Page 82 of The Wallflower Manifesto
“I saw him,” Abe realized. “What a good chap. I hope he got a nice bonus from your patroness.”
“I’ll find out,” she promised.
He winced, accepting the damp cloth from her and pressing it to the back of his hand. It did sting, even if it was only a little scrape. “Maybe that was a mistake,” he said with a sigh. “If I’d let him hire me, we could have kept sabotaging his progress.”
“Not worth it,” Millie answered immediately. “Nothing is worth suffering that man.”
“You’re not worried,” he realized, running a thumb over her own knuckles, unblooded perhaps, but just as fierce. “Are you?”
“Not at all,” she said with a sniff. “Freddy is making sure he will never find them. Let him waste another year or two turning over every rubbish bin in London until he tires himself out. What does it matter to us?”
He stared at her, more than a little dazzled by the ruthless simplicity of it. She was right, he realized. She always was.
“You won,” he told her, raising his brows. “Your manifesto, your letter to the wildflowers, it was an issued challenge to Society, and now it’s been tested. And you won.”
She stared at him, her eyes widening in a progressive roundness. “Oh, Abe,” she breathed, squeezing his hand, “I think you’re right!”
She looked so struck by it that she had to sit down, pulling out the other chair and sinking into it like she’d lost her balance. “You know,” she said, turning her eyes up at him, “I haven’t journaled much since it was published. I think I was afraid that if I wrote down my thoughts, the whole world would be seeing them again the instant they landed on the page.”
“And you wouldn’t like that?” he asked, surprised.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, laughing a little at the absurdity of the thought. “You know none of this would have happened if Lady Bentley hadn’t found one of my journals and taken it upon herself to read it. People finding and reading my work seems to be … not an invasion of privacy, even though it certainly was …”
She trailed off, shaking her head, looking for the words.
“She read your journal?” he repeated, aghast.
“Yes! But so has everyone else now,” Millie replied, wonder and amusement threading together in her tone. “And both times, it has only made my life better.”
“Well, of course,” he said with a nod. “Naturally. Because anyone who gets access to that mind of yours is better for it, Millie.”
“Stop that,” she giggled, as though he were flattering her. “Silly.”
“I was so indignant,” he told her, leaning close, “when they changed the title. That publisher, whoever it was, tookwildflowerand made itwallflower. It was so insulting to me.”
“I didn’t think anyone but me noticed that,” she said, gasping a little gulp of air. “I was angry about it too, at first. But then, the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. Let them call women like me wallflowers if they wish; let us reclaim the title and refuse to apologize for it. It doesn’t change my intent one whit.”
“I think,” he told her, “that you ought to write more. Publish more.”
“I can’t do that,” she said at once. “I can never claim the manifesto as my own, Abe. It would not end well, especially if you wed me and put my name on your business.”
“If?” he repeated with a mock clutch of invisible pearls. “What do you mean, if? I am wedding you. That discussion is closed.”
“Yes,” she agreed happily, looking around the kitchen again as though she were realizing that it would soon belong to her, “I suppose it is.” Then, after a moment and a giggle, she added, “Tell Freddy that he must double his hollandaise from now on.”
“Ah,” said Abe, “about that …”
And so they wasted another few hours, until they were forced to have dinner together, forced to linger with tea on the sofa afterward, and then, ultimately, forced to acknowledge that this was exactly what they both wanted.
Forever.
PHASE I: SEED
EPILOGUE
Millie Yardley carried a bouquet of English roses. Like her, they had been grown in her mother’s garden.
In her hair, she wore a crown of morning glories. Purple and blue.
