The Scoundrel and I: A Novella

The Scoundrel & I

A Novella

Katharine Ashe

www.katharineashe.com

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To the Princesses ~

Every author should be so blessed.

With all of my love.

Summer 1821

Brittle & Sons, Printers

London

Sometimes an honest, affectionate girl is born into misfortune but, by the grace of God or Luck or Fate, eventually finds her way out of those sorry circumstances to live happily ever after.

Gabrielle Flood was not, unfortunately, one of those girls.

Which was the reason that at the age of twenty-six, despite a heart inclined to optimism and a character inclined to hard work, Elle decided once and for all there was no God in heaven, and no Luck but bad luck. As for Fate,
if
it existed, it was only the sort with one grotesque eyeball shared by three old crones and a pair of sharp, cutting shears, as she had read about in a book of ancient mythology: the merciless sort.

And so, as summertime shadows lengthened across the press room of Brittle & Sons, Printers, Elle committed her first crime ever.

Not
crime,
really. Not precisely. Rather,
misdeed
. She was only borrowing the printing type, not stealing it.

Of course if despicable, vindictive Jo Junior discovered it, he would claim she had stolen it, even if Mr. Brittle Senior and Charlie believed her story. But she and Charlie had been on the outs since she had asked his father to increase her weekly wages—unsuccessfully. Poor Charlie, he was as timid as a church mouse.

Josiah Brittle Junior was another sort of man altogether. He would have her thrown in prison for this.

But he would never learn of it. The Brittle family had gone to Bristol on holiday for a fortnight. Declaring a holiday for the clerk and pressmen as well, Mr. Brittle had left Elle to work alone. The shop was essentially closed, after all; they never allowed her to carry on business in their absence. “Girls don’t have the head for it, Gabby,” Jo Junior always said with a smirk. She would not have another chance like this until Christmas. And time had abruptly become of the essence.

Unlocking the wedges and quoins that held the hundreds of pieces of type tightly together in the frame, she hefted the chase from the press. It was not an entire broadsheet; she could not possibly carry a chase of that size the three blocks to her flat. It was only the text portion of Lady Justice’s latest pamphlet, and this one happened to be brief. The remainder of the sheet would be advertisements. Setting down the heavy frame on a square of felt, she wrapped it carefully and tucked the edges of the felt into firm corners. At home, her grandmother would open the cloth, touch the type, and her face would shine.

It was all Elle could do for her now.

Each evening after the shops on Gracechurch Street closed, the byway swiftly emptied of traffic except for patrons of the King’s Barrel. Elle’s friends who worked at other shops had already gone home. Like Jo Junior, they would not understand her actions now. No one but Gram would.

Taking up her swaddled treasure, she locked the shop door behind her and started toward home. Keeping close to the buildings and making every step with great care, she passed into the alleyway that led to another alley, and then to her building.

When the horse barreled around the corner, Elle had the fleeting thought that she should have heard it coming.

Flinging herself backward as a scream tore from her throat, she flattened against the wall, slammed her elbow into a protruding brick, and dropped her bundle.

Dropped.

Hurled.

Flung
.

She saw it all as though it were happening in a nightmare. The corners of the felt tore loose, the fabric fluttered open, the chase struck the cobbles, snapped, and broke, and hundreds of little pieces of iron cascaded across the alleyway. Blinking into the dusk in shock and horror, she saw the grate of a drain not a yard away. A piece of type teetered on one metal slat.

“No,” she whispered.
“No.”

She could not move. Could not say another word. Could not make muscles function in her body or coherent thoughts form in her mind.

Heavy hooves clattered on the cobblestones. They came closer. Then closer. Then the horse was before her, a huge, dark beast clomping all over Brittle & Son’s best broadsheet type.

“No!” she cried, her lungs stuck to her spine. “No! Oh,
no
!”

“You there,” boomed a voice above the clomping. “Are you injured?” Clear, strong, and utterly confident, the voice did not ask. It commanded.

It shocked her out of paralysis.

Her gaze slid up—up the horse’s powerful legs, up a shining black boot, up a thigh 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 in full. (As we have long known, he is as Eloquent as he is Wise, Good, and Useful to Society, which is to say not at all.)

Dearest Lady,

In your latest screed you call for Parliament to ensure women’s rights, yet you are going about it all wrong. In the time-honored tradition of the feminine sex, you would be more likely to succeed in obtaining your desires if you flirted, cajoled, and petted. Instead you complain, insult, and demand. A man likes above all else a sweet tongue and a soft caress. Offer those and half the men in Government will be yours for the taking.

In guarded admiration,

Peregrine

Secretary, The Falcon Club

Fellow Citizens, if by “complain” he means that I make plain the inequities between men and women, and between rich and poor in this society; if by “insult” he means that I reveal the gross imbalance of power; and if by “demand” he means that I cry out for justice, he is speaking with more Sound Truth than ever before. Alas, he does not mean any of that. Full of masculine conceit, in order to coax me into softness he employs the very tactics he attributes to women: flirtation, cajolery, and caresses. In recommending that I behave with greater attention to my femininity, he himself practices feminine wiles.

I will not be enticed.

Mr. Peregrine, beware. For someday women will enjoy equal rights to men. On that day your arrogance will be stripped naked, your flatteries bared, and you will be forced to meet me eye to eye. When that day comes, pray that you remember how to be a Man.

— Lady Justice

Her grandmother’s eyes were twinkling brighter than they had in weeks.

“Sweet tongue and . . .” Gram drew a rattling breath. “Soft caress?”

“Yours for the taking?” Elle said.

“Stripped . . . naked?”

“And
bared
. Can you believe it?” Elle clapped her hands onto the page. “Oh, Gram, they are positively besotted with each other!”

“How wonderful it is . . . to hear you laugh, Gabrielle. I feared . . . that I might never hear that sound again.”

Elle dropped the pamphlet and grasped her grandmother’s fragile hand.

“You mustn’t say that, dear. You will be well soon enough.”

“I worry . . .” Her grandmother’s shallow breath did not even stir the coverlet over her chest. “That you will be alone.”

“I am not alone. I have you. And Mineola and Adela and Esme, of course.”

“You have closed off your heart,” her grandmother whispered. Her energy was already gone, even after so few minutes awake, and Elle’s heart did not feel closed off at all. It hurt beyond endurance. “Your mother . . . would not have wanted this.”

“My mother’s heart was far too open to men of poor character.” And Elle had followed naïvely in those footsteps. Now she knew better.

Her grandmother gave no response.

Elle sat with her until she slept deeply, the pleasure she had taken in Lady Justice and Peregrine’s latest brawl slipping swiftly away. The curate, Mr. Curtis, had confirmed her fears: her grandmother’s remaining days were few. And the gift she longed to give her—to run her frail fingertips across the type, to feel the words and pluck out the mistakes as she had done in the governor of Virginia’s workshop for years—was not to be. Tears welled in Elle’s throat, but her eyes remained dry. She never wept. Ever. Not when her mother died, or her grandfather, or when horrid Jo Junior had played her for a fool and broken her heart.

Panic crawled up the back of her neck. She would not despair now, nor weep. Instead, tomorrow before the shops opened she would return to the alley and search until she found every last piece of type. Then she would repair the chase, reset the type, and bring it home for her grandmother to touch—this time successfully.

No heedless, arrogant scoundrel would ever ruin her again.