Chapter Twenty-Three
For several moments, neither of them moved.
The foyer remained hushed around them. They closed the front door against the rain. The lamp upon the wall burned low. Upstairs, a floorboard creaked as Mama’s maid crossed the passage. Somewhere farther back in the house, a servant shut a door with quiet care.
Gabriel stood beside the hall table, his hat resting where he had placed it, his dark coat still buttoned, his expression composed enough to deceive anyone who had not learned how much effort composure cost him.
Poppy had learned.
She could see it in the line of his shoulders, in the way his fingers flexed once at his side and stilled again. His restraint had always looked like armor to her—polished, familiar, nearly impenetrable. Tonight, she could see the cracks.
Poppy drew one slow breath. Her pale pink muslin was wrinkled from the carriage, wet at the hem from the rain, and no longer arranged with any ambition toward charming a marquess.
She felt oddly relieved by that. The gown, like Poppy herself, had survived the day and had no further patience for pretending.
“Mama will sleep for hours,” she said.
Gabriel’s gaze moved toward the staircase, then returned to her face. “No doubt.”
“Jenkins has gone to the servants’ hall.”
“Yes.”
She folded her hands before her because otherwise she might reach for him without deciding whether she should.
Gabriel looked at her for a long moment. “Poppy.” Her name came out low and roughened at the edges.
She swallowed. “You said you wanted all of me.”
His eyes flared. “I do.”
Gabriel crossed the distance slowly, each step carrying him nearer to a choice she suspected he had already made and could no longer pretend to misunderstand. He stopped near enough that Poppy could smell the clean starch of his cravat and the faint trace of rain still clinging to his coat.
“I have no title,” he said.
“I know.”
“No great estate.”
“I know that too.”
“No fortune large enough to give you Caldermere’s kind of security.”
“And Caldermere offers a marriage where I will be expected to look away while his heart belongs elsewhere.” She lifted her chin. “You said yourself…he does not deserve me.”
“He does not,” Gabriel agreed. “But I’m not certain I do either.”
He looked at her with tenderness etched in his features. Then he raised one hand and touched her cheek. The contact was so gentle it made her eyes fill with tears. “But I love you,” he said.
Poppy went very still. For one suspended moment, she could only look at him. Love. Not desire. Not duty. Not reluctant tenderness dragged into the light and renamed. Love. The word seemed to settle into every frightened, hopeful part of her at once, until she could scarcely bear the force of it.
His face tightened. “I do not want to arrange you.” He stepped nearer.
“I do not want to rescue you either, though God knows I have thought of little else. You are not a parcel to be taken up by the man with the largest house. You don’t need rescuing.
You have been rescuing yourself and everyone around you for years.
” His voice lowered. “I want to stand beside you while you do it. And when you are weary, I want you to let me carry something.”
The ache in her chest deepened. Poppy lifted her hand and placed it against his waistcoat, feeling the fierce beat of his heart beneath her palm, all his calm and restraint undone.
“Gabriel,” she whispered.
She felt his breath move beneath her palm.
Poppy looked up at him, and for once she did not think of creditors, Algernon, Caldermere, cottages, titles, or whether anyone would judge her foolish.
She thought of Gabriel’s mouth on hers beside the Serpentine.
Of his hand on her breast in the drawing room.
Of his lips replacing his hand, and then…
“Come upstairs with me,” she breathed.
His face changed. The restraint did not vanish. It fractured. “Poppy.”
“Do not tell me what is wise.”
His hand moved from her cheek into her hair. “No.”
“Or what I need.”
“No.”
“Or what a solicitor should do.”
A rough breath escaped him. “I am not thinking at all like a solicitor at the moment.”
“Good.”
Then he kissed her. This time, there was no careful beginning, no tentative brush, no polite fiction that either of them might step back untouched.
His mouth found hers with hunger, and Poppy rose to meet it, gripping his waistcoat with all the desperation she had spent the day, the week, perhaps far longer, pretending not to feel.
Gabriel’s arm came around her. He drew her close, and the hard line of his body against hers sent a rush of heat through her so startling that she broke the kiss on a gasp.
He went still. “Poppy, if we go upstairs, do you understand what will follow?”
She touched his face. His jaw was tight beneath her palm, his restraint evident in every careful breath.
“I understand,” she said. “And I want to, Gabriel.”
For a moment he searched her face. Then he held out his hand.
She placed hers in it.
They climbed the stairs quietly, then moved through the dim passage like thieves. Poppy’s heart beat so loudly she was certain he must hear it.
At her bedchamber door, she paused. Her room had always been her refuge.
It wasn’t grand, or fashionable, nor untouched by the Montfort habit of making do.
The powder-blue coverlet had faded from years of laundering.
Books stood in uneven stacks beside the bed.
Ribbons lay in a small dish near the looking glass.
A worn shawl Mama had given her long ago hung over the back of a chair.
There had been nights after Papa died when Poppy had lain awake here listening to the house below fill with voices because silence frightened Mama more than noise.
This room knew too much of her.
Perhaps that was why she wanted Gabriel in it.
She opened the door.
He followed her inside and closed it softly behind them.
For a moment, the room was dark except for moonlight and the faint glow from the dying fire in the hearth. Gabriel stood near the door, no longer touching her.
She crossed to him first. Her fingers found his cravat, that beautifully ordered knot she had imagined disturbing far too many times. She tugged it loose slowly, watching his eyes darken with every movement.
“There,” she said, once the linen fell open at his throat. “Better.”
The corner of his mouth moved. Then his hands cupped her shoulders, and the humor vanished into something deeper.
“Turn around,” he said.
He unfastened her gown with painstaking care.
Button by button. Hook by hook. The slow attention should have soothed her.
Instead, it made every breath feel weighted with expectation.
When the muslin slipped from her shoulders, he caught it before it fell and after she stepped out of it, he laid it over the chair, granting even her ruined gown a gentleness that made her throat tighten.
Her stays followed. Then her shift.
Poppy had never stood naked before a man. She had imagined she might feel ashamed. But with Gabriel, shame never came. He looked at her in silence, his gaze moving over her body with such unconcealed desire that heat gathered low in her belly.
“You are beautiful,” he breathed.
Poppy had been called pretty before. Lovely, when a gown suited her. Charming, if she had successfully smoothed some social awkwardness and made others laugh.
Beautiful, in Gabriel’s voice, sounded less like praise than surrender.
She reached for him. “Let me see you.”
His breath changed.
He removed his coat, then waistcoat, then shirt. Each article stripped away the proper solicitor until only Gabriel remained: broad shoulders, light hair ruffled from her hands, chest marked by breath and restraint. Poppy touched him lightly, learning him by fingertips.
He shuddered.
That delighted her.
“Poppy,” he said.
“Yes?”
“If you continue looking at me like that, I shall lose what little discipline I have left.”
A smile touched her lips. “Would that be so dreadful?”
“Yes,” he said, and kissed her again with enough hunger to make the word sound like a lie.
He drew her to the bed with tenderness that did nothing to hide his desire. When she lay back against the pillows, he followed only as far as she allowed, bracing himself above her while his gaze searched her face.
“I will go slowly,” he said.
“Gabriel.”
“Yes?”
“Stop telling me and show me.”
A sound escaped him, rough and low.
He kissed her throat first, then the slope of her shoulder, then lower.
Poppy’s hands clenched in the coverlet when his mouth closed over her breast. The sensation was shocking, soft and sharp at once.
His tongue moved with patient purpose, and when his hand found her other breast, she arched beneath him without thought.
“That,” he murmured against her skin. “Do that again.”
Poppy’s breath caught. “What?”
“Move for me. Let me know when you like something.”
The words sent heat through her more surely than his mouth. She arched again, less by accident this time, and his fingers tightened against her nipple.
“Yes,” he said, his voice darker. “That is what I wanted.”
He learned her attentively, thoroughly, with a concentration that made her feel both cherished and undone.
His mouth moved from one breast to the other until she was restless beneath him, until every soft pull of his lips seemed to draw pleasure through her entire body.
Made the ache between her legs nearly unbearable.
When his hand slid lower, between her thighs, Poppy went still.
Gabriel lifted his head. “May I?”
The question was reverent.
“Yes.”
His fingers touched her with exquisite care.
Poppy’s breath caught. In the drawing room, he had stroked her with slow, searching patience, learning which touches made her tremble. This was different. His fingertip found the place where sensation gathered most fiercely and began to move in small, deliberate circles.
Her body jolted beneath his hand.
“Gabriel.”
He pressed his mouth to her throat. “Too much?”