Page 6 of The Finest Print

5

Outstanding Submissions (April 1848)

The Ladies’ Cabinet

The Court Magazine and Monthly Critic

Messrs. Chapman writing was meant to be read, wasn’t it?

She managed a nod. “You may look.”

He lifted the journal and unhurriedly flipped through it. She fell silent, simmering with nerves and regret. The slide of his thumb over her pages was a terrible intimacy. He paused at intervals, scrutinizing text while Belle compulsively smoothed her skirts and pretended this stranger wasn’t skimming the worst version of her manuscript.

“ Hell .” He leaned forward, stroking his beard, his expression one of either intrigue or horror.

She craned her neck, noticing he was on chapter nine. “Ah. I recommend you work up to that part.” She winced; chapter nine was not for the faint of heart. “The bloodstained robe has a logical explanation, but it’s best read in context.”

He turned to face her fully, but he wasn’t looking at her with concern or discomfort. Rather, his handsome face was illuminated with odd intensity.

“This is grisly.” He pointed at the page. “And it’s damn clever.”

Belle stared at the journal in his hand, her ears ringing. A rush of pride and disbelief radiated from her chest, all the way up to a smile she tried very much to keep to herself.

Grisly. Damn clever.

If he did in fact intend to proposition her, he was making a strong case for himself.

But no, she had no idea who he was. Nor why he was assessing her manuscript.

“Excuse me, mister…?”

“Fletcher,” he murmured, still reading with stark concentration. “Ethan Fletcher.”

“Mr. Fletcher. You never said—why were you hoping to find me?”

Her question snapped him to attention. He closed the journal and laid one arm across the back of the bench.

“You said you were interested in a genre of literature that, as it turns out, might solve my problem.” He nodded to her journal. “ That genre, specifically.”

“What problem?” She couldn’t imagine what sort of problem could be solved by any of the events in chapter nine.

At her probing expression, his half smile returned. “Between us? I’m having a hell of a time with my new business. But I think I’m nearly at a solution. When one has a plan, it’s hard to feel miserable.”

“I suppose.” Belle considered. “As long as the plan is a good one.”

The man genially tipped his hat. “Truer words, miss.”

His voice lowered on the last word, a rumble that dropped straight to her belly. She heated, wishing this bench was much longer. Or much shorter.

“What’s your line of business?”

“I’m a printer. Or at least, I’m trying to be.” He cocked his head. “I have, however, found myself with a dearth of material to publish.”

Belle froze.

A tingle crept over her scalp, the fine hairs at the back of her neck prickling with awareness. “That’s unfortunate,” she said slowly. “To be a printer with nothing to print.”

“Indeed. Most unfortunate.” His verdant gaze was still sharp on her face. “That’s why I wanted to find you. I was hoping, given your interests, you might have a name for me. A contact, possibly.”

“What sort of contact?” Her throat was very dry.

“I need a writer.”

A writer .

He stood and pointed to her journal. “Is this published?”

“Ah, no.” She swallowed. “It’s not.”

“Do you know the author?” He squinted at the crossed-out title page. “This Mister Three-Question-Marks Surname?”

He seemed to take her poleaxed expression to mean she was unable to disclose the identity of the author in question.

“Well, if you are ever so inclined, I would very much appreciate you giving him my name. That’s Fletcher—let me write it down—I’m at Sixty-Two Fleet…” He patted his pocket, looking for a pencil.

“Wait.” Belle scrambled to her feet, clutching her journal, scarcely able to believe the force of her conviction. This was patently insane behavior. She knew nothing about this man. Only that he’d read her pages, and he seemed to like them. Which was more than she could say for any other man with a printing press.

He paused, and she stood taller.

This was it. This was the change she required. Right here, with green eyes, in this garden.

“My name is Belinda Sinclair.” Her voice was hoarse. “Belle. I’m Belle Sinclair. And I do in fact know the author.”

She slowly, slowly extended her hand. He grasped it, her slender fingers fitting securely within the warm, calloused breadth of his palm. He squeezed lightly, and she squeezed back.

“And now, Mr. Fletcher, you know her, too.”

Mr. Fletcher’s casual ease shifted to action the moment they shook hands. Before she’d quite wrapped her mind around her own bravado, he was walking away, saying something about his printshop, a glint in his eyes that made it vexingly difficult not to follow him.

“ You wrote this?” He glanced at her, and she hastened to match his purposeful stride. Her corset and petticoats made it rather difficult to keep pace.

“Yes.”

“You wrote all of this?” He looked skeptical. “Even the…ah, incident in chapter nine?”

They rounded the corner to Fleet and came to a halt in front of a shabby door.

“Yes.” She bit her lip. “I wrote all of the incidents, in all of the chapters.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Did you now?”

“I did.” She let herself look up at him, as long as she wanted, because if he were assessing her by virtue of chapter nine, he was likely forty seconds away from declaring her an aberration, packing up his green eyes, and slamming this door in her face.

But he merely laughed and gestured her forward. “A puzzle,” he muttered, skating his gaze over her. “Just as I said.”

Fletcher unlocked the door to No. 62, a corner building studded with grimy windows. He paused in the threshold to straighten a faded wooden shingle proclaiming the business Gaines Print Works. Belle took in the peeling paint on the sign, fairly certain Clementina Bloom had solved a crime in an establishment just like this.

She trailed him inside and glanced around the shop. The space was long and narrow with a big-windowed front office featuring a creaky floor and an assortment of mismatched furnishings. Two doors opened off the office; through one, she spied a wedge of the bright and spacious workroom, through the other, a steep staircase leading to the second floor. Everywhere she looked was dust and disarray. The desk in the corner was piled with papers, and the row of bookcases sagged under mountains of parcels and ledgers. A length of rope was strung along one wall, a few neglected pages fluttering from it like paper shirts drying in the breeze.

“It’s…ah…” She broke off awkwardly, not wishing to be rude. “It’s quite…unpretentious.”

Fletcher flashed her one of his slow, bemused smiles. “Oh, most assuredly. Pretension is one of many things we lack.”

He moved to the desk, lifted the chair from behind it, and swung it around with a flourish. “Here you are, Miss Sinclair.”

She cautiously lowered herself to the seat.

He looked about for another chair, saw they were all under piles of detritus, and sat on the edge of the desk instead.

His thigh was very close to her. She looked at the dark wool of his trousers for one harrowing breath before pulling her focus to the desk, where she was greeted by the lurid illustration of a bearded man stealing into a woman’s bedchamber.

Wonderful .

“A penny blood?” She gestured to the paper. “I wouldn’t have guessed you partake.”

“Are you opposed to them?” He watched her curiously. “It seems these should align with your interests.”

Belle shrugged. Had he brought her here for a chat? She thought they were meant to arrange publication of her novel. “I would say I’m largely indifferent.”

“To reading them?”

She frowned. “Why, yes. What else would I do with a penny blood aside from reading it?”

“Ah.” He rubbed his neck. “I was thinking you might…write one?”

“What?” She could hardly stifle a laugh. “You mean stories of highwaymen and bandits and ghosts?”

“The very same.”

She looked at him with chagrin. “I don’t write penny bloods. I am a novelist .”

“Is that so?” he asked dryly. “Such certitude for a woman who, not ten minutes ago, used punctuation as her moniker.”

“Well, that was a bit of a low moment.”

“Look.” Fletcher sighed. “We’re going about this backward. Let’s establish a rule—as I said before, there’s no pretension in this shop, and nor will there be in this conversation.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you what I want, you tell me what you want.” Fletcher tilted his head, and she watched a muscle in his jaw work back and forth. “I inherited this business, but as you can see, it’s floundering. I need to turn a profit. Quickly. Penny fiction is reliable, fast, and cheap. I have everything I need to do it. Except a story.”

“But…” She faltered. She looked about the shop, taking in the disrepair, then back to the paper on the desk. “You aren’t interested in publishing my novel? That’s what I want. I can’t find a publisher, and I would very much like to finally get these words out of my blasted journal.”

He was already shaking his head. “Even if I had the time and expertise to produce and bind a novel, I can’t afford it. Not to mention our paper is poor quality.” He shrugged. “Make no mistake, I’m not a proper publisher. What I can do is print and distribute a weekly serial. I’ve worked in papers for most of my life.”

This information settled as a disappointing weight in her stomach. “I see.”

“I imagine this is not what you expected, Miss Sinclair, but my aim is sincere. Penny fiction has potential. I think your pages do too,” Fletcher said. “I think given our shared frustration, we might arrive at a shared benefit…if you’re amenable to compromise.”

Belle eyed him warily. He was possibly on to something. There was no doubt penny bloods had become wildly popular in recent years. They were far cheaper than literary magazines or triple-deckers—the three-part novels cost more than some men’s weekly wages.

“My pressman told me some penny bloods circulate upward of ten thousand copies each week,” Fletcher said casually. “It’s one way to get your words out of your journal.”

She sickened at the memory of Duncan’s snide barb— I didn’t see your novel anywhere. Unfortunately, the oaf had been right. Penny bloods might be a far cry from respectable literature, but right now, Clementina wasn’t any kind of literature at all.

Belle straightened. Ethan Fletcher thought she was grisly and clever . The least she could do was hear the man out.

“How would it work?” she said slowly. “If we did… this ?”

She unthinkingly indicated the story on the desk, which was regrettable, as now they were both looking at the illustration of an impending ravishing.

“Well.” Fletcher pointedly slid the serial away from her. “I’m not entirely certain yet. Tell me more about your manuscript. This Clementina Bloom, she’s an investigator?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Belle brightened. “She’s a courthouse maid, and she takes it upon herself to look into cases that were unsatisfactorily decided at trial. She sees everything, but nobody notices her . She helps women right wrongs, finds the real culprit and whatnot. And misadventures unfold along the way.”

“That’s a fairly expurgated description of what I read.” He cocked his head. “Involving substantially less arsenic.”

“Well…the circumstances tend toward the dramatic,” Belle admitted. “I want it to be exciting, you know.”

“So it could be pieced up,” he mused. “If you added more cases and… misadventures, as you call them. We could serialize it. One issue per week, eight pages an issue.”

She looked at him doubtfully; her story would need a great deal of restructuring to work.

“For how long?”

“I can promise to publish for ten weeks.”

Ten weeks .

Ten weeks of guaranteed publication. Her heart leaped in nervous excitement.

“When would you start?”

“Immediately,” he said, his hand once more moving over his beard. “I’d want something out by Saturday.”

“ Saturday ?” Belle laughed. “That’s three days from now. It’s impossible?—”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s possible,” he said bluntly. “It’s what has to be. I don’t have time to delay.”

“Why?” She narrowed her eyes. “You keep saying that—no time for a novel, no time to delay.”

“Because.” He rolled his neck. “My creditor has me in a noose.”

“ What ?”

“Not literally,” he said hastily, his green eyes widening at the look of horror on her face. “Apologies, that was an exaggeration. I must have been unduly influenced by the events in your manuscript.”

“You have a creditor ?” Belle’s voice dropped to a whisper. She glanced around the shop uneasily.

“Well, I don’t keep him here.” Fletcher pushed away from the desk and moved to the streaked window. “I’ll just visit him weekly and deliver all my earnings.”

“You mean to say you’re…” She trailed off uncertainly.

“In debt? Yes.” His tone did not invite questions, though Belle found herself with plenty.

“How…” She furrowed her brow. What sort of trouble had he already found for himself? “You said you’ve only been in London for a few days.”

“It seems my uncle left me with more than a printshop,” Fletcher explained curtly. “The debt is his, and this shop is collateral. If I don’t clear what he owes by mid-June, I’ll lose my business.”

“Oh.” She watched him pace, selfishly relieved Ethan Fletcher wasn’t an irrepressible wastrel who couldn’t be trusted to run a business aboveboard, even as she sympathized with his frustration. “That’s very unfair, Mr. Fletcher.”

“Indeed.” He hesitated. “And on that subject, I’m afraid I can’t afford to pay you the full going rate. I have a small staff, and I’m already forgoing my own salary to pay theirs.”

Belle frowned. She wasn’t concerned about payment, but she was worried about legitimacy. Could she truly agree to this? Ethan Fletcher had never published fiction before. He was new to London. He was in debt. Not to mention, if word got out she was writing a penny blood, she would be even more of an outcast than she already was. There wasn’t a single mitigating factor in the mix.

And yet.

This wasn’t the opportunity she’d been hoping for, but it was an opportunity. And despite her reasonable misgivings, she couldn’t deny Fletcher’s offer felt fearsomely, wonderfully exciting .

Hadn’t she thought it, just that morning? She needed change. She couldn’t go on this way, trying to make the wrong boot fit. Perhaps for ten weeks, she could wear a different shoe.

But if he was going to clarify his terms, she needed to as well.

“I don’t require payment,” she said slowly. “I do require partnership.”

“No.” It was his turn to frown. “I can’t take on a business partner. I just told you, I have no funds?—”

“Not in that way,” she said. “I’ll defer compensation altogether, but I won’t forfeit decision-making. I’m assuming a measure of risk with this endeavor—to both my creative and personal reputations. I’m not going to simply hand this journal over to you and step aside.”

She drew in a breath.

“I’m willing to try this, but I need to ensure it meets my standards, that I have some degree of security. So, yes, I expect to be your associate.”

“Partners.” His jaw was working again, bunching beneath the shadow of his beard.

“Yes.”

She lifted her chin, and his gaze followed, charting a shockingly bold path across her throat, her mouth, her eyes. It took him a very long time, and all the while, a faint thrum built somewhere deep behind her sternum.

“Fine.” Fletcher said, his voice pitched low. “I suppose I can agree to that. And if you’re in agreement as well?—”

“Not yet.” Belle raised a finger. “We haven’t finalized the last of it. What happens at the end?”

“The end?”

“After the ten weeks,” she said. “If you pay off your creditor? If you don’t?”

“Honestly, I haven’t the faintest.” He exhaled slowly. “At the very least, I hope to have more than we do now.”

She looked around the derelict shop. “All we have now is a story and a press.”

“True.” He smiled, a wide, brilliant arc of possibility, and Belle fell straight into it. “It’s more than either of us had before.”