by Rose Lerner
“Sparks!” roared Mr. Jessop.
Nick released Mrs. Sparks, cursing inwardly.
“Where is Sparks?” Jessop demanded.
Mrs. Sparks drew herself up, trembling with what could probably be mistaken for indignation. “He is out running errands,” she said coldly. “If you tell me the nature of your business, I—”
Mr. Jessop lifted the panel in the counter and headed for the kitchen door. “He’s hiding her up there, isn’t he?”
Mrs. Sparks’s eyes widened angrily. She was a better liar than Nick had thought. “My brother-in-law would never. You must have been misinformed.”
“Then you won’t mind my going up to look?”
She raced back to block his way. “I most certainly do mind!”
Nick was very much hoping it wouldn’t come to blows, when a liveried Jessop footman burst through the door. “Sir, I’ve found their trail!”
Jessop turned. “Their trail? My daughter is not a fox, young man.”
“Of course not, sir,” the boy said. “They got on the stagecoach going north. The crippled soldier who begs by the coaching inn was sitting in her chair. I recognized it at once, sir. He told me they’d gone a couple of hours since. The chair wouldn’t fit, and they just gave it to him.”
“Good God.” Nick hoped he was projecting the right air of stunned horror. Since he was feeling rather stunned and horrified, he thought he might be.
Mr. Jessop collapsed into a chair, white as a ghost. “She’s gone,” he said, his voice like a moan. “She’s gone.”
Mrs. Sparks stood with her hand over her mouth. “Oh God. He really—Jack really—”
“There, you see? I knew it!” But even the triumph of being right couldn’t bring animation to Jessop’s features for more than a moment. “The blackguard has stolen my girl.” He cupped his hands before his mouth, almost as if in prayer. “And they left her chair. How will she manage without her chair? She always liked to have her own, hated the Bath chairs you could rent in town…”
“You have had a shock, sir,” Mrs. Sparks said. “Let me fetch you some brandy.” Jessop didn’t respond, but she hastened from the room anyway.
“I am most sorry,” Nick said. “I never thought anything of this nature would occur.”
“Of course you did not. What honorable man would think of such villainy? To abduct a poor crippled girl…”
“Sir, you must put that sort of thinking from your mind,” Nick said carefully. “It seems clear Sparks did not abduct your daughter. She is old enough to know her own mind, and went with him quite willingly.”
Jessop’s face contorted. “She was always such a good little girl.”
Nick had yet to meet any child who was not a holy terror in one way or another, and suspected Jessop’s mind was clouded by either nostalgia or a poor memory. “You must consider, sir. If they are married, revenge against Sparks will harm your daughter as well.”
Jessop’s eyes widened. “You think I should turn the other cheek? To that Whiggish son-of-a—” Mrs. Sparks came in, holding a glass mostly full of brandy, and Jessop reflexively checked his language. He took a healthy swig and grimaced. “Swill. Of course the cad buys terrible brandy.”
Nick met Mrs. Sparks’s eye, smothering a smile in spite of everything.
Some color came back into Jessop’s cheeks as he drank, but he still looked dazed. “Oh, and during an election too. How could she? She was always such a staunch Tory.”
Nick wanted to put a hand on the man’s shoulder, but thought it might be considered presumption. “It will all come right, sir. If you treat this as a somewhat amusing youthful piece of idiocy, if you receive the couple when they return, if you are generous in the matter of settlements—”
Jessop gaped. “Give him money? You want me to reward him for this piece of infamy?”
“Mr. Dymond is right, sir,” Mrs. Sparks said, with a respectful bob. “Gossip thrives on story.”
“Of course you would agree with him—wait, what?”
“Story,” Mrs. Sparks repeated. “People love a good story. If you tell everyone exactly what happened and accept Mr. Sparks and your daughter, there’s no story. There’s no hero and villain, no ‘what really happened’ or ‘what happens next’. People may not entirely forget, but they’ll stop talking after a few months.”
Jessop groaned. “A few months? The election will be over next week!”
Mrs. Sparks frowned. “Your daughter will have to live here forever,” she said, a faint note of censure in her voice.
Jessop colored. The enemy was surprised; it was time for a flank attack. Tony and his mother would kill him, but the time for caution was past. Tony had put Mrs. Sparks in this position. “The Dymonds will back them,” he said. “Publicly. If you refuse to see them, if you spread accusations as to Sparks’s conduct, if you make it a question of party—you know no one will speak of anything else. No one will ever forget it. And your daughter will bear the brunt of it.”
Jessop threw back the last of his bad brandy.
Nick gentled his voice. “You’ll want to see her. She will want to see you. Don’t create enmity between you. You gain nothing by it.”
“People will say I tolerate wickedness,” Jessop said. “‘If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.’”
“If you cut her off, people will say you failed to temper justice with mercy,” Nick said. “People always have something to say. No one has the right to make this decision for you, not even your party. What does your heart say?” What would his own mother do, in this situation? If he eloped with Mrs. Sparks tomorrow, would he have a family when he returned?
Why had his mind immediately gone to eloping with Mrs. Sparks?
Jessop buried his face in his hands, but not before Nick saw his expression crumple. “Her mother left her to my care. I’ve failed her.” It was terrible. He should have been saying these things to people who liked him.
“None of us can change what’s already happened,” Mrs. Sparks said. “In the end, you don’t know what your wife would have thought or done. You only know she would want you and your daughter to be happy.”
It was what Nick had tried to tell her, about her father. He swallowed.
Jessop stared at her for long moments. Then he stood up. “I’m going home.”
“Drat,” Mrs. Sparks said as the door shut behind Jessop. “He’s taken Jack’s glass with him.”
“I thought that went well.” Nick wasn’t sure himself whether he meant it or whether it was a joke, but she began to laugh. She laughed so often, and yet not often enough.
“The spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us, as my father used to say.” She rubbed at her eyes. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I know you came to talk to Jack. You don’t have to stay. Owen and I have a lot of work ahead of us; I don’t suppose we’ll be good company.”
If Nick left, he would have to confront Tony about this mess. If he stayed, he could talk to Mrs. Sparks. It wasn’t much of a contest. “I haven’t anything else to do.”
The morning passed in a blur of correcting proofs, printing and folding. Owen ran the press. He was quick, and the cast-iron press was much faster than the old wooden one Will had taught Phoebe to use. But even going full out, the last sheet wouldn’t be off the press until suppertime.
Mr. Dymond took the damp papers from the press and hung them to dry, while she folded the sheets in half as soon as the ink wouldn’t smear. He inserted this week’s page from Childe Harold, thankfully printed in advance. Then she counted them out and bundled them for the newsboys and riders, who came in throughout the day for papers and their pay.
She dealt with Jack’s employees, but Mr. Dymond dealt with the customers. Phoebe had always liked the rush and bustle of the day, but it didn’t leave her much energy for smiling and chatting. When it had been her and the Sparks brothers, Jack had usually dealt with the crowds eager to have the week’s news ahead of their neighbors. Phoebe and Will brought out the ne
wspaper, taking swigs of ale every time a customer remarked in delight and surprise, The paper is still damp!
This week was worse than usual—swarms of gossip-hungry townsfolk who’d heard about the elopement and wanted details. Mr. Dymond managed them with a friendly cheer she probably couldn’t muster any day. The fiftieth time someone said, “Whatever is a gentleman doing selling newspapers?” his reply was as natural and engaging as the first, though she suspected he disliked the cracks about his being in line for a new profession.
She felt a nagging guilt at taking advantage of his good nature, but he made press day feel almost as festive as it used to. And he asked her and Owen questions, loads of them, as if he was really interested in the press and the paper.
“What are the parcels you give the newsmen?” he asked.
She looked up from running a folding bone down the crease of a barely dry Intelligencer. He had put on a leather apron over his fine clothes. Fine beads of sweat ran down his neck into his cravat, which had long ago lost its starch, and there was an inky fingerprint on his chin. He had so far been too polite to take his coat off, but she had hopes for the near future.
He frowned, and she realized she had been staring. “Sorry, woolgathering,” she said hastily. “The riders carry parcels and orders from the shops along with the papers. They go regular as clockwork once a week, so they’re more reliable than the tinkers and cheaper than the mails. In Will’s father’s day they carried letters, but that’s against the law now. I’m all for progress, but the Royal Mail isn’t half as reliable—”
A surprisingly mournful expression crossed his face.
“I’ve never seen anyone look so sad at the inefficiency of the mail before,” she said.
He shook his head, chuckling obligingly at her feeble joke. “You’re the heart of this district, with arteries going all over Sussex, bringing people news and hope and parcels. I miss being part of something like that.”
Her first impulse was to say something self-deprecating about it only being a newspaper—but she didn’t believe that, did she? She did think the Intelligencer was the heart of the district. “You will be again,” she said.
“Maybe. In the army—” He sighed. “You must be sick of my starting sentences that way. Everyone must. I’m afraid that when I’m old, I’ll still be saying it. My little grand-nieces and -nephews will mouth it behind my back along with me. I don’t—”
She folded a newspaper with great care, not looking at him. “Not grandchildren?”
She could see out of the corner of her eye that he wasn’t looking at her, either. “I don’t know if I shall marry.”
“Admiral Nelson was missing an arm and an eye, and girls swooned as he walked down the street. At least, I know they would have done here, if he had ever visited.”
“It isn’t that.”
He didn’t elaborate further, and she was afraid of revealing too much if she pressed him. She covered her unease under a pretense of being too busy to talk. But eventually the paper was out, the press was cleaned, and Owen began putting out the candles.
Mr. Dymond stood and collected his cane. “May I come again tomorrow?”
Yes! “You really want to come again?” she asked dubiously. “I know this must all seem very boring—”
“I don’t know why people always say that about things they love,” Mr. Dymond said. “I don’t think it’s boring at all.”
She felt warm from the inside out. “It would be a great help.”
Chapter Seventeen
Nick steeled himself and rapped on Tony’s door. By now his leg was in agony and he wanted nothing more than to eat supper and sleep, but he’d rehearsed this conversation on and off all day, growing angrier as he went. If he wanted to sleep, he had to have this out.
But when Tony answered the door, clearly on his way to speak at some club supper or society meeting, Nick searched for that anger and couldn’t find it. He only felt sad.
“Nick?” Tony checked his watch. “Ada and I are on our way to the Carpenters Guild supper, but I can spare a minute.”
“You gave Mr. Sparks money to take Miss Jessop to Scotland?”
Tony drew back, looking wary. “I did.”
“We talked about this.” Nick leaned against the doorframe to take weight off his leg. “You did this to ensure Mrs. Sparks would marry Moon.”
Tony’s brows rose. “You think she’ll marry Moon, then? I thought she was inclined towards the Tory.”
Nick winced. “That isn’t the point.” He held on to his indignation. “It’s going to be a terrible scandal. People were by the printing office all day asking about it. Mrs. Sparks’s reputation—”
“You’re going to lecture me about Mrs. Sparks’s reputation?” A sarcastic edge crept into Tony’s voice. “I’m not the one dancing attendance on her.”
Nick flushed. “Is there—?”
“Gossip? Of course there’s gossip. People in this damn town have nothing else to do. I’ve been asked about the two of you a dozen times or more, and I haven’t gone poking my nose in your business about it either.”
Guilt swamped Nick. He might say he wanted to help her, but so far, he’d brought Mrs. Sparks nothing but trouble. “She’s a respectable woman,” he said firmly. “This elopement—they could have married here with banns, if they didn’t want her dowry.”
“No, they couldn’t. The first week Jessop heard the banns read, he’d ship her off to the North. Besides, Sparks is the newspaperman in this town, and now he’ll be more loyal than ever. I did us all a favor.”
He hadn’t done Mrs. Sparks a favor. But Tony was right about the most important thing. Nick couldn’t wish Miss Jessop back in her father’s house. His brother had meant well. “I’m sorry I ripped up at you.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Nick smiled with an effort. “Sparks’s press is Whig again. If you’ve anything to be printed, I can bring it in tomorrow morning.”
“You’re going back tomorrow morning?”
Nick nodded.
Tony pursed his lips, looking concerned. “I know I said I wouldn’t poke my nose in your business…”
“Poke away.” Nick tried to sound amused.
“I don’t think you should see so much of her.”
“Mother sent me here solely to get her vote. Would you rather I ignored her?”
“If you want her vote, you’ll throw her together with Moon.”
“She’s been spending time with Moon,” Nick said. “Frankly, I’m not sure that’s to our advantage.”
Tony sighed. “Go and put a hot water bottle on your leg, you look about to swoon.”
Nick turned to go.
“Wish me luck?” Tony blurted out behind him.
Nick’s heart swelled. He turned back and clapped his brother on the shoulder. “You don’t need it. You were born for this.”
Tony didn’t look as if he believed it.
Phoebe was a little surprised and very pleased that Mr. Dymond did come back the next day, and the day after. He went through the London papers while she turned Jack’s near-illegible notes into articles about the election. She showed him bizarre local contributions, and he showed her inexplicable advertisements and marriage notices for people with funny names. They went for walks before dinner and after closing up for the day, so his leg wouldn’t grow stiff, and they found plenty to talk about then too.
He didn’t berate her, or question her judgment, or demand she work faster. Oh, he disagreed with her once or twice about whether something ought to be included—the paper would have been half military news if he had his way—but that only added to the fun. She felt guilty for making the comparison, but she’d always wanted working on the paper with Will to be like this.
She kept wondering if Mr. Dymond would kiss her again. So far, he hadn’t.
“I’m that glad you’re not averse to early rising,” Mr. Fairclough said. “Doesn’t it take your breath away?”
Phoebe smiled. “It doe
s, a bit.” She didn’t often get to ride in a carriage, and from this height, there was something magical about the stands of tall, slender trees and the fallow fields gilded with the pale morning light. Apart from a few laborers on their way to work and a milkwoman with her cart, the only other people out were two gentlemen pedestrians in casual morning wear, one carrying a satchel and the other a stout walking stick.
A walking stick? Phoebe looked again, and saw that same morning sun glinting a warm gold in the taller one’s hair. Suddenly the figure resolved into—
“If it isn’t the Dymond brothers, trudging along.” Mr. Fairclough crowed with laughter. “Think I can spatter them with mud?”
Phoebe thought of Toogood’s fastidiousness. “Oh, don’t.”
Mr. Fairclough slowed the horses. “If you don’t like it,” he said in that terse way of his, with a smile. She really did like him. So long as they didn’t talk about politics, everything was fine.
Mr. Nicholas Dymond was not a possibility.
“It’s only that I’ve been spattered with mud on this road a hundred times,” she hastened to add. “I hate it.”
“They’ve laundresses,” Mr. Fairclough said cynically. “When I was a boy…”
They passed the brothers as he was talking. Mr. Anthony looked furious to see her with a Tory. Mr. Nicholas, on the other hand, simply looked as startled as she felt. Their eyes met, and a shock went through her whole body.
“Well?” Mr. Fairclough said.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
Later, when Mr. Dymond arrived at the printing office, all he said was, “How are things going with Mr. Moon?” She couldn’t think of an answer that would be encouraging.
On Friday, Owen finished typesetting pages one and four, locked them in the chase together, and printed a couple of proofs. “Go home early,” Phoebe told him. “You’ve been wonderful this week. You deserve it.”
