She had to say something, anything, to bring back that necessary distance between them. It was a game between them, nothing more. She’d challenged him, and naturally he’d responded.
“You’re right,” she heard herself say. “That must be difficult for you. I’m pretty brilliant myself.”
“I had noticed. You’re both pretty and brilliant.”
She shook her head, clearing away all that heat. “All of this is why we need more proof.” She let out a breath. “We need to embarrass Delacey. Publicly. And to do that, we need to demonstrate conclusively that he has been deliberately trying to discredit me for his own purposes.”
He didn’t argue. He simply nodded. Free could get used to the notion of having a scoundrel to help out around here.
“And luckily for us,” she said, “I know just how to do that.”
IT WAS THREE IN THE MORNING by the time Free cut the last sheet off the press. The pages were still wet, and the ink that had been transferred to them was still susceptible to smearing. She handed the paper to Alice, who took it from her and hung it up to dry. Behind her, Mr. Clark unlatched the drum that held the type. He’d remained behind, lifting and carrying without complaint. He set the drum to the side, removed the roll of heavy paper from the press, and hung it over the trough to drip dry.
“They’re going to be shipped still damp,” Alice warned.
There was nothing Free could do about that. So the sheets would be a little wrinkled on arrival. It didn’t matter.
“Go home,” Free said wearily, letting her head sink into her hands. “Go home and go to sleep. We’ve still to produce the paper itself tomorrow.” After that, it would be Sunday and they could all sleep.
She’d never thought her twenty-six years made her old, but she felt old now. Five years ago, she’d thought nothing of staying up till all hours, talking with her fellow students about anything. But if she wanted to figure out how Delacey was obtaining her advance proofs, first she had to figure out which one of them was going awry. They’d taken to burning the sheets that Free and Amanda marked up, but Free had been in the habit of printing off a few extras, sending out early copies to friends and family.
Only one way to know which was going astray—and that was to send out three different proofs to the people who received them. She’d made small changes only—a misspelled word in one, transposed sentences in another.
Still, making those false proofs—setting up the machinery for each one—had been exhausting.
“Thank you all,” she finished with a yawn.
“It’s our press, too,” Alice told her.
Free felt her cousin’s hand on her shoulder, a brief touch. She reached up blindly and held it for a moment.
“I’ll go home soon,” she said. “I’ll just wait for the sheets to dry a little, and then pack them up for the mails. I can rest my eyes here.”
Alice and her husband lived in the attached building behind the press. Alice usually supervised the running of the press at night; she was never asleep when the press was running. That also meant she was near enough that Free could call out if anything went wrong. The errand boy would come by in half an hour for the mails, which he’d cycle down to the train for later delivery. She buried her head in her arms, almost drifting off. She could hear the others gathering their things, feet shuffling against the floor. Then a cool draft of night air came as the door opened, cutting through the humid steam let off by the press’s engine.
“Oh, that’s nice,” Free said. “Leave the door open.”
They must have done so, because that lovely breeze kept on.
She dozed off—her thoughts became blurry and indistinct—but not for long. Slowly, she came back to consciousness, remembered why she was still here. She opened her eyes.
But she was not in an empty room. Sitting some three feet away from her was Edward Clark. She blinked, but the image of him didn’t alter.
“Why are you still here?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t think it was right to leave you alone, asleep, in the middle of the night with the door open.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I know,” he said. “You’re thinking that between the certainty of me and the unknown dark, you’d rather have the dark. Not that you have any reason to believe me, but I’m not that sort of scoundrel.”
She rubbed her eyes, coming to herself. “That’s not what I was thinking. My cousin is near enough that she’d come on a scream. I was thinking that it was an absurdly protective gesture.”
He’d said he felt sexual attraction, and she didn’t doubt he did. But that could mean anything. He might feel the stirrings of lust toward a thousand women a day. No, she was safer remembering his first words to her. He didn’t give a damn about her.
Impossible to think that while remembering the sketches he’d made of her.
He looked away from her, glancing at the sheets that hung from large wooden rods. “Tell me what needs to be done, Miss Marshall. I’ll do it, and then you can head off to bed.”
“Check to see if the ink still smears.”
He stood and crossed to the sheets that were hanging. “The pages are still damp, but the ink is fast.”
Under her direction, they got the proofs ready for the mails. He worked with her, fetching envelopes and ink, folding the sheets of newsprint.
He talked as he worked. “Tonight was interesting. I always imagined that a printing press used wet ink, like from an inkwell.”
“This press can put off twenty thousand sheets per hour. It cost me five hundred pounds. You can’t get that sort of speed with wet ink without smearing it. So instead, you wet the paper and use lampblack…” Free smiled. “Now listen to me babble on.”
“I like hearing you babble.” He wasn’t looking at her as he spoke, just folding up sheets. “This is as far from that first press as a chisel and stone tablet are from a fountain pen. Twenty thousand sheets in an hour, and every one of them a weapon. I wonder if Gutenberg imagined this when he made that first Bible.”
She wondered if Mr. Clark saw the same thing she did when she looked at her press. It wasn’t just a thing of metal and gears, a machine that chopped and printed at an astonishing rate. It was a web of connections, from the account of life in the mines from a woman in Cornwall, to the description of the latest parliamentary machinations.
But no. No matter what he said, how charming he was, she had to remember who he was. A liar. A realist. He might care about her in the casual way that men cared about women they wanted, but he didn’t care about anything she did.
Such a shame.
He watched her address the envelopes. “Do you really know Violet Malheur? And is that the Violet Malheur? The one they call the Countess of Chromosome now?”
Free smiled dreamily. “A little known fact: I invented the word chromosome. Also, Lady Amanda is her niece. So, yes, we do know her. She’s penned a few essays for us on female education and vocation.” Free scrawled a brief note to Violet and folded it in with the proof.
“Is there anything you don’t do?” he asked.
“Sleep.”
He laughed softly. Free could almost have forgotten that he’d threatened her with blackmail, that he couldn’t bother to spare a single cheer for her future. She could almost believe that he was a friend.
They packaged the proofs and added them to the mailbag left on the stoop.
He took his scarf from the hooks at the door; she took a light cloak.
He went outside, but waited on the stoop for her to lock up. “Do you need someone to walk you home?”
Free pointed fifty feet down to her house. “I live there. I can manage that on my own.”
“Ah.” But he didn’t move, and for some reason, she didn’t either.
“Right,” she heard herself say. “Good night, then, Mr. Clark. Go get some sleep.”
He smiled wearily. “Not yet. I’ll be watching the mailbag, to make sure that our culprit isn’t interfering at this
point. You go, Miss Marshall.”
Still she didn’t. “Why are you doing all this? You say it’s revenge, but I can’t make sense of you.”
He looked down the street, away from her. “Just…wrestling with my conscience.”
“What?” She gasped in fake shock. “Mr. Clark! I didn’t know you had one of those.”
“I didn’t think I did, either,” he said wryly. “That’s why it’s proven so hard to defeat. I’m out of practice.” He sighed. “Very well, then. A while back, I told you that you would always know the score between us, even if you didn’t know the details.”
She turned toward him. “And now you want to tell me details.”
“God, no.” He looked disgusted. “Now I’m debating if I should tell you that the score has changed.”
The air shifted subtly between them. She turned to him. “You’ve given up on revenge, then.”
“No, Miss Marshall.” His voice was low and warm, so warm she could have sunk into it, let it enfold her. “I told you that I didn’t give a damn about you.”
Her breath stopped in her lungs. He was watching her ever so intently, so intently that she shut her eyes, unable to meet his gaze. “Oh?”
“That has changed. I find myself giving a damn. It’s an unfamiliar experience, to say the least.”
Free let her breath cycle in and out, in and out. But it was the sound of his breathing that she listened for, as if his inhalations might provide some clue to untangle what he meant.
She kept her eyes shut. “Well, Mr. Clark. You have not given me enough information to proceed. Precisely what sort of a damn are we talking about here? Is it a little damn? A big damn? Do you give more than one damn, or are we talking of damnation in the singular?”
She could hear his shoes scuff against the ground, taking him closer. Closer to her. She couldn’t see him, and that made the moment all the more intimate. She could imagine the look in his eyes, faintly approving.
“Free.” His voice dropped low, so low that she could almost feel the rumble of it in her chest. And then she felt it—not his hand, but a waft of air brushing her cheek, and then the absence of any draft. The warmth of him heating the space next to her.
“This,” he said, “is about the shape of it.”
She couldn’t help herself. She leaned forward, letting his hand brush against her jaw. His finger ran along her chin; his thumb brushed against her lips. Her eyes fluttered open.
She’d imagined him intent on her, watching her ever so closely. But she hadn’t expected that look in his eyes, hadn’t expected him to exhale when she finally looked at him. She hadn’t expected him to move closer still, as if he’d spent long years alone and only she could fill that hollowness inside him.
He leaned forward. His lips were close to hers, so close that she might have stretched up the barest inch and kissed him. But she wasn’t going to close that gap. She willed it into existence, demanded that it stay there. And he didn’t move any nearer.
“How deceptive,” he remarked.
It was such an odd thing to say; she blinked and looked up at him.
“It’s some kind of illusion,” he said. “Or a painter’s trick. Until this moment, I had the distinct impression that you were a lady of ordinary dimensions.” His fingers stroked her cheek with a gentle brush. “But now you’re close and you’re not moving, and I can see the truth. You’re tiny.”
“I am small,” she said, “but mighty.”
His touch was warm on her jaw. “Have you ever watched ants? They scurry about carrying crumbs three times their size. You’ve no need to remind me of your strength. It’s great big fellows like me who crack under the strain.”
He was great. And big. He was touching her as if she were some delicate thing.
“Tell me, Miss Marshall,” he said. “As unconventional as you are… Hypothetically speaking, have you ever considered taking a lover?”
As he spoke his fingers slid down her neck, resting briefly against her pulse. He must feel it hammering away, must know the effect he was having on her.
“As we are speaking hypothetically,” she told him, “I suppose that a woman can only break so many rules. I’ve chosen the ones that I shatter very, very carefully.”
“Ah,” he said. But he didn’t move away.
“I tell myself all those things,” she said, “but I’m a suffragette, not a statue. I have the same desires as any person. I want to touch and be touched, hold and be held. So yes, Mr. Clark. I have, hypothetically, thought of taking lovers.”
His eyes darkened. But perhaps he could tell that there was more to come.
“But we are speaking hypothetically. I don’t think I would do it in truth unless one thing were true.”
“Yes?”
“I would have to trust the man.”
His fingers came to a standstill on her throat. His eyes sought hers. For a long, fraught moment, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t protest. He didn’t demand an explanation. He didn’t erupt in anger.
Instead, ever so slowly, his mouth tilted up in a sardonic smile. “Well.” He spoke quietly. “That rather rules me out.”
She hadn’t known she was holding her breath until she let it out. “Yes. It does.”
“Just as well,” he returned. “I wouldn’t like you half so much if you let yourself spin breathless fantasies about me.”
Oh, she’d spun breathless fantasies. She was spinning one now, damning herself for having good sense when she could be getting a proper kiss instead. Later, she’d think back on this moment and imagine a thousand different endings.
For now, she swallowed back all that ill-advised want. She smiled at him—teasingly, she hoped, with no limpid doe-eyed desire—and shrugged a shoulder. “Oh, look at that. I am coming up in the world. I have graduated from mild indifference to a moderate preference.”
But she couldn’t trust even that assertion on his part. He was charming, but he was a terrible scoundrel. And if he intended to seduce her… Well, he was doing a bang-up job of it. How she wished her foolish reason didn’t assert itself over her desire. She suspected he was the kind of bounder who could make her feel very, very good before he casually destroyed her life.
“If ever you change your mind,” he said, “do let me know.”
“You mean, if I decide to trust you?”
For a moment, his eyes grew dark. His fingers tapped against her cheek. And then he moved away. “I’m a realist, Miss Marshall. I don’t hope for things that can never be. I meant that you might one day relax your requirements.” He turned away. “Now go home and sleep. I’ll watch the mails.”
Chapter Seven
“IT’S SO GOOD TO SEE YOU, Lady Amanda.”
Lady Amanda Ellisford sat, her hands clasped around a saucer, trying to remember why she was doing this again. Oh, yes. That was it. She was doing this because apparently, she loved pain.
Not that there was anything inherently painful about visiting Free’s sister in law. Nothing at all. Mrs. Jane Marshall was perfectly lovely. Her secretary was…more than that.
Once, Amanda had made morning and afternoon visits alike with no sense of unease. Now, though, the trappings of the social call—the plate of biscuits and sandwiches, the clink of cup and saucer—served as an ever-present reminder of what she no longer was.
She was no longer the girl who sat in pink-papered drawing rooms yearning for more.
And yet here she was. Sitting. In a drawing room.
“Just Amanda will do,” she said, trying not to sound stiff. “There’s no need to Lady Amanda me.”
Time was, there’d been nothing stiff about her under circumstances like these. She’d known how to make small talk about nothing at all for hours on end—a consequence of having had nothing in her life to talk about. But the skill had atrophied after years of disuse, and now, it seemed as if it had been some other girl who had been able to chatter away without flinching.
Today, even the tick of the clock behind them
seemed to reprimand her. You no longer belong here. You walked away. Why do you think you can simply come back?
It echoed a long-remembered voice. You went away once. I wish you’d do it again, and never come back.
Mrs. Jane Marshall obviously had never known what it meant to be conscious of her every move. She wore a day gown of pink-and-orange checks, trimmed with yellow lace. It would have been a hideous combination on another woman—like imagining flamingo feathers stuck haphazardly in a chicken’s tail. On her, it just…was.
Amanda felt like the badly feathered one in the room.
“I’m only in London a few more days,” she said. “Free asked if I would bring by a few letters—and this for the boys.” She held out an envelope and a brightly wrapped package.
“She spoils them,” Jane said, but she smiled as she took the package. “I’ll be sure to write her a thank-you. And thank you so much for bringing it by.”
“I have no wish to bother you,” Amanda said, making sure to look at Mrs. Marshall directly and at her secretary not at all. “I’ll be out of your hair in a twinkling.”
“But you’re never a bother to us.” Those words, said in so sweet a tone, did not come from Mrs. Marshall. Amanda turned—mostly reluctantly—to take in her secretary.
If Mrs. Jane Marshall was a flamingo, her social secretary, Miss Genevieve Johnson, was a perfect little turtledove. Or—to use another, not quite inappropriate example—she was like a china doll. She was perfectly proportioned. Her skin was a flawless porcelain, her eyes brilliantly blue. If there were any justice in the world, she would be stupid or unfriendly. But she wasn’t; she had always been perfectly kind to Amanda, and her intelligence was obvious to anyone who listened to her for any length of time.
She was exactly the sort of woman whom Amanda would have stood in awe of, when she’d had her Season nearly a decade past—the sort of brilliant, shining social diamond that Amanda would have watched breathlessly from afar.
In those ten years, Amanda had figured out exactly why she’d watched women like her with such avid intent. But understanding why Miss Johnson made her uneasy made her feel more in doubt, rather than less.
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