Page 182 of The Wallflower Takes All

Poppy laughed.

“So it begins,” Lady Viva said, delighted.

For the next quarter hour, the foyer became a battlefield of new instructions. Jenkins sent one servant for the Grosvenor Square address, another to halt the storage wagon, and a third to rescue the tassel from Freddie before it became a casualty of rank. Lady Viva peppered Gabriel with questions about conservatories, music rooms, attics, former duchesses, portrait galleries, and whether one might reasonably place a harp in a morning room.

Gabriel answered what he could and deferred what he could not, though each question seemed to increase his awareness that a dukedom came with fewer clear limits than a legal document.

At last, he turned to Poppy. “Will this continue indefinitely?”

“Yes.”

“I feared so.”

She patted his shoulder. “You are bearing it quite nobly.”

“I am considering writing to Wetherby to ask whether dukes are permitted to hide.”

“Not in this family,” Poppy told him.

“This family?” Gabriel repeated.

Poppy’s smile softened. “Yes.”

Something in his face changed.

Lady Viva had moved toward the stairs with Jenkins, debating whether the silver urn should go to Grosvenor Square immediately or arrive later “with more mystery.” Algernon had retreated to the morning room, ostensibly to reconsider his hospitality, his snuff, and hopefully his waistcoat. Freddie settled once again near Papa’s wrapped portrait, deprived of the tassel but not of his consequence.

For the first time all day, Poppy simply stood still.

She looked at the house. At the staircase she had descended for balls she had not been particularly welcome to attend. At the hall where Papa had once lifted her into the air when she was small. At the doorway where Mama had laughed too loudly to keep from grieving. At the portrait wrapped for removal, no longer abandoned but carried forward.

Leaving still hurt, and some part of her suspected it always would. The Montfort house had held Papa’s laughter, Mama’s music, childhood summers, candlelit ballrooms, terrible dinners, and every version of Poppy she had been to date. But leaving it no longer felt like losing herself.

The old dream loosened inside her and changed shape. She could grieve one house while stepping toward another. There would be new rooms, new memories, and a life filled with love, lamplight, books, dogs, Mama’s nonsense kept within tolerable limits, Freddie’s crimes, Gabriel’s steady hand in hers, and perhaps, someday, children laughing in the halls.

She did not need the Montfort house in order to remain Poppy. Nor did she need a cold marriage to prove she had chosen wisely, or a title to become someone worth choosing.

She only needed to choose the life that was choosing her back.

Gabriel came to stand beside her, his position making its own quiet promise. “What are you thinking?” he asked quietly.

Poppy looked toward the door, where the first trunks were being redirected to a house she had not yet seen.

“I am thinking,” she said, “that we shall need a very strong roof.”

His mouth curved. “To withstand the weather?”

“And guests.”

“Then we had better begin with the guests. Weather is more predictable.”

Lady Viva turned from the stairs. “Did someone say guests? Because I have begun a list for the wedding.”

Gabriel’s expression transformed with gratifying alarm.

“Wedding?” he said.

“Mama,” Poppy warned.