Page 25 of The Wallflower Manifesto
Millie blinked, looking up from her ink-stained hands and staring in disbelief at the sun cresting over the horizon through her curtains.
Surely she had not written through theentirenight?
And yet, there was the sun, stretching her arms over her head as bright, errant rays popped out over the roofs and chimneys of Mayfair, reaching languidly toward the heavens.
She looked back down at her journal. She had just written the first line on the very last page. And if she filled this one and the back too, she might still need the inside cover to contain all of her thoughts.
It had been a truly illuminating evening.
She’d learned Ember’s particular flavor of Chicken Hazard faster than any of the other ladies, though once Mrs. Goode had a handle on the rules, she’d been able to work out the mathematical basis for her bets the quickest.
Still, Millie had won over twenty shillings! It was more than an entire week of her stipend as a companion.
She was going to buy the finest kid leather journal she could find in Bloomsbury. She was hoping she could find something in a nice, pale blue.
Her entry was slanted and harried, likely impacted by the whiskey and the single puff of a cigar she’d managed to imbibe. The words were crammed together like jostling people elbowing their way through a crowded room, sometimes jumping over one another to fit into the line.
She hadn’t even intended to record the whole affair this way. She’d had one thing she felt she absolutely must record before she went to sleep, and once she started, she’d just been unable to stop herself recounting every impression in her mind. She felt as though she must fully empty everything out onto the paper before she’d catch a wink of sleep.
And oh, that thing that had started it all? It was still buzzing around her head like a gnat, refusing to stop repeating itself.
Tell Abe, the gnat kept saying,you must tell Abe!
It had happened when they switched to cards, after so many rounds of Hazard that some of the ladies had no more gambling spirit left in them.
While Ember shuffled and dealt the cards, Mrs. Goode and Mrs. Smith were explaining to the younger ladies about their business creating prints on Bond Street.
“The trouble is being ahead of gossip, or at least as fast as gossip,” Mrs. Goode was saying, catching each card dealt to her like she was snatching it out of the air. “We have reciprocalrelationships with all of the big gossip circulars, but of course, sometimes you still miss the jump. It’s best when they delay printing until we can produce appropriate artwork.”
“Yes, and often they are sensible enough to heed that,” Mrs. Smith put in, adjusting her spectacles to squint at her hand. “For example, that business this afternoon.”
“Oh, yes!” Mrs. Goode clapped her hands together, cards and all. “We had an artist work forhoursto have that done tonight. I hope he delivered it on time. Zelda doesn’t like trusting the artists to deliver, but some of our regulars are quite dependable.”
Mrs. Smith made a huffing sound but did not respond.
“Oh? What happened?” Ember pressed, discarding the rest of the deck and leaning forward on her elbows. “We won’t tell.”
Mrs. Smith made another disapproving sound, but her partner was already divulging.
“Do you recall last Season when jewels kept going missing from Society events? No? Well, it was kept as quiet as it could be just due to the embarrassment of it all. Zelda and I were waiting on tenterhooks to see if it would happen again.”
“I remember,” Millie had said, her voice dry from the thrum of energy the topic had sent bolting through her.
“Ah, see?” said Mrs. Goode. “It was at least somewhat known. Anyway, a duchess had her heirloom ruby ring go missing after a ball at Almack’s and raised quite a fuss over it. It was hundreds of years old, apparently, and the ruby was pristine.”
“So she says,” put in Mrs. Smith, tapping her fanned-out cards impatiently.
“Well,” Mrs. Goode continued, her eyes sparkling, “apparently, a second-year debutante got engaged to a well-to-do merchant ahead of last night’s ball at the very same duchess’s estate. And when the duchess went to congratulate the young lady on her good fortune, she saw her heirloom ring on the young woman’s finger! The merchant had proposed with it!”
There were appropriate scandalized gasps at this revelation.
“Of course, he claims he bought it from a reputable dealer,” Mrs. Smith said with a roll of her eyes. “The Runners were summoned and he was taken for questioning, but I hear he’s free again as of this morning.”
“Yes, it turns out he was on the Continent last season,” Mrs. Goode told them. “So he couldn’t have been the thief. But then, how did he come to propose with the duchess’s priceless heirloom? It’s delicious, and if we made it to print on time with our illustration, the inevitable sale of the original art will cover our expenses for quite a while.”
Millie took a deep breath, stretching her back into an arc and releasing a little sigh at the memory of it all.
Of course she had to tell Abe. She wanted to be the one to tell him, before the gossip sheets could.Whywas that so important?
