The Scoundrel and I - Katharine Ashe Page 0,1

clad in breeches that defined hard muscles, up a broad chest encased in an exceedingly fine coat, up a sparkling white cravat that caught the remnants of evening light—to a face suffused with arrogance.

Nothing came to her tongue. Nothing to her lips. Nothing even in her throat. Type glinted dully against the gray cobbles, her life in ruin beneath a horse’s giant shod hooves. And she could only stare mutely at its rider.

He had strong features, a straight-ish nose, a knick of a scar on his jaw, and raven hair curling beneath a silk hat. Clearly an aristocrat, and handsome as could be.

Elle did not care for aristocrats or handsomeness. She had learned the hard way that a man’s fortune and outer appearance meant nothing; only his character mattered.

“Speak, quickly,” he demanded. “Are you injured?” His eyes were vibrant blue, rimmed with pitch-black lashes, and brimming with impatience. Impatience. As though she had inconvenienced him by getting knocked aside by his horse.

Sickness crawled up her throat. To be ruined by this—this sort of man—it was too horrible.

She could not speak. She shook her head.

With a last penetrating stare, he wheeled his giant mount about and spurred it away. The clattering hooves faded, the street again fell into quiet, and Elle stood amidst her ruination and could not summon even a single sob.

~o0o~

Elle opened the door to her flat with the key hidden under the mat that allowed the grocer’s boy to deliver food and the kind young curate from the charity church to visit. It was a poor hiding place, but she and her grandmother had nothing to steal anyway.

Filling her nose with air scented by the tea and toast that she had made for her grandmother before departing for work that morning, she laid an apron on the table and ladled type onto it from her pockets. Gram had not left her bedchamber in nearly two months. She would not discover this evidence of Elle’s foolishness, this disaster that would lead to her termination at Brittle & Sons. Gram would have no reason to worry.

Swiftly she prepared a bowl of porridge and a pot of tea, then carried them in to the bedchamber.

Wrapped in shawls, with a cap over her gray curls, her grandmother slept in the rocking chair. When Elle’s foot depressed the creaking board at the doorway, Gram’s eyes opened and a smile stirred her lips.

“Reverend Curtis must have visited today. You are wearing your Sunday shawl.” Elle set down the tray. “How did he find you?”

“Dancing . . . on the table,” her grandmother rasped, but the shadow of a smile remained. “Have you brought it?”

“As promised, her latest!” Elle reached into her pocket and withdrew a folded sheet of paper. “Charlie made the print before he left for Bristol this morning, so that I can correct it while they are gone.” Unfolding the sheet with a crinkle, she opened it across her lap. “But first you must eat.”

“Mr. Curtis brought a meat pie.”

“A meat pie?” Impossible. She’d taken no more than porridge and toast for weeks.

With a tiny jerk of her chin, Gram gestured to the broadsheet on Elle’s knees.

“All right. But after I read, you will eat this porridge.” But she knew Gram would not eat it. It would instead become her own dinner, if she could force it into her sick stomach. She smoothed out the creases of the next publication of England’s most popular and controversial pamphleteer, Lady Justice.

A reformist in the style of revolutionary Frenchwomen of a generation earlier, Lady Justice wrote scathing condemnations of everything worth condemning in Britain: elitist snobbery, wastes of government funds, inhumane labor conditions, the suffering of war veterans and orphans, and anything else that required fixing in England. Elle proof-corrected the pages of Lady Justice’s pamphlets that Brittle & Sons published, then secretly carried home the discarded prints and read them aloud to her grandmother. Gram said Lady Justice’s spirit reminded her of America, her home for thirty years, and got misty-eyed with happy remembrance.

But mostly Elle and her grandmother enjoyed Lady Justice’s passionate public correspondence with “Peregrine,” the head of a highly elite gentleman’s club that Lady Justice had vowed to destroy.

“The nemeses are full of scorn for each other this week, as always,” Elle said, then read aloud.

Fellow Citizens of Britain,

See how the Head Bird Man imagines he is diving for the kill, while his attack amounts to a mere fluffing of feathers. I offer to you his latest letter to me here