Page 2 of A Baron's Scandalous Quill
“Come on, let’s see it then.” Charlotte halted at the far end of the print house. Across the room, the metal letters were clacking out early drafts of theSanders’ Periodical, which had been running nearly twenty years now, ever since Charlotte was born, and her father knew he had to do something to bring in more money for the family.
“Here it is.” Becca reached for the papers in her reticule and handed them over.
“You been runnin’ again?” Charlotte asked, taking the papers but keeping her eyes on Becca.
“Perhaps.” Becca smiled, prompting Charlotte to laugh before she finally looked at the papers.
“What’s this article about? Ah, Covent Garden! Your favorite subject.” She giggled as she read the caricature-like descriptions of the ladies in the teahouse, talking loudly and flitting their heads back and forth like birds twittering, an illusion only helped by stuffing their updos with feathers.
“Yes, my favorite subject,” Becca whispered, chewing her lip. As she waited for Charlotte to read the article, she turned this thought over in her mind. She longed to know more about theton,to see what the world was truly like from within it. “I just feel as if when I am looking at the members of theton,I am like a child with their nose pressed against the window of a confectioner’s. I’m always looking in.”
“You want to be a part of theton? Pah!” Charlotte laughed and sat down on some of the machinery, hopping up onto a level so that she was at Becca’s height. Becca, unusually tall, often towered over Charlotte unless she found some sort of platform to stand or sit on.
“No, no. Who would want to be a part of that?” Becca wrinkled her nose. “No, thank you. I hardly wish to be that proud.”
“Not all of them can be proud.”
Becca raised her eyebrows. She was not so convinced. As much as she was fascinated by their world, she had not had much experience with theton.What experience she did have persuaded her that there was quite a lot to be desired in some of their company.
Her own father, a lawyer and businessman, had talked frequently of how his business affairs had been affected by the pride of gentlemen in theton.More than once had he beencheated out of payment, for some gentlemen knew that to get ahead in life, they had to avoid paying their bills.
These days, her father preferred to work with the lower classes. He didn’t earn a lot of money, but he got satisfaction in working for men who deserved a lawyer defending their causes.
“Well, it’s brilliant,” Charlotte declared, “as it usually is.” She rang a bell nearby, and a young boy came running in. He could be no more than thirteen years old, yet he was already hard at work in the print house, with as much ink across his face and hands as Charlotte bore. “Take this to my mother and father, would you, Skip?”
“Yes, Miss Charlotte.” Skip nodded and took the papers, running off again. His small height meant he could squeeze through the tall machinery with ease, disappearing fast through the smoke that grew out of the fires across the room.
“Why are you so fascinated with thetonanyway?” Charlotte asked as she hopped off the machinery and beckoned Becca to follow her. They rounded some of the printers with difficulty, squeezing themselves into the small gaps which Skip had darted through with ease. “They’re probably just like us, aren’t they?”
“Are they?” Becca wasn’t so sure. “You’ve read the scandal sheets that get printed about theton.They seem to find mischief and gossip in the smallest number of indiscretions. We don’t seem to bother with such things.”
“No?” Charlotte stopped walking, turning to look back at her with raised eyebrows. “Do I need to remind you of what happened when you first started writin’?”
Becca didn’t answer but stood there fidgeting with her reticule, fiddling with the broken metal clasp. She remembered well enough the furor that had ensued when she had written a piece in her own name. Even her father was targeted by people in the streets who thought it an ill thing for the daughter of a lawyer and a woman who had been practically a beggar to start writing as if she were an educated gentleman.
“Well, I sorted that, didn’t I?” Becca reminded her friend. “Only you and your family know who I am now.”
“Oh yes,” a voice called from across the print house, his deep voice competing with the machinery. “I see we have Mr. Reginald Baxter in our midst.” One of Charlotte’s elder brothers, Jarvis, walked toward them, struggling even more than they had done to move around the machinery. He used the pseudonym with which she wrote all her articles in their periodical. “You told her yet?” he asked, nudging his sister with his elbow.
“Not yet,” Charlotte mumbled, looking at him with narrowed eyes. “I was buildin’ up to it.”
“Tell her. It means lots of money.”
“I will.” Charlotte snatched the envelope from him and waved him away with a flick of her hand. He chuckled and left, following the path Skip had taken through the room, though he clambered over the machinery in order to do so.
“What’s going on?” Becca asked, eying the envelope that Charlotte now turned back and forth in her grasp.
“It’s hard to explain. Even harder to shout over all this noise.” She looked angrily at the other end of the room as Skip and Jarvis started to line up the letters to print Becca’s article. “Follow me.”
Charlotte backed up and headed for a door in the side of the room. She burst through it quickly, with Becca following behind her. In this room sat another of Charlotte’s brothers. The youngest of the lot, and not much older than Skip; he was cleaning out old print letters by the fireplace, sitting on the stone hearth as they had no rug. He looked up tiredly at their entrance, yawning widely.
“Make yourself scarce, Bernie,” Charlotte said to him, flicking her fingers back to the door.
“You think we don’t know what you’re goin’ to be talkin’ about?” Bernie laughed, standing and collecting the metal letters together. “It’s about that fine man, isn’t it? The one wearing the nice suit and carrying the stick. Looked like an illusionist.”
“He was not an illusionist.” Charlotte waved him away again.
“Hmm. There’ll be an argument about this.” He left, casting a clearly wary glance back in Becca’s direction.
