Page 11 of The Finest Print

10

Secrets of the Old Bailey, Vol 1., No. 3

A Lucky Day for the Laundress

The problem with faking a death is sometimes a body is required. Not always—the Thames certainly had its uses. But the new Coroner’s Officer had the unfortunate habit of seeing a task through. The laundress’s vile husband was newly released from prison, a travesty which meant the laundress herself needed to disappear.

Fortunately, Clementina knew where they hid the bodies.

When Belle returned home Tuesday afternoon, it was to find Lena and their cousin Cecily in the front kitchen garden. She spied them from the door and hesitated, debating whether she’d prefer to be alone. Then the pair laughed, their heads together, and Belle accepted she could benefit from a bit of conspiratorial advice.

Smitten .

She was smitten with Ethan Fletcher.

It was not lost on her that the root of smitten was smite , which evoked a possibly more accurate definition. If she wasn’t yet powerfully afflicted by disaster, she had a feeling she was well on the way.

“Hello, dears,” she called, mustering a smile as she stepped into the small, square garden.

“What a coincidence.” Lena beamed from where she sat in the shade of the house. “We were just wondering where you were today.”

“Belle.” Cecily rushed to her. “My goodness, I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

Belle waved to a lounging Lena and bussed her cousin’s cheek. At twenty-three, Lady Cecily Travers was as charming as she was irreverent. Tall and athletically lean with her father’s gray eyes and her mother’s dark hair, she treated the marriage mart like a game she only played when bored. Cecily was best suited for a caper, always good for gossip, and she’d pulled the Sinclair girls into more trouble than their father preferred. She was also their most steadfast friend.

“I’ve been busy,” Belle admitted, sinking to the bench beside Cecily.

“Yes.” Lena poured them all lemonade. “That’s precisely what we were discussing.”

Belle paused, wondering how much she could share. The thought of verbalizing her confounding attraction to her secret business partner was as embarrassing as it was tempting.

Much like the confounding attraction itself.

She opened her mouth, blushed, and closed it again.

“Belle?” Cecily tilted her head. “What is it?”

“With that blush, I’d say the better question is who is it,” Lena teased lightly. “But we know Belle is steadfast in her loyalty to Doyle at the Old Bailey.”

Belle mentally lurched to the courthouse with Ethan—his gaze hot on her face, his hand hot on her arm—and color stained all the way down her throat, to where all her words were stopped up.

Cecily watched her obvious fluster with interest. “Well, now I simply must know where you’ve been.”

“Where you’ve been for weeks ,” Lena corrected before turning to Cecily. “Belle is disappearing more than usual…and considering she typically walks a well-trodden path between courthouse, garden, and her bedroom, I would say…”

“Mischief is afoot,” Cecily finished.

“Mischief is not afoot,” Belle said firmly. “Mischief is stalled. Mischief is, in fact, regressing.”

“That’s it.” Lena leaned forward. “Who is he?”

“Who is who?” Belle picked up the pitcher of lemonade, realized nobody needed a refill, and held it on her lap. Like a shield.

“Whoever has you making that face.” Cecily narrowed her gray eyes.

“I’m not making a face,” Belle said quickly. It was a blasted nuisance, how badly she wanted to be seen and to hide away, all at the same time.

“Belle.”

She looked between Lena and Cecily.

“He’s a printer,” she said despondently. “ Please don’t make a fuss?—”

Her plea was drowned out by immediate and substantial fuss.

“Belinda Rose Sinclair!”

“You little minx!” Cecily scrambled to not upend her beverage. “What are you suggesting…there is someone?”

“We were only teasing.” Lena looked as delighted as an aghast person could be.

“I really had no idea. Lena, did you?”

“No. I thought she was just off doing research she shouldn’t be—a printer !”

“Do we need something stronger than lemonade?” Cecily all but clapped her hands.

“He’s an American,” Belle continued against her own wishes.

“What?”

“He’s tall and kind and…his shoulders…” She pressed her cheek, as if to stop her rebellious mouth from moving. “He has a beard.”

“Oh my.”

“Definitely something stronger,” Cecily instructed Lena.

“If you think I’m leaving this garden, you’re mad,” Lena said, rising and squishing onto the bench beside Belle. It wasn’t made for three, but Belle was comforted by the familiar sandwich of her sister and cousin.

“I’ve been working with him on the…literacy initiative,” Belle said haltingly. She looked up to find them both gaping like a pair of pretty fish.

“What do you mean literacy initiative ?” Cecily asked.

“Never mind that. What do you mean working with him ?” Lena’s blue eyes were round.

“Just that.” Belle sighed. “We’re publishing something together, with the aim to…provide reading material for working-class boys.”

She thought of Clementina’s foray to the mortuary, and twisted her mouth closed.

“So that’s where you’re going every day. Off to some printshop, in your nicest dresses, wearing my rouge.” Lena gave her a superior smile. “I’d recognize that shade anywhere.”

“You can have your blasted rouge,” Belle groused. “Because our professional association is the whole extent of it. His only interest is what I can write for him.”

At this, both Cecily and Lena fell quiet.

“And you want something more?” Cecily asked cautiously. “Because you usually don’t want…”

“I know,” Belle whispered. She was perilously close to tears. Hell, everything was topsy-turvy as of late—including her detached reserve. “This is wretchedly confusing.”

Belle sensed a rapid and silent conversation happening over her head, but she was too forlorn to care. “He made a poem for me yesterday,” she admitted. “Well. Sort of. It was actually a line from a Poe story, about a woman who was resurrected as her husband’s new wife.”

“Ah.” Lena patted her hand. “That’s…romantic.”

“Maybe,” Belle said. “I don’t know what to make of it. I never know what to make of it. I suppose I should make nothing of it at all.”

“Darling, we haven’t heard you talk like this…ever,” Cecily said slowly. “I don’t think you should make nothing of it.”

“You should make something of it.” Lena sipped her lemonade.

“He might not even stay in London,” Belle pointed out morosely. “He’s focused only on this temporary project.”

All three fell into contemplative silence.

“Well.” Cecily was first to speak. “That’s an idea.”

“What’s an idea?” Belle turned to meet her cousin’s sly stare.

“A temporary project .” She said it as though she were proposing something illicit, and a half second later Belle realized that’s exactly what she was doing.

She slid her cousin an exasperated look. “I can only guess half of what you’re insinuating, and I can tell you, I’m not doing… that . I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I haven’t tried to attract a man’s attention…well, in years. Not really even before that. Duncan’s pursuit was disingenuous, but he initiated it.”

“You could, Belle,” Lena said quietly, and Belle was startled to find her sister wasn’t teasing. Lena’s eyes flashed. “Why shouldn’t you? You’ll really let that louse keep you on the shelf forever?”

Belle looked down. She’d been the one to bring up Duncan, and now she deeply regretted inserting her past into this discussion of her present.

“It’s not as though I have much choice in the matter.” She heaved a confused sigh. “I am on the shelf. Spinsters don’t take on temporary projects.”

“Belle, don’t say that. You aren’t a?—”

“Helena. Please.”

She’d never so boldly stated the truth; it hurt more than she expected. She was a spinster—not nearly, not almost. She was . She was twenty-five years old and an indisputable outcast. For years, she’d endured rumors far more shameless than she’d ever been, quietly accepting them as her due. A future free of Duncan had a cost, and life in the shadows seemed a fair price to pay.

But these last weeks with Ethan had yanked back those gray curtains. Suddenly, sunlight .

Why couldn’t she open the shutters the rest of the way?

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves.” Cecily was still scheming. “Let’s focus on what we know. Belle is spending her days with someone who I can only presume is a handsome American?—”

“Who quotes Poe,” Lena added. “We mustn’t overlook that.”

Belle couldn’t help but smile. She would never overlook that.

“We don’t need to know how long he’s staying, or what mysterious project you’re working on, or anything so big and serious as what spinsters do and what they don’t,” Cecily said thoughtfully. “Why don’t we just start very small?”

“How small?” Belle asked cautiously.

“Suppose you arrange to see him socially?” Cecily said. “Outside of his work. Something simple.”

At the thought of intentionally seeing Ethan away from the shop, her stomach tightened with something frighteningly like anticipation. That’s when she recognized how far gone she truly was, because Belle didn’t anticipate seeing anyone, and she certainly didn’t anticipate initiating it herself.

“For instance,” Lena prompted, “the man eats dinner, I presume?”

Belle made a very small sound of defeat, and as one, Cecily and Lena’s arms came around her.

They understood it was neither small nor simple.

“Excuse me, miss—watch yourself!”

Ethan glanced down to find Belle studying the street with ferocious intent. Since she wasn’t looking ahead, he did so for her, firmly grasping her elbow to tug her out of the way of a pushcart barreling down Fleet in the opposite direction.

She seemed entirely unbothered by her near-capsizing, though she was certainly bothered by something else. She’d been like this the last few days—distracted and oddly quiet. He presumed it was due to her writing. She went through stretches when she withdrew, lost in private musings he wouldn’t be privy to until they appeared in garish detail on the composing stick.

“Ethan…”

“Hmm?” He could drop her arm; there were no more pushcarts in sight. He decided it was better to be safe than sorry.

“Ah, if you have a moment, there’s something I want to speak with you about.”

“You mean other than helping you sneak into a crypt?”

“ I’m not sneaking into a crypt,” she admonished, meeting his half smile. “I’m simply verifying the general feasibility of sneaking into a crypt. I might add, I didn’t ask you to help me.”

It was Friday afternoon, and in a surprising turn, Ethan and the Porters were ahead with this week’s production, which left him time to escort Belle on this short walk to St. Bride’s. The nearby church was the site of an ossuary she wanted to use in an upcoming story.

“Of course I had to help you,” he said lightly. “What good would it do for you to break your neck trying to hop a churchyard gate? I’d have to ask Sam to write next week’s story.”

“If anyone is hopping a gate, it will be you.” She glanced down at his long stride. “There’s not much trouble I can cause in my skirts.”

Ethan gritted his jaw. He could certainly cause trouble with her skirts. But now was not the time to contemplate how far his hand could wrap around her thigh.

There would never be a good time to contemplate that.

“I feel this should go without saying, but nevertheless, skirts or no skirts, nobody is breaking into a crypt today.”

“There should be a staircase to the ossuary inside the church,” she said thoughtfully. “I think. If not, I can probably make do with a cemetery…”

Ethan decided to change the subject before she could extend this outing to include further gravesites.

“Listen, there’s something I need to speak with you about as well,” he said reluctantly.

She steered him down a narrow, cobbled passage to the church. The noise of the street was muted by tall buildings framing the churchyard. A pair of sparrows chirruped from their perch on the iron gate. Ethan wondered which was the male and if he was likewise in the thralls of the most intense and inconvenient attraction of his life.

He drew to a halt and reached inside his coat, withdrawing a stack of handwritten pages Belle had given him that morning. “I need you to rewrite this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not typesetting this.” Ethan shook his head. “It’s not ready.”

“What’s wrong with it?” She took the story and folded it protectively against her chest, as though it had ears.

He scrubbed a hand over his neatly trimmed beard and leaned on the stone wall surrounding the yard. Above him, the church’s tiered spire pierced the sky.

“This story is intriguing and entertaining, but on the whole, it’s a bit…tidy.”

“Tidy?” Her mouth dropped open, and she jabbed the pages. “Ursula DeVry’s chaperone was garroted .”

“Well, yes, but Clementina solves a case every single week. It’s getting a little predictable, don’t you think? We might consider the benefit of more suspense. What if you drew out the scene in the dungeon, and then just…ended. And Ursula DeVry isn’t saved until next week?”

“That means Clementina would completely overlook the invisible ink in the diary,” she protested.

“Yes. Which works, if you move the diary to the scene with the glass-eyed caretaker.”

It was a testament to Ethan’s new line of work that these debates had become entirely commonplace. He used to write about the growing number of immigrants in Boston; now he was an expert on invisible ink and dungeon garroting.

“Last week, it worked well, didn’t it? Your idea to add more trial details had us selling more copies than any issue to date. Let’s try this too,” he said. “Let everyone suffer more. In a theoretical sense. There’s plenty of actual suffering, already.”

“Hmm.”

Belle joined him against the wall. She grimly studied her pages, and Ethan grimly studied her.

With the weather improving, she’d been getting more sun, aided by her maddening habit of pushing back her bonnet. It was inconceivable she could grow more fair, but there it was—the wisps at her temples gleamed gold, a bloom painted her cheeks, and a small constellation of freckles dusted the bridge of her nose.

Ethan stared; the freckles were a recent development.

He glanced mutinously at the bonnet trailing by its ribbons. The fact that she owned a dozen hats and couldn’t be bothered to wear them correctly was proof of his rotten luck. Why wouldn’t life hand him yet another problem?

At that inopportune moment, Belle reached for the pencil he kept in his coat pocket, her slender fingers unthinkingly brushing his chest. He was seized by a rapid and inflaming reverie—popping the buttons on her bodice, peeling back the soft muslin, baring her shoulders to the rough pads of his fingertips. He imagined angling her head, kissing a path up the smooth line of her throat, of all the places she would flush that had nothing to do with the spring sun…

Hell .

In light of all her covert freckles, he took a moment to remind himself of the other things he knew of her. She was a respectable lady, she had men sending her flowers, she had men chasing her out of the courthouse. She had time for hobbies —the serial was probably one of them, helping to fill her days until she married some limpid barrister and set up her own house with her own damn scones and her own damn tulips.

He grimaced. Only half of those things were true.

“Fine, yes. I see your point.” She sighed, making a quick series of notations. “I don’t like it, but I see it.”

“I don’t mean to be insufferable,” he offered. “It’s just good business.”

“I know.”

She fell quiet, apparently in no hurry to enter the church. Ethan looked about, wondering how long she meant to loiter.

“Did you want to go inside…or…?”

She looked up, and he was startled to see her expression was one of determined misery.

“What’s wrong?”

“Ah…Ethan. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been meaning to ask you…well, all week really.”

He wondered if he should be as concerned as she seemed to be. “Yes?”

“I was thinking…if you aren’t otherwise engaged…ah. That is, I noticed you didn’t take your midday meal.” She winced, color high on her cheeks. “And dinner is, you know…next.”

He squinted, trying to parse if he’d been asked a question. “What?”

“Never mind,” she said quickly.

He blinked, the fumbled invitation finally landing.

She was asking him to dinner.

Belle wanted to spend time with him outside of work.

She wanted to do it intentionally, because yes , there was intention in her blush, and now that he could see it, he couldn’t see anything else.

Something inside leaped with golden, cheerful confusion, only to abruptly halt, as though a leash had tightened around his throat.

No. No . He had no idea what she was on about, but he would not be finding out over dinner. Whatever friendly feelings she elicited with her soft-smelling hair and thoughtful cleverness weren’t useful for anything but the penny blood.

As for other feelings she elicited…those were for Ethan to untangle alone, at night, staring at the ceiling, his palm sliding over his aching?—

Stay clear .

“I’m engaged for dinner tonight,” he said quickly, hoping she would leave it at that. “Mrs. Porter invited me.”

“Oh.” She looked disappointed, which was probably for the best. And yet, he felt an irrational urge to put his finger on her wounded little frown and smooth it away.

Fortunately for Ethan’s irrational urges, at that moment, a pair of women in elaborate hats strolled through the churchyard. Belle glanced at them once, then again, her hazel eyes growing wide.

“ Blast .”

She looked at Ethan as though assessing whether she could hide behind him. She stuffed her story behind him instead. Their hands briefly touched as she closed the papers in his fist, and then she was whirling around.

“Miss Sinclair? Is that you?”

Belle’s bonnet was back on her head before Ethan could so much as straighten from the wall.

“Lady Beaumont.” She looked at the church looming behind them. “My, what a surprise. Is…is this your parish?”

“Heavens no.” The older woman scoffed. “My Thomasina and I are here to see about contributing to one of the charity schools.”

“How nice.”

Belle shot Ethan a look he didn’t know how to interpret. He frowned; he was used to being able to read her moods. The two women were now looking at Ethan too—he could interpret their moods just fine.

“Lady Beaumont, Miss Beaumont, this is Mr. Fletcher.”

Ethan scrambled for any notion of what to do—forms of address to aristocracy were lost on him—and decided on a nod. “Pleased to meet you.”

Lady Beaumont’s sniff indicated he’d got it wrong in one way or another. Likely all ways.

“Helena very much enjoyed your ball a few weeks ago,” Belle said politely. “She was brimming with praise.”

“Yes, well, the feeling is entirely mutual. Your sister is a lovely, accomplished young woman,” Lady Beaumont said. “There’s no doubt she’s a credit to your parents.”

Belle’s smile shifted to something practiced and tight. “She most certainly is.”

“It’s a pleasure to host her,” the matron continued. “And dare I say, my other guests would agree. I spoke with Mr. Turner just last week—he was quite effusive .”

The woman trilled another laugh, and Ethan’s frown deepened.

“It’s nice to see you, Thomasina.” Belle directed her attention to the young woman standing halfway behind her mother. “It’s been a long time?—”

“Forgive me, Miss Sinclair, we really must be off.” Lady Beaumont jerked her chin at her daughter. “Thomasina invited friends for tea this afternoon. Perhaps your sister will join them next time. It’s such a convivial group, I’m sure you recall.”

There was a small, uncomfortable lull.

“I’m sure she would appreciate an invitation,” Belle finally said.

“Good day, Miss Sinclair, Mr. Fletcher.” Before either of them could respond, the woman and her daughter were hurrying away and disappearing down the cobbled passage.

Ethan stared after them.

“I’ll take my papers back now,” Belle said quietly.

He passed her the draft, which she’d nowhere to put, except back in his still-extended hand. He folded her story and tucked it in his coat pocket.

“Shall we go in?” she asked, pushing her bonnet back again. “I really am fine to go alone. If you want to ready yourself for the Porters.”

“No, I’ll come.” And then, before he could think better of it, he added, “Did she say Mr. Turner ?”

“What?” Belle looked at him with brief confusion. “Oh. Mr. Turner. Yes, he’s?—”

“The man who sent you tulips.” Ethan hoped Tobias had a healthy dose of strong liquor at his house.

“Tulips? You mean the flowers I brought to the shop?” She gave him a strange look. “Those weren’t for me. My sister received them after Lady Beaumont’s ball. I merely thought they might brighten the place a bit.”

It was Ethan’s turn to stare.

“What?” She asked suspiciously.

“Nothing.” He didn’t know how to explain to her he’d never felt quite so much like an ass as he did right now.

He looked after the Beaumont ladies, hard-pressed to think of someone who was more superior company than Belle Sinclair. Hell, she’d spent a full hour yesterday helping Sam write himself into next week’s story as the heroic victim of a vengeful heiress, all in service of impressing not-yet Abigail.

Belle was a good friend, but did she have any? She spoke often of her sister and cousin but rarely of plans outside the printshop. He’d assumed it was because she didn’t want to make things uncomfortable between them.

Now he didn’t know what to think.

“Belle…”

“You know, I’ve always liked this church.” She resolutely looked at the spire overhead. It was plain she wished to change the subject, and Ethan figured the least he could do was let her.

“Why’s that?”

“Legend has it, the four tiers on the steeple inspired a young baker to create a marvelous wedding cake for his betrothed. It’s how tiered cake came into fashion.”

Ethan studied the spire. “That’s a nice story.”

“Not all of my useless anecdotes are morbid.” She exhaled a soft laugh. “Sometimes my notions are romantic…though still useless.”

Even with the muffled noise of the street behind them, it was remarkably quiet here, standing with Belle outside the crumbling wall of a stone wedding cake.

“Not useless.” He shook his head, ugly guilt moving through him. “Your notions are the most stimulating aspect of my life lately.”

He stepped closer, near enough he could see the striations of amber in her hazel eyes. Her hair was mussed from her bonnet, one tendril slipping along her neck, needlessly calling attention to the pale curve that had been tormenting him since the first day in the garden.

Stay clear .

But she was standing beside him, with her pages in his pocket and a wash of freckles on her subdued face, and Christ, if it wasn’t the exact formula to push him right into the damn middle of it.

“Your hair is coming loose,” he murmured. And he reached for it, unable to resist twining the gleaming coil of golden brown around his calloused finger. He had no right to touch her, which made him want to do it all the more, to fit the scarcest lovely part of her around himself.

Just that, and only that?—

There was a ruffle of feathers as one sparrow flew away.

“There.” He tucked the hair behind her ear, soft upon soft, and his throat ached. “Sort of. It’s the best I can manage.”

Her wide eyes swept over his face, and it was all too sweet, too harrowing, and he suddenly wished he did need to break into a crypt, for he was itching to do something reckless.

“Ah. Thank you.” She reached up, her finger trailing around the shell of her ear.

“Belle.” He grasped the gate of the churchyard. “About before. When you very helpfully pointed out that dinner follows lunch?—”

“Never mind,” she said quickly. She averted her eyes, but not before he saw a flash of blunted hope. “It was nothing.”

“Tomorrow,” he said against every single one of his good intentions, “I have no engagements.”

She startled, then smiled, a small slice of radiant relief, and he knew what was happening and wished he didn’t know, wished he hadn’t helped her along…but how could he not? This was a bad idea by every measure—except for the brightness on her face, which had somehow become the only measure that mattered.

“Tomorrow,” she told his shoulder, “My housekeeper is making gooseberry fool.”

There was a long, heavy pause.

“I like fools,” he said, feeling exactly like one.

She blushed, a gorgeous disappearing of her freckles. “So do I.”