There was a great deal more he had wanted to talk about on women’s wages, never mind their property rights - but there wasn’t much use on a day like this, when people had places to be and things to do and even Kingsley had a shift to hurry off to. No sense in sitting here going over it alone.

So he had made it halfway to the door when Kieran sought his attention with a wave, which turned him around in his tracks. His eyebrows shot upwards at the arrangement of roses, all painstakingly threaded together in a loop. He hadn’t asked what Kieran was doing - Kieran did all sorts of strange things during their meetings, he was used to it - but the flower project was a rarer sight than the sketching.

Jude took the roses from him, almost without thinking - but he did not put them on, just stared blankly. “Um, why?” he managed eventually, aware that Kieran had been working hard on them but truly quite disconcerted by the meaning of this, if there was any at all. “What will they do?”

Quite suddenly, he remembered the roses from that May Day.

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