Chapter Twenty-Seven
By four o’clock, Poppy had packed the same box of books twice.
This was not efficient.
She had begun with Papa’s copy of The Tempest, only to decide it ought to travel with them rather than disappear into storage.
Then she had remembered that there was, as yet, nowhere for it to travel to except the hotel, where space would be limited.
She returned it to the crate, took it out again, and finally held it against her chest because Papa had loved it, and packing it away felt like admitting something she was not ready to admit.
She paused. The library sounded wrong without its books. Rooms had voices. Poppy had always known that. This room’s voice had been paper, leather, old dust, Papa’s quiet laugh, and Mama calling through the doorway to ask whether anyone had seen her fan, her pearls, or her fichu.
Now the shelves stood half bare. The remaining books looked abandoned, plainly resentful that the household had decided to leave without asking their opinion.
Near the front door, Papa’s portrait waited in its wrapping, guarded by Freddie with grave and entirely self-appointed devotion. He had already growled at one footman, barked at Algernon, and attempted to rip a tassel from a cushion intended for storage.
Mama had declared his conduct deeply loyal and only moderately destructive.
“Darling,” she had said when Poppy carried another stack of books through the hall, “do not let them pack the silver urn. We must ensure our hotel suite is anything but ordinary.”
“I am not certain it will be an entire suite, Mama.”
“It will be after I have a talk with the gentleman in charge,” Mama replied with a wink.
Poppy turned back to the packing. The whole house felt like a memory being disassembled one object at a time. And yet beneath the grief, happiness kept rising.
Gabriel had asked her to marry him.
Gabriel, who had kissed her in the stripped study with dust on her cheek and crates around them. Gabriel, who had offered not a palace, not an ancient name, not a life free from difficulty, but himself.
Mrs. Gabriel Ashby.
The thought made her smile so suddenly she had to set down The Tempest before she dropped it.
It was not the grand future she had once imagined while standing at the edge of ballrooms, calculating which gentlemen might tolerate Mama and which would flee before the second scandalous anecdote. It was not the dream of a title that would make every door open and every whisper turn polite.
It was better.
Gabriel was not a consolation prize for failing to secure a marquess. He was the man she had wanted when every practical argument told her to want someone else. And given that…perhaps she had pulled off the boldest of the wallflowers’ revolts.
The thought also made her smile.
A crash sounded overhead.
Poppy closed her eyes.
Then Jenkins appeared in the library doorway. “Miss Montfort.”
“Yes?”
“The footmen wish to know whether the smaller writing desk is to go to storage or remain until tomorrow.”
“Storage.”
“And the Italian screen?”
“Storage.”
“And the bronze satyr?”
Poppy paused. “What bronze satyr?”
“The one her ladyship says represents merriment.”
“Storage,” Poppy said. “Before Mama gives her opinion.”
“Very good, miss.”
Another thump came from above, followed by Lady Viva’s voice calling, “If that was Algernon’s cabinet, no one move! I want to cherish the moment.”
Jenkins’s eyelid flickered.
Poppy pressed a hand to her forehead.
“I heard that,” came Algernon’s voice from somewhere far away.
Then the front door opened below, and the rhythm of the house changed.
She knew before she heard his voice.
Gabriel.
Poppy turned from the crate as footsteps crossed the hall with unusual haste.
“Miss Montfort is in the library,” she heard Jenkins say.
A moment later, Gabriel appeared in the doorway. He looked windblown and hurried, his hat gripped in one hand and his blond hair ruffled by weather or agitation. Worst of all was his expression, composed with such care that Poppy knew at once he was holding something back.
“Gabriel,” she said.
He looked at the open crates, the half-empty shelves, the book in her hand, and something restrained broke through his expression. “I need to speak with you.”
Lady Viva appeared behind him in the hall, peach silk skirts gathered in one hand. “Mr. Ashby, darling, you look as if you have been chased by street urchins.”
“Something has happened,” Gabriel said, breathing hard.
Algernon emerged from the hallway, snuffbox in hand, his beetle-green waistcoat somewhat less starched than it had been that morning. “What now?”
Gabriel did not look at him. “Poppy, may we have a moment?”
Her heart began to beat too fast. “Yes.”
She led him down the staircase and into the study, leaving the door ajar because even after accepting a proposal in a room full of crates, propriety deserved a token appearance.
Gabriel remained standing.
Poppy set The Tempest upon the desk. “You are frightening me.”
His gaze flew to hers. “Forgive me. I did not mean to.”
“What happened?”
He drew a breath. “The letter from Lincoln’s Inn concerned the Duke of Alderbury.”
Poppy blinked. “The one who died?”
“Yes.”
She narrowed her eyes. “And Messrs. Wetherby, Crane, and Holt wished to consult you about it?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No.” A faint, strained smile crossed his face. “It is a delaying tactic.”
“Gabriel.”
He came toward her then, stopping close enough that she could see the disbelief still moving through him.
“The Dukedom of Alderbury was created with a special remainder,” he said. “A rare provision in the original letters patent. The direct line has failed, along with the nearer collateral branches. The descent passes through the first duke’s elder daughter’s line.”
Poppy listened, but she still didn’t understand what he meant.
Gabriel continued, quieter now. “That line eventually came through my mother.”
Poppy’s breath caught.
“Lady Anne Marten,” he said. “She was the senior surviving descendant. As she is dead, the right passes to her eldest and only surviving son.”
For a moment, all the sound left the room, and the half-empty shelves, the crates, the scrape of trunks in the hall, Freddie’s barking near Papa’s portrait, and Algernon’s complaints about filtered light all seemed to fall away.
Poppy stared at Gabriel. “You,” she whispered, half-covering her mouth with her hand.
“Yes.”
Her eyes widened. “You are the Duke of Alderbury.”
Gabriel gave a helpless shrug. “Apparently, yes.”
Poppy sat down abruptly on the edge of a crate.
Gabriel reached for her. “Poppy?”
“I am not fainting.”
“You sat rather suddenly.”
“I am recalculating the universe.”
His mouth twitched despite the tension in his face. “So am I.”
“The Duke of Alderbury,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“So…Alderbury Court?”
“Yes.”
“And that gorgeous house in Grosvenor Square?”
“Yes.”
“And other estates?”
“Several.”
She looked positively alarmed. “How many is several?”
“I left my father at Lincoln’s Inn to discover that.”
Poppy stared at him another moment. Then a laugh escaped her. It was not elegant. It was not restrained. It contained too much shock and too much disbelief and too much hope trying to become something else.
Gabriel knelt before her. “Poppy.”
“You promised me a respectable practice, prudence, and a house with room for Mama,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.
“I meant it.”
“And now you have returned with a dukedom.”
He shook his head. “I did not plan the timing.”
“No. Had you planned it, I suspect you would have chosen a less alarming hour.”
His smile faded. He searched her face. “Does it frighten you? The dukedom, I mean.”
Poppy looked at him. The honest answer was yes.
A duke could marry nearly anyone. A duke did not need to attach himself to a penniless viscount’s daughter with a disastrous mother, an evicted household, and a puppy who had declared war on upholstery.
A duke could have the sort of wife Society approved of before she entered the room.
A duchess trained from birth to preside over galleries, tenants, dinners, committees, charities, and ancestral silver without once wondering whether the flowers were wilted.
Poppy was clever. Competent. Loyal.
She was also the daughter of Lady Viva Montfort, currently packing a household in a state of partial collapse while Cousin Algernon inspected curtains.
Gabriel saw the fear before she could hide it.
His hands closed over hers. “No.”
She tried to smile. “I did not say anything.”
“I can tell by the look on your face. You were about to decide I require a different wife.”
Her throat tightened. He knew her too well. “A duke requires a duchess,” she said.
“Yes.”
“One capable of moving in that world.”
“You are.”
“Gabriel.”
“I asked you before this.” His voice was gentle but firm. “Before the title. Before Alderbury Court. Before Grosvenor Square. Before I knew I possessed anything more than my name, my work, and an ability to find unsatisfactory cottages.”
Her laugh broke around a tear.
“I asked because I love you,” he said. “Not because you fit a title I did not know I had. If anything has changed, it is that I have better means to protect the life we already chose.”
“The life we chose,” she repeated softly.
“Yes.”
Not the life he would bestow upon her. Not the rescue he would arrange.
The life they had chosen.
Together.
Poppy reached for his face. “You are still you?”
“I am attempting to be.”
“Good. Because if you become pompous, I shall set Freddie on you.”
“That seems excessive.”
“It may be necessary.”
His eyes softened. “Then I shall endeavor to remain humble.”
“You have inherited a dukedom. Humility may require assistance.”
“I have no doubt Lady Viva will provide it.”
“Mama,” Poppy said, and covered her mouth.
Gabriel’s brows rose. “Yes?”
“She is going to be unbearable.”
He laughed. “More than usual?”
“By alarming degrees.”
He laughed then, and the sound of it settled something inside her.