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M illie dragged her feet all the way to Bloomsbury.

There was something deeply humbling about going home again, regardless of the reasons for it. She wondered if married people felt this way when they had Christmas with one set of the parents or the other.

She wondered how her mother had felt telling her mother that she was going to marry Ezekiel Yardley, a barrister, not a peer.

Knowing her own grandmama, Millie suspected that the reaction had been something dry and painful, like “At least someone wants to marry you, Lacey .”

And she winced, because at the very depths of her soul, Millie was concerned that maybe everyone was thinking the same thing about her and Abe.

Abe, who could have had any woman he wanted.

She’d never say that to him, of course. Not because she was afraid he’d agree. Quite the opposite. He’d act as though she was so daft and delusional that even attempting to validate or explain further would only be a massive waste of time.

He looked at her like she was still a fresh, young debutante. He looked at her like she was the epitome of beauty.

And, she thought, warmth spreading through her chest, she knew that he would never be convinced that either thing wasn’t fundamentally, objectively true.

He had wanted to come with her, of course.

He’d gotten all blustery and insistent over how he thought such a scene should play out with handshakes and cigars and blessings, but when Millie had pointed out to him that they’d already done quite a few things out of order, he’d simply grinned at her in that sparkling, uniquely Abe way, kissed her hand, and told her to say the word when it would be his turn with her parents.

She approached the house like a guest, uncertain if she should rap on the door or simply walk inside. What an odd thing , she thought. What a very odd, very unwelcome thing.

Luckily, she did not have to choose, because she could hear her mother’s voice carrying over from the side of the house, from the rose garden, where Lacey Yardley frequently either chided or praised her famous English roses.

Today, she was chiding.

“Perk up, now,” she said with exasperation. “Whatever it is can’t be that bad!”

Millie felt herself already starting to chuckle, abandoning the approach to pick her way through the layers of fencing into her mother’s domain.

She found her quite the opposite of how she’d imagined her all the way here.

She’d been dreading a chilly sitting room conversation, a stiff-backed exchanging of awkward news.

Instead, here was Mama, straw hat tied under her chin, gloves to her wrists, and soil to her elbows, dressing down a plant like it was a particularly silly friend.

“There will be more rain,” Lacey Yardley said to the flowers. “You’d best get used to it!”

“Perhaps the truest thing ever said to an English flower,” Millie called, suddenly feeling much, much lighter.

Her mother turned, surprise giving way to a broad grin. The pruning shears, agents of woe and destruction, were dropped into the soil as her mother came bustling across the lawn with her arms wide.

“Millie!” she cried. “I didn’t think you were going to visit.”

And Millie didn’t resist the very dirty hug, because she wanted it. She wanted it more than her mother did, she thought.

Absurdly, her eyes filled and her chest heaved. It was ridiculous. She squeezed her mother back harder than she ought to have, and Lacey Yardley didn’t complain at all. But she did notice.

“My dear girl,” her mother said, pulling back with alarm. “Goodness, whatever is the matter? Come inside. Come inside before anyone starts chittering.”

They entered through the gardening hutch, a little room of glass and hooks where plants lived when it was cold or treacherous, or otherwise germinated when winter was in its final throes.

There was a couch here, a tattered, ugly old thing that Millie found herself shuffled onto, her mother dropping down next to her and tossing her gloves on a nearby bouquet bench.

“Has something happened, my Millie?” she asked carefully, reaching up with her hands, clean to the wrists and then filthy to the elbow, to stroke the tendrils of hair that framed Millie’s face.

She laughed and choked and sobbed all at once, shaking her head. “So, so very much has happened, Mama. But nothing is wrong. Nothing at all.”

“That’s good to hear,” said her mother, without a change in tone or a ceasing to her comforting ministrations. “I cry sometimes too. Just when I need to. It drives your father mad.”

Millie laughed again, this time without the other things muddled inside. “It does,” she agreed with a sniffle. “I’m so sorry I didn’t come earlier.”

“Oh,” her mother laughed, dropping her hands into her lap. “Is that why you’re upset? You’ve been living a dream with the countess, haven’t you? Seeing all the finest parts of London and the High Season. I wouldn’t have visited either!”

“The dowager countess,” Millie said with a raise of the eyebrows. “Claire’s the countess now.”

“Oh, that’s true, isn’t it?” Lacey said. “I’m still not used to it. My daughter is a countess? Absolutely madcap!”

“Mama,” she said as the courage began to find its way into her fingers and toes again, “how are the roses?”

“Oh, Millie, you never liked the roses.” Her mother laughed. “Hated them, in fact. But they are well, when they’re being sensible. The shift from spring to summer always makes them dramatic.”

“I was wrong,” said Millie. “This Season has given me a newfound appreciation for English roses. I realized I had misjudged them, after all. Especially yours.”

Her mother looked unconvinced. “Oh? And how did that happen?”

Millie took a gulping little breath and flexed her fingers and toes, testing for her resolve before she answered. “Mama, I think I am going to marry soon. Very soon. I have met someone.”

Lacey stared, her tawny eyebrows crawling up her face until they nearly brushed her hairline. “Have you?” she breathed. “Oh, Millie, I always knew you would have been better off with a more elegant chaperone. I knew it.”

“Mama, no,” Millie cut her off, chuckling and reaching out to squeeze her mother’s hands. “Not anyone from Society, I’m afraid. Someone rather common. Mr. Cain’s investigator.”

“Mr. Cain’s …” She trailed off, her brows retreating back to their usual height, but at an increased wrinkle. “The Scots fellow? The lanky one?”

“Yes,” Millie confirmed, feeling an odd flutter in her chest at even a threadbare description of Abe.

“Well!” said her mama. “How did that happen, then?”

“How did what happen?” Millie asked, momentarily revisiting that night at Abe’s townhouse, her color steadily rising.

“The proposal, you silly chit,” her mother laughed.

“Oh! Oh, it wasn’t anything grand,” Millie said, deflating with a pulse of relief. “It was the opposite, really. A friendly exchange.”

“A … a friendly exchange?” her mother repeated, clearly confused. “He didn’t get down on one knee? Didn’t make a grand speech?”

Millie coughed to cover up her urge to laugh. “He turned to me one morning and he said ‘we’re getting married, aren’t we?’ like he wasn’t sure if we had penciled it in yet or not.”

Lacey looked rapt. “Yes? And you said?”

Millie felt herself coloring. “I said ‘Yes, probably,’ and he gave a curt nod, and that was that.”

A breeze rattled the door to the gardening hutch, providing a bit of percussion to the beat of silent disbelief that hung in the air after that statement.

“Millie,” said her mother seriously, “do not ever tell your sister that story. She will melt into a puddle on the spot.”

“I wouldn’t,” Millie assured her.

And then they laughed together at how silly it all was.

It felt, for perhaps the first time in Millie’s life, like her mother was something equal to her, rather than towering above. Like they were something more akin to friends than guardian and ward.

She stood up, stretching, and walked over to the sideboard where her mother kept the towels to fetch one for the dirt still clinging to Lacey’s arms. There, on the sideboard, was the usual collection of things: gardening pamphlets, scandal sheets, an old dime novel Lacey read every year.

But also, there, amidst the stack, Millie saw something that made her heart stop.

“The Wallflower Manifesto?” she read carefully from the cover, this one of a different binding than Millie had seen before. She turned to toss her mother the old towel, attempting to keep her face placid and neutral.

Lacey caught the towel mid-arc, looking completely devoid of any suspicion whatsoever. She blinked, running the cloth over her dirty forearms, and said, “Oh, yes. It’s all the rage right now. Haven’t you read it?”

“I skimmed it,” Millie replied thinly.

“It’s very good, dear. You ought to give it a proper read. I’d love to talk about it with someone who doesn’t get the vapors every time it’s brought up.”

“Oh?” Millie asked, feeling her way back to the couch as quickly as possible to restore a steady foundation under her body. “Who’s doing that?”

“Your father,” she sighed. “And the neighbors. Everyone’s so quick to be bowled over. I heard a widow wrote it, you know. But I don’t think that’s true.”

“You don’t?” Millie heard herself squeak.

“No, definitely not,” said Lacey Yardley, shaking out the towel and tossing it onto the arm of the couch. “A matron wrote this. Someone like me. I know it in my bones.”

“You’re probably right,” Millie managed to say.

“You can have my copy if you’d like to read it,” Lacey told her. “And make that boy of yours read it too. It ought to be required before a wedding.”

“I have a copy,” Millie said weakly. “And he has.”

“Has he?” She looked delighted.

Millie drew in a stabilizing breath, looking around as though a distraction might be found somewhere in the hutch.

“Well, what else have I missed?” her mother asked. “Tell me everything. Shall I go put some tea on?”

Millie blinked, knowing she shouldn’t, but unable to resist. “Actually,” she said conspiratorially as she stood to follow her mother into the house, “do you remember the Fletchers’ housekeeper, Mrs. Knox?”

“Of course, dear. I’ve known her as long as I’ve known Percy, which is practically as long as I've known your father.”

“Well,” said Millie, stepping over the threshold into her childhood home. “You won’t believe what happened.”

She almost went home. That is, she almost went back to Lady Bentley’s townhouse.

But instead, she found herself going another way entirely.

Back at Dot’s house, Abe had asked her, with what appeared to be total sincerity, which window was hers at the townhouse. Now, as far as Millie was concerned, there was really only one reason he’d want to know that: an intention to scale the rain pipe and enter through it.

So she had not told him. Not yet, anyway.

Besides, that townhouse was always teeming with people. It wasn’t just Lady Bentley, it was a full staff, and often these days, Dom Raul as well. Abe’s townhouse, however … well, right now, there was only one person there, wasn’t there?

Because Freddy was in Dover.

She did feel a little guilty about how that night at Dot’s house had gone. Lady Bentley had attended with a desire to help, to become part of something, and to tell her son she was proud of him. But Freddy had never given her the opportunity. He’d never even come back inside.

And Lady Bentley had waved it off, bravely saying she could just tell him when he got back. Insisting, even, that maybe it was better that way, after he’d finished his heroics.

But Millie had seen how it hurt her. After spending time with her own mother this evening, she was determined to facilitate that reunion. She couldn’t go as far as to tell herself that Freddy deserved it, but Lady Bentley certainly did. At the very least.

She knocked, blushing slightly at the memory of how it had unfolded the last time she’d knocked.

“Coming! I’m coming! Don’t leave!” came the brusque brogue of Abraham Murphy stumbling down a staircase.

The door swung open and she caught him looking as though he’d just been having a nap, his hair sticking up, half his face red and lined with pillow imprints.

And instead of looking confused or startled, he just smiled at her, wide and pleased, like she was perfectly expected.

He stepped aside, holding the door for her as she walked in.

“Millie,” he said softly, leaning back on the door as it closed. “Thank God. I thought you’d be a client.”

“Don’t you want clients?” she teased, though she was curious.

“Ach, well,” he said with a shrug. “Not nearly as much as I want you.”

“Abe,” she said with a blush, only making him grin wider.

“You know, the strangest thing happened when I saw you standing there,” he told her. “All I could think to say was welcome home .”