Linda Needham (3 page)

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t get the chance.”

“You seemed to be finished with me, my lord, so I—”

“I’m not finished with you, Miss Finch.” The flick of his dark eyes set her heart loose of its orderly rhythms, made it skid around in her chest. “Not nearly finished.”

H
ollie swallowed hard, terrified that Everingham suddenly knew everything about her, that his favorite game was cat and mouse and she was now his plaything, to be tormented to her last breath.

She’d seen his powerfully rugged profile hundreds of times: that strong blade of a nose, the hard-edged jaw, the precision of his brow as he pinned a man with his glare. Sketches of his features had been printed often enough in
The Times
; in her father’s own newspaper, as well. Caricatures of the man, to be sure, etched into tin, inked, and then pressed by her own hand into the heavily taxed newsprint—but those caricatures hadn’t prepared her for the power of the man in the lifting shadows, and at this dizzyingly close range.

Nor had the years of secretly, shamelessly watching him from the press gallery in Parliament, listening to his imperious speeches and meticulously committing them to her notebook for her father’s newspaper, wondering all the while how he could be so compellingly thick-headed. But far more disturbing, wondering how the man could sometimes be so wise.

“We can be done with this quickly, Miss Finch.”

“Good, my lord, because I—”

“Where is he?”

“He?” Blast the man and his unbalancing questions, for the dizziness he caused as he closed in on her and the darkness in his eyes that left her senses reeling, left her searching for light, for the normal sense of things. “Where is who, my lord?”

“Your husband, madam,” he whispered, now just inches from her temple, his eyes starless midnight. “Where is he?”

“My
husband?
” Hollie nearly choked on the word, on the absurdity. On her relief at the earl’s poor sense of direction—away from her and onto some more capable man who existed only in Everingham’s misogynistic suspicions. But he’d managed to back her slowly against the round table heaped with all the evidence of her crime, the heat of him blending with her own, his scent becoming part of hers. “I don’t know what you mean, sir,” she said breathlessly. “I’m not married.”

That seemed to please him in some way, though he made a dark, disbelieving sound in his throat and lowered one of his tall, broad shoulders, bringing him closer to her ear. “Your father, then, Miss Finch. Tell me where he is, and I’ll go easily on him.”

“What do you mean, my father?”

“Sheltering a criminal is a crime in itself, Miss Finch, punishable by long years in prison. Protecting him will only gain you more trouble.”

The blackguard! She hadn’t been able to protect her father when he was alive, could only watch him fall under the yeoman’s blade and then hold him as he died.

It was too late to protect him; honoring him was all that was left to her life.

Tears stung her eyes, stuffed her chest and her throat, but she swallowed back the salty heat. She be damned if she’d cry in front of the earl, who was carefully watching her and waiting as a lion awaits his supper.

“My father is dead, my lord. Buried in the family crypt.”
And the fault belongs to you and men like you.
Her father’s death and so many others.

But saying that would give Everingham too much knowledge against her. He would surely understand her cause and her conspiracies, might sense the danger to him, the stakes in this dance of theirs.

Everingham stepped away slowly, the lamp
light striping his black hair with glints of brightness, his eyes narrowed and studying her. “When did your father die?”

The truth would lead to Peterloo and to her rabble-rousing, and then to her. “Several months back.”

“When exactly?”

“After Christmas.” Yes, that lie would do—unless he decided to poke around the parish records.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Finch. But I need to know the whereabouts of the man who calls himself Captain Spindleshanks.”

“I can’t help you.”
Won’t. Ever.

“He’s a danger to the peace of the country, an even greater danger to the people around him. You know the man. You must.”

“I haven’t the slightest idea which
man
you’re talking about, let alone where you might find him.” It was a simple falsehood, yet it rang in her heart like a pledge to her father. “Is he such a dangerous creature, my lord, to put the fear of God into a whole Parliament?”

Oh, what a blistering dunderhead she was, baiting the earl of Everingham! She prayed that he hadn’t noticed, that he’d been too busy loosening his neck cloth and his shirt collar, exposing the bronze imprint of the sun on his throat and the promise of hard muscles beneath the fine fabric.

But the gaze he lifted to her had a feral gleam,
as though he suddenly recognized the enemy and knew his plan would succeed.

“Tell me, Miss Finch, why did Summerwell find you sleeping above a print shop?”

Damn his blindsiding questions! She’d seen him bring down mighty lords and their unshakable opinions with his unexpected strategies. “He found me there, my lord, because that’s where I live.”

He studied her as he tossed the neck cloth across the back of a chair. “And
why
do you live above a print shop?”

“Why?” Dear God, the answer would give everything to him. There was a ragged-toothed trap behind each of his questions, and she couldn’t judge where to step next.

“Because the shop is mine.” It sounded like a question even to her own ears.

“Yours?” The beast laughed without a stitch of humor, plainly unbelieving that a woman could bear such a responsibility. “The truth, Miss Finch. Why were you sleeping in the print shop? At whose bidding?”

“At my own bidding, my lord, because the Tuppenny Press belongs to me, and I live there.” She inhaled the dangerous spice of him, and her courage came back again at full force, allowing her to glare up at him and all that tethered fury. “And now will you remove your medieval chains from my wrists and send me home? I have work to do that cannot wait.”

He raised her chin with his knuckle almost gently, as though he would kiss her when he finished. As though she wished for him to, yearned for it.

“I applaud your loyalty, madam, but it’s past time you stop your lying and tell me who you’re protecting. Who is Captain Spindleshanks, Miss Finch?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he worth that much to you, madam? A quick trial and a brutal prison term for aiding a criminal?” His heat billowed against her nightgown, seeped in through the seams where the breezes that roamed his cavernous house caught and swirled. She’d been standing blithely inside the circle of him to keep warm. Her skin had been pinched and dimpled from the cold, and now it seemed to crave him and his heat all the more when he walked a few steps away from her, though his gaze never wavered.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, my lord. The shop is mine. I’ve never heard of Colonel Whatever-His-Name-Is.”

“Is he your printer, Miss Finch?”

“My what?” That breeze slipped across the floor from the buffeting shadows, danced at her ankles again, and all the while Everingham stared at her.

“The man who operates the equipment. Does he work at night when you’re asleep or away?”

“
He
is
me
, sir. Hollie Finch.” She might well be signing her own death warrant by the admission.

“I am not only the publisher, but the printer, the compositor, and the charwoman, and everything else since my father died.”

“Are you?” His quietly rumbling doubt settled low in her belly, a disconcerting intimacy that softened her knees to putty and sped up her heart. “Then what is it that you print in your…little shop?”

Sedition, my wicked Lord Everingham.

“Why?” she asked, angry to her bones at his prejudice. Let the lout disbelieve her, dismiss her entirely. That’s where she would hide from his inquisition: deeply inside the truth. “What has my work to do with setting me free of these blasted shackles?”

“Answer my question.”

“I am innocent of anything you believe this Captain Spindleshanks has done.”

“Good, Miss Finch, then you’ll answer me truthfully.” He crossed his arms and leaned easily against the paper-cluttered table, a beast guarding his treasure trove of evidence. “What is the nature of your printing business?”

“I print the sort of things that any printer does, various jobs for various customers.”

“Jobs such as?”

“Sale notices for local merchants. Playbills for the touring shows when they come.”

“And…?”

“Announcements.”

“Of…?”

Secret trade union meetings.
“Births, deaths, market fairs, traveling minstrels.”

“What else?”

“Billheads and booklets and posters.” Hollie hadn’t blushed in years, had never suffered such a rush of breathless, unfocused heat. His studied silence disturbed her more than his insufferable questions. As though he were looking through her, leaving traces of himself, warm streaks of mystery and wanting. “Recipes and wallpaper patterns, a book of remedies, primers.”

“What else?”

Seditious handbills, likening you and your commission to a foul nest of vipers.

“Almanacs, of course, my lord. They are very popular.”

“With whom?”

“With ordinary people. Those of us who must live by the tide tables and planting days, and those who are interested in the chronology of the archbishops of Canterbury and how many square feet in a hectare.”

Hollie wanted to stop herself, but Everingham was the enemy, and she had a huge burning in her chest that needed airing. And his brow was cocked at a jaunty, arrogant angle.

“And your newspaper as well?”

“Yes. My printing press is busy constantly. Anything my customers want, because it’s my livelihood. Though I can’t imagine that you would understand the need to work for a living.”

“What I don’t understand, Miss Finch, is this: if you are truly the proprietor of the Tuppenny Press, a shop that obviously prints Captain Spindleshanks’s sedition by the bushel full, then how is it that you’ve never met the man?”

“I—” Oh, blast! She’d plowed headlong into his trap.

He leaned closer. “You what, Miss Finch?”

“Well, that is to say—” The tip of Everingham’s finger was fitted perfectly against her lips like a hot kiss, taking her breath as he pressed her back against the desk again.

“Enough, madam.” His words brushed at her temple, made her want to turn her mouth to catch them, to feel them against her cheek. “You’ve done a fine job protecting your captain; no man could ask for a more loyal champion. But it’s time you end this dangerous charade.”

“My lord, I—”

He shook his head, as he slid his fingers along her jaw and then through her hair until she was tilting her head back, exposing her throat, and the telling flush that was rising out of her bodice.

“You may not know Captain Spindleshanks beyond the profitable custom he brings in secret to your shop. He may pay you well for your silence. You may not even approve of his illegal activities. But it’s your press that prints his seditious tracts and your silence that is keeping the secret of his identity intact.”

She was skating on such thin and crackling ice.
And yet an idea was forming there, just beyond her reach. “But, sir, I don’t—”

He wound a lock of her hair around his massive hand. “Would your captain be as loyal to you, Miss Finch? This paragon of the people, this flawed hero of yours?”

She swallowed roughly and braved the man’s gaze, terrified by the foolish risk she was considering. “Loyalty, my lord, is a delicate thing.”

“Profoundly so, Miss Finch. The basis of trust. I’d consider my loyalty wisely, if I were you. Don’t be foolhardy enough to waste it on the unworthy. I’ll assure your captain that you were shackled against your will. That you struggled bravely to the bitter end, protecting his name and his cause. But that at the last, you realized that the right thing, the sane thing to do, was to reveal his whereabouts. Tell me his name, and you go free.”

His name. Her name. A phantom.

“Now, Miss Finch.” He braced his hands on the edge of the desk behind her and met her thighs with his own, all hard muscles and heat, his minty breath playing at the curls along her hairline, lifting them lightly in a growl. “You’ll tell me his name, else I’ll have you clapped in prison with the fleas and the rats.”

It was now or never.

“Oh!” Hollie whimpered for dramatic effect, drew back in abject horror, and cried out, “No! No, my lord! Not the rats, pleeeease!”

Looking surprised, Everingham let her up slightly, but his eyes were still narrowed and doubting, still testing. “That’s what prisons are all about, Miss Finch. Dripping walls and dark pits. Hunger and privation. And rats.”

“No!” Hollie hissed and clasped her shackled hands to her chest, hoping she wasn’t pouring it on a bit too thickly. “Not the rats, sir! Tell me you wouldn’t throw me into prison, my lord, just for being too loyal.”

Everingham blinked down at her, his brows winging suddenly toward his dark hair, a quirk to his fine mouth.

“Make no mistake, Miss Finch: I’ll see you locked inside the dankest and darkest prison possible, if it means finding Captain Spindleshanks.”

Hollie hauled her chained hands up to cover her eyes and gave a good, long wail. “I don’t know what to think anymore, sir, or what to do.”

“Just tell me the truth,” he said between his teeth.

“Oh, please, sir, don’t force me to do this! Not to…to…
him
.” Hollie peeked at Everingham through her fingers as she sobbed.

He was rubbing the knuckles of his fist along the hard-edged ridge of his jaw, as though he didn’t trust his sudden good fortune.

“Whom do you mean, Miss Finch?”

“I—I mean—”

A brother? No, she’d never betray a brother. Who else would he believe she’d protect with her
life? Someone she loved, adored. Someone she’d walk through fire to save.

Of course!

Her heart in her throat, Hollie dragged her hands away from her eyes, unexpected tears burning at the back of her nose, as though such a beloved man truly existed and that she was in terror of his life. “Promise me that you won’t hurt him if you find him, my lord.”