Page 178 of The Wallflower Takes All

“Several.”

She looked positively alarmed. “How many is several?”

“I left my father at Lincoln’s Inn to discover that.”

Poppy stared at him another moment. Then a laugh escaped her. It was not elegant. It was not restrained. It contained too much shock and too much disbelief and too much hope trying to become something else.

Gabriel knelt before her. “Poppy.”

“You promised me a respectable practice, prudence, and a house with room for Mama,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

“I meant it.”

“And now you have returned with a dukedom.”

He shook his head. “I did not plan the timing.”

“No. Had you planned it, I suspect you would have chosen a less alarming hour.”

His smile faded. He searched her face. “Does it frighten you? The dukedom, I mean.”

Poppy looked at him. The honest answer was yes.

A duke could marry nearly anyone. A duke did not need to attach himself to a penniless viscount’s daughter with a disastrous mother, an evicted household, and a puppy who had declared war on upholstery. A duke could have the sort of wife Society approved of before she entered the room. A duchess trained from birth to preside over galleries, tenants, dinners, committees, charities, and ancestral silver without once wondering whether the flowers were wilted.

Poppy was clever. Competent. Loyal.

She was also the daughter of Lady Viva Montfort, currently packing a household in a state of partial collapse while Cousin Algernon inspected curtains.

Gabriel saw the fear before she could hide it.

His hands closed over hers. “No.”

She tried to smile. “I did not say anything.”

“I can tell by the look on your face. You were about to decide I require a different wife.”

Her throat tightened. He knew her too well. “A duke requires a duchess,” she said.

“Yes.”

“One capable of moving in that world.”

“You are.”

“Gabriel.”

“I asked you before this.” His voice was gentle but firm. “Before the title. Before Alderbury Court. Before Grosvenor Square. Before I knew I possessed anything more than my name, my work, and an ability to find unsatisfactory cottages.”

Her laugh broke around a tear.

“I asked because I love you,” he said. “Not because you fit a title I did not know I had. If anything has changed, it is that I have better means to protect the life we already chose.”

“The life we chose,” she repeated softly.

“Yes.”

Not the life he would bestow upon her. Not the rescue he would arrange.