“How generous of you.” Edward inclined his head. “You’re too good.”
And so saying, he slid the newspaper into the inner pocket of his coat—both the Gazette and Free’s proof rolled into one. There. His primary object for the evening was accomplished. “Good night.”
“Good night.” But as Edward started to leave, his brother grimaced. “Wait.”
Edward paused. “Yes?”
“Have you separated Shaughnessy from Miss Marshall yet?”
“No,” Edward said slowly. “I haven’t. He’s stubborn.” He’d not thought that his careful lies would bear fruit so soon. He stood in place, willing his brother to say more.
James sighed. “Can you keep a secret?”
“James.” Edward shook his head slowly, patiently. “I am a secret. Who would I tell?”
“True, true. Well. In the interest of brotherly rapport, you might want to make sure that Shaughnessy is not at the press late tomorrow evening.”
“Of course. Is there some reason?”
James hesitated, so Edward fed him another lie.
“No, no, don’t tell me,” he said. “I can see there is another reason. You’ve done something rather clever, haven’t you?”
That was enough to push his brother over the edge. “Oh, not so clever,” James demurred. “It’s taken me ages to build up to this. It’s just that tomorrow is when they’re supposed to set the fire.”
FREE HAD BEEN BURIED under a veritable onslaught of telegrams—seventy-three by four that afternoon—and the courier on his cycle brought more every hour.
That number didn’t count the notices that would come in the mails. After the exposé that had been printed in the London Review this morning and echoed in papers around the country by noon, advertisers throughout England had been desperate to sever their ties with her. Subscribers would no doubt follow suit.
Free had left the headlined paper out on the front table, a reminder of what she needed to accomplish by the end of the day.
WOMEN’S FREE PRESS FOUND COPYING COLUMNS FROM OTHERS.
“Your response won’t hold up.” Amanda had come back from London that morning, and she was examining Free’s hastily hand-scrawled defense. “This piece sounds like the thinnest of excuses. I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t watched you write those columns.”
“Mr. Clark has proof,” Free said.
Amanda snorted in response. “Mr. Clark is not here. Convenient for him, is it not? Here we are, asserting that someone—and while we suspect who it is, we cannot prove it, and so we dare not name him—has taken our work early, but we are not sure how. This unknown person has done this in order to discredit us for some unknown reason. The story is so thin that it would rouse the suspicions of even our most faithful adherents. We can’t print this. We’re better off printing nothing at all.”
Free folded her arms and glared off into space. “So you think printing a bare denial is the best option.” It had been her choice to wait until she had proof before proceeding; this debacle was what resulted.
“Yes,” Amanda said.
“She’s right,” Alice said over her shoulder.
When those two agreed, they were almost certainly correct.
“Say simply,” Amanda said, “that the Women’s Free Press has reviewed its internal procedures and we are satisfied that the pieces we have printed were authored by our writers. We are looking into this matter.”
“But—”
“Add that we will allow the reporter from the London Review to examine our internal archive of advance proofs, demonstrating that earlier versions of the columns were in our possession before the other newspapers went to press.”
“But—”
“Don’t defend yourself, Free, until you can do it well. You’ll have one chance to build your defense in the public eye. Wait until your story is unassailable, or you’ll lose.”
Damn it. She wanted to do something. Free balled her hands into fists. The telegrams had come all day long, and every one she glanced at felt like a knife to her heart. Andrews’ Tinned Goods—she’d worked with them for years. It wasn’t right, wasn’t fair, that they’d not even waited to hear her explanation before jumping to the conclusion of her guilt.
“We will win,” Alice said behind her, setting her hand on her back.
She didn’t want any of this. Even if she fended off these accusations, every hour she spent defending against them was an hour not spent on issues of substance. That bill of Rickard’s, flawed as it was, was unlikely to even come under discussion unless she helped do her part to put it on everyone’s lips. The very act of spending energy on this hopeless morass was a loss, no matter how it turned out.
She set her head in her hands.
The door opened. She turned, expecting the courier again.
But instead of the bespectacled boy from the telegram office in town, Mr. Clark stood in the doorway. He looked around the room—at her and Amanda and Alice at the table, arguing over that all-important response—and his eyes narrowed.
“Where are the men, Miss Marshall?” His voice was a low growl.
“What men?”
“The men I told you to hire.” He took a step forward. “I know you don’t trust me, but with what is at stake, I’d think you could at least bloody listen for a half minute.”
“What men?” she echoed.
He looked at her—really looked at her, taking in the ink stains on her chin, the drifts of telegrams on the table beside her.
“Christ,” he swore. “You haven’t read my telegram.”
“I’ve been busy.” She glared at him accusingly. “Trying to piece together a response to this accusation without any of the evidence you claimed to have but took with you. I haven’t had time to sort through all the messages. One more person canceling an advertisement or expressing their glee at my fall from grace—what would that have mattered? Things can’t get much worse.”
“Yes, they can,” Mr. Clark growled. “I was wrong; I didn’t have the full plan. This is not just about putting you in distress, Miss Marshall. You need to be seen to be in distress by the entire world. That way, when your press is burned to the ground, everyone will believe it arson. They’ll think that faced with the certainty of financial ruin, you set fire to everything for the insurance money in a fit of desperation.”
Free felt her hands go cold.
“He could be lying, Free.” Amanda came to stand by her. “These so-called men he wants you to hire—who knows who they might be? Men under his control. And once introduced, they’ll be here. Protecting us, so they say, but who knows what other master they’ll serve? Do you really trust him?”
Mr. Clark’s lips thinned, but he said nothing in his own defense. He simply folded his arms and glared at her, as if willing her to make up her mind—as if daring her to trust him now, when she had every reason not to.
But it wasn’t his silence that decided her in his favor. It wasn’t the memory of the last time she’d seen him—of the touch of his glove whispering along her jaw. It wasn’t even the perilous thud of her heart, whispering madness in the back of her mind.
No. Her trust, such as it was, was won on a far more practical basis.
“On this,” Free said, “I believe him.”
He let out an exhalation, his arms dropping to his sides.
“But—” Amanda started.
Free turned grimly and went to the window. “I believe him,” she said, “because I smell smoke.”
Chapter Eight
THERE WERE NO MEN PRESENT, only the half-dozen or so female employees who had remained to run the printing off the press. Cambridge, with its fire engines, was a full half-mile distant. By the time Edward had made his way out of the door of the press, it was already too late. Smoke had begun to seep out of the door of the small house down the way in light wisps.
He opened it anyway. A wave of heat hit him, followed by an outpouring of choking, eye-stinging smoke. Gray clouds billowed in th
e front room; fire crackled. He looked up; flames were already eating into the beams of the ceiling overhead. There’d be no putting this out on time to save the structure. There was no sand and only a few buckets.
Free was right behind him. She squared her shoulders and shoved past him.
He grabbed hold of her wrist, yanking her back.
She pulled against his grip. “We can put it out.”
“We can’t,” he told her. “I’ve seen more fires in my life than you could dream of. The smoke will kill you if you try.” His throat was already irritated, and he’d only been standing on the threshold.
“But—”
“Is there anything in there that is worth your life? Because that is what it will mean if you go in now.”
“My Aunt Freddy’s letter.” He could feel her whole arm trembling in his. “She left it for me when she died.”
“Would your Aunt Freddy want you to risk your life for a piece of paper?”
“No,” she whispered.
Her eyes were watering. If anyone ever asked him, he’d say it was the smoke irritating them. He didn’t think that Miss Marshall would be willing to admit to tears.
He took off his cravat and handed it to her. “Wet this and wrap it around your mouth and nose. It’ll help. We’ve work to do.”
She’d not taken the time to put on a hat; her hair was coming out of its bun and trailed down her back like an angry braid of her own fire.
She took the cravat from his hands. “I thought there was nothing to be done.”
“For your home? There isn’t. But we need to set a firebreak to make sure the flames don’t spread to the press.”
It had been years since he’d been on the fire brigade; he’d thought the memory of those weeks had hazed together into nondescript forgetfulness, but it was all coming back to him now. That tree, there—they’d have to lop the branches back, and then dig a line in the turf.
Her shoulders heaved one last time. But by now, the flames were waist-high in the room beyond, and even she must have known it was hopeless. She turned away, marching back to where the women were coming out of the press.
“Melissa, we need shovels, or anything like shovels you can find. Caroline, you must go fetch help. Phoebe and Mary, start with the buckets.”
Edward found a shovel himself and had started to mark off a perimeter when his brain finally caught up with his body. He looked up—at the women scattering in all directions, off to do battle against the blaze—and his mouth dried with a sudden realization.
This wasn’t the fire that his brother had been talking about. This was the distraction.
He had no time to think. He left the shovel in place and ran back to the press building. The doors were open wide, but the press floor was empty. But the overpowering smell of paraffin oil assailed him. The floor underfoot gleamed in iridescent colors.
He looked around, saw nobody about.
There had to be someone here. The arsonist must be inside; the place needed nothing more than a match to go up. He crept forward, checking under a table, behind a chest of drawers. He came to the other side of the room—the wall where the glass window spilled light into Miss Marshall’s office. Her door was ajar. And there, in the darkening shadows under her desk…
There was a boot tip poking out from the other side.
Emotion, he told himself, would be nothing but a burden now. He needed to act, and act quickly. And yet he could not dispel it. His stomach seemed full of rage.
He stalked into her office, grabbed hold of the man by the foot, and hauled with all his might. He was so angry he scarcely even felt the mass of the other man, even though the fellow must have weighed at least fifteen stone.
The man kicked out, knocking Edward’s grip loose. Another kick targeted Edward’s knees, and he crumpled to the floor. The arsonist scrambled to his feet, dashing to the door of Free’s office.
Edward lunged for him, grabbing for his ankle. He had it—but the man stomped, and his boot found Edward’s hand. Somewhere, pain registered. But in the moment, with the smell of smoke and paraffin overwhelming his senses, Edward felt nothing.
He reached up and grabbed the man by the collar with his other hand, twisting, cutting off air.
“You idiot,” he said darkly.
The sound of wood striking against sandpaper—the brief smell of phosphorus—brought him back to himself. For a moment, he felt fear, and with it, every other sensation returned: the sharp pain in his hand, the burn of his lungs.
“Let me go,” the other man said. “Let me go or I’ll drop this now.”
Edward’s attention focused on the flare of the match, that perilous dancing flame. Hell, the fumes in this room were thick enough that they might ignite.
“Stop being an idiot and put that thing out,” Edward growled. “You’ll kill us both.”
The man’s hand trembled. Edward reached out—his hand didn’t seem to be working properly—and crushed the flame with his glove.
His heart was beating like the wings of a flock of birds. The man kicked out once, twice—uselessly, now, because Edward had hold of him and was not letting go.
He could tell the moment the man gave up—when his limbs came to rest and he looked into Edward’s eyes, his lips pulling into a resigned frown.
“Oh, yes,” Edward said in a low growl. “You should be afraid. You are in a heap of trouble.”
BY THE TIME NIGHT FELL, the last remnants of Free’s home—charred and blackened embers, scarcely holding together in the shape of a building—had almost stopped smoldering.
It was gone. Her home, her place of safety… But that had been an illusion, too. Her hands were streaked with soot; her dress smelled of paraffin. But her press was still standing. Victory, of a sort.
Some victory.
She trudged back to her knot of tired, bedraggled employees. They’d all worked hard. She wished she could send them home. There was no time to be weary, though. There was too much to be done.
The most important of those things needed to be done quickly. “Amanda,” Free said, “you’ll need to leave now, if you wish to catch the night train to London.”
“But—”
“We can’t take even an instant to sit still and lick our wounds,” Free said. “Every moment we spend combating this is a moment lost to a larger, more important fight. If something else happens, you need to be in London, where you can commission another press to print our paper.”
More importantly, if something else was planned for tonight, if something happened to Free, she needed to make sure Amanda survived to carry things on. But she didn’t say that; if she spoke it out loud, she might lose her nerve altogether.
She didn’t have to. Amanda’s chin quivered, but she nodded.
“Melissa, make sure Amanda gets safely to the station. While you’re in town, let them know we have someone here that the constables will need to take into custody.” That had to be done; if they had any chance of presenting this affair to the public, they’d have to be seen to play by civilized rules.
She didn’t feel very civilized. She turned away, before she lost her nerve and begged her friend to stay. She didn’t see Amanda off. There was too much to do, after all. She had a response to finish, a paper that needed to be out on the 4 a.m. train. There was no time to stop now.
“All right, everyone,” she said in a carrying voice. “We have paraffin to clean up.”
And while they were doing that, she had a story to uncover.
Mr. Clark had bound their captive at the wrists and feet and tied him to a chair. The man was stowed in the archive room. She needed to know who had sent him, what he’d been tasked with doing. And she needed to know it now—in time for her to write that story, before the constables came.
There was no time for anything but swift answers. And she had a scoundrel here, after all.
She took a deep breath and went to find Mr. Clark.
He was in the archive room. The space was small and dar
k. With an extra chair and the desk still in place, she and Mr. Clark were almost elbow-to-elbow, facing that bound man.
“What have you learned?” Her voice sounded shaky to her own ears. A bad sign, that. She struggled for control.
Mr. Clark turned to her. “His name: Edwin Bartlett. But unfortunately, he doesn’t know who hired him. There was at least one intermediary, and I would guess more.”
No. She refused to believe that. She had hoped that it would all be simple—that the arsonist would give up James Delacey at the first instant, that he’d be able to describe him perfectly.
It would have been some compensation for losing her home—to be able to place the blame publicly at his door.
Her voice shook when she spoke. “He’s lying. He has to know more.”
That was met with silence. She couldn’t see Mr. Clark’s face, and he didn’t turn to her.
“He has to be lying,” she said. She needed him to be lying. “Don’t you have…” Her stomach turned at the thought of asking for more. The very idea made her feel ill.
“Don’t I have what?”
“Some way.” Her hands were shaking. “To encourage him.”
“Encourage him.” He made a rough noise in his throat, almost a growl. “Miss Marshall, I don’t think you want me to say, ‘Here, now, Edwin, there’s a good chap.’ Maybe you need to clarify what you mean by encourage him.”
No.
They didn’t have time. The constable would likely be here in forty-five minutes, and in any event, with the deliveryman coming at half past two… She had little more than half an hour to get whatever else he knew, if she wanted to have this story in the next paper.
“He’s scared as it is,” Mr. Clark told her curtly. “Frankly, I doubt he’s got the strength of mind to tell lies at the moment.”
She breathed out. “Maybe we need to jostle his memory. Isn’t there something you can do?”
“I don’t know nothing,” the arsonist put in, his voice a whine. “I’ve said it all, told all the details. It was a man from London who hired me, a big man. Bald head.”
She felt sick.