Page 18 of The Finest Print

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Secrets of the Old Bailey, Vol 1., No. 6

The False Chaperone

Ursula DeVry had been missing for months, but when questioned, her lady’s maid maintained she was abroad, reuniting with Count Fulco, her estranged husband. She had taken Captain Howe as her chaperone.

Of course, this assertion was called into question when the real Captain Howe was brought into the courtroom, with no Contessa in sight.

“I should have asked to be a villain after all,” Sam crowed in a corner of the workroom, where Ethan spied him holding court over a trio of newsboys. “A recurring character, if you see my meaning.”

“Your mother appreciates that you made a one-time appearance,” Tobias said dryly as he lifted the glass from his son and took an experimental sniff. “Besides, I don’t know what anyone here has to do with it.” He gave Sam a heavy look. “ Irascible Nell is the author.”

“Who is it really ?” Paulie, one of Roberts’s newsboys, tossed a roasted nut in the air and spectacularly missed catching it. “The author.”

“Paulie, if you can’t handle your liquor, you damn well better handle your nuts,” Ethan barked. “Pick it up or pack it up.”

He leaned in the doorway, surveying the chaos of his shop. As it turned out, the Bull and Crow would not serve Belle, and the Compass wouldn’t serve the Porters, so when Belle suggested they return to No. 62 to devise an alternate plan for the evening, it seemed harmless enough. But somehow over the last two hours, the printshop transformed from the site of planning to the site of happening .

Ethan looked around at the cramped revelry. What had started as the six denizens of 62 Fleet—he and Belle, Tobias and Sam, George Newburn and, unfortunately, Victor Marks—had nearly tripled in number and noise. There was Newburn’s brother, Roger, who played the accordion with the same enthusiasm with which George set type. A pair of Marks’s fellow artists, who had appeared with a dusty crate of clinking bottles. A group of pressmen Tobias was friendly with. And Sam’s loyal band of newsboys. Everyone knew someone who wanted to toast to the author of Secrets , who was apparently enjoying a bit of mystery-fueled celebrity in the neighborhoods along Fleet.

Unbeknownst to the crowd of devotees, Irascible Nell was much nearer than they realized. In fact, she was arranging a plate of ham sandwiches and slices of current cakes she’d sent Sam and Paulie out to purchase from a street vendor when it became clear the contents of the artists’ dusty bottles would go down easier with sustenance.

“To Nell!” Roger Newburn launched into a polka on his accordion, and bottles were handily passed. “Whoever he is, may he be irascible no longer.”

Ethan drew nearer to Belle. He glanced behind him at the jovial group, then swiftly dropped his hand to her hip. “How much do you regret your choice of pseudonym?”

He was only half teasing—given their crashing success, he’d started to wonder if she might want to stake her claim as the author. But Belle balked at attention, always assuming it would be negative. As long as she was content with her alias, Ethan would keep inking it.

“I don’t regret it half so much as Sam is going to regret that second bottle,” she said, leaning briefly into his hand. In the low light of the oil lamps, her face was flushed—but she, like Ethan, had drunk little more than a half glass of champagne.

He felt intoxicated anyway.

Sometime in the late afternoon, Belle had gone home, ostensibly to tell her housekeeper she was joining Helena at their aunt and uncle’s home. While she was there, she changed into a simple dark blue gown that had him by the throat. He couldn’t look away from the sweeping neckline, the elbow-length sleeves—so much bare skin, all dewy in the stifling air of the shop. Her hair had stopped behaving at least an hour ago, so she’d given up with pins and instead wove her tresses into a long, thick plait. The hair around her face was curling in the heat, and he wanted to put his hands in her damp, messy waves, to draw her face to his.

He settled for slowly trailing the back of his knuckles along the impossibly soft skin of her forearm.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” He lowered his voice and kept his back to the room. He slid one foot behind her skirts, shifting infinitesimally closer to block the gradual traverse of his fingers along her wrist.

She sighed, her hazel eyes flicking up to him. “You shouldn’t.”

“I know.” He curved his palm fleetingly over hers. “Any minute now, I’ll remember why.”

He reluctantly stepped back, and not a moment too soon, for their ragtag group of celebrants had started to call for a toast.

“To Fletcher,” Tobias boomed, raising the mug he’d lifted from Sam. “For keeping us at work.”

“Hear, hear!” The men whooped and stamped, which was wholly unnecessary, seeing as Ethan only kept a fraction of them at work.

“To Miss Sinclair,” Sam called. “For keeping us in line.”

Ethan had no choice but to raise his own glass to that.

Belle looked up from rearranging the platter of refreshments; all eyes were on her. Ethan rubbed his jaw, watching closely. If she shirked from the attention, he would step in.

But to his immense pride and pleasure, she accepted Newburn’s hand and climbed onto her own desk chair.

“To all of you.” She lifted her half-drunk champagne. “For keeping me company.”

The men cheered and clapped, and she beamed, her eyes bright. Ethan’s heart clenched. She looked perfectly at ease, and he wished every man in her father’s courtroom could see her now, holding court of her own. He took her hand to help her down, but she remained standing on the chair beside him.

The shop grew quiet, everyone waiting expectantly.

“To dreams,” Ethan finally said, his eyes on Belle. “For keeping us bold.”

“Fletcher, if you have a moment?” Tobias drew up beside him, clapping him on the shoulder.

Ethan turned away from the card game one of the artists had started—not that he had been playing. He preferred not to bet on anything but himself.

“I have a moment.”

Tobias jerked his chin toward a trio of men crowded around the worktable. “Thought I might make an introduction.”

Ethan followed him to the corner, passing behind Belle, who was attempting to teach Sam the polka. “You’re not so much leading as dragging.” He heard her instructions as Sam hauled her through a turn. “Sam, that’s my foot?—”

Crushed toes aside, she seemed to be enjoying herself. Which was too bad, because Ethan was ready to bring this party to an end.

He didn’t want to share her any longer.

“Fletcher, this is Hawkins, Smith, and Ferguson.” Tobias pointed to his fellows, and Ethan nodded to each man in turn.

Ferguson, a silver-haired fellow with a weathered face, looked to Ethan in interest. “Porter says you worked on a paper in America. A penny daily?”

“I did.”

“In what capacity?”

“First at the press, then the pen.” He thought of the passion Belle brought to her work, and his own subsequent appreciation for publishing. “Though I’m far better at the former than the latter.”

Ferguson tilted his head. “That your aim here? To start a paper?”

“Ah.” Ethan cracked his knuckles. “Aims are a bit obsolete at the moment. I arrived here with one firm plan, and it was promptly wrenched sideways. Currently, my only concern is getting things straight again.”

The men chuckled, and Ethan glanced over to Belle. He did, in fact, have aims aplenty, but all of them depended on wrangling a reliable business.

“Ferguson was heavily involved with the unstamped press movement about ten years back,” Tobias explained. “Now he keeps the rest of us apprised of the work underway to abolish the newspaper duty.”

“You should come round with Porter sometime,” Ferguson said. “Learn about our efforts. We don’t have anyone with experience with a penny paper. Could use your insight, Fletcher.”

Ethan slid Tobias a questioning glance.

“I thought you might like to know what’s happening here, on a larger scale than the serial,” Tobias said casually. “In case it’s ever of interest to you.”

Before Ethan could respond, Belle appeared at his elbow. She was pink-cheeked and panting and so damn pretty, he felt an idiotic grin start at the corner of his mouth.

“I didn’t know the polka was so dangerous,” Tobias observed as she held the table, rotating her ankle.

“None of us did.” She winced.

“You’re kind to show him, Miss Sinclair. My wife thinks nigh on seventeen is too young, but…”

“The point of young love is to be young,” Belle teased warmly.

“Seventeen,” Ethan mused. “Not so young. I had a girl when I was just a bit older.”

Tobias boomed a laugh. “So did I—my wife.”

Ethan smiled wider. The Porters were a rare breed indeed.

Belle tilted her head at Ethan in curiosity. “Who was she, then?”

He looked over to her, hoping she wasn’t bothered; he didn’t think she was. It was a very long time ago. And Belle, of all people, knew the past was past.

“Her name was Rachel.” Ethan sat on the edge of the table. “She was the daughter of a butcher. I was infatuated, she decidedly less so.”

Belle hummed sympathetically. “What happened?”

“I wasn’t ready.” He shrugged. “I was a new journeyman, a long way from establishing myself. I don’t blame her for not wishing to wait for me.”

“Aye.” Tobias nodded. “Those are hard years, and a long wait.”

“Indeed.” Ethan moved his eyes across Belle’s watchful face. The past was past, but it nevertheless nipped at his heels, reminding him how far he still had to go.

“I suppose it depends on what you’re waiting for,” she murmured.

Her shy smile might as well have branded him for all the heat he felt at her sweet promise. He was going to kiss her in the next five minutes, the men in this printshop be damned.

“Porter!” Marks and Newburn waved from the card game. “Do you want in?”

Tobias ambled over to join the others, and Paulie the newsboy immediately replaced him.

“All right, Miss Sinclair. If you’re done with Sam, I’ll take a turn.” He winked. “Fear not. Your ankles are in good hands.”

“Oh…” Belle looked faintly alarmed.

“Her ankles are going nowhere near your hands,” Ethan warned. “At least not if you want to keep them intact.”

“You know, Paulie, I think I need to step outside for a spell. Mr. Fletcher, would you mind escorting me?”

Gladly .

He eyed Paulie as he followed her out of the noisy shop into the cool spring evening. A lamplighter had worked his way down Fleet, sending pools of light into the gathering darkness.

“Ah…” She tipped her head back as the breeze teased the flushed line of her throat. “That feels heavenly.”

Ethan drew her around the side of the shop. Even in the alley, he could hear the raucous noise of the accordion vying with a barrage of shouts. It seemed George Newburn was losing at cards to one of the artists.

“This has been wonderful, Ethan. I know you’re not keen on having everyone in the shop, but it’s nice, isn’t it? All these people we’ve somehow collected?”

She leaned against the brick wall, and Ethan braced one arm above her. She looked up at him, her face half-hidden in shadow.

“I wouldn’t go so far as saying a full shop is wonderful ,” he murmured. “I had a slightly different agenda for the evening.”

“Did you? How enterprising.”

“Always,” he promised her, his mouth tilting. “I’ll give them another quarter hour before I clear everyone out. Starting with Paulie.”

She smiled and reached forward, stroking the lapel of his coat. “Does that include me?”

“I love how you make me say it.” He stepped into the space she’d made for him. “To think, Sam toasted you for keeping us in line, when the truth is, you’re dragging me right over it.”

“Oh, that reminds me.” She pushed him fractionally away from her. “All this talk of keeping things in order…” She reached into the concealed pocket of her skirts and withdrew a sealed envelope.

“You’re ruthless,” he muttered. “I’m a hair’s breadth from stealing a kiss, and you decide now is the time to play letter carrier?”

She ignored him. “I meant to tell you before, but everything’s been so busy. On my way to the shop this morning, the postman stopped me with your mail. I put everything in the top drawer of the desk.” She hesitated. “Except this.”

She handed him the letter, her hazel eyes searching his face.

“I didn’t open it,” she added quickly. “I just didn’t want it to get mixed in with your other correspondence. It seems…important.”

He took the letter, lifting it to the small circle of light from a nearby streetlamp.

“Park Row…” He licked his lip, glancing at Belle. “Newspaper Row.”

She was silent.

Ethan slid the letter, unopened, into his coat pocket.

“Wait,” she blurted.

“Precisely my thought.” He stepped closer, once more backing her to the wall. “The letter can wait. God knows we have.”

His lips fell to the exposed curve of her neck. It was his weakness—and hers. He sucked gently, just a little, not enough to leave a mark.

“Don’t…” She sighed, angling her head for him. “Don’t you want to open it?”

“Not right now, I don’t,” he murmured. “I want to open something else.”

“Ethan…”

“I want to take you to bed, sweetheart.” His mouth moved up, teasing beneath her jaw. “Would you like that?”

A slow shiver rolled through her, and she breathed a soft laugh. “Would I?”

“Yes.” He drew one fingertip lightly over her collarbone. “You would.”

She inhaled, her lips parting, a honeyed invitation.

He kissed her slowly, his tongue playing with hers. She tasted like champagne. He found the end of her hastily woven plait, and he played with that, too, imagining how good her soft, heavy hair would look splayed across his bed.

He pulled away, his voice husky. “But only if you want it.”

She slid her palm over his chest. With his waistcoat between them, he couldn’t feel the heat of her skin. Always, always a barrier. It was unbelievable he had yet to strip her bare, to put his body against hers.

“I want it.” She was breathing very fast. “I want it, just as you said.”

“I have a condom.” He hesitated, needing to temper her expectations for the stiff sheath. “They can sometimes be a bit coarse, Belle. If you don’t care for it, I’ll?—”

“It’s all right.” She stared at him, her eyes glowing in the faint light of the streetlamp. “I brought what I need from home, and I would prefer to use that.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes.” She gently stroked his chin. “You needn’t worry. We can take good care, Ethan.”

Good care .

It touched him in a deeply unexpected way, that she wanted to help him care for her. That she was caring for him in kind.

He couldn’t remember the last time someone had taken care of him.

“Belle.” He caressed her cheek, seized with the urgency to make himself explicitly clear. “I meant what I told you. I can’t offer you anything but myself, for the time I’m here. I know how insufficient it is?—”

“Stop.” She touched his mouth. “You are not insufficient. Never.”

He kissed her again, cradling her face, angling her closer. He wanted nothing between his abraded palm and the soft expanse of her body. He wanted to hold her in his arms and feel no guilt or censure.

He wanted them to be ordinary people, skin and bones and two hearts beating together.

So not very ordinary at all.