Page 65 of The Wallflower Manifesto
“Oh,” she said, looking not only appeased but happy with herself. “That’s quite blasphemous, Abe.”
“If you’re going to sin, you might as well do it right,” he returned immediately, pulling her closer. “I’ve no regrets.”
“Regrets?” she repeated, stifling a little yawn. “I hadn’t even considered them.”
He paused, using his fingers to try to gently pull the knots from her curls, to arrange them soft and perfect on her bare, pale shoulders. “Do you feel … all right?”
“What? Yes?” she said in a sleepy mumble.
He frowned again. He hadn’t taken any precautions, he realized, in those final moments. “No, I mean—” He cut himself off, making a noise of impatience with his own stupidity. “Do you feel …”
She pushed back a little, meeting his eyes. “What?”
He felt himself growing hot. If he’d been wearing a collar, it would be steaming. “Do you feel pregnant?”
She stared at him, a big wall of silence inflating between them like a balloon. And he held his breath right up until she started laughing, dropping her head back on his chest and letting it shake through her body.
“It doesn’t work like that, Abe,” she finally managed to say, swallowing hiccups of amusement.
It was, he realized, the second time he’d sent her into hysterics today with his own foolishness. He should feel resentful about that, maybe. But instead, he was just happy to be present to hear her laugh.
He was, he thought somberly, completely and utterly broken for this woman.
“I suppose I might be,” she amended after she’d caught her breath, “but it takes a lot longer to know.”
“You don’t seem disturbed by the prospect,” he observed with a kind of wonder.
She considered that, chewing on her lip. “I don’t, do I? I suppose after everything that happened today, it’s not worth considering unless it actually becomes a reality. And even if it is one, Iwouldn’t call the prospect distressing, though I know it should be.”
“I was irresponsible,” he told her, low and accepting of his place in it. “I know better.”
“We were irresponsible,” she corrected. “And we had earned it, I think.”
He paused in his work of combing out her hair, his fingers caught in a hammock of tresses. “Does that mean you forgive me? For what happened earlier?”
“Yes,” she said immediately. “Yes, I’ve realized in short order that I probably would have done the same. And things kept getting more and more mad, Abe, like the universe was personally demonstrating to me how little it mattered that you live with Freddy bloody Hightower.”
He stared at her a little too long after that. “What happened?” he finally asked, when it was clear she wasn’t going to just volunteer the insanity that led her to think Freddy was a small matter. “Something clearly happened.”
“So much happened, Abe, that I don’t even know how to begin to explain.” She sighed, shaking her head against his chest. “I suppose I should say first that I found the jewel thief.”
He was so surprised that his body startled a little. “What? And you sent Freddy off to get him, did you?”
“Her,” she corrected, perhaps a little bittoosmug about the fact that the criminal shared her sex. “And no, he’s not off to arrest her; he’s off to help her escape. Them, actually. It was two women.”
Abe could only blink, his powers of speech momentarily in flux.
She sighed. “I’m not supposed to tell you because Dot thinks you’ll haul off and murder someone. You! I’ve never seen you so much as flick a gnat. I know you punched a magister once, but … I don’t know, Abe, that doesn’t sound like you, like the man I know.”
He hesitated, that warmth creeping back up his neck again. “I did do that,” he said quietly. “You don’t remember the first time we ever saw each other, do you? Because I was ready to murder someone that day. I wanted to find Freddy and pull every golden hair out of his head as painfully as possible.”
She scoffed, like she couldn’t believe it.
It made him laugh, even if it shouldn’t have.
“The wedding,” he prompted. “Freddy had escaped my escort from that jail on the Continent. He’d drugged me, stolen my ring, and taken off. Don’t you remember, I accidentally said something about waiting for my chance to go outside and rip him out of the carriage.”
She blinked, pushing back and drawing her brows together. “Oh, yes!” she realized. “You idiot! You sent Claire into labor.”
