Page 20 of The Finest Print

19

Accounting Ledger of E. Fletcher

Week of 13 May 1848

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

Earnings less expenditures—￡20

Remaining debt owed—￡45

N.b.—paper stock low

“You were right, Porter,” Ethan remarked around a mouthful of bacon. “You estimated by mid-May, we’d run through our store of paper, and damn if you didn’t hit the mark.”

It was Wednesday morning, and all around them, the coffeehouse thrummed with efficiency as working men traded publications and good-natured barbs over steaming cups of piquant brew.

“Good God, Fletcher, are you even chewing?” Tobias remarked, wrapping his hands around his own coffee as he watched Ethan’s steady progress through his plate.

Ethan grinned as he tore a thick slice of buttered bread and piled it with eggs. He was, in fact, famished. Helena Sinclair had been at a ball until the early hours, an excuse Belle had rallied behind when making her own arrangements with the housekeeper. Of course Mrs. Bowers did not know Belle wasn’t attending to her sister and cousin, but rather was being attended to by Ethan in his bedroom above the shop.

He'd been up half the night making love to her, only to rouse her just before dawn. In the quiet shadows of his bedroom, he was sleep-rumpled and slow, kissing her palms, her eyelids, the curve of her shoulder. When the hour came to see her home, he’d pressed his lips to hers, beckoning the first sweet tilt of her mouth. The sunrise on her face was far brighter than the one breaking through the window.

“ Fletcher?”

Ethan swigged the scalding coffee.

“Careful. You’ll burn your mouth,” Tobias warned.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Ethan assured him. “The hotter, the better.”

“Speaking of paper.” Tobias stared as Ethan loaded up on ham. “We need to send our purchase order to the paper mill. You’re right. The forthcoming issue will use the last of our reams.”

“The mill in Kent?”

“Fifteen miles from London,” Tobias confirmed. “Not the closest we can do, but…”

“So long as it’s the cheapest. And pulp paper.” Ethan frowned. “The paper duty is a goddamn travesty.”

“It is,” Tobias grimly agreed. “But we don’t have a choice.”

“You don’t have a choice yet .” A gruff voice interrupted them.

Ethan looked up to see the grizzled mane of Ferguson, Tobias’s publishing acquaintance from Saturday’s party at the shop.

“May I?”

“We’re due at the shop soon, Ferguson,” Ethan said, gesturing to the empty end of the bench.

“I only need a moment. Heard you breakfast here.” Ferguson slid a small pamphlet to him. “Thought I’d stop by to give you this.”

Ethan glanced through what appeared to be a political pamphlet, promoting peaceable means for working-class reform. There were remarks on the expansion of voting rights, calls to remove property qualifications to stand for election, and above all, wider public access to the news. There was nothing in here Ethan was opposed to, but now was not the time to take up causes.

“This is intriguing…” He lifted one shoulder. “But I’m not looking for a political party. I don’t even know if I have a permanent residence here yet.”

“If you care about cheap press, this is a group you’ll want to look into.” Ferguson rapped his knuckles on the table. “Radical but nonviolent, and their work is catching notice. It may not happen soon, but happen it will. An abolition of the tax on knowledge.”

“You think?” Ethan appraised the man. “A repeal on the newspaper duty?”

“Mark my words.” Ferguson eyed Ethan significantly. “One day, Fletcher, you could turn your penny blood into a penny paper. Come round some time, when you aren’t printing fiction. There’s work to be done, and we could use your help doing it.”

Ferguson shook his hand and took his leave.

“Hmm…” Ethan showed Tobias the pamphlet. “You suppose there’s any weight to this? A repeal?”

Tobias shrugged. “Suppose you’ll have to stay around to find out.”

“Believe me,” Ethan muttered, “I’m working on it.”

“And you’re succeeding,” Tobias said bracingly. “Think of it this way, Fletcher. We wouldn’t need to purchase more paper if we hadn’t used up our supply. We’ve made more strides in the last few weeks than anyone has any business doing. Over fifty pounds, paid.”

Forty-five pounds still to go .

Ethan’s appetite soured.

“Buying paper means our profits are about to contract.” He pushed his plate away. “Significantly.”

“We should still be able to make it.” Tobias sipped his coffee. “It will be tight, but…”

“No margin for error,” Ethan finished his friend’s thought. “ None . I looked at the accounts yesterday, wondering if adding Marks and Newburn was ill-conceived. But we need them to move the numbers we need to move, and we need to move those numbers every single week .”

“Do you have any of your own funds to contribute?” Tobias asked. “If you get close enough to close the gap?”

Ethan heaved a sigh. “Not anymore. My savings were meager to begin with, even before my passage here. I need to retain at least some funds, or else I can’t—” He broke off, flushing.

He never flushed. The sensation was so unfamiliar, it took him a moment to recognize the vulnerable heat for what it was.

“True,” Tobias said casually. “Very true.”

“What’s that?” Ethan’s neck prickled uncomfortably. Surely, there was no way Tobias could see how red he’d turned. Hell, half his face was covered by his beard and the other half with a scowl.

“It makes sense you’d want to keep a little savings at the ready.” Tobias stole a piece of Ethan’s toast. “Marriage doesn’t come cheap.”

Ethan glanced at him sharply. “Nobody is getting married.”

Not yet, at any rate .

Because Tobias was right.

Clearing the debt was only the first Herculean effort in a long, looming series of them. The penny blood was a shovel, meant to dig him out of the ground. Once he was standing on his own two feet, he still had so far— so damn far! —to go. Even if he managed to stay in London, things would be very difficult.

He hadn’t appreciated how truly precarious his situation was until he’d seen another sort of beginning reflected in Belle’s golden gaze. There was promise there—and hope. Which meant the stakes had never been higher. She dreamed of writing a novel, not penny fiction; he, too, had ambitions beyond the serial.

He needed to turn a temporary arrangement into a solvent business—real outlay, real capital.

A foundation they could build upon.

Tobias leaned forward. “Something on your mind, Fletcher?”

Ethan unwillingly thought of his bedside chest, where the letter from Todd Eamon was tucked inside a drawer. A generous, unexpected offer, including travel arrangements for a steamship out of Liverpool in just over three weeks.

He should feel relieved. He could forfeit the shop and its financial noose and be in New York publishing a newspaper by midsummer.

And yet, here he was, sitting in a coffeehouse, sourcing paper and joining up with tax reformers.

“I’ve been offered a position.” Ethan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Editor of a paper. In New York.”

Tobias nodded slowly.

“Belle says I should take it.”

“Editor of your own newspaper?” Tobias raised an eyebrow. “She’s not wrong.”

“I haven’t responded,” Ethan clarified.

“Why haven’t you?”

Ethan shook his head. “I don’t want to take the offer. Nor can I afford to turn it down. I clawed my way to that offer, years and years of work…I can’t discount that.”

“Nor should you.”

“I have to keep that door open, in case it ends up being the only door left.”

“Perfectly reasonable.”

“Hell.” Ethan exhaled in sharp frustration. “Nothing about this is reasonable. All my choices feel half-formed. The loose ends are strangling me.”

“So what will you do?” Tobias watched him closely.

“Forge ahead, I suppose.” Ethan frowned. “The serial has been selling so far. There’s no reason to think it won’t do exactly that for the next few issues. I’m not surrendering hope that for once, I’m going to end up on the other side of something good.”

Tobias looked at him for a long time.

“What?”

“I feel compelled to ask you a frank question.”

Ethan waved him on. “Please, by all means.”

Tobias slowly folded his arms. “I don’t know the extent of what’s transpired between you and Miss Sinclair—nor do I want to know, let me be clear—but I know a moon-eyed man when I see one. I’m living with one. Hell, I am one.”

Ethan smiled.

“Miss Sinclair is a fine lady, and I don’t say that only because of her family—though in this case, I mean exactly that.” Tobias hesitated. “I’m sure you’re aware she likely has a portion set aside. I imagine it would be some help.”

“We aren’t there yet,” Ethan warned. “I’m weeks away from knowing where I stand and what it means for Belle and me.”

“But if you were?” Tobias prompted. “I know you, Fletcher. This is what you do. You solve problems. You can’t tell me you haven’t considered that she can go some way to solving yours.”

Ethan gritted his jaw.

He had considered it. But while a dowry might provide temporary relief, it wasn’t a long-term solution. Just look at his mother—she’d come from some small means, and it hadn’t been nearly enough to offer any measure of real security.

He’d once thought Belle would save his neck, but he’d never meant like this. She deserved a man who didn’t rely on her.

He deserved a chance to be a man who could rely on himself.

“I can’t.” He shook his head. “I can’t do that. I don’t want to be a kept man, taking handouts from others, depending on my wife and her family. It turns my stomach in more ways than one. Look at the mess I’m in right now, because of an inheritance. A boon that came with a load of shit attached to it.”

Tobias regarded him. “You once told me you weren’t a proud man—do you remember that? I told you there’s no prestige in penny fiction, and you laughed me off.”

“I remember.”

“This isn’t about penny fiction, is it?”

“No,” Ethan said quietly. “It’s not.”

He spun his empty coffee cup in his hands, mulling it over.

“Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been under someone else’s thumb. Buffeted by their whims. Reliant on them. Damaged by them. There’s such wretched uncertainty in being tethered to that kind of life.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Am I a proud man? I suppose I’d like to be. I’d like to have something I’m proud of . I’d like to build something that can’t be taken away.”

I’d like to build it with her.

Tobias leaned back in his chair. “Then my last piece is this—I wager you can relieve yourself of at least one concern where she’s concerned.”

“What’s that?”

“Miss Sinclair isn’t the girl back in Boston who refused to wait for a journeyman,” Tobias said bluntly. “She’ll wait for you. I’m certain of it.”

Ethan stared at him, his chest constricting.

He knew Tobias was right.

Belle would wait.

But that’s not the promise he wanted to ask of her.