“Then it must be the proofs.” Alice shrugged. “If that’s the only option.”
Alice Halifax was Free’s cousin through her father. Her family had grown up mining coal until the mine’s production faltered. In the panic of ’73, she and her husband had fallen on even harder times. Free had known Alice only dimly at the time of the panic, but she’d needed someone to help out, and so she’d asked. It was the best decision she could have made. Alice was straightforward and direct, telling Free and Amanda when the paper went astray, when they were too theoretical. She also told them when they were condescending to women who knew the confines of their station better than they did. She grounded the entire paper. If Alice thought this would make trouble, this would undoubtedly make trouble.
Free sighed. “You are no doubt right, Alice. If you say it must be the proofs, it must be the proofs.” She put her head in her hands. “But I don’t want it to be the proofs.” If that was the case, secrets weren’t being sold by some stranger going through her rubbish.
Alice shrugged, unmoved. “You don’t get to be stubborn about this, Free. Reality is what it is.”
Amanda, who had been sitting at Free’s left, was more gentle. “It’s likely not what you’re imagining,” she said. “You’re supposing that Aunt Violet or one of the other people we send complimentary proofs to is chuckling evilly while she hands them off to your enemies. But just think rationally. It’s much more likely to be a servant filching the household papers.”
Free let out a long breath. Amanda was right, and it was a calming thought. But then Amanda always was a calming influence. They’d met almost a decade before, when Amanda’s Aunt Violet—Violet Malheur now, the former Countess of Cambury, and a brilliant, successful woman—had announced a series of scientific discoveries, upsetting all of England in the best way possible. Amanda had attended Girton a year behind Free. After years of being friends, it had seemed easy to ask Amanda to join her when she started her newspaper. Now Amanda reported on various Acts of Parliament. She spent half her time in London, taking notes in the Ladies’ Gallery.
When she was here, though, she and Amanda shared this house and a charwoman. The land they had built the house on—leased for as many years as Free had been able to get—had once been a cow pasture on the edge of Cambridge. The space also housed the building where her press stood, some fifty feet away. That way, when the press was running late at night, they’d not be bothered by the noise. Her dwelling was scarcely a cottage—three small rooms—but she felt secure here, surrounded by her friends.
She shook her head. “Then we’ll figure out who is doing it, and we’ll stop them.” She hesitated. “In fact… Along those lines, do you recall the man who was here the other day?”
“Mr. Clark.” Amanda frowned. “Is that right? Is he advertising with us?”
“Yes. Well.” Free grimaced. “He wasn’t really here about advertising.”
“What a shame. With Gillam’s pulling out—”
“He was here because he claims that the Honorable James Delacey”—Free gave the word Honorable a sarcastic twist as she spoke—“is behind the copying. I’m not sure we can trust Mr. Clark. In fact, I’m certain we can’t. But he may be telling the truth about that.”
She spilled the whole story. Almost the whole story. She left off mention of the blackmail and the forgery. She also—somehow—didn’t mention the compliments he’d given her or the solid feel of Mr. Clark’s hands on her waist as he’d boosted her to the window.
Amanda listened with increasing disapproval. “Free,” she finally interrupted, “whatever were you thinking? Going off alone at night with a strange man? What if—”
“She’s taken bigger risks,” Alice said with less rancor.
“I told Mrs. Simms where I would be,” Free said. “I left a letter, so if anything happened to me—”
“Oh, good.” Amanda rolled her eyes. “If my best friend had been killed, I could have avenged her death. What a comfort that would be! You have to be more careful, Free. I’ve seen some of the letters sent to you. There was that incident two years ago with the lantern, and just three weeks ago, those letters painted on our door in the dead of night.”
“Well, nothing happened.” Free looked away. “As Alice says, I’ve done more dangerous things for a story. If I went into hiding just because people sent me vile threats, I’d spend my entire life cowering beneath a blanket.”
“Oh, don’t do this.” Amanda huffed. “There’s a massive difference between hiding beneath a blanket and slipping out at night with a man you just met. I don’t care how sterling his credentials were.”
“Oh, they weren’t sterling at all,” Free said. “I’d never have trusted him if they were. They were more like tarnished brass, and we laughed at them together.”