Chapter Seven
Chapter
SEVEN
Portia had worked for the duke for almost a week before she had her first day off.
She had insisted on every Sunday when she had taken the job because that would always coincide with Equitas going to print.
To say that she was looking forward to a whole day of not supervising his spoiled sisters was the understatement of the century.
They had proved to be every bit as rebellious and reckless as he had promised.
Every day so far without fail, they had found some way to punish her for being their supposed “jailer.” Whether that be trying to slip away unnoticed, which they hadn’t managed to do for more than a couple of tense minutes since that fateful first day, thank goodness, or treating her as an invisible inconvenience to whom they refused to talk, they made it plain that it was them against her.
Portia was thoroughly exhausted by their constant petty shenanigans so was very much looking forward to this entire day away from them. For very different reasons, she was also looking forward to a whole day away from him.
She made sure that she and the dratted Duke of Dimples rarely collided.
When they did, it was only to hand over the most recent invitations and to give him the brief and heavily censored synopsis of the day that he insisted upon.
She hadn’t liked him to begin with, but now that she knew that he was a magistrate, she felt even more unsettled around him.
Hardly surprising when he was the law and she was, according to all the current unfair legislation, technically breaking it by willfully printing what he and his fellow peers would see as sedition.
Although she rather liked the irony that he had, inadvertently, given her the perfect seditious topic for her first opinion piece for Equitas.
An article that she double-checked was safely in her satchel before she left the house.
She walked all the way down to the river, stopping and checking regularly that she wasn’t being watched by any prying eyes. When she was certain the coast was absolutely clear, she slipped into the warehouse, which was a hive of activity.
While the rest of Bath made their way to whichever of the city’s churches they chose to worship at before they enjoyed their day of rest, today was their busiest day here at the newspaper.
As soon as her editorial was typeset, she, Sir William, and their skeleton crew of volunteers would begin the labor-intensive and time-consuming task of printing the two thousand copies of Equitas that would leave via the River Avon tonight.
By midnight, almost every single-paged broadsheet not destined to remain here in the West Country would be wrapped and loaded on a barge bound for London.
If their precious cargo made it all the way along various rivers, canals, and locks to the capital, then it became somebody else’s problem to distribute it.
However, it was their problem until then, so Portia expected to be here for the long haul today.
“There you are!” William spied her first. He was already covered in grime and ink because their ancient printing press was temperamental. “Were you followed?”
“Of course not.” She tossed her bonnet to the side and stripped off her lightweight summer spencer and hung it on a hook.
She had worn an old dress on purpose, but still intended to put a capacious apron over it.
The last thing she needed was anyone asking questions if they spotted her when she arrived back at the Royal Crescent covered in the same level of dirt as William.
She gestured to his oily hands. “Have you and Bessie had a fight again?” Bessie was the name he lovingly called the machine because she apparently reminded him of his mother—forthright, formidable, and prone to temper tantrums.
“Print day wouldn’t be print day without Bessie and I having a tiny disagreement.” He grinned. “But I think we have reached an accord.” He jerked his fluffy gray head toward the machine and the pair of legs currently sticking out of it. “Jim is putting her back together.”
“Morning, Jim.” Jim was a laborer by trade, and it showed because he was huge. “Are you winning?”
“Not yet, Portia, although I remain hopeful that we’ll emerge victorious in the end.”
He was a gentle, thoughtful, and resourceful soul, despite his bulging muscles and towering height, who could neither read nor write, but helped out with all the manual work, which he excelled at.
His lack of literacy was, sadly, not uncommon.
Few from his lowborn station were ever taught their letters or numbers because their impoverished families could not afford the luxury of schooling.
They instead needed their offspring to earn their keep in the fields or the factories or shoved up chimneys or down mine shafts from a young age.
She turned back to William. “Will we be ready to go when Bessie is?” They had been nine-tenths of the way there when she had left here last night.
“Edgar is finishing the typesetting as we speak.”
The last member of their motley crew was Edgar, a solicitor’s clerk who wore the thickest spectacles Portia had ever seen but who, ironically, had the most meticulous eye for detail.
He was also one of the sourest individuals she had ever met.
While the others had all cheerily greeted her, Edgar merely lifted his brow in acknowledgment when she offered him a smiling hello, his attention never wavering from the tiny metal letters he was arranging neatly in the block.
“Here is my article, Edgar. I am sorry it is so late.” It was the last one to arrive and so there was a lone empty space right at the top of the front page waiting for it. “My piece is under five hundred words—exactly as specified.”
While adhering to Edgar’s imperious instruction chafed, space was tight in Equitas.
To keep printing costs to a minimum and to avoid having to pay the ridiculous stamp duty imposed by the government on any political newspaper printed at least monthly on two sheets or more, the entirety of Equitas had to fit on just one side of a large piece of paper.
That meant that every article in it had to be succinct, and difficult editorial decisions had to be made.
As she had been the one making them alongside William, she did appreciate the need for brevity in her own article.
It had made it harder to write, but it was sharper as a result, and she was proud of it.
Immensely proud.
Edgar finished the last word in the sentence he was constructing before he deigned to glance at the piece of paper she had put beside him. “Better late than never, I suppose.”
He had taken an instant dislike to her when she had arrived, probably because he did not like being outranked by a woman. Not that she had used that rank over him yet when she was trying her best to fit in among the loyal few here who were instrumental in getting the finished newspaper out.
“I wanted my first column to be perfect.” She owed that to the cause.
Edgar grunted as he picked it up, no doubt ready to find some fault with it, as he did with anything she gave him.
He scanned it and frowned. “Have you gone quite mad?” Edgar immediately turned to William.
“This topic is grossly inappropriate in the current climate.” He tossed her article across the desk to their approaching editor in chief as if it carried some hideous infection.
“I do not wish to be difficult, William.” Yes, he jolly well did!
“But in my humble opinion”—which Edgar considered vastly superior to all others—“I think it highly likely that Portia’s column is only going to rile up the local law enforcement, who, I am sure that I do not need to remind you, are looking for any excuse to shut us down.
” He jabbed at her words. “This incendiary article is daring them to raid us, and Portia is playing with fire!”
William shot Portia a quick he’ll-come-around placating look, and took the sheet. “‘Is the worst form of injustice pretended justice?’” Then he chuckled. “What an attention-grabbing headline, Portia.”
“An unnecessarily provocative headline,” interrupted Edgar like a crotchety wild dog with a bone.
“Nonsense!” William waved that way. “The powers that be all think that we are naught but uneducated oiks who wouldn’t know their ancient Greek from their Roman, so a well-chosen quote from a learned tome like Plato’s Republic will bring up short those who are taught the classics from the cradle.
” He tapped her article. “This is excellent work, Portia, and an excellent and timely choice of topic—in my humble opinion.” Then he winked at her as he gave her nemesis a comradely pat on the shoulder before he turned away.
“Get it set, Edgar, so that we can go to print.”
“But this article calls the entire justice system ‘flawed and fundamentally rotten to the core!’ That’s a direct quote.
” Edgar wasn’t one to take defeat graciously.
“Might I remind you that Portia has already increased our risk of scrutiny from the authorities by taking a job in the house of one of the local magistrates, so attacking our legal system in this way is a reckless and unnecessary gamble.”
“Is your employer aware of your involvement in Equitas, Edgar?” She tried to say that sweetly but there was bite in her tone.
“Or do you, like me, keep your political leanings discreet while you earn your living because you know that they are bound to lose you your job otherwise?” She took satisfaction in the way his thin lips flattened at that irrefutable logic.
“Before I came here, I worked for three years at the League’s headquarters while also juggling my responsibilities as a governess for an active anti-reformist member of the House of Lords, and not once did I do anything that jeopardized the cause.
” And he could stick that in his sanctimonious pipe and smoke it!
“Constable Nolley is already after our blood! Baiting him with this”—Edgar slapped her article with the back of his hand as he followed William back to the printing press—“will bring trouble to our door.” Once again, he spoke about her as if she weren’t there.
“Portia is playing with fire—but it is all of us who will get burned by this recklessness.”
William sighed. “Constable Nolley would still be after our blood whether we printed Portia’s article or not.
But we cannot live in fear. We must print the truth, Edgar, because only the miserable, sorry truth will help our cause.
That is what we do. It is what we have always done, irrespective of the risks.
” Sir William deposited the article back in the now-ranting typesetter’s hand, signaling that the matter was closed.
“We print and be damned!” Their editor in chief wagged a righteous finger in the air as he walked off. “That is my final decision.”
“Then expect me to say I told you so when all our property is smashed to smithereens and we’re all locked in the clink.
” The muttering Edgar took that decision with all the belligerence Portia expected of him, snatching up her article and scrutinizing it again now that Sir William wasn’t in direct earshot.
“Why is this signed in a different name to yours? Are you so ashamed of what you write that you have to hide behind a pseudonym?”
Portia offered the man her best go-to-hell smile.
“As you’ve already pointed out, I work for a local magistrate and don’t want to give him any reason to bring trouble to our door.
” As much as she wished she could print her real name and be damned, she liked the irony of calling herself Pendle after her rival for the position in the duke’s house, Miss Strictland, had called her that to put her in her place.
Irony in all its forms always amused her.
“William has already approved that pseudonym, Edgar, but do check with him again if you don’t believe me.”
He muttered something under his breath as she sailed away but she didn’t give the childish pedant the satisfaction of responding. If he had a problem with a woman being second-in-command here, that was entirely his problem to contend with because she wasn’t going anywhere.
Or so she hoped.
A hope that was swiftly dashed not more than five minutes later.
“I meant to tell you, Portia,” said William after he and Jim finally got Bessie going again.
“Headquarters are sending us another reinforcement! An upstanding and up-and-coming young chap, by all accounts, who has impressed the top brass no end. He expressly asked to work with us too and seems to have all the skills we need. I am reliably informed that he has a way with words, just like you do, and isn’t a pitchfork wielder, so I have high hopes for him. ”
Her heart sank.
So much for her proving herself here. How was she supposed to do that after helping to edit just one edition if they were already sending her replacement?
“That is good news.” She managed to smile rather than stamp her feet like she wanted to.
“What role do you envisage him taking?” She hoped that was a subtle enough way of asking if she was already out of the job without throwing a justified tantrum on the blatant unfairness rife within the United League for Reform as well as in the country.
“He’s quite an adaptable and affable sort, or so I’m assured, so I am sure he can turn his hand to most things. I’ll leave you to put him through his paces to see where he best fits though.”
“Me?” She hadn’t expected that. Nor fully understood what that meant.
“Of course,” said Sir William. “Seeing as I have already had to pull rank today, the power has quite gone to my head, as power always does, so I feel inclined to delegate.” He grinned before he wandered back to the printing press while flicking a dismissive hand.
“I do not want the bother of teaching him the ropes. Especially as he’ll be your assistant, Portia.
” He inserted a blank page into Bessie to test that they were ready to go, and then heaved the platen down.
“Although if I were you, the first job I would give him is sorting out this office. Your expressive face does a very poor job of hiding how much all the disorganized clutter annoys you.”