Page 56 of The Wallflower Manifesto
Millie had come to her feet slowly, busying herself with stacking up the fabric samples, but it was clear she had a sharp ear turned to this conversation, her eyes snapping up at a mention of overlapping interests.
Lady Bentley gave a little sigh, glancing at Millie. “Millicent, my dear, have you met Mr. Murphy? Perhaps you know one another through the Cains?”
“We are well acquainted,” Millie said, her voice deceptively even and pleasant. “Friends, in fact.”
“Oh, wonderful!” said Lady Bentley, drawing closer to Dom Raul while she spoke to Millie. “Then there is no need for airs. Mr. Murphy is assisting me with a family matter, nothing terribly concerning, it’s just Freddy again.”
“Freddy?” Millie repeated, confusion evident. “I hadn’t realized he was still making mischief.”
Abe and Lady Bentley both scoffed, the sounds varying in tone but doubtlessly communicating the same sentiment.
“Lady Bentley, I confess I have very little in the way of updates about the earl,” Abe said apologetically. “I was simply dropping by to check in and also to see Miss Yardley.”
Millie’s eyes narrowed very slightly at that. As to any other reactions, it was hard to say. Abe felt that the light in the room had all but fled, leaving only Millie in what remained.
“By all means,” said Lady Bentley, somewhere in the void.
And somehow, in the next moment, he’d been steered out of the sitting room by Millie herself and deposited back on the porch outside the house.
“Abe.” She didn’t say it like it was a question or a rebuke or an absolution. She just said it, clicking the door shut with murderous calm behind her. “Freddy?”
He grimaced, trying very hard to summon a smile and failing. “I … have just realized,” he said carefully, letting her psychically push him down the porch stairs and onto the sidewalk as she followed steadily behind, “that I have been remiss in not mentioning a particular detail of my life to you.”
“Oh?” Millie replied, her head dropping a dangerous fraction of a degree to the right. “And what would that be?”
“Right, well.” He cleared his throat, which had become dry at some point. So very dry. “Shall we walk?”
“Abe.”
He heard himself release a sound adjacent to a nervous giggle, but she did fall into step beside him.
“You recall what we did to Freddy a year or so back,” he began, then cursed himself in his mind. Ofcourseshe did. She was there. She was his wife’s sister. “Um, yes, the whole business with the jail in Bruges and the custodianship of his home and fortune and … yes.” He nodded brusquely at her silent but impatient expression.
“So, after that, the poor sod had nothing but his allowance. And I, by chance, was also in a bit of a bind. I’d been drummed out of the Runners, as you know, for punching that magistrate, and Silas had opened up a new world of possible recovery for me by hiring me as a private investigator.
“Freddy owed me a favor after he drugged and robbed me back in Bruges for trying to save his sorry arse.” He stopped, wincing. “Sorry. For saving him. We had a rapport, even if it wasn’t a particularlygoodone, you know? And I saw an opportunity—his allowance, my business, both of our precarious housing realities—it all sort of fit together.”
Millie stopped walking, blinking rapidly, a disbelieving and humorless smile coming and going from her face.
“You live with him,” she realized in that infuriatingly observant, whip-sharp, cruel way of hers.
“I.. ah …” He stopped, trying to swallow again through the total lack of moisture in his mouth. “Yes. I do, aye.”
And then she did laugh. True, overpowering, possibly a little mean-spirited humor. She almost doubled over, putting her hand on his shoulder and just … just letting it out in front of all these fine people on the street.
“That’s why!” she realized between the peals of it. “That’s why you were following Lady Bentley! Because of Freddy!”
And Abe had to just stand there and listen to it while his insides shriveled up like raisins.
Through her gasping hysterics, she managed to say, “How is it that I am theonlyperson on this spinning planet who has never once been seduced by that blustering peacock of a man? How! I don’t understand it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I was sed—” he attempted, but she was still going.
“My best friend,” she said, holding up a finger, “was going to marry him. My little sister eloped with him. Silas protects him. Ember trusted him so much, she almost ended up homeless. My patroness has to mother him. And now you! You! My … my … friend? No, you’re more than that, aren’t you? My … my Abe.” She paused, her eyes wild. “Whatever you are! You live with him?!
“Is it me? Am I the deficient one here?” She shook her head, the laughter starting to dissolve into something more sober and resentful. “It must be me. I just do not see it.”
Abe didn’t know what to say. Absurdly, he wanted to defend bloody Freddy! He wanted to say something like “Well, hold on now, that’s not fair. Have you ever actually talked to the man?”
