Page 108 of The Ladies Least Likely

“Forgery?” The man called Froggart gasped. “That is a capital offense, Your Honor!”

“Is it true?” Oliver fixed her with a stern glare. “You made these copies.”

Lying would achieve her nothing. “Yes,” Amaranthe agreed in a hollow voice.

“The alchemical treatise he mentions was the Treatise on the Spheres by John of Holybush. I was asked by a friend of my old schoolmistress to make a fresh copy he could share with his students. I made a practice copy while I produced the fair copy, and Mr. Karim took interest in it, as the treatise draws much on the work of Arabic astronomers. The works I copied from St. Johns College Library in Oxford are the Physiologus, a medieval bestiary, and the more recent sale is the Secretum Secretorum. Also known as the Book of Secrets , the?—”

“Yes, the advice of his tutor Aristotle to a young Alexander the Great.” Oliver nodded. “I saw your copy in the bookshop, remember? Only knew it because I had to read it for my exams. And you took the manuscript from an Oxford library?”

“Borrowed it, Your Honor, while my brother was a pensioner there.” She didn’t add she had parted with these copies—works she’d never intended to sell—only to support first her own household, and then Hunsdon House after Sybil had robbed them.

Her purposes wouldn’t matter to an upholder of the King’s laws. Only the fact of the crime.

It was over. With her a known forger, Mal would not be believed.

It was best he had already cast her from his life, now that she was about to be thrown into the bridewell and tried as a criminal.

What would happen to Joseph with a sister in prison or transported, or worst of all, hanged?

What would happen to her household, to Eyde and Derwa and Davey and Mrs. Blackthorn and Inez?

She’d never have the chance to spend time with the Delaval children, if they ever forgave her.

She’d never have the chance to spend time with Mal.

She turned her eyes to him, lost. She’d fallen in love, firmly and truly. She’d finally found a man she could envision sharing her life with. She’d regret losing him most of all.

“So, Mr. Thorkelson, you accuse Miss Illingworth of selling, for profit, copies she has made of ancient manuscripts,” Mr. Oliver said mildly. “Quite skillfully made copies, if her reputation is to be believed.”

“None of that constitutes forgery,” Mal said.

He wasn’t talking to her but to the judge.

Amaranthe blinked, her vision blurred with the tears she fought to hold back.

Mal, of all people—the man who had scolded her so thunderously in her own study, before he sheared her from his life forever—he would try to claim here, in a court of law, that she wasn’t guilty?

She gestured at him to cease before he sank his own reputation along with hers. But he carried on.

“Was it forgery that Bishop Thomas Percy found and reprinted his Reliques of Ancient Poetry ?” Mal said. “No. He was simply sharing antique works he had discovered that he knew would be of interest.”

Amaranthe put a hand over her pounding heart.

She’d told Mal about the Reliques in one of their conversations on the road.

Its publication ten years ago, when her father brought the manuscript into their house, had enchanted her thoroughly, confirming her love for ancient writings and her commitment to rescue them for others, just as Percy had salvaged his ballads from the manuscript he’d found a maid using to light fires.

“Was it forgery if young Thomas Chatterton indeed created the Rowley manuscripts?” Mal went on. “Perhaps.”

Amaranthe tried to control her shortness of breath. She’d told Mal all about Chatterton, too.

“But Miss Illingworth is not creating any works that she means to pass off as antiques,” Mal said.

That was a lie. If anyone looked in the locked cabinet in her study, they’d find a whole row of books she’d reproduced for herself.

Stolen, as Mal put it, just as she’d stolen the treatise on the spheres.

She could and might try to sell them as ancient works, if it increased their value.

She was a businesswoman as well as an artist. Besides, Mal had seen the title page for her Book of Secrets and guessed at once what she was about.

She ought to have burned that page as soon as he left her. She’d burn it the moment she arrived home. The manuscript Ned had given her was priceless, but she would not steal from the Delaval children. She’d find another way to share the knowledge within.

But Thorkelson was still right. All the manuscripts he’d identified had been forged by her. There was no way around it.

How bitterly she regretted now what had once seemed like her only possible means of sustaining herself, Joseph, and their household. If she did not have a protector or income of her own, a woman was forced to go into service or sell her body. Inez was proof of that.

But Inez was also proof that honest labor was better than thievery. Why had Amaranthe never chosen the straight and narrow path?

She wished Mal would not lie, here in a court of law, to protect her. Yet he pressed on.

“I have consulted with Mr. Karim himself and have a deposition that he recorded with Mr. Rosenfeld—if the court will allow me?” Mal’s barrister brought forth yet another document and presented it to the judge, who took it with great interest.

“Mr. Karim attests therein,” Mal said, his manner growing more formal, “that the manuscripts furnished him by Miss Illingworth, rather than mere reproductions, are special editions of her own making.

He has identified several places where text has been changed or corrected, and the work in fact bears her signature, in the form of a distinctive mark.

A mark in the shape of a flower of the amaranth family, as it happens, which also happens to be her given name.

“Furthermore, Mr. Karim attests that none of the manuscripts he has obtained from Miss Illingworth are works over which the original author might exert control,” Mal said.

“John of Holybush lived over five hundred years ago. The two other manuscripts you mention were reproduced from the library of St. John’s College at Oxford, one of our greatest universities, which, if I need remind you, has been dedicated for centuries to preserving and disseminating knowledge for the good of the nation, as a matter of public trust.”

Amaranthe’s head whirled. Mal had spoken with Mr. Karim.

He had discovered what she was about and then had gone to the bookseller to investigate the extent of her crimes.

And Mr. Karim, with his sharp eye, had discovered for himself what Amaranthe was up to.

But rather than shape his discovery into damning evidence, Mal had taken a position that would exonerate her and Mr. Karim both.

He was using his knowledge of the law to save her.

He was also using what she guessed to be his barrister’s voice. It was low and smooth, with a rich, smoky timbre, hypnotic. She found herself nodding in response to his questions, caught up in his argument.

“Were these works entered by their authors into the Stationer’s Register and thus protected by copyright?

” Mal said, his voice swelling to fill the room.

“No. Were they works held in copyright by another publisher? No. These are works in fact not protected by copyright and therefore not governed by the Statue of Anne. These works belong to the public domain and there are, therefore, no restrictions on their duplication or circulation.”

He turned a steely glare on Thorkelson, then the man called Froggart. “Miss Illingworth is in violation of no known laws and cannot thereby be charged with forgery. You have made a false accusation that one may, in fact, consider libel.” A chargeable offense.

Amaranthe repressed a smile of giddy relief. Mal had accused her of forgery himself, but no matter. She tried to look meek and innocent as Oliver turned a probing gaze on her.

“It does not appear that Miss Illingworth has trespassed as you say, Mr. Thorkelson,” he observed. “She has broken no laws in reproducing and then selling copies of these works.”

“That doesn’t mean she didn’t forge those marriage lines,” Sybil cried. “It sounds like she very well could have.”

Amaranthe drew a deep breath. Just as Mal had been deemed unworthy all his life because he was a bastard, she was deemed unworthy by the mere fact of her sex. There was no earthly reason, nor precedent, for a man of authority to listen to her.

“Your Honor,” she said anyway, “an examination will prove these documents are not forged. If you will permit me to approach?”

Oliver motioned her forward, and Mal fell in beside her, his shoulder brushing hers. She reined in the impulse to lean against him.

“These documents cannot be new, because the parchment is not new,” she said with quiet authority. “Do you observe this texture? These pages are some decades old. Parchment, particularly vellum, which this is, will tend to buckle as it dries. It is why medieval books are held together with clasps.

“Furthermore, I suspect both of these pages were cut from the same larger hide. There’s a very distinct pattern of coloration shared by both, when put side by side.

The pattern of capillaries on both suggests the hide was not scraped as smooth as could be, nor were the folios smoothed with pumice before being written upon, which means the pages were not meant for manuscript but for records that would only be seen once. ”

She tapped a finger on the ink. Her own finger, if the gloves were off, would have shown the ink stains from her toils that morning, but no matter.

“Your second indication is the ink. Oak gall ink, unlike lampblack or India ink, fades over time. If you look at the notations being made by our court scribe there, you will see the letters are dark and black only when they are freshly laid down.”