Page 179 of The Wallflower Takes All

The life they had chosen.

Together.

Poppy reached for his face. “You are still you?”

“I am attempting to be.”

“Good. Because if you become pompous, I shall set Freddie on you.”

“That seems excessive.”

“It may be necessary.”

His eyes softened. “Then I shall endeavor to remain humble.”

“You have inherited a dukedom. Humility may require assistance.”

“I have no doubt Lady Viva will provide it.”

“Mama,” Poppy said, and covered her mouth.

Gabriel’s brows rose. “Yes?”

“She is going to be unbearable.”

He laughed. “More than usual?”

“By alarming degrees.”

He laughed then, and the sound of it settled something inside her.

A duke. Gabriel was a duke. And yet he knelt before her holding her hands as though her uncertainty were more urgent than any estate, title, or revenue in England.

Poppy bent and kissed him, brief and steady, with astonishment and relief trembling beneath it.

Then Lady Viva’s voice sounded from the hall. “Sweeties, I am attempting not to eavesdrop, but the door is ajar, and virtue has limits.”

Poppy closed her eyes. “We should tell them.”

“Yes.”

Gabriel rose and helped her to her feet. They stepped into the hall together.

Lady Viva stood near the staircase. Algernon hovered behind her with his snuffbox half open. Jenkins had paused beside a stack of trunks. Freddie sat on the corner of Papa’s wrapped portrait like a small, suspicious sphinx with long ears.

Poppy looked at them all. For once, she had the pleasure of delivering the impossible news. “Gabriel has inherited a title.”

Algernon sniffed. “What title?”

Poppy turned toward Gabriel, then back to the hall. “The Dukedom of Alderbury.”

The words seemed to pass from face to face before anyone remembered how to speak.

The Montfort house, which had survived a decade of nonsense without ever being silent for more than a breath, went utterly still.

Lady Viva recovered first. Of course. “A dukedom!”

“Yes, Mama.”