Page 38 of The Wallflower Manifesto
Millie laughed and turned to the side, a blush rising on her cheeks. “Spinsters have more freedom,” she said thinly.
“How would you know that?” he answered lightly, and she could hear the grin in his voice.
Mercifully, she did not have to answer. He took the pages up again and found his place, commenting blithely, “D’you know, my mother is a great lover of the sciences? If anyone tried to prevent her from borrowing a book she wanted, I imagine she’d rain holy hell down upon them.”
“Is she?” Millie rounded the sofa and sat on the chair next to it, curiosity sparking in her mind. “Your father allows her studies?”
“Allows them,” Abe scoffed, shaking his head. “They met at one of her lectures. She’s something of a wunderkind.”
“What! What is her name?”
“Shh,” he said, shooting her a twinkling look over the tops of the pages, “I’m reading.”
“Humph,” said Millie.
There was silence for the next few minutes, save for the riffling of paper. He stacked each read page upside down next to him in a neat stack, his brow furrowed in concentration.
Millie watched him. His focus on the pages allowed her to study the fine lines of his face in a way she would otherwise never be able to get away with. There was a softness to his features, to the hollows of his cheeks and the sharpness of his chin, that spoke to the soul behind the handsome visage.
She thought she could look at him for days and never grow tired of it. She wanted to run her fingers over the line of his jaw, to draw her thumbs over his brows and eyelids. She thought he was the most beautiful person she had ever seen.
“This is incredible,” he said, startling her out of her reverie.
Somehow, he had reached the end.
“What?” she said, blinking rapidly. “The letter?”
“Yes, the letter,” he answered with a laugh, “or perhaps I’m commenting upon the upholstery? Millie, this is enlightening. I am hardly the intended audience, and yet I found it gripping and full of the type of information one can’t help but feel Society wants to keep hidden.”
“Oh!” She could not suppress the wide smile coming upon her. “Yes, I feel the same way. That it had been deliberately kept a secret.”
“Can’t have the young ladies of the world knowing they have options other than marriage, I suppose,” he mused, thumbing the corners of the stack. “When you’ve finalized it, I should like to send a copy to my sisters. The younger one, especially.Rosalind is … rather obsessed with the whole concept of marriage.”
“You have sisters!” she breathed, feeling a strange urge to swat at his arm. “Mr. Murphy, there is too much I do not know about you!”
He seemed to still, the smile on his face widening as he watched her. “Does that displease you?”
“Of course it does!” She sighed, leaning forward to touch his knee. “I feel you already know everything there is to know about me. I only know that you were once a Runner and that you occasionally breakfast with Mr. Cresson.”
His smile faltered, his eyes flicking down to her fingers on his trousers, though neither of them moved to amend the clear breach of etiquette.
After a moment, he took a breath and said, with a hint of roughness around his words, “I would teach you many things, would you allow me.”
That offer hung heady in the air, floating into the stagnant emptiness of the room around them. Its meaning seemed to crackle in the heat like static after a storm. And still, somehow, Millie could not pull away. She brushed her thumb along the curve of his knee, watching her fingers as though they belonged to someone else entirely.
“I never considered it,” she said through the heat in her cheeks and the sudden thickness in her throat, “that gentlemen might find anything of interest in my letter.”
“Millie,” he replied, a note of warning in his tone, “I am no gentleman.”
She blinked, that statement startling her enough to return her gaze to his eyes. “Of course you are,” she protested, more out of instinct than anything else.
“No,” he answered, leaning forward and winding his fingers around the back of her neck. “I most certainly am not.”
And then his lips were on hers, soft, at first, but demanding. Intoxicating.
He had come off the cushions of the couch at some stage, she realized, and was looming over her like a conquering warrior, claiming his prize after a long-fought battle.
She wanted to pause, to give herself a moment to observe and retain every detail of this, but her mind seemed to overheat, filling with a primal muddle of steam that left nothing but the ability to feel and react.
