Page 68 of The Wallflower Manifesto
“You’re supposed to get married first!” Freddy cried, color rising to his cheeks. “Was … did you just propose to her, you bastard? Is that how you propose?”
Millie looked at Freddy with a genuine sort of curiosity. “So many rules,” she observed. “How didyoupropose? Not to Dot, I mean, I know how that happened. To my sister. Or did you? Did you elope before or after spending the night together?”
“Millicent!” Freddy gasped, his voice strangled.
“I see,” Millie replied, and sipped her coffee again.
“I …” Freddy gritted his teeth together, tearing his eyes away from both of them like he couldn’t stand the sight. “I’m going to make breakfast.”
He stalked off, not looking back, and moments later a lot of clattering started to emerge from the kitchen.
Abe looked at Millie, shrugged, and sat back down beside her.
“He makes breakfast?” she said in open disbelief.
“Oh, you’re in for a treat,” Abe replied with a chuckle. “He’s been funneling every bad habit he has into learning to cook and clean. I hope he makes a hollandaise.”
“Right,” said Millie.
Because, at this point, she had no shock left to give.
She practically dancedback to Mayfair, wrinkled dress and all.
Abe had offered a hackney. Freddy had tried to insist upon it. But Millie always walked when she needed to contemplate a thing, and so she’d had to be very firm in her no.
She had pinned up her hair with the only two salvageable pins from Abe’s dismantling of her chignon last night, pocketing the rest so he wouldn’t fret over ruining them. She knew she looked a fright, but she also knew that most people rarely looked up from their own worries on city streets.
You had to go to the park for that.
She’d gotten a tour of their townhouse properly before she left. She’d gotten to look at Abe’s case ledger and smell the rose oil on his desk.
Freddyhadmade a hollandaise, and ithadbeen very good.
Freddy! The wonders truly never ceased.
He would be gone again soon, personally escorting Gretchen and Paula to Dover. He’d given them a mumbled account of theplan, of how he’d spent the night playing coffee-fetcher and ink-refiller to Mr. Cresson.
It made her laugh, all alone on the morning sidewalk.
Lady Bentley was at the harpsichord when she arrived, so engrossed in her sonata that she barely looked up when Millie passed by the sitting room.
It gave her enough time to go upstairs and call for a bath and a gown and a strong cup of black tea, enough time to get into appropriate order again before coming down for luncheon, though she did mourn to wash Abe from her skin, frowning at the frothing soap as it slid over her arms and legs.
Irene had sighed heavily at the state of Millie’s dress, but had accepted “caught in the rain” as an explanation for the state of it.
“Well, at least there are no beads or flourishes,” she’d said, shaking it out opposite the sunlit window. “A press should sort it out well enough.”
“If it doesn’t,” Millie had told her, “that is all right.”
“Your hair looks like you combed it out by hand,” Irene had tutted.
It made Millie’s heart flutter. Because it had been, of course, but not by Millie’s hand, not by her fingers carefully worrying away the knots and snarls.
By the time the luncheon bell rang, she felt refortified, as though all the glow of the night before had been tucked safely away in her pocket, to carry in secret. Of course, the downside of that was that in its absence, everything else came back into focus.
“There you are, dear,” Lady Bentley said, using her fingers to rip apart a fresh roll of bread, much to the chagrin of the nearby footman. “Your note last night had me a touch worried. Is all well with Mrs. Cain?”
Millie glanced at the staff before answering, the footman with the bruised jaw reminding her that these people were likely on her side, so far as what had occurred last night.
