Chapter Two
Chapter
TWO
Portia’s tummy was doing somersaults as she walked across Pulteney Bridge toward the less-populated outskirts of Bath.
The bulk of her nerves were due to excitement at the new challenge ahead, but there was enough self-doubt and fear to make her question the unpopular and very hasty choice she had just made.
Because while her three best friends, Kitty, Lottie, and Georgie, had all wished her well on her adventure, they had also made no secret of the fact that they agreed wholeheartedly with Miss Prentice.
That it was rash to potentially throw away everything for an impassioned whim.
Aside from the fact that she didn’t have any clear idea what she was letting herself in for, giving up a well-paid position as a governess in Mayfair to become the temporary assistant editor of Equitas, the reforming periodical that Portia had written periodically for these past five years, was a huge and reckless gamble.
One that Miss P had urged her repeatedly to reconsider.
“Principles are all well and good, dearest,” she had said with a shake of her head, “but they do not pay the bills. And who is going to employ you here again in Mayfair when those principles are exposed?”
Miss P was right, of course.
Always a committed overachiever, Portia had worked hard since she had graduated Miss Prentice’s School for Young Ladies to excel as much as a governess as she had a political writer.
Furthermore, unlike Kitty and Lottie, who had frequently managed to get themselves dismissed, she had a largely unblemished record as a governess.
But that wouldn’t mean a thing if word of her involvement with this newspaper ever leaked out—which it doubtless would with her name printed in it weekly.
Thanks to a tumultuous few years, the government and the majority of the ton saw Equitas as the enemy.
An instrument of sedition and the mouthpiece of radical revolutionaries who wanted to crush the aristocracy and destroy the very fabric of British society.
At best, she would be branded a troublemaker of the highest order if her words and deeds caused the authorities consternation.
At worst, she would be tried as a criminal!
In the last five years alone, two of the newspaper’s former editors had been imprisoned.
One on trumped-up charges of treason, which had been quickly dropped, and the other for incitement to riot.
That the latest one of those, whom she was so hastily replacing, looked to be imminently sent to a penal colony in the New World was a cause of grave concern that she couldn’t ignore.
Nobody would employ a governess with a criminal record, and she sincerely doubted anyone would need one if she ended up transported to Botany Bay.
And if all that wasn’t gamble enough to make her question her snap decision to come here, as much as it galled her to admit it—even to herself—she also had to factor the problem of her sex into the equation.
Reformers liked to think of themselves as an egalitarian bunch; however, it was no coincidence that all the leaders of the movement were men, and men, as a general rule, tended to think of women as the weaker sex.
Portia had constantly been pushed to the rear as a result.
Relegated to creating pamphlets or writing other people’s speeches, rather than taking on the more important and influential role at the forefront of the movement that she craved.
It did not matter that she had a unique and convincing way with words, or that she was twice as clever and had worked twice as hard as any of the men she tirelessly campaigned beside at the United League for Reform’s headquarters—this was ultimately still a man’s world.
That she had been given the position at Equitas simply because her predecessor had just been arrested and was currently awaiting trial in a Bristol prison did not help her plight either.
Portia was the last-minute, make-do replacement while the men in charge waited either for the original candidate to be released or, if he was sent down, for a more suitable male replacement to be found.
Hence, they had been at great pains to caveat her position here at the newspaper as only “temporary.”
Yet despite those many obstacles, here she still was.
Because she felt in her gut that this was her chance to shine.
To make a real difference in the war for reform.
Because principles mattered.
The truth mattered.
The rights of men—and women—mattered.
Because she believed too passionately in the cause to not take this risk and because, even after she had debated all the pros and cons in a soul-searching essay to herself that had extended to ten whole pages, she had come to the irrefutable conclusion that this was the right thing to do.
She walked down to the quay and scanned the row of ramshackle buildings, comparing them to her instructions.
The office of Equitas wasn’t easy to spot, but then she discovered it was the shabbiest warehouse of the lot.
She wasn’t surprised by that. The United League for Reform ran on a shoestring and the newspaper had to move thrice since it had been forced out of London three years ago.
There weren’t many respectable landlords who would rent space to “trouble,” especially trouble that infuriated the government.
She wasn’t surprised to find the well-hidden door locked either, to keep trouble out, so she knocked and waited as excitement fizzed.
“Who is it?” The voice inside sounded wary.
She took a second to straighten her shoulders, pull herself to her full height, and enjoy the significance of this moment because it had been a long time coming.
“Miss Portia Kendall. Your new assistant editor.” An achievement she was beyond proud of, because now her words would travel the length and breadth of the country every single week—the assistant editor of Equitas always, always, always wrote the opinion piece that sat at the very top of the newspaper.
What sounded like twenty bolts shifted before the door was flung open to reveal a smiling man with thick spectacles and a mane of curling gray hair.
“You drew the short straw, did you? My condolences.” He beckoned her across the threshold.
“But you are very welcome nonetheless. For my sins, I am William Stowe.” He held out his hand and she smiled, a little in awe, as she shook it.
“Editor in chief of this scandalous and seditious rag.”
“I know who you are, Sir William. I’ve been reading your articles and essays for years.” Sir William Stowe was up there with Mary Wollstonecraft, as far as Portia was concerned, and one of the main reasons she had done everything in her power, including some unbecoming begging, to be here so fast.
Academic.
Lawyer.
Orator and writer extraordinaire. This eccentric-looking old man was an unwavering, unapologetic legend of the reform movement.
“And I didn’t draw the short straw, sir—I volunteered.
” The chance to work alongside one of her idols and soak up some of his genius, albeit temporarily, was too good an opportunity to miss.
“Ah … the folly of youth.” He chuckled as he bolted the door behind her.
“Did nobody ever tell you to never volunteer for anything as it is invariably a mistake that you will live to regret? I take it you are full of vim and vigor and principles and as keen to get cracking as I have been assured that you are?”
“Of course.”
“Excellent,” he said. “I am an admirer of your articles too, by the way. That one you wrote for us last month on the willful ignorance of the aristocracy to the plight of the poor on their doorsteps in the capital was eye-opening and very well researched. It certainly made me think.”
“Thank you, Sir William.” If she died and went to heaven right this second, she would go happily. Being praised for one of her essays by the great Sir William Stowe was a magnificent achievement in itself. She would have been cock-a-hoop with just the knowledge that he had read one!
“Call me William,” he said as he disappeared through another door, expecting her to follow.
“It’s only a matter of time before the powers that be take that silly knighthood away, and we don’t do airs and graces here at Equitas because we are all in this together.
” A throwaway comment that was music to her ears.
He was every bit as wonderful and egalitarian in person as he was in print.
A true man of the people. “Let me show you around.”
Portia followed him into the most disorganized shambles she had ever seen in her life.
She tried not to judge, but this was not how she pictured the flagship newspaper of the reform movement to look.
There were piles of discarded correspondence and books tossed hither and thither; stacks of paper lined the crumbling walls and blocked the gangways, the lack of order making her head spin.
The only area that wasn’t filled with clutter was occupied by a giant printing press that looked so old it might have come off the ark.
“This is where all the magic happens.” He swept his arm to encompass the chaos.
“My apologies for the mess, but we had to move premises in a bit of a hurry to thwart a raid last month after your predecessor—that idiot firebrand Reynolds—got himself arrested. Although I knew that was only a matter of time the first moment I met him.”
“Why?” Back in London, the recently imprisoned Matthew Reynolds was being heralded as a martyr to the cause. They were even going to send a brilliant but expensive London lawyer all the way to Bristol to defend him at his trial, so it was interesting that Sir William thought so ill of him.