Chapter Twenty-Two #3
“What? I have endured a false wedding, a fraudulent archbishop, paste jewelry, and a shocking amount of candor. Cake seems warranted. Though I should like plum cake, not seed cake.”
Gabriel crossed to the table and retrieved the fraudulent license, folding it with exacting care. “I shall settle the parlor charge and arrange for the valise.”
Lady Viva turned toward him. “Mr. Ashby, darling, have you ever considered that competence is among the most seductive qualities a man may possess?”
Poppy closed her eyes. “Mama.”
Gabriel’s expression barely shifted. “Not at any length, my lady.”
“A grievous omission.”
He inclined his head and stepped toward the door, discreetly giving them another moment.
Poppy helped Mama sit, then retrieved the rose cloak from the sofa and placed it around her shoulders.
Lady Viva caught her hand. “You will not marry in haste because of me.”
Poppy looked down at their joined hands. “I will decide what I must do. But you cannot run off to hotels with dubious men every time you are frightened.”
“I shall try to limit myself.”
“No, Mama.”
Lady Viva sighed. “Very well. No more dubious men in hotels.”
“Thank you.”
“And no dead archbishops.”
“That too.”
Mama nodded solemnly. “An excellent rule.”
Poppy laughed again, softer this time.
The day was not fixed. Nothing was fixed. Algernon still approached. The house would still be lost. She had no doubt missed Lord Caldermere’s call. Gabriel still had not chosen her.
But something true had finally been spoken between mother and daughter, and that felt like a door opening in a room they had both been trapped inside for years.
When Lady Viva finally stood again, she pressed both hands to her cheeks. “I must look appalling.”
Poppy laughed through the tightness in her throat. “You look as though you attempted to marry a false count in a hotel parlor.”
“How oddly specific.”
Poppy sighed. “It has been an oddly specific morning.”
Gabriel stepped through the door just then and Mama looked toward him. “Mr. Ashby, darling.”
His face was composed, but his eyes were not. “Yes, Lady Montague?”
“Would it be terribly dreary if I asked you to take us home?”
“Not at all.”
“And perhaps refrain from telling anyone about the dead archbishop?”
“I consider discretion part of my profession,” he replied.
“How fortunate. I begin to see why Poppy likes you so much.”
Poppy’s cheeks heated. “Mama.”
Lady Viva glanced between them, tear-streaked and exhausted but unmistakably herself again. “Darling, even grief has not made me blind.”
Gabriel splayed his hand toward the door. “Shall we?”
Poppy looked at him, and for a moment the hotel parlor, Mama’s tears, Bellarosa’s fraud, and all the future’s uncertainty narrowed to the steadiness in his face.
He had come with her. He had stood beside her. He had not turned away from the worst of it.
“Yes,” Poppy said. “Let’s go home.”
Mama fell asleep in the hackney before they reached the end of Albemarle Street.
Lady Viva rested against the squabs with one hand curled loosely in her lap, her cloak drawn around her. The exhaustion had stripped the animation from her face. She looked older than she had that morning and, somehow, more peaceful.
Poppy sat beside her.
Gabriel occupied the opposite seat, one hand braced against the side of the carriage as it rolled through London.
For several streets, neither spoke.
Poppy did not know what to say.
Too much had happened. Mama’s disappearance. Bellarosa’s false license. The preposterousness of Mr. Pottle. The first tears Poppy had ever seen upon her mother’s face. The apology she had wanted for ten years and discovered she could not receive without mourning everything that made it necessary.
And Gabriel had witnessed all of it.
Not every word, perhaps. He had given them what privacy a hotel parlor permitted. But enough. Certainly enough.
Poppy looked toward him. “I am sorry,” she said softly.
His brows drew together. “For what?”
She nearly laughed. She had spent so many years apologizing for Mama, the house, and every complication attached to them that the words came before thought. “For drawing you into this.”
“Poppy.”
The quiet reproach in her name stopped her.
Gabriel leaned forward slightly, his voice low enough not to wake Mama. “You did not bring me anywhere I did not choose to go.”
The word settled inside her.
Choose.
He hadn’t had a chance to reply when she’d asked him to choose her. But he had remained beside her today without hesitation.
Poppy looked down at Mama’s sleeping face. “I did not know,” she whispered. “I thought she did not cry because she did not feel it as deeply as I did.”
“I think she felt too much.”
“Yes.”
The carriage rocked gently over the street. Poppy drew in a breath. “That does not excuse everything.”
“No.” The answer came without hesitation.
She looked at Gabriel. He understood. Not merely Mama’s grief, but hers as well. He did not expect Poppy to forgive ten years in one embrace or transform pain into something pretty because the tears had finally arrived.
“She is my mother,” Poppy said. “I love her.”
“Yes.”
“But I cannot continue as we were.”
“No.”
The simple agreement steadied her.
By the time the hackney turned into their street, rain was coming down in steady sheets.
When the coach drew up before the town house, Gabriel descended first, removing his coat to cover the ladies’ heads as he helped Poppy down.
Jenkins opened the door before they reached the top step, alarm visible beneath his composure.
“We found her,” Poppy said.
His shoulders eased. “Lord Caldermere called,” he said solemnly.
Poppy nodded. “I expected as much.”
“He left his card.”
Poppy nodded again.
Gabriel and Jenkins managed to guide Mama upstairs. Lady Viva protested only once, murmuring that seed cake would be acceptable after all if Cook had not allowed it to become stale.
Then she disappeared with Jenkins and her maid.
Poppy remained in the foyer.
Gabriel came down the stairs a moment later.
The house had gone quiet around them.
For one suspended moment, the scene felt unnervingly familiar: Gabriel standing near the open door, the lamplit street beyond him, and Poppy with too much pressed against her heart and no smile left to shield herself.
Neither of them spoke.
Then Gabriel turned toward her.
His face was no longer guarded in the way she had come to expect. Weariness showed in the set of his shoulders, and concern had gentled the hard line of his mouth. He still held himself with that careful composure of his, yet this time it did not hide him entirely.
“Poppy?”
She crossed the foyer until only a breath of space remained between them. “I do not wish to be alone,” she said, and the admission cost her dearly.
Gabriel looked at her for a long moment, as though he heard everything beneath the words.
“I choose you, Poppy,” he said.