Page 80 of The Wallflower Takes All

“A polite word for retreat.”

“Yes.”

Poppy looked down at the cup before her. The tea had gone untouched, a thin curl of steam rising from the surface while the room seemed to wait with her. Lord Ketterham had been sensible, eligible, and exactly the sort of man she was meant to want. Yet Gabriel’s answer had not landed like disappointment alone.

Her hand stilled beside the cup. “And did you want him to retreat?”

The quiet question struck him harder than anger would have.

Gabriel drew a breath. “Yes,” he breathed.

Poppy lifted her gaze toward him.

There. He had said it. The word stood between them, plain and damning.

“I told him the truth,” Gabriel said. “But I did not tell it kindly. I did not tell it in a way meant to preserve his interest. I told it because he wanted the easiest parts of you and feared the rest.”

Her eyes brightened. “The rest being Mama, Freddie, debts, and ruin?”

“The rest being loyalty. Courage. Wit. Stubbornness. A heart that has been made to carry too much and still has room for everyone else.” His voice roughened despite his effort to steady it. “If a man cannot see those as reasons to want you more, he has no business asking for any part of you.”

Poppy stared at him.

Gabriel had gone too far. Again.

He forced his hands to remain at his sides. “That does not excuse what I did.”

“No,” she said quietly. “It does not.”

The answer had enough truth in it to draw blood.

She looked down at the tea tray. “I suppose he wanted quiet.”

“He did.”

“And we are chaos.”

“Sometimes.”

Her mouth trembled. “How diplomatic.”

“Poppy.”

The name escaped him before he could call it back.

Her attention flew to his face.

He did not correct himself. “You are not chaos. You have been living inside it for so long that you mistake its noise for your own.”

She closed her eyes, her composure cracking at the edges.

Gabriel took one step toward her, then stopped. “Lord Ketterham is wrong if he thinks peace means choosing a woman untouched by trouble. Peace is what you create, again and again, with your hands full and no one thanking you properly for it.”

For a moment, she said nothing.

Then she gave a small, unsteady laugh. “You have a dreadful habit of ruining me for other men, Mr. Ashby.”

His chest tightened. “I know.”