Page 37 of The Wallflower Manifesto
She flushed and ducked under his arm, walking briskly into the study without looking behind her.
It might have been a defeat for any other man, but Abe could not shake his smile. It was proof, he thought, that she felt the heat of their proximity as keenly as he did.
“So someone is impersonating Mr. Aiden?” she asked, her voice a pitch higher than it had been a moment before.
“Perhaps,” he confirmed, pulling the door shut behind him as he closed them into the study together. “But no one at any of the agencies will admit such a thing could be possible. And Mr. Aiden himself has no daughters or sisters. The man is what we call a confirmed bachelor. It is a puzzler, isn’t it?”
“Oh, but it need not be a close relative or friend,” Millie said, sitting on the chair behind the desk and riffling through the stack of papers on it. She looked up, her eyebrows raised as she held her letter aloft. “Goodness, Abe, it could beanyone. Any woman who knows Mr. Aiden’s name and his relationship with the agencies in question. I imagine they check the log for known persons, but do not investigate beyond that when filling orders for Society’s happenings.”
“Indeed,” he said with a sigh. “So it may be a tantalizing thread that leads to yet another dead end. Disappointing, isn’t it?”
She frowned. “Yes. Does this sort of thing happen to you often in your line of work?”
“Mercifully, it does not,” he answered, crossing the room to take a seat on one of the sofas opposite the fireplace. “Most criminals and ne’er-do-wells are just like the rest of us. That is to say, they are rather simple.”
Her frown quivered with amusement. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”
He laughed. “Shall I endeavor to be kinder to the miscreants? If you order it, I will obey.”
“Well, I suppose someone ought to be,” she said with a roll of her eyes, pushing herself to stand. “Here is my letter. Will you read it now? I confess I am feeling impatient for your thoughts. Consider it an order, I suppose.”
“Bring it here,” he said playfully, holding out his hand. “I endeavor to please.”
CHAPTER 15
Millie did her best not to outwardly fret as he read. She didn’t pace or wring her hands or tap her fingernails on Dot’s desk, but goodness, she wanted to.
Any time he smiled or breathed differently, she wanted to spring across the couch, grip his shoulders, and demand to know which line or word had elicited such a reaction. Instead, she sank into Dot’s chair again and gripped her hands in her lap, watching Abe Murphy’s handsome profile as his lovely hazel eyes scanned over her words.
She wished, in that moment, that she’d taken greater care with her penmanship. It looked very sloppy all of a sudden, from here.
On Dot’s desk were books on civil law and property precedence. Millie eyed the titles without much interest, but did find it heartening that she was continuing to do legal research for her husband, as she had been doing for her father for many years.
In another world, Dot would have been a formidable barrister herself.
There was also a much dog-eared pamphlet by an Anna Thynne. It appeared to be about childrearing and was entitledA Mother’s Advice to her Daughter.This one kept her eye for a moment, and she ran her thumb over the cover, imagining a future where her own letter might be on a young lady’s desk, with passages bookmarked for re-reading.
It was a grandiose and silly fantasy, she knew, but the thought of it made tears well up behind her eyes.
“Is this true?” Abe asked, startling her from her reverie. He was looking over the top of the sofa, holding the third page of her letter aloft.
“Which bit?” Millie asked, rising to walk to him. “I mean, yes, in general, but which bit?”
“The bit about circulating libraries,” he said, frowning. “Is it true that young ladies are prevented from borrowing anything deemed too serious for their minds?”
“Oh.” She gave a humorless laugh. “Yes. When Claire was expecting Oliver, as you know, we had trouble finding a midwife. While Dot searched, I attempted to find her some medical journals on the subject and was stoutly refused on the basis of propriety. And you should have been here the day Dot attempted to simply ask for the information from her father’s physician. He stormed out in a rage.”
“I was here,” he said with a sheepish twist of his lips. “Hiding near the hedgerows. It was the day you finally went inside.”
She blinked at him, startled. “Yes, I suppose it was.”
“It was,” he assured her. “And this thing here”—he flipped back a few pages—“about divorce. It seems damned unfair.”
“Of course it is,” she answered incredulously. “Had you never considered it before?”
“Well, I don’t know anyone who is divorced,” he said, setting aside the manuscript for a moment to think about it, “but I know a great many men who would jump at the opportunity to get a young lady alone and never once consider how it might unravel her life.”
They looked at one another for a moment, the empty room and closed door suddenly feeling like a third presence in the room.
