Page 1 of The Finest Print

PROLOGUE

March 1844

London

There was a very good chance Belle Sinclair was ruining her life. There was an even better chance she was doing so in vain.

By the time she walked out of Scotland Yard today, her circumstances would be both better and worse, and there was no telling which would withstand the test of time.

She wasn’t wearing the ring; it was safe in a little silk pouch in the concealed pocket of her skirts. She’d removed it two days ago, twisting it off her finger and enclosing the skin-warmed band of silver in her fist.

Now she put the pouch on the desk and slid it across the roughly hewn wood to Detective Sergeant Lawrence Duncan, who watched with mild bemusement.

He lifted the pouch, opened it, spilled out the ring. A small metallic clatter sounded as it spun twice.

Duncan chuckled. “You cannot be serious, Belinda.”

She stared at the ring, fighting a frightened impulse to snatch it up, to squash it on her finger, to keep her feet walking the path they’d agreed to walk.

But then she looked up to encounter his knowing smirk.

He didn’t believe she could go through with it, which was precisely why she had to.

“I’m quite serious.” Her voice sounded far softer than intended.

She swallowed hard and imagined herself in front of the gilded mirror on her dressing table, where she’d practiced this conversation a dozen times in the last two days. Her reflection—finely boned face, wide hazel eyes, barely tamed waves of tawny hair—was always composed. Her reflection did not entertain nerves, because it had none. She needed to be the same—dispassionate, assured, the embodiment of Belle Sinclair in the mirror.

And she had to do it from the warm side of the glass.

Duncan picked up the ring and slid it on his pinky. He held it to the sunlit window in his tiny office, examining it as if he had never seen it before.

“I presume this is because of the incident with your journal?”

“It was my manuscript,” she corrected hoarsely. She was unable to think of it. All those lost pages. Words she loved, words she nurtured.

Words she could never, ever get back.

She looked at him, no longer seeing his sleek pomade and polished veneer—only the man of two days ago, his face twisting as she retrieved her ruined pages from the puddle of his upended teapot. Duncan’s ugly outburst had been a sobering shock and yet, somehow, entirely expected. It confirmed that her mounting unease was warranted, that she had taken the measure of him after all.

In truth, her revulsion didn’t stem from his treatment of her manuscript—his outrageous jealousy over her busy pen—but from the malice lurking behind his calculated composure. She curdled, recalling how he tossed her a napkin, bluntly censuring her distress. Come, Belinda, let’s not make a fuss.

Now she blinked away from him, supposing nothing said so much of a man’s character than what he would and would not make a fuss about.

“You do realize you have no other prospects?” Duncan spun the ring on his desk with casual confidence. “I’m the only man who offered for you. And not to be crude, Belinda, but I might remind you, a broken engagement will harm you far more than it will me.”

She resolutely squashed a blurry memory of his hand on her knee. If he thought to trap her with the small liberties she’d cautiously granted him, he was wrong about what would harm her.

“I have the prospect of myself,” she said, holding her fists tight in her lap. “Of my family. Of my writing?—”

“Your writing is not only trite and meaningless, it’s a liability,” he interrupted tersely. “I’m due to be named Inspector . Superintendent one day. Christ, Belinda, the only thing you had to be was convenient.”

She stared at him, grateful he’d admitted it. She knew he valued her for her family connections, just as she knew she was meant to value him for his own merits—without question, Duncan was competent, respected, and highly ambitious.

How different things might have been, if he’d also been good .

“I am not a convenience.” Her throat ached with feeble resolve. “Nor can I become so. It’s not what I want.”

“Indeed, you are not.”

Duncan spun the ring again. She watched it rotate on the table, fast under his finger. Her cheeks grew tight, a sure sign she was close to tears—which was infuriating, because she wasn’t sad…not precisely.

“Is Justice Sinclair here?” He glanced at the door.

At the mention of her father, Belle’s courage rebounded. “He’s here.”

Her father was waiting in the corridor outside. When she finished, he would step in to conclude the business of a broken betrothal. He’d done just so, many times over, in his career as a barrister. Papa wanted to attend this meeting with her, but Belle asked to come in alone. She was determined to undo her own near-disastrous mistake. God knows she would require the same fortitude in the days to come.

Duncan huffed one short laugh. “So this is it, then?”

She reached out to put her hand atop the spinning ring, setting it squarely on the desk in front of him. She wanted nothing about this moment to be in flux.

“This is it.” She had more to say. But she couldn’t. She wanted to go home. She wanted to curl in her bed and rest her aching head on her mother’s knee. “Thank you for your time, Sergeant.”

She left the office, an awful levity rising within her, a bubble of emotion about to burst. All of the hard things would come now, the rumors, the whispers. Mess, all of it a mess. A mess her parents had cautioned of even as they handed her a broom. If you have reservations , Papa told her, so do I . But then he looked at Mama with a grim resolve that settled in Belle’s bones.

“Belle.” Her father was pacing the dingy corridor, his dark blue eyes somber as he took her in. “No. Not here.”

She was breathing too fast; her face was wet. She quickly dragged her knuckles across the damp ridge of her cheekbone.

Papa glanced behind her, then put his hands on her shoulders. She looked up at him. She was twenty-one years old and had just upended her life over a bad feeling. And her father had let her do it. She couldn’t imagine ever feeling as grateful as she did right now.

“Eyes dry,” he said, his voice low. “The way you walk out of here matters, Belle. There is no world in which Duncan will make this easy for you. I’ll be quick, but you should wait outside.”

Belle nodded, pitching with painful relief.

Swiftly, she descended the staircase and crossed through the back hall. It wasn’t until she stepped out to the street that she remembered her careful rehearsal, the impassioned, well-articulated remarks Duncan would never hear.

But now, standing in the cold, cold blue, she found her eyes were indeed dry, and she was fiercely glad she’d remained silent.

Belle had no idea what the future held. Her words might be all she had.

And she would not waste a single, precious one.