Page 28 of The Finest Print

27

Mr. Gabler,

I write to inform you of my impending departure for New York, where I have a new venture waiting for me. My associate, Tobias Porter, will handle operations and business at 62 Fleet until you turn over the property to Charles Howe.

Thank you for your services during my brief time in London.

Sincerely,

E. Fletcher

The shingle hanging above 62 Fleet was crooked. Belle reached up, tracing the faded paint. Gaines Print Works. How odd, that the business was still called that. They’d never managed to change it.

Instead, they changed everything else.

The door swung open, and Tobias stuck his head out. His dark eyes were creased in concern. “Miss Sinclair? What are you doing out here? It’s raining.”

She stared at him, feeling as vacant as she probably looked. It was raining; she’d barely noticed. Nor did she have any clear sense why she was here. When she left Ethan’s residence last night, she hadn’t planned to return this morning.

But her feet brought her.

“I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I don’t know why I came. Should I leave?”

“No.” Tobias shook his head. “No, come in, out of the wet. We were just tidying up, taking inventory…”

He ushered her inside the shop. She walked through the office, her skirts trailing a wet puddle across the floor.

She let Tobias take her shawl, and he hung it on the coatrack. Belle was the only one who ever used it; Ethan tossed his things wherever he liked. Unthinkingly, she turned to the bench where his coat was most often slung.

“When?” she asked quietly.

“He was gone before I arrived,” Tobias said. He checked his pocket watch. “His train will have already departed for Liverpool.”

Gone .

“Oh.” Belle clenched her jaw, tight enough to focus her pain. The sear was a welcome change from the empty ache in her chest. “Is…there anything I can help with?”

She needed to be busy. She couldn’t stomach the thought of sitting at home with her family’s worry. They’d been treading lightly for days, and today was bound to be the worst of all.

Tobias must have sensed her aimlessness. “We’re cataloging supplies. I’m arranging for an auction, and I could use another pair of hands.”

“I can do that.”

“Sam’s in the workroom. Perhaps you could help him distribute the sorts.”

Dully, she set her basket on the desk, then followed Tobias to the workroom. She paused next to the Columbian, recalling Ethan’s practiced efficiency. She touched the eagle counterweight; it was such a beautiful press. She hated the thought of somebody buying it, of it being disassembled and carted away.

She joined Sam, her melancholy heightening tenfold in the quiet workroom. How had Ethan endured this all week? It must have torn him to pieces, trying to plan, knowing his hard work had come to nothing.

“We’re sorting type, Miss Sinclair,” Sam instructed, only too happy to put her to work. “The uppers are all mixed in with the lowers, so if you can just make a pile for me…”

She absently set about her task, hardly noticing when the door to the shop creaked open. There came the soft jingle of the bell, followed by the voice of Victor Marks, calling to Tobias in greeting.

Belle plucked a B from the case and engaged in a self-sabotaging recollection of Ethan’s hands around hers, showing her how to typeset her name.

She put the B on the table, flipping it upside down.

There is no exquisite beauty…without some strangeness in proportion .

She wished she’d printed the quote for him. He’d never shown her how to work the press. She asked him once, and he had only laughed his beautiful big laugh and told her if she could write, typeset, and print, she’d have no use for him. It’s my own brand of security, sweetheart , he’d teased, kissing her temple. I need to make sure you need me.

She passed Sam the B .

“I’ll have your final pay by week’s end.” Tobias’s deep voice drifted from the office. “I’ll see you get what you’re owed, Marks.”

“It would have been a fair bit easier if Fletcher hadn’t played white knight and just accepted the payment on offer,” Marks grumbled.

Belle lifted her head, caught by the mention of Ethan’s name.

“What’s done is done, and he had his reasons,” Tobias said sternly. “The Metropolitan is a racket, and you know it.”

“A racket that would have kept this door open.” Marks sighed. “Alas, what the heart wants…”

Belle frowned. What are they on about? She left Sam’s table to slip back to the office.

“Miss Sinclair.” Marks offered a chivalrous bow. “Regretful turn of fate for us all. I shall miss having you as my muse.”

“Yes,” she said distractedly. “I’m sure you’ll find another.” She looked to Tobias. “What was that about the Metropolitan News ?” She bit her lip. Ethan had said something about a story lambasting penny bloods. “Is it related to that article?”

“The article?” Marks shook his head. “There is no article. That’s precisely my point, ma cherie ?—”

“Marks, you’re from Derbyshire,” Tobias barked. He turned to Belle. “There was going to be an article, but you needn’t worry. Fletcher took care of it.”

Marks looked doubtful. “I suppose that’s one version of what happened. Because he chose to let it happen.”

“I don’t understand.” She was exhausted and cold and her boots were wet from the rain. She had no patience for unraveling mysteries right now. “Might you speak plainly?”

“Miss Sinclair…” Tobias said carefully. “What exactly did Fletcher tell you?”

“Ah…” Belle wrenched herself back to her father’s study. “He was fighting a losing battle on too many fronts.” She rubbed her forehead. “He was forced to stop printing, because there was going to be an inflammatory article…we were too behind on the debt, and he has real prospects in New York…”

Tobias and Marks glanced at each other, and Belle had the distinct sense she was missing something. The conversation with Ethan was a blur. She’d been overwhelmed by grief; he’d been miserable and resigned.

“I can’t recall him saying anything about a choice in the matter,” she finished uncertainly.

“Likely because to him, it wasn’t a choice.” Tobias sighed.

“What do you mean?”

“They wanted a name,” Marks said, leaning against Belle’s creaky desk. “ Your name, specifically, lovely. It was meant to be the pièce de résistance in their article to stir up melodrama about a moral panic. And he was willing to pay Fletcher for the information.”

“What?” Belle whirled to Tobias. “Is this true?”

“Yes,” he replied reluctantly. “Marks came by with one of their correspondents. He was aiming to get a statement from Fletcher, and a meeting with his writer.”

Her stomach fell somewhere beyond the dusty floor of the shop.

“Say it again,” she rasped.

Tobias looked at her with palpable concern, and it was no wonder—she was half-bedraggled and hadn’t slept in two days.

“Say all of those things again but say them differently…because I don’t understand.”

Resigned, Tobias repeated the story with the patience of a father speaking to an unreasonable child.

And from a fog of fear, Belle understood what had happened, what Ethan had done.

For her .

He could have taken the payment, he could have continued publishing, he could have kept the shop from being sold.

Ethan wasn’t the one with his back to the wall.

Ethan’s back was shielding hers .

She stared vacantly into the workroom, at the table where they’d worked together, remembering what he’d told her. A legacy of leavings. Each leaving made things better for those who remained.

“Miss Sinclair?” Sam was at her side, his face close and worried.

She blinked, trying to clear the clamor in her head.

“The article,” she said, her voice sticking oddly. “Have they written it yet?”

“Not that I’ve seen.”

A terrified conviction unlike any she’d experienced started in her boots and rattled all the way through her. The happiest she’d been in half a decade had been these last months in the printshop. The serial was affirming. It was challenging and interesting and successful. It wasn’t drivel. She wasn’t ashamed of it.

It was theirs .

“We can save it.” She stared at Tobias with woozy determination. “We can save the shop for him.”

“What?” Tobias looked at her as though she might be ill…which was the only correct way to look at her right now.

“We could publish number ten,” she said in a rush. “You just said it was Ethan’s choice to stop producing the serial—and he only did so to keep me out of things. What if I wasn’t out of things? What if we moved forward? We could pay off the debt, Tobias. No forfeiture to Mr. Howe. No sale to anyone.”

Belle looked at the men for a confirmation nobody seemed keen to give her.

“Ah…”

“That’s not?—”

“I already have it written,” she insisted. “We only need to print it.”

“But Miss Sinclair…” Sam looked nearly sorry for her. “Mr. Fletcher is already gone.”

Everyone fell silent as Sam’s words dropped into the middle of her aching heart.

“He’s gone.” Belle managed to keep her voice steady. “But he’s not gone forever. We can give him something to come back to. We can keep running the shop for him, we can keep publishing the penny blood. And then if things go wrong in New York, or if he wants to return, he will have the option , Tobias. He never has options. I can give him that…can’t I?”

She was pleading, and Tobias seemed to waver.

“Well…we can’t run it well without him. Not at the capacity we’ve been doing. But some version of it, I suppose.”

“All right then.” Belle twisted her little twine ring. She felt anxious and afraid, which was far better than feeling helpless and sad. “Then I say…we make a go of it.”

“Hold, Miss Sinclair.” Tobias looked grave. “Your aim is earnest, but there’s still the problem of actually clearing the debt. We can’t bring enough in on number ten. It’s just not feasible. Fletcher and I looked at those numbers more times than I care to recall.”

She raced over to the tabulations, still tacked on the wall.

“It’s the fifth of June,” she said. “We have ten days. If we start production today, we could exhaust our paper supply. That’s…what? At least fifteen thousand copies.”

“A penny a piece…” Tobias shook his head. “It’s not enough.”

“We can charge more in Mayfair…” Belle’s thoughts were scrambling, but she was growing sharply clear on one point. “We can charge triple in Mayfair. Three pence is nothing there.”

Tobias frowned. “We don’t have an audience in Mayfair. High society doesn’t read our penny blood.”

Belle straightened. Every sickening, embarrassing, lonely experience of the last four years revolved around her in a panorama show—all the people who looked at her askance, who stopped hiding their whispers, who shut her out of their homes. The men who sidled too close at the courthouse, as if they couldn’t decide if she was too ruined or not yet ruined enough. The friends who no longer wrote to her. The weddings she missed, the children she hadn’t held.

Enough .

She didn’t need one of those people to ever look at her again. The only eyes she wanted on her were Ethan’s, and he was gone , trying to salvage what was left of her reputation. But her efforts to maintain separate lives had only torn her life asunder. And for what? So she could be taken seriously one day, so her dreams were still on offer?

But her dreams weren’t worth more than his. They were worth the same. They were the same.

She gripped Tobias’s hand in white-knuckled resolve.

“Society will read it if they know who writes it.”

“ Hell . No.” Tobias looked pained. “Don’t even think of it?—”

“What, exactly, is happening?” Sam glanced between his father and Belle.

Tobias shot her a warning look, but Belle was too far gone.

Because this mattered. It mattered . Ethan deserved to have someone helping him.

“I’m going to give my name to the Metropolitan News ,” she said, whirling to face Sam. “I’m going to make them pay handsomely for it. Then we’re going to give society what it loves best—a scandal. The judge’s disgraced daughter penning drivel and gore. Once they’ve said their piece, we’ll publish number ten. The circles I grew up in won’t be able to help themselves.”

“Diabolical.” Marks looked impressed.

Tobias, meanwhile, looked sick.

She laughed humorlessly. The article practically wrote itself. But what of it ? The people who cared about her would still care; the people who didn’t, never would.

Sam looked at his father. “So should I reassemble the composing case?”

“Yes,” she said decisively. “What do we have to lose?”

Tobias hesitated.

“Tobias,” she whispered. “ Please .”

He swore fantastically. Belle blinked in surprise at his uncharacteristic outburst.

“God help us. Sam, grease the press.” He nodded to Marks. “You need to fetch Newburn. We need a compositor.”

“I can start typesetting.” Sam’s brown eyes were surprisingly grave. “Until we find Newburn, that is.”

“Sam…”

“Mr. Fletcher’s been teaching me,” the boy said, more resolute than Belle had ever seen him. “I’m slow as can be, but I can do it. If it would help.” He looked to Belle. “I’d like to help you, Miss Sinclair.”

“Of course.” Belle’s throat felt tight—more tears were on their way. “Sam, that would be a wonderful help. But you need to come with me. I need to get you the draft—the correct draft—and then you can get started.”

“Where will you go?” Tobias looked worried. “The offices for the Metropolitan ? I can’t let you go alone.”

“No,” Belle said, her heart lurching. “Not until after I speak to my family. I cannot move forward with any plan until I tell them what’s happening…what’s been happening. It affects them too.”

“Fletcher wouldn’t want this,” Tobias said, his face etched in concern. “He wanted to keep you out of it.”

“It’s not just for him.” Belle’s eyes were bright. “It’s for me . It’s time. It took me long enough, as it were.”

She looked at the desk, the crooked leg still secured by Ethan’s rolled up newspaper.

“It’s for us.”