Page 14 of The Finest Print

13

Secrets of the Old Bailey, Vol 1., No. 4

After the Wedding

Portia St. James claimed her tenant absconded with her impressionable daughter, but when the gaolor brought a fiery-haired Adonis into the courtroom, it was plain to anyone with two eyes Lydia St. James had left her mother’s house on her own two feet.

Fortunately, Clementina had already located the banns and left them on the Judge’s desk. Portia St. James wasn’t pleased with the surprising turn of events, though Clementina wasn’t convinced all the fuss was warranted.

The man wasn’t that handsome.

The lone saving grace after Saturday evening’s calamitous encounter in the study was that the Sinclairs were expected at Fordham House on Sunday. Much like Aunt Cora and Uncle Nate’s family, their residence on Upper Grosvenor was beautiful, warm, and the site of sustained havoc.

Needless to say, Belle very much hoped the outing would mask her fevered befuddlement.

Unfortunately, not even the chaos of her extended family could detract from the knots she was in. Belle was heated and distracted and quite possibly permanently useless for all endeavors aside from keeping her head above the tides of one restless daydream after another.

The door behind her, hard against her shoulders. Ethan before her, hard against her breasts. His beard dragging along her collarbone, his mouth everywhere—the side of her neck, the curve of her jaw, the corner of her desperate, desperate lips…

“Belle,” Cecily called from the far side of Aunt Cora’s sunny drawing room, where she sat with Lena, purportedly embroidering a baby blanket for Tess. “Belle, were you listening?”

“Hmm?” Belle’s book slid from her lap, and she touched her collarbone, praying her flush stayed below her neckline.

Cecily tilted her head. “Did you sleep well last night, dear? You look a bit peaked.”

Belle did not rise to the bait. She’d spent most of the visit pretending to read and avoiding Cecily and Lena’s curious glances. She knew her cousin was itching to hear about her evening with the American printer, a wish Belle was in no hurry to grant.

“She looks perfectly fine,” Aunt Cora interjected. “Though, Belle darling, you dropped your book.” Belle hastily bent to retrieve it as her aunt admonished Cecily. “And you’re hardly one to talk about sleeping well, Cecily Travers. Don’t think I don’t know you were up playing cards half the night.”

“Papa wagered sapphire earrings.” Cecily yawned. “I had no choice but to make a stand.” She looked around. “Where is he, by the way?”

“Uncle Nate is waiting for Tess.” Lena was making much better progress on her half of the blanket. “I hope you won the card game. Sapphires would be lovely with your hair.”

His big hand gentle in her hair, his eyes wary as he smoothed the strands he’d tugged loose…

“Belle?” Her mother regarded her carefully. “You know, you do look a bit peculiar.”

“I’m fine,” she said thickly. “Just hoping Cecily bested Uncle Nate.”

“Unfortunately not,” Cecily groused. “One of these days.”

“I expect the earrings will turn up regardless.” Aunt Cora shook her head. “Your father is not known for restraint.”

“As opposed to yourself,” Papa commented dryly. “Cora, Lady Fordham, patroness of restraint.” He looked over at his sister, halfway through addressing a bevy of invitations for a party she was arranging for Belle’s eldest cousin, Leo, the ninth Viscount Dane. “That’s quite a guest list Leo provided. Has he seen it?”

“Belle.” Cecily would not be deterred. “I was wondering about?—”

At that moment, Belle was granted reprieve in the form of a series of echoing shouts from the corridor.

“Oh!” Aunt Cora beamed. “That must be Tess and the boys.”

“Bloody hell.” Tess’s curse entered the room before her. A moment later, fair-haired, blue-eyed, foul-tempered Lady Rockwell stormed into the drawing room.

“Hello, darling.” Aunt Cora rose to embrace her daughter. “Did the travel not agree with you?”

“It most certainly did not.” Tess flopped inelegantly across a chaise. “Three hours in a coach with three little hellions. Nathaniel nearly pitched out the window.” She frowned at the small swell of her stomach. “ This one better be a girl.”

“Right.” Cecily smirked. “Because your daughter is unlikely to be a hellion.”

Mama patted Tess’s hand and passed her a platter of lemon bars.

Aunt Cora looked about. “Speaking of Nathaniels, has your father seen the boys?”

“Indeed he has.” Uncle Nate strode in, covered with small, tousle-haired ruffians. His little namesake sat on his wide shoulders, while Alexander and Raymond were glued to his legs. “And a finer troupe of gentlemen, I’ve never encountered.”

“Says quite a lot about the state of the company you keep, Papa,” Tess observed.

Uncle Nate winked cheerfully. “All right, boys, down we go.” He managed to extract himself from his grandsons, who were shouting about a dead crow they’d seen on the roadside.

“Come here, my little loves.” Aunt Cora swept up the boys, kissing three nearly identical heads in swift succession. “Have you been to the nursery yet? Last week, I found your mother’s old storybooks. I thought we might have a look.”

“Are there pages left in them?” Uncle Nate feigned surprise as the boys scampered off.

Tess’s rude retort was mostly muffled by a lemon bar.

Uncle Nate laughed and joined Papa at the corner table, which was covered in enough newspapers to curdle Ethan’s stomach should he catch sight of it.

Not that Belle wished to think of Ethan’s stomach, or how obscenely hard it felt beneath her hungry hands when he held her against the door and plied her with one melting kiss after another, until she felt woozy and raw and thoroughly, deliciously claimed …

“If the boys are occupied, I suppose I should rest,” Tess announced, interrupting Belle’s delirium. “I know it’s rude, but politesse was never my strong suit. As evidenced by the fact that I will be taking these with me.” She hefted the tray of lemon bars and followed her boys out of the room.

“I wonder which of her storybooks survived,” Uncle Nate contemplated. “I thought most of them were turned into maps.”

“And ransom notes,” Papa added.

Belle smiled, remembering their increasingly elaborate childhood games. She came by her imagination honestly.

Though she could do with a little less imagination right now.

“Now, Emilia.” Aunt Cora finished addressing an invitation with a flourish and turned to Belle’s mother. “Are you and Gavin ready for your departure to Wiltshire?”

Mama brightened. “Nearly. We’re set to leave at the end of the week. Gavin has some business to finish at Westminster first.”

Belle looked up in foggy surprise. It was a testament to her increasing distraction that she’d completely forgotten the assize courts were nigh.

Every year, judges were required to preside at circuit courts, and Mama had long made a habit of accompanying Papa for a few weeks in the countryside. When Belle and Lena were growing up, they’d stayed with their aunt and uncle’s family, but in recent years, they divided their time between Fordham House and staying home with Mrs. Bowers. Belle had come to think of those brief weeks of increased independence as preparation for her future—helping run her mother’s household, serving as her sister’s companion, largely minding her own business.

But in prior years, her business didn’t involve spending every day with Ethan Fletcher. She gripped her book, lest she drop it again.

“We’ve been over Lena’s calendar.” Aunt Cora reached for her diary. “I have her engagements noted, and it’s my pleasure to chaperone.” She turned to Belle with a warm smile. “Belle, what about you, darling? Shall we find something to do together while your parents are away, just the two of us? I could take you to the shops. Or the opera?”

“Don’t bother yourself with plans for me, but thank you all the same.” Belle was touched by her aunt’s kind concern, even if there was less than no chance she could attend a society event like the opera. “I’m a bit busy these days.”

“That’s right.” Uncle Nate spoke up from the table. “Cecily mentioned something about a new charity?”

Belle nodded reluctantly. If ever a day was to be rued, it was the one when she invented that blasted lie. Though…not entirely a lie. She stood by what she told Ethan—the penny blood did get boys reading. They just weren’t reading anything especially virtuous.

“Belle is working with a charity to publish reading material for boys of the laboring classes,” Mama explained, when it became apparent Belle wasn’t going to elaborate. “We met one of her associates last evening. At dinner.”

Cecily made a motion that might have been an attempt to grab Lena’s hand.

“Indeed?” her cousin said, far too innocently. “How was your dinner?”

Papa lowered his newspaper again.

Belle paused. She imagined explaining the situation—that she blurted her engagement to Ethan with the grace of a butcher unloading a side of beef, that she let him ravish her in her father’s study, that she watched him leave with confusion hanging heavy between them.

“Dinner was fine,” she said instead.

There was a lull, and Belle felt her neck grow hot, wondering who knew what, if what they knew was better or worse than what they suspected.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she murmured, setting her unread book aside. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

She slipped from the drawing room and wandered a small distance down the corridor, willing herself to settle and maintain a measure of normalcy.

Her family’s voices followed her down the passage.

“She’s been out more than usual,” Mama was saying, a note of caution in her tone. “Gavin is a bit uneasy about our forthcoming travels…”

“Come, Gavin.” Aunt Cora’s voice was firm. “Belle is older than either Emilia or I were when we were running households of our own. She can manage just fine while you’re gone.”

“I wouldn’t worry, Sinclair,” Uncle Nate added. “Belle stays clear of trouble, doesn’t she? Unlike my brood.”

“She likely won’t even go to the courthouse without you there, Papa,” Lena said softly.

Belle stiffened. This happened sometimes. She wasn’t always in the same room as everyone else, which meant she occasionally stumbled upon gentle assessments from her loved ones. She considered herself through their eyes—reserved, unconventional, harboring wishes she was too trepidatious to share. They weren’t entirely wrong about her…nor did they have her entirely right.

Sometimes she could be very reckless indeed.

“I should see if she’s feeling all right.” Her mother’s voice floated from the drawing room, and Belle winced. She looked around, wondering if she could plausibly slip upstairs to see the boys. She could feign interest in their dead crow.

But Papa spoke. “I’ll go, Emilia.”

Belle closed her eyes.

She should have known.

Papa found her in front of Aunt Cora’s rosewood hallstand. Afternoon light slanted through the windows, illuminating threads of gray in his dark hair. If it hadn’t been combed so neatly, it would be as wavy as hers. She self-consciously reached up to check her hairpins, again reminded she was, in many ways, a messy version of her father. They were so alike in temperament, but her reality had always been far more tangled than his.

He came to stand beside her, watching in silence as she traced the ornately carved lip of the cabinet.

“I’m thinking of using a similar furnishing in my manuscript,” she finally said, by way of unprompted explanation. “I’m trying to decide if it could reasonably include a secret compartment.”

“Hmm…” Papa humored her. “Maybe a catch could fit here. Though it would have to be small.”

“Yes.” Belle touched the carving. “That’s fine. It would hide something small.” She refrained from mentioning further plans for the caretaker’s glass eye.

“Belle, I want to apologize,” Papa started. “It wasn’t fair of us to make arrangements for Lena in front of you. I hope we didn’t make you uncomfortable.”

“Oh no.” Belle shook her head. “It isn’t anything to do with that. It was just a little noisy in there. You understand.”

“Yes, of course.”

He hesitated.

“Belle. About last evening.”

She continued following the grapevine with her finger, keeping her face very still. It was an absolute travesty, at times, that her father earned his living by having a preternatural ability to see through bluster.

But she was not unprepared. She’d watched him work for years.

She knew silence was in her favor.

“Mr. Fletcher. You’re friendly with him?” Papa’s voice was mild, his expression sharp.

Yesterday morning, when she broached the topic of her hasty invitation at the breakfast table, she was asked this same question and had answered with near perfect honesty— Someone I work with on occasion. Mutual interests in publishing. A friend, of sorts.

Now…

She weighed how best to respond. All these weeks later, she’d come to treasure having the printshop for herself. She liked being Irascible Nell, who could write whatever she liked without Belinda Sinclair having to answer for it.

Her feelings for Ethan felt like that too—only for her, hidden and safe.

“As you’ve heard, I’m writing something new.” Belle scanned her father’s face. “It matters to me. And Mr. Fletcher is instrumental to that endeavor.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I must say, it gladdens me to see you with renewed purpose. I know your writing has been a struggle, as of late…” He paused. “I’ll even go so far as to say I like knowing you have new acquaintances.”

This comment was perhaps the frankest evidence to date her family worried about her. If Papa was willing to see strange Americans as a relief, Belle’s social circle had grown horrendously small indeed.

“You know, Belle, the hardest aspect of these last years has been watching so many avenues close to you,” Papa said slowly. “Granting you some autonomy may not have been a conventional choice, but it was calculated. Encouraging you to carve some space in the world is perhaps the only gate I can still lift for you. So in that spirit, I won’t ask you to pause your new project while I’m away.”

“Thank you,” she said softly, but Papa raised his hand.

“However—I will remind you of expectations.” He gave her a pointed look. “The fact that you have proven yourself to be a good judge of character is not an excuse to forget your own. You are to apprise Mrs. Bowers and your aunt of your comings and goings. Above all, I ask you write to me while I’m away.”

“Of course,” she said sincerely.

Papa studied the carvings on the hallstand. “You know, I think you might be right about this.” He tapped the curved rosewood. “It’s remarkable, isn’t it, all the places we can hide things? Even things that seem very small at first.”

“Papa…”

He sighed. “I must admit that lately, I feel a bit adrift with you, Belle.”

I feel adrift too , she wanted to say. She wanted to explain she felt so out to sea, the shoreline had become unrecognizable. The landscape was so much bigger and wilder than she thought possible.

“I’m not adrift. I’m right here.” She took his hand, feeling tremendously peculiar and more than a little sad. “That’s the thing, Papa. I’ve always been here, haven’t I? Always, the same place.”

“Belle.” Papa squeezed her hand. “Do you know what I most admire about you?”

“No.” She looked up in surprise.

“You know your own mind.” He smiled suddenly, and his face looked much younger. “Wherever you are, I’ve taken comfort in the fact you must want to be there.”

Papa touched her cheek. “I’ll tell your mother all is well, but I wouldn’t tarry much longer.”

She nodded, and he returned to the drawing room.

She watched his retreat, then slowly turned to regard her reflection in the beveled mirror of the hallstand. From this vantage, she indeed looked the same as she always had.

But she didn’t feel the same anymore.

She tugged down her collar, just a little. The bruise of Ethan’s kiss was very faint. She touched it gently, then stroked up her neck, her fingers walking the same path as his lips. He could say he was careless, but she knew the truth.

He cared . Her body carried the memory of the rough and welcome force of his care.

Unyielding.

Undeniable.

Wanting her.

She watched her cheeks color, assailed by an ascendant swell of hope. Resistance was futile; she’d been soaring since the day she met him, caught in the rarefied orbit of a man who vowed he would make something of them both.

If only he would allow them to make it together .

Ethan said the work was vital; she agreed. The work was vital. But something astonishing was taking root between them, and he was too stubborn, too afraid to give them a chance to nurture it.

Well .

That was bloody unfair of him, wasn’t it?

She readjusted her collar, prickling with indignation at the way he insisted on knowing what was best and getting it so perfectly wrong.

Was she meant to be patient and brave enough for them both? Because Ethan might think they could ignore what passed between them, but she wasn’t capable of regretting him. And she couldn’t withstand the torment of watching him try.

What a disaster. Belle wanted to laugh. Or perhaps cry. Papa believed she knew her own mind, but she’d never felt so muddled.

It might be prudent for her to retreat a bit. Give them both time when they had no choice but to act as the polite business partners Ethan pretended them to be. She could use the space to collect herself, and Ethan could…well, she wasn’t exactly sure what he would do.

She supposed he would be happy. She was going to give him exactly what he said he wanted.

They might have to work together…

But he never specified where .