The Suffragette Scandal (The Brothers Sinister) (10 page)

God, she’d forgotten how utterly outrageous he was. Time to wrestle this conversation back under her control. “Mr. Clark,” she said as sternly as she could manage, “never tell me that you’re doing
that
again.”

“Which of my myriad flaws is making you uneasy, Miss Marshall?” He gave her a long, slow smile. “Is it my arrogant conceit or my wicked sense of humor?”

“Neither,” Free answered. “I rather like both of those. It’s just that you’re trying to use my attraction to you to set me on edge.” She smiled at him. “It won’t work. I’ve been attracted to you since the moment I laid eyes on you, and it hasn’t made me stupid once.”

He froze, his hand on the edge of her desk.

“Did you expect me to deny it?” Free shrugged as complacently as she could. “You should read more of my newspaper. I published an excellent essay by Josephine Butler on this very subject. Men use sexuality as a tool to shut up women. We are not allowed to speak on matters that touch on sexual intercourse—even if they concern our own bodies and our own freedom—for fear of being labeled indelicate. Any time a man wishes to scare a woman into submission, he need only add the question of sexual attraction, leaving the virtuous woman with no choice but to blush and fall silent. You should know, Mr. Clark, that I don’t intend to fall silent. I have already been labeled indelicate; there is nothing you can add to that chorus.”

His mouth had dropped open on
sexuality
; it opened wider on
intercourse,
and wider still on
attraction.

“I’ve found,” Free said, “although Mrs. Butler would hardly agree, that the best way to deal with the tactic is to speak of sexual attraction in terms of clear, unquestionable facts. The same men who try to make me feel uneasy by hinting at an attraction can never live up to their own innuendos. Once I show that I will not be cowed, that facts are facts and I will not hide from them,
they’re
always the ones who blush and fall silent.”

“I’ve mentioned before that I’m not like the rest of them.” He shifted on her desk, turning to face her. “I have only fallen silent because listening to you admit an attraction to me is far more pleasant than speaking myself.” He gestured. “Please continue on. What else do you like about me?”

There was something about him that made her feel daring.

“Alas,” Free said briskly. “There’s nothing more. I’ve run through all the praise I can muster. You have an admittedly splendid physique, but it is unfortunately wasted on a man burdened with your abysmal personality.”

He laughed at that. “Brava, Miss Marshall. That
is
my besetting sin, is it not?”

He was the only man she’d ever met who was stymied by compliments and yet accepted her worst insults as his due.

“So you see,” Free said, “we’re all better off if we can just admit these things without putting too much significance on the matter. Let’s skip that rigmarole and get down to business. Why are you here, Mr. Clark?”

“Does anyone
ever
get the best of you?”

“Yes,” she returned, “but only when I choose to give it to them.”

“Ah.”

“Now, tell me, Mr. Clark. Did you come here to allow me the chance to once again demonstrate my intellectual superiority, or did you have some actual business?”

“You don’t need to demonstrate your superiority to me. I take it as a given on all fronts.” He reached into his coat, removed a notebook, and began to flip through it.

He
was
arrogant. And conceited. And yet… He had never denied her credit for any thought she’d had. It was hard to remind herself that she didn’t dare like him.

He creased the spine of his notebook. “I’ve not been idle these last weeks. I’ve been doing some work on your behalf. Here we are. I introduced myself to Mr. Calledon, owner of the
Portsmouth Herald,
and asked him how he came to write that extraordinary column mirroring yours.”

“And he simply told you?”

“After that glowing letter of reference I gave him from his former mentor at the
London Times?
Of course he did, Miss Marshall. He practically fell over himself to do so.”

Free raised an eyebrow. “Somehow, I suspect that his former mentor wrote no such letter.”

He winked at her. “And yet if you showed it to him, he’d find the writing so achingly familiar that he’d be hard-pressed to disavow it. I
am
good.”

“Bad,” she corrected. “We might recall, from time to time, that forgery is generally not accounted
good.”

His smile widened. “Then I am excellent at being bad. In any event, Calledon admitted that he had been paid a sum to run the article. The text was provided by a solicitor shortly before press time. I even managed to obtain this.”

He took a folded piece of paper from his notebook and set it before her.

She unfolded it. It was a typewritten page containing the text of an article. Free recognized it as her own. A handwritten note atop offered it with the sender’s compliments.

Free narrowed her eyes. “Is that real?”

He shrugged. “Real enough that the participants themselves wouldn’t know the difference. With this in hand, we could, ah…
convince
Calledon to publicly admit that he’d copied you. Surely you can see the benefit in that. But then, perhaps you’re too
good
to put pressure on others.”

“Mr. Clark.” Free almost wanted to laugh. “Do you suppose I had myself committed to a hospital for prostitutes afflicted with venereal disease by telling everyone the truth all the time? Sometimes, the truth needs a little assistance.”

He smiled in satisfaction. “Precisely. No wonder we get along so well, Miss Marshall.”

“So is that what you’ve been doing all this time?”

He flipped the page back. “You must think me the most inefficient fellow. Here’s Lorring of the
Charingford Times.
” He held up another bit of paper. “Chandley of the
Manchester Star.
” Yet another note. “Peters from the
Edinburgh Review.
Have I impressed you yet, Miss Marshall? I may have an abysmal personality, but I do have my advantages.”

“I’ll grant you that.” She leaned forward, thinking about those bits of paper he’d showed her. She could use them—but at this point, nobody had yet noticed the duplications. Was it better to point them out herself and thus forestall the inevitable story? If she did, she might lose all chance at catching her enemy publicly. And without proof of a motive, the copying might seem a mere childish prank.

That was when she caught a glimpse of Mr. Clark’s notebook. She had expected a few notes, perhaps a page in some scrawled code that only he could unravel.

But she saw nothing like that.

She reached over the table and plucked the book from his hands.

“What are you doing?” he growled.

There were no words at all in his notebook—just a simple drawing of a bearded man in an office. “That is exactly Peters from the
Review,”
she breathed.

“Yes.” His hands twitched. “I make sketches. It helps my memory.”

“You’re good.” Free turned the page. There was a penciled drawing of a café in Edinburgh, gray clouds threatening overhead.

“Of course I’m good,” he told her. “I’m excellent. I should think you would have noticed by now. Might I have that back, or are you not done violating my privacy yet?”

“When you put it that way, then… No. I am not finished. Ah, here’s Chandley.” She smiled. “Oh, you got his mustache just right.” She flipped the next page. “And here’s a train car.” She flipped it again and then stopped. The next page was
her
—a pencil sketch of her standing on a stool, wearing one of her favorite walking gowns, and leaning forward.

She swallowed. “Right. This.” She flipped the page again.

But that was her, too, head bent over her metal type, her fingers closing around an exclamation point. The next was her gesturing at some unknown person, smiling. And the next was her, too.

He reached forward and smoothly took the notebook from her. “I had to keep sketching you,” he told her, his tone mild. “I never could get any of them to look right, and I do hate failing at any endeavor.”

Her mouth was dry. “On the contrary.” She did her best not to sound shaken. “They seemed…very well done, to my eye.”

“Yes.” His mouth twitched up. “Of course they are. I am something of a genius, after all. Likely the only reason I found the drawings inadequate is the sexual attraction.”

She felt her stomach twist. His eyes met hers, held them for far too long. But no, she wasn’t looking away.

“It’s rather more difficult for me to grapple with than it is for you,” he said politely, almost courteously. “You see, you
don’t
have an abysmal personality.”

She’d heard the expression
playing with fire
before. She’d never before been tempted to employ the expression. Fire was a dangerous enough tool; any reasonable person kept it safely locked away when they could. But this was a heat she could enjoy.

She had to say something, anything, to bring back that necessary distance between them. It was a game between them, nothing more. She’d challenged him, and naturally he’d responded.

“You’re right,” she heard herself say. “That must be difficult for you. I’m pretty brilliant myself.”

“I had noticed. You’re both pretty and brilliant.”

She shook her head, clearing away all that heat. “All of this is why we need more proof.” She let out a breath. “We need to embarrass Delacey. Publicly. And to do that, we need to demonstrate conclusively that he has been deliberately trying to discredit me for his own purposes.”

He didn’t argue. He simply nodded. Free could get used to the notion of having a scoundrel to help out around here.

“And luckily for us,” she said, “I know just how to do that.”

I
T WAS THREE IN THE MORNING
by the time Free cut the last sheet off the press. The pages were still wet, and the ink that had been transferred to them was still susceptible to smearing. She handed the paper to Alice, who took it from her and hung it up to dry. Behind her, Mr. Clark unlatched the drum that held the type. He’d remained behind, lifting and carrying without complaint. He set the drum to the side, removed the roll of heavy paper from the press, and hung it over the trough to drip dry.

“They’re going to be shipped still damp,” Alice warned.

There was nothing Free could do about that. So the sheets would be a little wrinkled on arrival. It didn’t matter.

“Go home,” Free said wearily, letting her head sink into her hands. “Go home and go to sleep. We’ve still to produce the paper itself tomorrow.” After that, it would be Sunday and they could all sleep.

She’d never thought her twenty-six years made her old, but she felt old now. Five years ago, she’d thought nothing of staying up till all hours, talking with her fellow students about anything. But if she wanted to figure out how Delacey was obtaining her advance proofs, first she had to figure out which one of them was going awry. They’d taken to burning the sheets that Free and Amanda marked up, but Free had been in the habit of printing off a few extras, sending out early copies to friends and family.

Only one way to know which was going astray—and that was to send out three different proofs to the people who received them. She’d made small changes only—a misspelled word in one, transposed sentences in another.

Still, making those false proofs—setting up the machinery for each one—had been exhausting.

“Thank you all,” she finished with a yawn.

“It’s our press, too,” Alice told her.

Free felt her cousin’s hand on her shoulder, a brief touch. She reached up blindly and held it for a moment.

“I’ll go home soon,” she said. “I’ll just wait for the sheets to dry a little, and then pack them up for the mails. I can rest my eyes here.”

Alice and her husband lived in the attached building behind the press. Alice usually supervised the running of the press at night; she was never asleep when the press was running. That also meant she was near enough that Free could call out if anything went wrong. The errand boy would come by in half an hour for the mails, which he’d cycle down to the train for later delivery. She buried her head in her arms, almost drifting off. She could hear the others gathering their things, feet shuffling against the floor. Then a cool draft of night air came as the door opened, cutting through the humid steam let off by the press’s engine.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Free said. “Leave the door open.”

They must have done so, because that lovely breeze kept on.

She dozed off—her thoughts became blurry and indistinct—but not for long. Slowly, she came back to consciousness, remembered why she was still here. She opened her eyes.

But she was not in an empty room. Sitting some three feet away from her was Edward Clark. She blinked, but the image of him didn’t alter.

“Why are you still here?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t think it was right to leave you alone, asleep, in the middle of the night with the door open.”