Page 4 of The Finest Print

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The Record of Title to Lands, No. 181

By deed dated 3 April 1848, the hereditaments of 62 Fleet Street in the City of London were transferred to the undersigned.

Ethan Thomas Fletcher

Parish of St. Bride’s, London

As he made his way back through the gardens, Ethan enjoyed a small measure of relief. His situation was dire, but at least it wasn’t so dire he couldn’t be cheered by a pretty face. Few things in life were more restorative than flirtation.

He ambled back toward Fleet with his hands in his pockets, still smiling over her doe-eyed surprise. He’d been too forward with her, but really, what was the harm? All morning, he’d been consumed with work, sifting through his uncle’s accounts while a teasing slice of sunlight crept through the windows and across the uneven floorboards of the printshop. Finally, he permitted himself a break, itching to see what life was like in his new corner of the world.

And what he found was a welcome sight indeed.

The first thing he noticed as he drew up to the cobbled garden wall was the bend of her bonnet, and— well . Such simple pleasure in such a small curve. Had any sight in this gray city been as welcome as the graceful arc of this woman’s neck? Still, he might have kept walking had she not cursed. The sound of a bald oath in that soft, cultured accent was too alluring to ignore.

He couldn’t take the chance such a lovely neck was in distress.

When he came around the path, he found her curled on the bench in an evergreen dress, and he could tell just by looking at her, a man like him should do nothing more than look. Her curse notwithstanding, she was clearly refined—the fabric of her bodice cut so close, even his inexpert eye could appreciate the craftsmanship in how it clung to the slender lines of her arms. Her head was down, her hat pushed off her face, and the hair unspooling from her bun gleamed two shades darker than the finely braided straw of her bonnet.

Green and gold.

And that sweet, sweet curve of her neck.

Thank you. Ethan directed the words to whatever deity’s apology for these hellish circumstances came in the form of a beautiful woman holding a familiar book.

Maybe the next apology would come in the form of one hundred pounds sterling.

When he reached the top of the street, he oriented himself within the winding, illogical maze of his new neighborhood. Spying a secondhand bookshop in a side alley, Ethan paused. If he had time to flirt, he had time for a reconnaissance mission. He had just about ten weeks to execute a plan for paying off the debt.

He was ready to work.

It had been two years since he operated a printing press, but when he inventoried his workroom that morning, he’d been filled with a blooming sense of purpose. As he curved his calloused palm around the sculpted-eagle weight of the gorgeous Columbian press, it all returned to him. How his body stretched with the laborious rhythm of the lever, how his muscles gradually thickened with each roll of the type form. God, he’d once been so fast , the hours blurring as his shoulders burned.

Ethan was no stranger to the hard work of printing—but it typically required having something to print.

He entered the dusty bookshop, scanning an array of publications on display. Papers, pamphlets, periodicals. He asked for one of each—a reckless selection, but if he were going to continue this foray, he needed to see what was what.

“Five pence?” He frowned at the cost of The Times . “Is that usual for a newspaper?”

The proprietor nodded brusquely. “Just about.”

The Boston Sentinel was a penny paper, intended to be read by the working class, which was why Ethan chafed at his editor’s shortsighted coverage. There were a number of more expensive weekly publications in America, but penny dailies were what most people could afford. When Ethan said as much, the bookseller shrugged.

“Stamp duty,” the man said by way of explanation. “Publishers pay a news tax.”

“How much is the tax?”

“A penny per paper for news. Paper duty on top of it. Drives prices up.” He looked over Ethan’s shoulder, as if to summon a less inquisitive customer. “Anything else, sir?”

Ethan jerked his chin toward a stack of densely printed serials, notable for a garish illustration of a caped man at the gallows. “This one is priced a penny?”

“No news tax on it.” The bookseller tied up his publications. “It’s a story paper.”

“ Varney the Vampire .” Ethan raised an eyebrow. “A penny blood, I presume?” He’d heard about the sensational stories of lust and gore.

“They’re horrid.” The man grimaced. “But you won’t hear me complain. I won’t have any left after the lads come round later.”

Ethan’s mind ticked back to the woman in the garden— horror, crime, mystery. He’d thought it an odd preference, but now he considered the gruesome etching on the penny blood. It would be a damn shame to run into her again and have nothing to talk about.

Ethan lifted the serial. “I’ll take one of these as well.”

He strode with his purchases back to No. 62, mulling over the disconcerting information he’d gleaned from the bookseller.

Hell . There was no way around it; the news tax was punishing. Not one of Ethan’s readers in Boston could afford a five-cent paper. He’d bet a healthy portion of his precious savings most of London’s working class couldn’t afford it either. Information had value, something those in power knew all too well.

It didn’t sit right with him. Not only would it be too expensive to establish a newspaper here, it would be too expensive for his desired readers to purchase.

Damn. Damn. Damn .

He pushed open the door to the printshop, fighting with the string of a tinkling bell above the doorframe. The bell was entirely unnecessary; in the last two days, not a single client had stopped in.

“It’s only me,” Ethan called to the back as he disentangled himself from the threshold. “We need to do something about that damn bell, Tobias.”

A sturdily built Black man emerged, wiping his hands on his apron. “I’ll have Sam take a look at it,” he replied amiably.

“It will give him something to do,” Ethan groused. “Business being what it is.”

“I have him distributing type sorts.” Tobias folded his arms, surveying the dusty front office. In the afternoon light filtering through the big windows, the small space felt decidedly lackluster. “He can clean in here next.”

Tobias and Sam Porter, father-and-son pressman and apprentice, were the only two remaining employees at Gaines Print Works. When Ethan asked why the Porters stayed when the compositor and other apprentices moved on, Tobias only lifted one heavy shoulder. “Somebody had to finish the outstanding job prints. Not that there are many.”

It had been Tobias’s blunt assessment that first got Ethan thinking. If they couldn’t rely on external business to turn a profit, the obvious alternative was to publish something new of their own…wasn’t it?

He tossed his purchased publications on the rickety desk. “Do you have a moment, Porter?”

“I have as many moments as you need until six o’clock.” Tobias had made it clear Mrs. Porter expected both of her men home for their meals; Ethan sensed he wouldn’t fare well if he crossed her. “What have you here, sir?”

Ethan shucked his coat and dropped it over a bench. “If a printer needed to turn a profit quickly, what, in your professional opinion, would be the best way to do so?”

The pressman leaned on the doorframe. “Not job printing, that’s for certain. At least not the way your uncle did it.” He hesitated. “If I may…”

“Go on.” Ethan waved his hand. “You won’t offend me. I never even met the man.”

The only thing he knew of Robert Gaines was that he’d owned a printshop. His uncle’s trade had always loomed large to Ethan’s mother, who left London when she was nineteen years old, on the arm of an American sailor. To hear Marina Fletcher tell it, she regretted leaving her brother every day of her too-short life. It’s likely why she apprenticed her son to a printer before he was shoulder high.

“You can be honest with me, Porter. Your honesty is, in fact, imperative.”

Tobias grew thoughtful. “Your uncle was too particular about his work. There can be money in job printing—timetables, business cards, invoices…the single-page bits and bobs, if you’re familiar.”

Ethan nodded. He’d worked a jobbing press in his day, though by the time he’d become a journeyman, he was almost exclusively focused on newspapers.

“Well, your uncle wanted illustrious commissions.” Tobias shook his head. “He turned work away. Then work stopped coming…and then, of course, there was the paper debacle.”

Ethan rubbed his temples. He would circle back to that last statement in a moment. He didn’t need another debacle right now.

“So job printing requires rebuilding a clientele,” he muttered. “And with small runs, we won’t see much revenue.”

“At least not quickly,” Tobias confirmed.

Ethan rifled through the sample papers he’d purchased. “From what I gather, a newspaper is out of the question?”

“Entirely out of the question,” Tobias said flatly. “Stamp duty aside, we’d need a whole different outlay. A steam press, perhaps. More staff, at the very least.”

“Job printing is too irregular. The news is too expensive.” Ethan set the newspapers aside. “What we need, Porter, is something both consistent and cheap.”

A clatter sounded from the back, followed by Sam’s colorful curse.

“Language,” Tobias boomed. A pause. “Are you all right, son?”

“Dropped a bloody frame.” Sam came into the office, rubbing his knee. “But all the type’s distributed, sir.”

The boy approached his father, and Ethan couldn’t help but smile at the pair. Sam, a lanky lad of sixteen, was as tall as his father but half as broad and twice as talkative. In most cases—Ethan’s included—apprentices left home when they began learning their trade. His uncle was clearly partial to unconventional business practices, but in this regard, Ethan was glad for the atypical arrangement. Having both Porters lent an air of stability to this otherwise unsteady operation.

Sam glanced over the publications on the desk, his brown eyes growing wide at the sight of the gory illustration splashed across the penny blood. “Say, is that this week’s issue?”

“I believe so.” Ethan picked up the serial and contemplatively flipped through it. “Do you read Varney the Vampire , Sam?”

The boy was ready for him, launching into a long, complicated recounting of some family who seemed, in Ethan’s opinion, to have worse luck than him, given their penchant for unholy run-ins with the titular vampire.

“Last week, Varney was hanged,” Sam said passionately. “He’s been killed before—I think this is maybe the third time—but the doctor is going to resurrect him.” He longingly eyed the serial. “And it looks like he has. Can I see it…just for a moment, sir?”

Ethan handed over the paper and grinned at Tobias. “It’s a real shame he doesn’t like it.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s the most wholesome subject matter, but at least it keeps him reading.” Tobias shrugged. “And not just him—the lads on our street lap this up like a cat with cream.”

Ethan looked over at Sam, now fully engrossed in Varney’s possible revival. But the vampire wasn’t the only one coming to life. Ethan’s pulse was racing in the way it sometimes did when he realized he still had another step between his back and the wall.

He was possibly having a ludicrous notion.

“Bookseller said the same,” Ethan said slowly. “I can see the allure—it’s sensational, certainly. It’s also affordable. Affordable to buy…” His voice lowered. “Affordable to print?”

He glanced at the workroom, where two iron presses squatted indolently.

“You’re thinking a penny blood,” Tobias mused. “It’s certainly an idea.”

“Yes. But is it a good idea?” Ethan rolled his cuffs. “Or a neutral idea?”

“I’m trying to decide if it’s a bad idea,” Tobias said, his voice warm and deep. “It would kill your uncle twice over. There can be profit in penny fiction, but there’s no prestige. I take it you aren’t a proud man, Mr. Fletcher?”

Ethan laughed, booming and full-throated. “Porter, I slept on the floor of a ship for two weeks. I assure you, pride is not my weakness.”

Tobias rubbed his chin. “In that case…”

A dozen considerations jostled for precedence. Eight pages an issue, one issue a week, one penny each, minus the cost of material, labor, distribution. Ethan had no sense what sort of print run they could sustain, let alone how to compete in this market.

Then again, there was what he did know—the bookseller couldn’t keep penny bloods in stock; Sam couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.

No tax on fiction .

“Fletcher?” Tobias appeared taken aback by the sudden force of Ethan’s concentration.

“There’s still the paper duty to contend with.” Ethan rattled through drawers, trying to locate a pencil, trying to keep his expectations in check. “There will be a cost to starting anything of our own. It might not be feasible.”

“Oh, paper’s not a problem.” Sam laughed. “Not precisely. Tell him, Father.”

Ethan narrowed his eyes. “What about paper?”

Tobias sighed. “Follow me.”

Paper. Dozens and dozens of reams of paper stacked along the walls of the storeroom.

“I told you we don’t have a paper problem,” Sam said, delighted at the shock on Ethan’s face. “At least not a paper quantity problem.”

“How…how many reams?” Ethan ran a hand along one shelf, incredulous. From what he’d seen in his uncle’s books, the cost of a taxed ream of paper was nearly twenty-four shillings. “Why in hell wasn’t he using this? Do you have any idea what this is worth?”

“It’s worth nothing,” Tobias said. “Gaines’s troubles started when he made a bad investment with a paper mill. This is all damaged. Pulp paper, practically disintegrating. He couldn’t use it for his job prints.”

“But he already paid the duty on it?” Ethan glanced up. “We own this supply outright?”

Tobias nodded confirmation, and Ethan’s blood surged.

“Can it be printed on?” He bent, slitting open a ream with his pocketknife. The paper was discolored, the quality uneven. Tobias was right; this couldn’t be used for business documents.

But for a one-cent serial …

This paper was a sign. It wasn’t the capital he’d expected, but perhaps it was the capital he needed. His idea took root, spreading, sprouting. In this dark, musty storeroom, Ethan’s lungs filled not with the smog of London, not with the grease and ink of the printshop, but with bright, grassy hope .

“We could do this,” he breathed, staring at his beautiful, damaged, free-and-clear paper. “We could publish a penny blood. We have the material. Between the three of us, I wager we have the labor.”

“Cheers.” Sam looked between Ethan and Tobias. “So…who’s going to write it?”