Page 184 of The Wallflower Takes All

“Not soon enough,” Gabriel replied.

Pembroke smiled into his coffee. Nicholas had the charity to turn a page of the book and pretend not to notice.

Alderbury House had received the Montfort party with far more ease than Archer House ever could have done. It had space enough for everyone and then some: a drawing room with silk walls the color of pale cream, a music room that seemed to have been designed for sopranos, a dining room capable of seating forty people without strain, and a staircase that descended into the marble hall with all the confidence of a coronation procession.

Lady Viva had taken one look at it and said, “Darling, one could make dreadful decisions here in perfect comfort.”

Poppy had laughed, then gone quiet.

Gabriel had understood. The house was magnificent, but magnificence was not the same as home. Not yet.

Still, the place had begun to change under the invasion. One of Freddie’s ribbons now hung from a bronze satyr at the foot of the stairs. Lady Viva’s flowers had multiplied in every room. None of them wilted. Jenkins had established a favorite spot near the front door. Bea had reduced the wedding arrangements from impending spectacle to something that might plausibly be called intimate, though Lady Viva continued to dispute the term.

“Ten,” Lady Viva had pleaded last week from the blue drawing room, where she had draped herself upon a satin sofa with Freddie in her lap and a list in one hand.

“Six,” Bea had replied. As Poppy had appointed Bea her official wedding negotiator.

“Nine, and one of them very quiet,” Lady Viva had countered.

“Six,” Bea repeated.

“Eight, but I count Freddie as clergy.”

“Six.”

Nicholas had finally looked at Gabriel and said, “You see what marriage to a wallflower entails.”

Jason, standing beside Georgie, had added, “You are getting the mild version. No one has threatened an escape.”

This morning, Lady Viva had made one final attempt to include Mr. Loxley.

“He wrote a poem for the occasion,” she said.

“That is not an invitation requirement,” Bea replied.

“It proves interest,” Lady Viva argued.

“Six,” Bea had said with finality.

Upstairs, Poppy stood very still while joy moved through her in trembling waves, so vast she could scarcely tell where her nerves ended and happiness began. Today she would cross a room, speak a vow, and step into her new life.

All that remained was to be married. The men had made their way to the largest drawing room of Alderbury House. The archbishop had already arrived, the special license had been produced, and champagne waited in the enormous dining room.

The moment Poppy stepped into the room with Georgie on one side, Bea on the other, and Mama close behind her, the sight of it all took her breath away. It had been designed for consequence. Gilt-framed mirrors reflected the pale winter light. Tall arrangements of white roses and greenery stood before the mantel. A chandelier glittered overhead, all crystal and restraint, while two short rows of carved chairs had been arranged upon an Aubusson carpet so fine that Lady Viva leaned near Poppy’s ear and whispered, “I hope no one cries on it.”

It was, by Lady Viva’s standards, a tragically modest ceremony.

By Poppy’s, it was perfect.

The people she loved were there.

Mama. Gabriel’s father. Bea and Nicholas. Georgie and Jason. Jenkins stationed near the door, solemnly prepared to defend the occasion from canine mischief. Freddie sat beside him, supposedly under supervision, with an ivory ribbon around his neck for decoration.

She had not seen Gabriel all morning. Bea had declared it improper. Georgie had supported Bea on the grounds that romance deserved some ceremony. Mama had agreed because separation, she said, made reunions more theatrical. Poppy had accepted the verdict with as much patience as she could manage, which was to say very little.

But there he was.

He stood beside the archbishop in a dark coat, impossibly handsome and more moved than his controlled expression wished to reveal. Duke or solicitor, Alderbury or Ashby, he was still Gabriel. The man who had stood in hotel parlors and stripped libraries, the man who had chosen her before inheritance transformed his world, the man whose hands had taught her that being cherished could feel like both shelter and fire.