A Bit of Rough Read online

  The noise abruptly ceased.

  “Nothing, milord,” a gruff, Cockney-accented voice said. “If he’s hiding aught in here, me mum’s the queen.”

  A short silence intervened, during which Honora imagined the magistrate ground his teeth and muttered imprecations under his breath. “Very well, sergeant,” he said at last. “It appears you’ve slipped the chain again, Mr. Rickert. But I know you’re printing The Weekly Disciple and eventually, I’ll prove it and put you and Evangelista out of business once and for all.”

  The storeroom door slammed shut.

  Honora lifted her head from his chest and opened her eyes, though the second act was futile, since it remained as pitch black as ever. “I suppose we are safe,” she murmured, although she made no move to escape his embrace. She liked it too much.

  “On the contrary,” he said, his voice a gentle rumble, “I fear we are in greater danger than ever.”

  And then his mouth closed over hers.

  Chapter Two

  “The browner a man’s skin, the less inherent worth is imputed to him, and this is true even amongst the natives of this isle, for a pale complexion is prized as a sign of good breeding while a dark one is reviled as the mark the lowborn laborer.” – Luke Evangelista

  Lucas knew better. Kissing Miss Dicax was without a doubt the most reckless, most foolish, and most inappropriate thing he had ever done in his life. The fact that she clung to him in the dark was no excuse. Neither was his certainty that she was every bit as aroused by their proximity and the danger they had just weathered as he was. Those were reasons for being tempted, not justifications for succumbing.

  He would have stopped immediately had she offered the slightest resistance or even demonstrated indifference to his attentions. While he might not be a gentleman in the classic sense of the word, he would never force his attentions on an unwilling woman. But when his mouth touched hers, he met nothing but eagerness and invitation. Her lips were sweet and soft, and when he deepened the contact, she responded with the same ardor and intensity that characterized her writing. However precarious her position or dangerous the cause, this woman threw herself into the enterprise with reckless abandon.

  Her complete enthusiasm undid him. Desire surged through him, heating his blood and coiling in his loins like a loaded clock spring. Had he ever felt want like this? Yearning so bone-deep, it more resembled need.

  Why her? Why now?

  After all, he had no clear idea what she even looked like. He’d barely caught a glimpse of her features beneath the cap she’d pulled low over her brow. At best, he’d got a hint of a strong, square chin and a pert nose before Rickert had herded them into the chamber and closed the door.

  And it didn’t matter at all. She could be a veritable Medusa for all he cared. Here in the dark, he could explore her with senses far more trustworthy than mere sight. Since she was clothed in male garb, his eyes could not have recognized her supple, sumptuous figure, but he could certainly feel the lush swell of her breasts and the generous curves of her waist and hips as she pressed herself tight against him. The skin of her cheek, which he cradled in his calloused palm, was velvety smooth, and her lips were plump and pillowy. He’d noticed her orange-and-rosewater scent right away, but her taste—which he could now fully appreciate with his questing tongue—was every bit as intoxicating, like honey and cream and tart, fresh fruit. Nor could his eyes have appreciated the throaty hums of pleasure she made or the answering thunder of his pulse in his own ears.

  Gods, he could kiss her for days and never be satiated.

  She was a feast, and not just for his physical senses, but for his intellect as well, because this was a woman whose mind he knew nearly as well as his own. Never mind that they had never met in person, that he had no idea of her true name, or that he was certain, having heard her cultured accent, that she was a member of the upper classes he normally shunned. He had read every treatise she had ever written since she’d first deigned to publish her work in The Weekly Disciple and in nearly every particular, he agreed with her propositions, analyses, and conclusions. She was as close to a soul mate as a man could have, and so it seemed right and natural that he should kiss her, that he should desire her. That she should be his.

  In all honesty, he was not sure what would have happened next if he hadn’t heard the loud clunk that betokened someone releasing the latch to the hidden door. She must have heard it too, because they leapt apart simultaneously—or as far apart as they could within the boundaries of the chamber, which was not nearly far enough to compensate for how close he had been to doing something truly unforgivable.

  Light flooded the space, dazzling in comparison to total blackness, although in truth, it could not have been very bright at all. Lucas raised an arm to shield his eyes as the portal opened to the full, and Rickert said, “You can come out of there now, but you’ll both have to stay until closing time, which won’t be for several hours.”

  “Several hours?” Miss Dicax repeated, a quaver in her husky voice.

  Lucas wondered how much of that quaver was due to anxiety at the prospect of being unable to leave the print shop and how much to what had just transpired between them. He tried very hard to wish it was more the former than the latter, but he did not entirely succeed. Honesty compelled him to admit he hoped the kiss had devastated her as thoroughly as it had him.

  Dropping his arm and blinking, he found he could make out Rickert in silhouette, though his eyes had still not adjusted sufficiently to allow him to discern the man’s rough-hewn features. After stepping through the doorway, he started to turn to offer his hand to assist Miss Dicax to exit when it dawned upon him that, as far as the printer knew, she was a he. Lucas wasn’t sure which would be worse—for Rickert to realize she was no boy or to deduce what they had been up to while still misapprehending her sex—but he did not think either would be desirable.

  “I imagine the boy has other business to attend to,” he told Rickert gruffly. “Keeping him here much longer will undoubtedly have a negative effect on his daily wages.”

  The other man nodded. “I ken it’s not good for him, but Lord Hornsby believed we’d had someone in the shop besides my sons and me, which means he may have had someone watching the door before he and his ruffians showed up. That’s why they were so sure they had us.” Heading back to the storage room door, he added over his shoulder, “I’ve set the newspaper boys to keep watch for the rest of the day and warn us if we’re about to have another visit from the Peelers, but the only way I can think of to get you both out safely is to have you leave at closing time wearing my sons’ clothes and have them stay behind for a bit.”

  “But…” Miss Dicax protested, close enough behind him that Lucas knew she’d come out of their hiding place, “I can’t stay here all day.” In what he recognized as an effort to conceal both her sex and her social class, she spoke in a reasonable approximation of a London street accent and kept her voice in a low register. “Mr. Evangelista is right. I’ll be missing me work.”

  The three of them trooped out of the storage room and Rickert closed the door, though he left the secret door open, possibly in anticipation of the need to access the chamber in haste again.

  “I’m afraid it can’t be helped, lad. That is, unless you’d like to take your chances of being arrested and interrogated. Either way, I don’t think you’d be getting any more deliveries done today.”

  Damn it. Rickert was right, but that didn’t solve the problem for Miss Dicax. While Lucas didn’t know exactly who she was, he did know that an unmarried lady of quality could not go absent on her own for half a day without repercussions. If she’d truly been a messenger boy, he could at least have compensated her for the loss of a day’s wages. He could do nothing, however, that would compensate for the damage to her reputation and, possibly, the imposition of restrictions on her future freedom. While he was certain she was an adult, for she had been writing and publishing her work for more than six years now, he could n
ot imagine that she did not still live under her parents’ roof. Wealthy or aristocratic parents tended to take a dim view of their unmarried daughters gallivanting about the city for hours at a stretch without a chaperone.

  He could see no alternative to the one Rickert had proposed, however. Lucas just wished there was some way to protect Miss Dicax from the consequences. And that there was some way he could forget that damnably foolish kiss, which was going to haunt his dreams for quite some time to come.

  Rickert clearly knew a windfall when he encountered one, Lucas reflected. Having been forced to dismantle most of the typeset for the front page of this week’s issue of The Weekly Disciple, he now recognized that he had two additional pairs of hands for the remainder of the day. In exchange for their help in packaging and assembling the day’s books and periodicals for delivery, Rickert offered Lucas a ten percent discount on the printing of his own publication and Miss Dicax a threepence in wages.

  Fully cognizant as he was of her circumstances, Lucas had to turn away to cover his wry amusement when Rickert proposed the amount as if it were a king’s ransom, but Miss Dicax accepted the sum with great gravity and gratitude.

  Once they had been set to the task, Rickert wandered off to oversee the compositing and printing of The Weekly Disciple, an activity that produced sufficient noise to allow Lucas and Miss Dicax to converse without danger of being overheard. In point of fact, they nearly had to shout to hear one another when the press was running at full tilt.

  “I feel I must apologize—” he began.

  “Don’t,” she interrupted, and he got his first good look at her face, for she raised her head to meet his gaze directly.

  Gods help him, she could certainly turn a man to stone, but not because she was distasteful to look at. Quite the contrary. He would hazard a guess, in fact, that society must account her one of the most beautiful women of her generation. Oh, he supposed some might consider the squareness of her jawline a bit too hard or object that her lips were a bit too wide, but in his view, these made her features more attractive. More defined and more interesting. Her slender, elegant nose would not look out of place on a Greek statue of Aphrodite or Athena except that a few freckles dusted the bridge, suggesting she wasn’t entirely careful about keeping her face shielded from the sun.

  It was her eyes, however, that truly stunned him. Large and dark-lashed, they were an arresting shade of gray so pure that he would have called them polished silver if that had not seemed fanciful. And those metallic irises met his without embarrassment or modesty.

  The heat that had only recently vacated his body welled upward in his loins again, and he felt ashamed of himself. Hadn’t he just told himself her appearance was a matter of no consequence to him? Yet here he was, mooning over purely physical characteristics, which were hardly any measure of true desirability.

  “If you apologize for kissing me,” she said sternly, a hint of a smile playing upon her lush mouth, “I shall be quite put out.”

  To his chagrin, his cheeks heated with a blush. Despite his complexion, which was much darker than the typical Briton’s, he knew the rush of color would be evident to her. “I did think I ought to do that,” he admitted.

  “Then I beg you to stop.” She held up her hand to block his words. “Because if you do so, I will be obliged to pretend that I regret it, too, and I do not. On the contrary, I wish to thank you.”

  “Thank me?” he echoed, nonplussed.

  Her nod was firm and brisk. “Indeed. I found it quite educational.” After glancing toward the printing press to be certain they were not being listened in on, she lowered her voice and added, “Until today, I could not fathom why everyone makes such a fuss about such things. Now…” She shrugged. “Now I quite understand.” A sultry smile curved her lips and, gods help him, had they been alone, he would have kissed her again.

  Wrestling his frustrated lust under control, he said in a facsimile of his own voice, “Very well then, but I still must express my regret that you are trapped here for the remainder of the day. I sincerely hope that you do not suffer unduly for it.”

  Stacking several copies of Catherine Gore’s Pin Money in a box intended for the purpose, she frowned and shook her head. “Questions will be asked and recriminations delivered, but I am twenty-five years old and my parents are…” her lips compressed and twisted as she searched for the correct word, finally settling on, “…unorthodox in their attitudes. They won’t be happy that I was absent for the better part of a day, but my mother believes I should have the same freedoms as she allowed my older brothers at my age—with some exceptions related to safety, of course—and my father does his best not to contradict her, even when I suspect he would very much like to.”

  Lucas raised his eyebrows. Not just at her description of her parents but at the disclosure of her age. She was several years older than he had supposed—nearly his contemporary, in fact—and this took him aback. Most women married by the time they were twenty-one or twenty-two. To be honest, he could not quite credit that she would get off as lightly as she imagined, but he supposed she knew her family better than he did. Not for the first time, he wondered who that family was. But it would be improper—if not downright dangerous—to ask.

  He settled for saying, “Nevertheless, I feel obliged to point out that we have not yet slipped the noose. There is still some chance we will be caught, either because the constabulary makes a return visit or because the person they’ve set to watch the place does not believe we are James and George.” Placing several more copies of the Gale book alongside the others in the box, he grimaced and added, “I cannot help but believe your parents would be considerably more displeased if you were to be arrested. Are they… That is, do they know that you write such, er, scandalous content for periodicals which are not strictly legal?”

  “They know about some of my writings and therefore about some of my publications. I have more than one pseudonym.”

  “Indeed? How many?” This woman really was full of surprises.

  “Three,” she answered easily. “Although I stopped writing as Mary Weather some time ago.”

  Lucas couldn’t help himself; his eyes widened with astonishment. Mary Weather was the popular and acclaimed author of a dozen morality tales for children, all of which had been published between 1821 and 1828. Although he’d never read any of them, he’d heard them praised by people of all social classes, for the moral of the story was often that the character portrayed as a wealthy aristocrat was less trustworthy and ethical than the poor, downtrodden commoner.

  The first Mary Weather story had been enormously successful, printed and reprinted in multiple periodicals over the next several years and was, occasionally, reprinted even today. If she was twenty-five now, that meant the first had been published when she was only fifteen!

  Apparently unaware of his awestruck admiration, she went on, “Of the three, however, Polly Dicax is the only one they don’t know about it.” Shifting on the stool Rickert had provided, she sighed. “It would be difficult for my father to discover that I am she. He has several colleagues who consider her writings to be tantamount to treason, and while he has not precisely agreed with that assessment, he has taken the position that her opinions are sensational and not in the best interests of the crown.” She smiled, which was dazzling, and shrugged. “But his making that discovery was a risk I was willing to take when I decided to warn you all that the shop was about to be raided. I had the choice to walk by, but I did not, because whatever consequences may come my way, they will be insignificant compared to what you and Mr. Rickert would suffer.”

  Despite Lucas’s familiarity with her positions on everything from the legal standing of women to the treatment of the poor to the British Empire’s exploitation of foreign lands and peoples, he was still shaken by the realization that she had deliberately put herself at risk for the sake of virtual strangers. And not just any strangers, but people she must know were far beneath her on the social hierarchy: common
ers of modest means who toiled for a living. He ought to have expected it of her, of course, yet he found her willingness to make such a sacrifice breathtaking, for he had not realized until she’d mentioned it that she’d had a choice. As a man who fought his battles primarily through words, he believed the in the power of the pen as much as that of the sword, but he was also well aware that self-preservation often trumped even the most ardently held principles when actions were required.

  Polly Dicax had not shied from the sword. Indeed, she had placed her neck directly beneath it, knowing full well the risk she took.

  And gods help him, he admired her for it. In fact, he was very much afraid that “admiration” was far too cool a word for the emotion she aroused in him.

  Chapter Three

  “All inequity springs from a single source—the notion of birthright supremacy. Once a society has accepted this proposition as given, then all other accidents of birth allow people to find some innate quality upon which to lord it over their fellows, be it nationality, skin color, or sex.” – Polly Dicax

  By the time darkness began to gather outside the shop windows, Honora was exhausted. She had never performed so much physical labor in so short a period of time. After packing multiple boxes of books and periodicals for distribution, Rickert had enlisted her and Mr. Evangelista in the assembly and folding of all eight hundred copies of the newly printed issue of The Weekly Disciple.

  The paper consisted of three sheets, each of which was stacked separately on a single table, with the center sheet at one end and the front/back at the other. To compile a single copy, one began by nesting the center sheet inside the second, then the center and second into the third until all five were stacked together. These were then folded in half lengthwise and in thirds the other direction so as to fit inside a newspaper boy’s hip bag. The process was simple, but strenuous nonetheless, since it could not be accomplished without walking from one end of the table to the other, over and over again.