A Bit of Rough

by Jackie Barbosa

  Lucas shook his head. “How would you explain being caught in my bedchamber to your father?”

  Her eyes widened and her cheeks flushed, but she stiffened her shoulders. “I would explain that I am a grown woman and my personal affairs are none of his business.”

  “And you think that would work? That he would not ask questions, such as how you came to be acquainted with someone like me? We are hardly likely to have met by some random happenstance, after all.”

  She pursed her lips, and Lucas had to fight the urge to kiss her. After a few seconds, she rolled her eyes and nodded. “Very well. You’re right, of course. It would be rather difficult to explain my presence in your lodgings without revealing some facts he would probably find unpalatable.”

  “Including that you are Polly Dicax.”

  “Yes,” she admitted with a grim nod.

  “So you see why we cannot continue to meet here. However much we may want to, you have too much to lose. I don’t want to be responsible for causing you to fall out with your family, especially if that might also mean you had to give up one of your most successful pseudonyms.”

  “Well, that’s very noble of you,” she said, her gray eyes growing fierce as a thunderstorm, “but do you honestly believe I could stand by and do nothing if you were arrested?”

  “You should do exactly that. I’ve never seen a publisher face anything worse than a fine and a few weeks in prison for failure to pay the stamp tax, and most never even pay the entire fine. It’s an inconvenience I’d prefer to avoid, but for me, it will be little more than that. For you, it could be a disaster. And I love you too much to let that happen when I have the means to prevent it.”

  Her mouth had been open—no doubt with the intention of contradicting him—before he finished speaking but she failed to utter a word for several seconds. Instead, she just stared at him, her eyes wide and shimmering with emotion. “You…love me?” Her voice was strangled, as though she could scarcely bring herself to say the words.

  Wrapping his arms around her, he dragged her across his lap and kissed her, deeply and lavishly. “What the bloody hell did you think all this was about? I have loved you from the moment Rickert shoved us into that closet together and I realized who you must be. I knew then that I would never meet another soul so eminently suited to be my mate, because even though we had only just met, I already knew everything about you from reading your work.”

  “I felt the same way. I feel the same way.” With a sigh, she pressed her lips to the crook of his neck and then to the corner of his mouth. “Whatever are we to do now?”

  “Stay away from each other,” he said firmly. “We must go back to communicating by means of the offices. I’ll send any material I find or write that you might be able to use for the next three voter’s guides there, and you can send me your articles via the same route, keeping all of our messages as impersonal as possible. And we will count ourselves lucky that we got a few stolen days together.”

  After a long, pensive moment, she expelled another heavy breath and wriggled from his embrace, getting to her feet and presenting him her back. “You’d best finish fastening me up, then.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Electoral reform is essential, not just to enfranchise our own citizenry, but to end the morally repugnant practice of slavery in all British territories once and for all; for so long as any human being remains chained, none of us is free.” – Polly Dice

  One week, one day, and nineteen hours—yes, she was counting—had passed since Honora and Lucas had agreed never to see one another again, and she was bloody miserable.

  The unqualified success of the voter information guide, which had proved so popular that the first thousand free copies ran out within an hour and Roth & Lee had gone on to print and sell nearly nine thousand more at the outrageous price of sixpence each, consoled her not at all. If anything, this triumph increased her wretchedness, because she had no way to share it with or even give proper credit to the one person who had made the entire project possible.

  She also gained no comfort from writing several screeds directed toward, in order: the systematic criminalization of journalism through stamp taxes and frivolous charges of seditious libel against publishers who were the least bit critical of government policies; the ongoing efforts of the West India Committee to prevent the emancipation of slaves in British colonies, particularly through the purchase of rotten boroughs; and finally, the current state of law which dispensed the same penalty—death—for sodomy as for rape, yet perversely found no problem with a man having carnal knowledge of a girl so long as she was more than twelve years of age and claimed she had agreed to the act. As if the private behavior of consenting adults was of more interest to the state than the predatory vices of men who preferred children to grown women! But while penning this last piece had given her a certain degree of moral satisfaction, in part because she knew it would offend the sensibilities of so many supposedly virtuous people, it had not, in the end, relieved her malaise.

  She missed Lucas the way she would a severed limb, like a leg she had depended on to support her that was suddenly gone. Ridiculous, perhaps, when they had spent only a few days in one another’s company, but those days had made all the difference. How could she be content with what she now knew was half a life? Oh, not because he “completed” her in some mystical way, but because he’d introduced her to parts of herself she had never known existed: to her longing for a kind of intellectual and emotional companionship that her family and friends could not provide, and to her own body’s hitherto unsuspected capacity for astonishing physical pleasure. And having unearthed those aspects of her nature, she was unable to reconcile herself to burying them again.

  It would not be so dreadful, she reflected, if she had some way of communicating with him beyond brief, impersonal notes.

  Enclosed, please find this week’s article. – PD

  Payment for last week enclosed. -- LE

  Received 2s6d. -- PD

  Between the paucity of the messages and the necessity of avoiding any expressions of tenderness that might indicate an intimacy between them, Honora had taken to perusing with a keen eye the one missive Lucas had sent, searching for something in his handwriting—a slight wobble in the strokes, perhaps, or an extra flourish on individual letters or words—that would suggest he suffered as keenly as she did from the lack of interaction. But alas, even on the hundredth examination, she could find nothing in those twenty-six characters to which she might impute an alternative meaning.

  With a resigned sigh, Honora set aside Lucas’s note yet again and opened the drawer in which she kept her unfinished manuscripts. She hadn’t looked in this particular drawer since parting from Lucas, preferring instead to focus assembling on the second voter pamphlet, which had gone into circulation today, and then on writing the new Polly Dicax essays. The title at the top of the first page—which was otherwise blank—caught her eye.

  The Adventures and Misadventures of Miss Persephone White: Episode 18

  And suddenly, she knew exactly what to do.

  There had been no mistaking the source of the packet that had been waiting for Lucas in the office on Little White Lion Street this morning. He would recognize in Honora’s bold yet elegant hand anywhere.

  The trouble was that it was Monday and, moreover, that Polly Dicax’s articles typically arrived directly at the printer’s shop on Tuesdays rather than being delivered to the office. Not only was the timing wrong, but the package was much thicker than it should have been if it contained one of her essays, which could be no more than five handwritten pages to fit in the space he reserved for them. She never exceeded her allotted space nor did she ever fail to fill it. But this package must contain at least three times as many pages.

  So what on earth was in it? He could not imagine that Honora had written and sent him anything of a personal or potentially identifying nature. She was far too clever to do something so foolish, but he burned with curiosity
nonetheless and, since he could not safely linger in the office long enough to open and read the contents, he was forced to suffer the ten-minute walk back to Neal Street in considerable agitation.

  When he reached his own rooms, he did not even bother to remove his hat or overcoat, despite the fact that both were damp from the chilly May fog that was wet without quite amounting to a drizzle. Instead, he crossed directly to his desk near the window and, after dropping the rest of the correspondence he had retrieved onto the well-worn surface, untied and ripped into Honora’s parcel open with unsteady fingers.

  Just as he had suspected from the weight and thickness of the package, there were far more than five pages enclosed. Later, when he counted, he found there were eighteen. All bore Honora’s distinctive penmanship, but he puzzled for several seconds over the title and author attribution that appeared at the top of the first sheet of paper.

  The Adventures and Misadventures of Miss Persephone White: Episode 18

  By M. Honeywell

  Wasn’t that the title of the serial Rahul’s parents had read? The one that had resulted in their unexpectedly enthusiastic acceptance of a former opera singer as a daughter-in law?

  Lucas’s eyes drifted down the page. Since he had not read any of the previous seventeen episodes, he could not judge the consistency of either the plot or the language with the rest of the story, but there was a confidence to the storytelling that convinced him of Honora’s familiarity with both. A familiarity that seemed unlikely to belong to anyone but the author.

  Honora was M. Honeywell. That was the only rational conclusion. She had told him, hadn’t she, that she wrote under three pseudonyms—two known to her parents and one that was not? He knew the one that her parents did not and, of course, Mary Weather, which she would have had no reason to conceal from anyone, given the utter wholesomeness of those books. M. Honeywell must be the third.

  But why had she sent him these pages? Surely she didn’t intend that he should publish them; aside from anything else, The Weekly Disciple did not print fictional stories. So what possible use did she imagine Lucas would have for them? The only way to know, he supposed, was to read and find out.

  He carried the manuscript to his armchair, sat down, and began to read.

  The chapter opened with a scene between the story’s eponymous heroine and her…well, how to describe the character of Gabriel Jones? It was immediately clear that Jones, a Bow Street Runner, had played a central role in Persephone’s many escapades. Lucas did not get the sense, however, that Jones had been much more than a necessary instrument of the plots, which seemed to involve the danger-prone heroine engineering her own rescues by means of enlisting the Bow Street Runner’s aid. But in this episode, the dynamic was different.

  Here, it was Mr. Jones requesting Miss White’s assistance. He had been hired to find a pair of stolen cufflinks, and his principal suspect in the crime was an aristocrat who also happened to be an ardent admirer of the heroine. Unfortunately, the Bow Street Runner had no concrete evidence linking the aristocrat to the theft. Since Miss White had so often been the inventor of clever schemes that unmasked the perpetrators of other criminal enterprises, did she have any suggestions for how Jones might proceed without betraying his suspicions?

  This exchange, in and of itself, might not have alerted Lucas to the change in the arc, but the heroine’s inner monologue during the conversation certainly did. Persephone, according to the text, noticed the shape of Jones’s lips when he spoke and the breadth of his shoulders when he settled back in his chair to await her response. She wondered why she hadn’t perceived his physical attractions before now and found herself unexpectedly pleased by his respect for her intellect and actual abilities. Men—and even many women—so seldom appreciated her for anything outside her appearance that she hadn’t even realized how much she craved recognition for what she could do, not just how she looked.

  By the time Lucas had reached the middle of the chapter, he knew why Honora had sent him the pages. It was a love letter. Coded as fiction, but a love letter nonetheless. And when he reached the end, he knew what he was meant to do: write back.

  Honora Pearce was a bloody genius.

  Episodes 18 and 19 of The Adventures and Misadventures of Miss Persephone White were published together rather than with the usual month between chapters. Episode 19, which took the serial in a new direction by telling the story from Gabriel Jones’s point of view, was broadly praised by ardent devotees of the tale and new readers alike.

  Despite Honora’s initial concern that some readers would object to the previously chaste Miss White’s romantic interest in any man, copies sold out within a week, and Roth & Lee begged her to deliver the next two episodes as soon as possible to capitalize on the sudden increase in demand.

  She sent Lucas half of the proceeds, of course. It was only fair, since he had written half of the story. Under different circumstances, she would have found a way to credit him, as well, by adding his pen name as an author of the new volume, but she had no idea what name to use and, anyway, M. Honeywell might just as well be two people as one.

  The next two installments were published two weeks later and, despite a doubling of the print run, sold out even more quickly.

  Honora had begun writing Episode 22, wherein Persephone White would liberate Gabriel Jones from the clutches of the evil aristocrat, when the bottom fell out.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Asking Miss White to assist him in an investigation was profoundly irresponsible, but Jones could think of no one whose advice and instincts he trusted more. After all, she had rooted out two murderers, two kidnappers, and a half a dozen other criminals of varying stripes; but those malefactors had drawn her into their schemes by their own choice, and she had foiled them by necessity, not choice. If she came to harm because she helped him in his efforts to bring Lord Yarbrough to justice, Jones would never forgive himself.” – M. Honeywell

  When Lucas had pondered the possibility of being arrested, he had always assumed the event would occur in one of two places: at the office of his printer, whoever it happened to be at the time, or at his lodgings on Neale Street. He had never once imagined the event would occur at the coffee-house during one of his regular Wednesday engagements with Rahul. But that was exactly how it had happened. He was drinking his second cup and listening with half an ear to his best friend’s enthusiastic, though not at all prurient, description of the delights of the newly married state—a topic he relished barely more than he would a persistent toothache, despite his genuine happiness on Rahul’s behalf—when the tall, graying magistrate appeared in his peripheral vision, accompanied by three bobbies in their conventional blue tails and hats.

  He wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or amused by the show of force. Surely they didn’t believe a man whose primary weapon was words would be capable of putting up an effective resistance to arrest, especially in so public a venue as this. Although, to be fair, they might be more concerned about the reaction of the establishment’s other patrons; Peeler’s Bloody Gang was hardly revered by the average citizen, after all.

  In part to avert any potential violence, Lucas rose to his feet and held his wrists together in front of his body to signal his willingness to be taken into custody. Lord Hornsby’s gaunt face twisted into a rictus of displeasure at the gesture. The magistrate had been spoiling for a fight and now that he saw he wasn’t going to get one, he wasn’t pleased.

  His disappointment didn’t prevent him from exercising his duty, however. “Lucas Delgado Guerrero,” Hornsby intoned with somber glee, “I hereby place you under arrest on the charges of stamp tax evasion and seditious libel.”

  Curiously, as one of the constables clapped a pair of handcuffs over his proffered wrists, Lucas felt more relieved than worried. After spending the better part of three years with the threat of arrest hanging over his head, the worst had finally happened, and he no longer had to dread that outcome.

  “Now, Mr. Guerrero—”r />
  “Delgado,” Lucas corrected with an exasperated sigh. “My surname in English law is Delgado; Guerrero is my mother’s surname.”

  Lord Hornsby scowled and muttered, “Bloody Spaniards.” The magistrate, flanked by two policemen, stood just inside the door to the holding cell and looked regally down his nose at his prisoner. “Mr. Delgado, then. Do you understand how serious the charges against you are?”

  “I do, your lordship,” he said meekly.

  “I am glad to hear that, because I have a proposition that I think you will like. One that will get you out of here today, if you are willing to cooperate.”

  An uneasy sensation twisted in Lucas’s gut. Whatever Hornsby wanted from him, he was absolutely not going to like it if it would result in his immediate release. “And what is that, milord?”

  Hornsby’s grin was almost as menacing as his frown. “Simply reveal the true identity of Polly Dicax, and we will drop all charges against you.”

  Lucas stifled a gasp. So that was what they were after. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised; Honora’s articles in these past few weeks had been more critical of the government than ever. With the election of a new, more reform-minded Parliament, the old guard would want to settle scores with its public adversaries before they lost their power to do so. But he still felt as though the wind had been knocked from his lungs, because he couldn’t help but wonder if Hornsby suspected that Lucas and Polly Dicax had a more than professional relationship.

  But how could the magistrate suspect that and not already know who Polly Dicax was?

  Taking several easy breaths to camouflage his fears, he shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”