Perhaps I'll hire you, she nearly teases, but she bites it back. Why force him to reject her again? He's made his position clear.
Talking to her father is so exhausting these days. Nothing is easy like it used to be.
"I have my two hands," she says instead, lightly, and holds them out to regard them. She's wearing little lace gloves, and she's very fond of the pretty way they look. "And I have Marius! He had a friend who gardened once, you know, he told me so. Perhaps we'll grow our own buttercups. What do you think of that?"
She's not sure she could bear to have a gardener bustling about the garden with no bell on his knee, no fatherly smile for her, only a hired stranger tipping his hat to her and calling her madame. If she hadn't had to give up her father when she gained a husband it would be different; then she'd be hiring someone to be a help to him, it would be a present, everything would be different.
Anyway she likes the wildflowers that run riot, too.
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Talking to her father is so exhausting these days. Nothing is easy like it used to be.
"I have my two hands," she says instead, lightly, and holds them out to regard them. She's wearing little lace gloves, and she's very fond of the pretty way they look. "And I have Marius! He had a friend who gardened once, you know, he told me so. Perhaps we'll grow our own buttercups. What do you think of that?"
She's not sure she could bear to have a gardener bustling about the garden with no bell on his knee, no fatherly smile for her, only a hired stranger tipping his hat to her and calling her madame. If she hadn't had to give up her father when she gained a husband it would be different; then she'd be hiring someone to be a help to him, it would be a present, everything would be different.
Anyway she likes the wildflowers that run riot, too.