Page 5 of The Finest Print

4

Clementina had been the courthouse maid for long enough to understand a trial was naught but a performance. And on stage today? Augustus Foote, playing the role of Defense Counselor with all the dread of an unprepared understudy. It was little wonder he was nervous. Foote was defending Miss Allegra Carter, and three weeks ago, Miss Allegra Carter poisoned the Magistrate.

Of course, she had good reason.

—Excerpt from The Sensational Cases of Clementina Bloom

Chapter 3 ( Draft 2 Draft 3)

When Belle arrived back at Lincoln’s Inn Fields after her afternoon in the garden, she was greeted by the familiar sight of Mrs. Bowers hovering at the door. The comings and goings of various Sinclairs were a source of constant consternation for the punctual housekeeper.

“Good evening, Mrs. Bowers.” Belle untied her bonnet and hung it neatly on one of the many pegs studding the front hall.

“This came for you today, Miss Sinclair, but I don’t advise you dawdle with it.” The housekeeper sounded vaguely reproving as she handed over a letter. “Your family is about to dine.”

Belle grasped the letter, the embossed stationery heavy in her fingers. She’d instantly recognized the seal.

Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine .

She thanked Mrs. Bowers and slipped into her father’s empty study, her heart racing. Blackwood’s was both an unlikely prospect and her last one. The magazine frequently published horror fiction. And they sometimes published women. Granted, they didn’t usually publish both at the same time…

As she scanned the letter, her stomach plummeted.

Miss Sinclair,

Thank you for your letter, dated 9 February. Enclosed, please find the chapters you included, returned in full to you with a recommendation that Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine decline to publish at this time. While your submission shows promise, there is some concern about the Subject Matter and Authorial Reputation.

She closed her eyes.

Another rejection.

Likely her final rejection. She had no other outstanding submissions.

Damn. Damn. Damn .

Belle had been writing The Sensational Cases of Clementina Bloom for the last four years—writing, rewriting, submitting, resubmitting. Her pile of rejection letters was half as thick as the blasted manuscript. Her gruesome tale of courtroom mayhem didn’t fit anywhere. It seemed nobody knew what to do with it—except to tell her to change it.

Much like Belle, herself.

She quickly stuffed the letter in her basket, refusing to contemplate its ramifications before dinner. She looked herself over in the mirror above the mantel. Her family was waiting, and her father, for certain, could read her mood on her face. If she was going to cry, she would need to either do it very quickly or much later.

Papa’s bracing refrain from the day she left Duncan worked its way to the surface—not that it had a long way to travel. His hushed advice had bolstered her through many a sore spot in recent years. She drew a deep breath.

It matters how you walk out of here.

Satisfied she was appropriately composed, Belle made her way to the dining room. She paused at the threshold to watch Papa pour wine. Her family always dined en famille and sometimes with a rotating and random assortment of guests—relatives or law students or the occasional progressive-minded MP. She was relieved that tonight, the table was set only for four.

“Hello,” she said, stepping into the dining room.

“Belle.” Mama swept her into a sweet-smelling embrace. “There you are. Come, sit, darling. You’ve been out all day, you must be famished.”

“Doyle told me you departed early.” Papa’s dark blue gaze was as perceptive as always. “I assumed you’d be home before me.”

“I took a long walk,” Belle said evasively. “It was such a nice day, I thought I’d read outside.”

“Speaking of walks…” Lena, always good for distraction, thrust a dish of haricots verts in her direction. “Here, dear, I’m all finished with them, so take what you’d like. Now, you won’t believe what happened at the milliner’s…”

Belle settled into her seat and let the conversation wash over her, wondering how long she could avoid participating. She did not wish to talk about her day, a goal at odds with family dinner. Mama, mindful of her quiet husband and eldest daughter, had long insisted on fairness—everyone shared, everyone listened. It wasn’t that Belle was opposed to conversing with her family, but she didn’t welcome the prospect of reliving twin embarrassments inflicted by Duncan and her latest rejection letter.

“Belle?” As if reading her thoughts, Mama turned to her with a bright smile. “How was your afternoon?”

Belle paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. Was there anything she could safely share about her day?

A flash of green garden, green eyes, a slow, slow smile…

She coughed.

“She’s blushing.” Lena leaned forward, her eyes alight. “Belle! What aren’t you telling us?”

“She’s not blushing,” Papa said.

“She does look a bit pink,” Mama countered. “Did you get some sun today, darling?”

“Fine.” Belle speared a potato and pointed it at her younger sister, struggling to maintain a straight face. “If you must know, Doyle called me pretty.”

“Doyle, the elderly guard?” Lena’s laugh met Belle’s. “Let’s hope he has a grandson with a chiseled jaw.”

“Helena.” Their father slid Lena a look as he neatly cut his roast. “Might you refrain from discussing chiseled jaws at the dinner table?”

“Oh, Papa, we’re only teasing.” Lena squeezed their father’s hand. “I still think there’s something Belle isn’t telling us.”

Belle pushed her vegetables across her plate. The news would come out eventually. “All right.” She cleared her throat. “I do, in fact, have something to tell you. But before I do, I want you to please believe I am perfectly fine.”

Mama set down her fork. Lena leaned forward.

Belle kept her eyes on her father, who perhaps remembered the blistering fallout better than anyone.

“Lawrence Duncan has returned to London.”

“Do you know what would make you feel better?” Predictably, Lena had barreled into Belle’s bedroom the moment they were excused from dinner. Now she was pacing behind the dressing table while Belle readied for bed.

“I feel perfectly fine.” Belle dragged a brush through her long hair.

“Fine. It will make me feel better. Come to Lady Beaumont’s ball on Friday.”

Belle gave her sister a sharp look in the mirror. “I will do no such thing.”

“I don’t want to go alone.”

“Cecily will be there.”

“No. She and Aunt Cora are visiting Tess this week. Speaking of…” Lena paused, apparently willing to defer her crusade for Belle’s social life to share family gossip. “Cecily said Tess has been a complete beast this time around. She can’t keep anything down but lemon bars. It’s even worse than it was with Nathaniel, and it was plenty bad then.” Lena tilted her head mischievously. “Though Cecily also told me we needn’t be overly sympathetic. Tess admitted her husband is most enthusiastically provisioning more than desserts.”

Belle smiled. “You’re terrible.”

Lena squashed beside her at the dressing table and pressed their cheeks together. Helena had inherited the brightest features from both their parents—their father’s blue eyes, their mother’s flaxen hair. Belle, for her part, was all Sinclair. She had the same tousled curls as her father, though her light brown hair and hazel eyes were hers alone. When she put her face beside her sister’s, Belle sometimes felt muted, as though the water colorist had meant to dip his brush one more time. But she’d always felt generally content with her appearance. The way she looked to others wasn’t the problem; it was the way she looked at the rest of the world.

“You really won’t go to the ball?”

“Was I even invited?” Belle asked skeptically.

“Well…” Her sister hesitated, confirming Belle’s suspicion.

Lady Beaumont was the sort of woman who preferred the ladies on her guestlist have unimpeachable reputations and polite interests. Belle, as an aspiring crime novelist with a broken engagement, was not likely to ever be asked to grace her ballroom.

“Lena.”

“If you ask Aunt Cora to write to Lady Beaumont, she would do so in an instant,” Lena said in a rush. “No society matron in her right mind would deny a request from Lady Fordham.”

Belle sighed. Lena was right. Aunt Cora—Papa’s younger sister and a fixture of the ton —would happily maneuver on her behalf. But Belle wanted no such attention.

Though the Sinclair family’s connections granted them access to the fashionable set, she’d never fared well at upper-crust dinners and dances, as evidenced by her only offer coming from the respectably middle-class Duncan. Belle hadn’t minded. Her eccentric interests were more suited to her father’s professional circles anyway.

Not that it mattered now.

“Aunt Cora is not begging an invitation for me,” she informed her sister. “I’m perfectly fine.”

“You’ve said that four times tonight,” Lena said quietly.

“It’s nothing a ball will fix,” Belle admitted, setting down her hairbrush. She crossed to her writing desk and retrieved the letter from Blackwood’s . Sighing, she turned to her sister. “I’ve been turned down. Again.”

“Oh, Belle.” Lena pulled her sister down to sit beside her on the bed. “I’m so sorry, dearest. Did the publisher say why?”

Belle passed her the letter.

“This is it?” Lena skimmed the short rejection. “Drat.”

Lena’s solidarity was lovely, especially considering she herself had not read Belle’s manuscript. Not for lack of trying—Helena, as it turned out, had no stomach for bloodshed.

“It’s a better rejection than the last dozen,” Belle said glumly, flopping back on her bed. “Mind you, Subject Matter and Authorial Reputation are capitalized. Apparently, they wished to clarify that point specifically.” She sighed. “Poor Clementina. She should have been written by a man.”

“These well-to-do magazines do seem to be flummoxed by your feminine wiles,” Lena observed. “Or possibly your lack thereof.”

“How wretched.” Belle pressed her fingers over her eyes. “You know, I thought having my novel published would go some way toward soothing the sting of my ruined prospects. It might be time to admit it’s having the opposite effect.”

Lena made a soft sound of protest and tugged Belle to sitting. “You aren’t ruined, Belle.”

“Duncan knows it.” Belle winced, recalling the uncomfortable meeting. “Of course he would relish the notion that I’ve made no gains in my aspirations, even as his own career has blossomed without me. He was insufferable today.”

“More insufferable than usual, you mean?” Lena pulled a face. “Because from what I recall, you suffered plenty.”

“Don’t remind me.” Belle’s stomach clenched. “Goodness, he’s a vainglorious brute, isn’t he? I lost at least six months of work when he dumped that teapot on my pages.”

Even now, she could scarcely bear to think of it. Of all the things he took from her, the very first draft of Clementina hurt the most.

“You know, Belle, I understood why you ended it.” Lena gently touched the ends of Belle’s hair. “But I never understood why you agreed to marry him in the first place.”

Belle looked down, fiddling with the hem of her night rail. “There were things I once admired about him,” she said slowly. “Of course, that was before I understood those things were only what he wanted me to see.”

She looked at her sister, contemplating how best to explain why she let things go on for too long.

“Do you recall when Papa won the Briggs trial? When everything started changing?”

“By changing , you mean we had money?” Lena laughed. “Yes, I don’t think I could forget.”

“Mama took us to the cobbler for new boots. It was so important to her. She wanted it to be perfect, you know how she is about spending, she’s still so careful, even now. But my measurements must have been off, because those boots only mostly fit.”

“They pinched,” Lena nodded. “I remember. You had a blister but wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“I didn’t want anyone to know.” Belle frowned. “I was embarrassed the boots turned out to be wrong. I wanted them to fit…but everything chafed. And my foot was my foot. I couldn’t change it.” She shook her head. “I could only change the boots.”

“Darling.” Her sister smiled sympathetically. “I can say with certainty, even those pinching boots were a better fit than Duncan.”

Belle sighed and tossed the rejection letter aside.

“It wasn’t only that he didn’t want me to write, it was that he held me in so little regard. He didn’t want me to do anything .” She wrinkled her nose. “Well, that’s not entirely true. He wanted me to help him rise.”

Lena lifted her eyebrow, and Belle rolled her eyes.

“I don’t mean that in the way you’re thinking, you little minx.”

“Don’t you?” Lena teased.

Belle flicked her shoulder. “You really are terrible.”

Lena laughed and kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry you had a trying day, darling. It’s a load of rot, top to bottom—Duncan, Blackwood’s . I hope you at least enjoyed the sunshine.” Lena looked her over. “Your cheeks are a bit pink.”

“I did enjoy the sun.” Belle tugged the end of Lena’s plait. “Now you need to go to bed, and so do I. I had a very trying day, as you said, what with all the humiliation and rejection.”

Lena tutted and stood. “Put it all out of your mind,” she said firmly. “Your luck is going to turn, I’m absolutely certain of it.” She paused, smiling deviously. “And when it does, think how satisfying it will be to see Duncan eat crow.”

Belle fought a smile. “That’s not why I want to succeed.”

“Of course it isn’t.” Lena winked. “But it certainly won’t hurt.”