Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
A duke. Gabriel was a duke. And yet he knelt before her holding her hands as though her uncertainty were more urgent than any estate, title, or revenue in England.
Poppy bent and kissed him, brief and steady, with astonishment and relief trembling beneath it.
Then Lady Viva’s voice sounded from the hall. “Sweeties, I am attempting not to eavesdrop, but the door is ajar, and virtue has limits.”
Poppy closed her eyes. “We should tell them.”
“Yes.”
Gabriel rose and helped her to her feet. They stepped into the hall together.
Lady Viva stood near the staircase. Algernon hovered behind her with his snuffbox half open. Jenkins had paused beside a stack of trunks. Freddie sat on the corner of Papa’s wrapped portrait like a small, suspicious sphinx with long ears.
Poppy looked at them all. For once, she had the pleasure of delivering the impossible news. “Gabriel has inherited a title.”
Algernon sniffed. “What title?”
Poppy turned toward Gabriel, then back to the hall. “The Dukedom of Alderbury.”
The words seemed to pass from face to face before anyone remembered how to speak.
The Montfort house, which had survived a decade of nonsense without ever being silent for more than a breath, went utterly still.
Lady Viva recovered first. Of course. “A dukedom!”
“Yes, Mama.”
“A proper one?”
Gabriel bowed slightly. “A very proper one.”
“With a house?”
“Several.”
“A ballroom?”
“I have not yet had confirmation.”
“Wine cellars?”
“Almost certainly.”
“Portrait galleries?”
“Likely.”
Lady Viva pressed one hand dramatically to her chest. “Oh, Poppy, darling, I may become interestingly ancestral.”
Algernon dropped his snuffbox. It landed on the carpet, burst open, and sent a small cloud of snuff across his polished shoe.
Freddie barked once, sharply, clearly approving the new order of things.
Algernon stared at Gabriel. “The Duke of Alderbury?”
Gabriel inclined his head. “So I am informed.”
“Your Grace,” Jenkins said, bowing.
The butler’s tone was perfectly discreet, but Poppy detected unmistakable satisfaction in it.
Gabriel looked faintly pained.
Poppy nearly laughed again.
Lady Viva swept forward and took Poppy’s face between her hands. “My darling girl. You shall be a duchess.”
“Mama.”
“A duchess,” Lady Viva repeated, softer now.
The glittering delight in her eyes shifted, and, beneath it, Poppy saw fierce, trembling relief tangled with remorse.
“You will be safe,” Mama whispered, tears filling her eyes.
“We all will,” Poppy said. “But you must let Gabriel and me decide what happens next.”
Lady Viva’s mouth trembled before she gave a true nod, quiet and stripped of performance. “I shall try.”
“I mean it,” Poppy warned.
“I know.” Mama kissed Poppy’s cheek. “You have kept things standing long enough, darling. I have complete faith in you.”
It was not a promise of perfection. After the hotel, Poppy no longer required one.
Gabriel stepped nearer. “The Grosvenor Square house may be opened immediately, if the documents are as Mr. Wetherby represented. Lady Montague, you may stay with us, of course. Or, if you prefer, we may discuss a nearby house of your own once matters are settled.”
Lady Viva blinked. “A house of my own?”
“If you wish.”
“With a salon?”
“I should hope so.”
“And a guest room?”
“One guest room,” Gabriel said.
Lady Viva’s expression turned tragic. “One?”
“Perhaps two.”
“Affection cannot be defined so narrowly,” Lady Viva informed him.
“Affection, perhaps not. Guest rooms can.”
Poppy gave Gabriel a small, knowing smile. “You will need all your legal skills to convince her.”
Gabriel shook his head. “I have begun to understand that.”
Algernon cleared his throat, and everyone turned. He had retrieved his snuffbox and was attempting to regain the authority of a viscount in the presence of a duke. The effort was not going well. “I suppose,” he said, “this alters certain arrangements.”
Gabriel’s expression settled into calm authority. “It doesn’t alter your legal rights, Lord Montague. You still may claim this house and Brambleberry Court.”
Algernon straightened slightly. “Yes, but…perhaps I should allow my dear aunt and darling cousin to stay with me…until after the wedding.”
Ah, so now Mama was a “dear aunt” and she a “darling cousin”? Poppy shook her head. “That won’t be necessary. We can stay at a hotel.”
“In a suite, no less,” Mama added with a beatific smile.
“But Lady Montague’s personal belongings will still be removed according to a reasonable timetable,” Gabriel continued.
“The late viscount’s portrait and effects will be treated with respect.
And nothing belonging to either lady will be detained on the assumption it forms part of the estate unless proper proof exists. ”
Algernon opened his mouth.
Gabriel waited.
Algernon shut it. “That seems reasonable,” he said at last.
Lady Viva leaned toward Poppy. “His waistcoat has lost confidence,” she whispered.
Poppy pressed her lips together.
Jenkins stepped forward. “Shall I redirect the larger trunks to the Grosvenor Square residence, Your Grace?”
Gabriel glanced at Poppy, leaving the answer where it belonged, entirely with her.
Poppy nodded.
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “Please do.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
Freddie chose that moment to dart beneath the hall table and emerge with a tassel in his mouth.
“My first ducal crisis,” Gabriel said.
Poppy laughed.
“So it begins,” Lady Viva said, delighted.
For the next quarter hour, the foyer became a battlefield of new instructions.
Jenkins sent one servant for the Grosvenor Square address, another to halt the storage wagon, and a third to rescue the tassel from Freddie before it became a casualty of rank.
Lady Viva peppered Gabriel with questions about conservatories, music rooms, attics, former duchesses, portrait galleries, and whether one might reasonably place a harp in a morning room.
Gabriel answered what he could and deferred what he could not, though each question seemed to increase his awareness that a dukedom came with fewer clear limits than a legal document.
At last, he turned to Poppy. “Will this continue indefinitely?”
“Yes.”
“I feared so.”
She patted his shoulder. “You are bearing it quite nobly.”
“I am considering writing to Wetherby to ask whether dukes are permitted to hide.”
“Not in this family,” Poppy told him.
“This family?” Gabriel repeated.
Poppy’s smile softened. “Yes.”
Something in his face changed.
Lady Viva had moved toward the stairs with Jenkins, debating whether the silver urn should go to Grosvenor Square immediately or arrive later “with more mystery.” Algernon had retreated to the morning room, ostensibly to reconsider his hospitality, his snuff, and hopefully his waistcoat.
Freddie settled once again near Papa’s wrapped portrait, deprived of the tassel but not of his consequence.
For the first time all day, Poppy simply stood still.
She looked at the house. At the staircase she had descended for balls she had not been particularly welcome to attend.
At the hall where Papa had once lifted her into the air when she was small.
At the doorway where Mama had laughed too loudly to keep from grieving.
At the portrait wrapped for removal, no longer abandoned but carried forward.
Leaving still hurt, and some part of her suspected it always would. The Montfort house had held Papa’s laughter, Mama’s music, childhood summers, candlelit ballrooms, terrible dinners, and every version of Poppy she had been to date. But leaving it no longer felt like losing herself.
The old dream loosened inside her and changed shape.
She could grieve one house while stepping toward another.
There would be new rooms, new memories, and a life filled with love, lamplight, books, dogs, Mama’s nonsense kept within tolerable limits, Freddie’s crimes, Gabriel’s steady hand in hers, and perhaps, someday, children laughing in the halls.
She did not need the Montfort house in order to remain Poppy. Nor did she need a cold marriage to prove she had chosen wisely, or a title to become someone worth choosing.
She only needed to choose the life that was choosing her back.
Gabriel came to stand beside her, his position making its own quiet promise. “What are you thinking?” he asked quietly.
Poppy looked toward the door, where the first trunks were being redirected to a house she had not yet seen.
“I am thinking,” she said, “that we shall need a very strong roof.”
His mouth curved. “To withstand the weather?”
“And guests.”
“Then we had better begin with the guests. Weather is more predictable.”
Lady Viva turned from the stairs. “Did someone say guests? Because I have begun a list for the wedding.”
Gabriel’s expression transformed with gratifying alarm.
“Wedding?” he said.
“Mama,” Poppy warned.
“What? I have been quiet for several minutes. It was heroic.”
Gabriel looked at Poppy, then at Lady Viva, then at Freddie, who had begun edging toward the confiscated tassel again.
Poppy slipped her hand into his.
Whatever came next—wedding lists, guest rooms, suspicious spaniels, ducal correspondence, and Mama with access to a ducal ballroom—they would face it together.