Minnie attends the ball in A Fugitive Green chapter 15. This is the perfect time to put the letters back.
Of course, Minnie needs to find the right time to get to the right room. I’m amazed that she just easily walks around the house to find the room the letters need to go in. While the O’Higgins brothers could certainly describe the place, this is the first time she’s been here.
It doesn’t quite go to plan. This chapter sets up the story for how Hal and Minnie end up together.
Breaking down A Fugitive Green chapter 15
It’s the night of the ball, and Minnie has spent the night trying to ward off the attentions of the men. While yes, she is supposed to be there to find a husband, she is also focused on getting the letters back to the draw of Hal’s father’s desk.
When Hal is with the Prince of Wales and Harry Quarry, she decides that it is the perfect time to go for the room where the letters need to go. There is an issue with her lock picks, and that leads to a footman finding her, but she’s able to work her way through that situation. While she is quite new to spy work, she has trained for this.
It’s when Hal turns up that she is on the back foot. She tries to say that Edward Twelvetrees had stolen the letters, which could work. After all, Edward wants the letters, and Hal saw Minnie with him a few days earlier. However, Hal wants to know why Minnie would come to the house to put them back. Why not deliver them anonymously?
She shares some empathy for the man, sharing that she understands that he would be embarrassed to think that people had read these letters. To show her sincerity, she kisses him, and this certainly leads to more than a kiss. It was only in a previous book that we read that Hal had his way with Minnie the night she was putting letters back in the desk, and this all plays out in A Fugitive Green chapter 15.
While Minnie says that it will never happen again — and even gives Hal a fake address — we all know how this plays out.
Could this chapter be used in a TV adaptation?
We would need to see this chapter play out in a TV adaptation of A Fugitive Green. After all, it’s the moment we’d been waiting for, with Minnie and Hal together. This is where things really take a turn, with Minnie finding herself the future Lady Melton. She is pulled into the drama that is the Grey family.
There’s also the suspense in this chapter. We get Minnie trying to get the letters back in the desk, and there’s a great buildup to what happens in the room. We could even get this chapter told from two points in the series, with seeing the conversation between Hal and his companions before leaving them and coming across Minnie.
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