Page 57 of The Wallflower Manifesto
But that would have just proven her point. Her very salient, very fair point.
“Millie,” he managed to croak, “I am so sorry. I don’t know why I didn’t bring it up.”
She laughed again, taking her hand away from his shoulder like she was retracting a gift. “Yes, you do.”
They looked at each other in silence for a moment, the street continuing to spool out around them in conversation and passing horses and glittering sunlight, as though the world hadn’t just irrevocably shifted.
“Have I ruined everything?” he heard himself ask.
She didn’t answer right away. She watched him, emotions flickering delicately over her pretty face.
“I don’t know,” she finally said with a shrug. “I’d hate to give Freddy the satisfaction, but I can’t say it doesn’t matter.”
Another beat of silence. Another pocket of people moving on with their lives around them, rude as you please.
“I just need to think,” she said.
“Clearly, so do I,” he replied raggedly, “more often than I have been, in any event.”
It won a very slight smile from her, something that could’ve been easily missed in her tumble of emotions, but he saw it. He saw it and grabbed it to hold as tight as he could until she’d finished her thinking.
And then he let her go.
CHAPTER 22
Millie did not knock. She blew into Dot’s home like it belonged to her and marched straight past several scandalized staff to Dot’s study.
Dot, of course, might not have even been home, but Millie somehow knew she was and exactly where to find her.
Ember was present, too, which suited Millie’s tumult very well. The two women had set up a painted cork board propped up against couch cushions and, for some reason, were heaving little metal darts at it from behind the opposite couch.
They both looked up like they’d been caught doing something tawdry. Dot looked startled, and Ember immediately broke into a wide grin.
“Perfect!” Ember said, grabbing Millie by the wrist without a single question about the reason she’d just blown in unannounced. “Take this and heave it at the center of that board, will you? Dorothy here insists it’s too difficult.”
Millie looked down at the heavy little projectile in her hand, then up at the cork board, and without really processing the oddityof the situation, she threw it. It hit near center, not perfect, but hard enough that the board heaved over and onto its back.
“Too difficult,” clipped Dot, crossing her arms.
“Bah,” said Ember, immediately walking over to straighten the board again, prising out the dart Millie had thrown with no small effort. “My mam says the pub in Kildare got one and it’s so popular, they already bought two more. She mailed this one to me with a very loud letter about how the Forge needs one before week’s end, and mind, she probably wrote it some weeks ago!”
Dot looked skeptical but somehow cowed by the opinion of Ember’s mother, whom no one in this room other than Ember had ever met.
Ember held up the dart, which Millie could now see was slightly bent at the tip, and frowned.
“You,” she said to Millie, “throw from farther away, I think.”
Dot, at this moment, finally seemed to register Millie’s presence, turning to look at her friend with a slow phase into mild concern. “Goodness,” she said, swatting Ember away from a new delivery of darts for Millie, “what’s happened? Sit down.”
Millie allowed herself to be pushed into a cushiony embrace, watching the dart board get demoted to the armrest while Dot and Ember took the couch across from her. She felt a little chord of regret for interrupting their fun. Perhaps what she had really needed, after all, was just to mutilate more darts.
“Did you know,” she began, awkwardness finally finding its way under her skin, “that Freddy is in London and living with Abraham Murphy?”
“Yes?” said Dot.
“What!” Ember grinned.
Millie sighed.
