Chapter 22

The rain beat against the windows so hard Ben almost didn't hear the knock. The metallic clank of his hammer on the broken press had also swallowed up the announcement of a guest. The printshop was closed today, closed until he'd transformed the entire damn thing from London Life Prints to Bailey Prints, hanging sign and all.

But the knocking continued.

"Persistent pest," Ben mumbled, testing the lever that lowered the top half of the press onto the paper. Still stuck. Damn.

The knocking continued, muffled, clearly from the shop's front door at street level, but audible all the same, even from the lower back room where he worked in the bright afternoon light streaming through the windows.

But why answer the door? Painted blue like the one in Boston. Seeing it would only remind him that he no longer liked the color so much. Preferred, instead, the blue green of a keen lady's eyes.

How long had it been since he'd looked into them? Almost a week? Difficult to tell, every day and night running together.

He deserved this. He could have told her at any time, made a joke of it, planned with her to tease Clearford in some way, to drive the man mad. They'd driven him someplace else entirely, though. The duke had arrived at the printshop with his solicitor a few days after Ben had left Clearford's house. Had looked wearier than before, defeated. They'd exchanged no words other than those related to the sale of Clearford's shares.

And Ben didn't flinch a bit to know he'd received those shares through duplicity. Clearford remained in the dark still, and perhaps that was for the best. What would he do with the information, after all? And what harm did these women and their reading proclivities do anyone? Not Clearford's job to pass judgment.

Not Ben's job to lie through his teeth and expect reward in the love of a pretty Prudence.

The knocking on the door turned to banging loud enough to drown out the banging of Ben's hammer on the broken press, and then it stopped entirely.

"Finally." Ben tossed the hammer aside and brushed his hands on his pants, leaving a smear of ink behind. Perhaps he needed some oil. He rummaged around for it in the shadows.

And heard another knock. This one much closer, ringing out from the door at the end of the room that led into the alley behind the shop.

"Bloody hell." Ben stormed toward the door. Why couldn't all humanity leave a man to wallow in peace and quiet, to lose himself in the fixing of machines because the one machine he couldn't fix was his own damn heart? "Damn persistent"—he threw open the door—"Prudence?"

"Yes, I am. Why didn't you answer the door on one of the first one hundred or so knocks? My knuckles are raw."

He snatched her hand before she could move away, stripped off the glove and held it tight, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. Were they too red? The skin torn and irritated? A bit perhaps. At least the thin barrier of the glove had offered some protection. He kissed them.

She yanked her hand away, retrieved her glove from the floor, and slipped it back on. "I did not come here for that, Mr. Bailey."

He crossed his arms over his chest to keep from reaching for her again. She smelled like rain and some sweet summer flower, and his fingers felt an itch he couldn't ignore, to touch her, to never let go.

"You're wet," he grumbled, stepping to the side. "Come in."

She did, looking everywhere but at him, the light of curiosity in her eyes brightening everything her gaze settled on. "I've been in the workshop behind The Daily Current before. This one is similar."

"Yes, mostly."

"The presses seem different. They're quite elaborate." She weaved between a row of presses, her hands clasped behind her back, a rain battered, beaded reticule swinging from her wrist. She craned her neck to look up at the golden eagle perched on the top of the press.

"My father believed in having the most sophisticated equipment. This design is from the States. Elaborate, yes. Gaudy, even. But quite advanced. What's used at The Current is older. Kingston likes it that way. Would you like to see the cylinder press?" He didn't wait for her answer but swept past her to lead the way. "I've hired a few men to learn to work it, fix it. And I won't get rid of the flatbed presses, though some using the cylinders have. If my father believed in keeping up with advances in the field, my mother believed in caring for your workers."

"This shop is for them, isn't it?"

He stopped and turned to find her still, several feet away from him. "Yes."

She swallowed, looked down, then back up. "I came today for two reasons. The first was to see what it was you loved if not me—"

"Prudence—"

She held up a hand. "I thought it a building. A collection of things. A means of making money. But it's not that at all. It's your parents." She strode toward him and cupped his cheek, her hand warm beneath her damp glove.

One moment you have no clue. The next you know.

He'd thought to experience the truth of that statement only once. But it seemed with Prudence, he'd realize how much he loved her over and over again, whether it be in the comfort of her palm or the brimming sadness behind her eyes.

What could he do to make it right? Because he couldn't give up. Couldn't give her up.

He closed his eyes and nestled his cheek deeper into her palm. "I loved them with everything I was. And I failed them. And when I saw this shop, I saw a way to make it right. It seemed like fate. The door, my mother's favorite color, the same color as the door to the printshop in Boston. The hanging sign, the same shape. I could not buy it on my own then, and when I finally could, your brother—"

Her hand dropped away from his cheek. He felt the loss of it in his bones, but he managed to stay upright and find his way toward the cylinder press. He dragged his fingers across the rounded top of it.

"What I did was not right, Prudence. I do not pretend it was. I knew even as I did it that I flirted with the line of good behavior and bad. Only I thought, and your brother thought too, that you are a woman who could not be hurt."

"You thought I did not have a heart." She spoke from right behind him.

"No. I thought you had put your heart elsewhere, that you would hide it away from men, for some reason. I did not think you would ever hand it to me. And I found myself giddy when you did."

"And your heart?" She stepped forward to stand next to him and ran her fingertips along the machine's edge as well. "Does it reside at the bottom of the Atlantic with your mother's ring and your father's final printed pamphlet?"

He swallowed. "No. It's wailing right now." She sniffed, clearly doubtful, but he continued, "From inside the ribbed cage of another's chest."

She shook her head and followed the outline of the machine until she stood on the other side of it, opposing him. "I came here for two other reasons. The first is to let you know the day after we returned to London, I began my monthly courses. I am done now, and clearly, I am not with child."

Well that seemed the final nail in the coffin of his hopes. Her mouth said I am not with child, but the meaning behind those words clear—no need for them to marry.

"And the second reason?" he asked.

She inhaled deeply, pushed her shoulders back. "I need your help. Cora, as you know, is intent on holding a poetry reading at Lottie's ball. But I am intent on finding safer ways of hosting such events. You saw the outcome of our attempts in the garden the night Cora was compromised. I'd been forced out of the house and could not find my way back in. I could not set the markers for the others to find the room." Beneath the press her toe began to tap, and she slung her chin toward her shoulder with a huff. "There must be a better way. There is a better way. With your help."

"Details, Lady P."

The pet name seemed to rush a pretty pink across her cheeks, and her eyelashes fluttered. But only for a mere moment before she shook such softness away. "I know you intend Bailey's Prints to publish political pamphlets, to be home to authors of intellectual note with new ideas. But I would ask you to print one more pamphlet of an entirely different sort."

"About?"

"Those things typically considered women's interests. What is in fashion, what is out of fashion, gossip about how certain ladies are decorating or redecorating their houses, who is out of Town and who is in, that sort of thing. Kingston has allowed my brother to write a column for one of his papers. And this pamphlet will be written by my sister Imogen. With the help of Isabella."

"The twins?" He scowled. "They can't."

"They can anonymously."

"How would what amounts to a gossip column help your situation?"

"You said you wish to help in any way you could. Was that a lie, too?"

"No. But I cannot help if I do not know the details."

"You can provide a press on which to print our little periodical. That is the only help we need. You need not know the rest. Disappointing, I know, for a man who likes to uncover others' secrets."

He wanted to upend the printing press, to send it smashing against the wall. He wanted to throw Prudence over his shoulder, take her up to his office, and throw her down on the small sofa there. He wanted to put his head between her legs and pleasure her until she tangled her hands in his hair and screamed his name. He wanted to thrust into her over and over again until she allowed him to wrap his black ribbon around her wrist once more.

Instead, he said, "If you suspect me of lies, Prudence, then why come to me for help? Don't you think I will just run off to your brother and tell him everything?"

Her chin dropped to her chest, and she rounded the side of the cylinder press and headed for the door. He followed, helpless not to. When she opened the door into the alley, she leaned against its frame, half in half out of the shop.

"I am enraged with you," she said, her voice steady, not a hint of her anger evident there. It flashed, though, in her eyes—furious lightning. "I'm enraged more, frankly, that I don't distrust you. I know somehow, deep in my gut that you will not tell my brother a thing. But"—she shrugged, gave a little laugh—"what have you really told him so far? Nothing much."

He risked moving closer until he stood only inches from her beneath the door frame. He bent his neck and inhaled deeply. God, how he'd missed the smell of her.

Her breath hitched. "No cravat," she muttered. And then her fingers were on the V of skin exposed by his open shirt. "You're a mess. Surely, it has been at least a week since you've shaved. Have you brushed your hair in that time?"

He shook his head slowly.

She tsked. "I want to hate you." Confusing words for what her hands were doing, curling around the neck of his open shirt. "But more than that I want you." She jerked him right up against her body and kissed him hard.

Between clashes of teeth and lips, he slid one hand around her waist to find its home. The other he propped against the door frame above her head as he rolled his hips into her.

"I'm a fool," she said, touching him everywhere.

"Never," he breathed against the skin of her neck. His tongue darted out and licked a line from collarbone to ear, tasting the sweat and rain on her skin.

She gave a little growl, clutched him to her more tightly, and spun him so his back pressed against the door frame, and she pressed against him. He bent his knee and parted her legs, hitched it up and into her body until she gave a delightful little gasp of pleasure, throwing her head back. They had barely begun, but…

"I cannot stop," he said. He picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, clinging with her arms around his neck. He slammed the alley door closed and marched with her back into the warehouse, brought her to the long, beaten-wood table at the far edge of the room, and set her down atop it. He placed his hands on the table on either side of her hips and gathered her skirts, rucked them up to her waist as she kissed him wildly.

She'd missed him, too.

He slipped a hand between her legs, found her wet there and not from the rain. That rain beat steadily still against the windows and on the roof, a melodic companion to their panting, chaotic breathing. She sank her teeth into the visible skin in the V of his shirt, and he stabbed his fingers into her hair, pulled her head back to reveal the curve of her throat, which he kissed and kissed and kissed.

Somewhere between fake courting her and kissing her, he'd fallen irrevocably, brutally in love. And he could not live without her now.

A few flicks undid his fall. He stepped between her spreading legs, and with one thrust sank deep inside her. She cried out, the scream a ripple of pleasure through the air. He thrust again and again, slow and steady, and her hands on his shoulders, his abdomen, easily dipping past the waist of his too-loose trousers, set him on fire. A pleasure to burn for her touch. Each caress drove him faster and harder. One of her hands clung to his neck, and he took her other and placed it just over the curls between her legs.

"Show me how you do it, Lady P. When you're alone in bed. Thinking of me."

She gave a little growl, clearly not liking his insinuations. But she did not shy away from touching herself, and her fingers began to work methodically. Of course. His punctilious Prudence. Her head fell back with a moan.

"That's it. That's it, love." The tension in his body twisted tighter. "Prudence, listen. You're safe now, but if I do not pull out, you will not be."

Her eyes flashed. She understood him well enough. She grabbed the back of his head, holding his hair as hard as he held hers, holding him so close to her face that they were eye to eye, nose to nose. "Do not stop."

Her command much too much. A wildness unfurled inside him, and he pumped uncontrollably before releasing everything he ever was and ever would be. He claimed her as deep satisfaction roared through his body. And then he placed his hand over hers between her legs, and his lightest touch was enough to send pleasure shattering through her body. Her every muscle clenched as her back arched, her entire body a tense curl pushing away from him as her hips rolled against him, driving him more deeply home inside her. Then she flung herself forward to hang on to him, her muscles going limp and heavy.

He pulled from her and gathered her into his arms before sitting on the table and holding her in his lap as he had that day in the portrait gallery. He curved into her, nuzzling the side of her face as their breath mingled. The rain continued steady and hard above and around them, and the shadows of the shop seemed to thicken and hold them close as he held her closer.

Then she rustled, her hand slipping into the folds of her gown and reappearing holding a silver pocket watch. "It is time for me to leave. I am meeting my sisters on Bond Street. We need new gowns for the ball."

He let her slip from his lap, though every muscle in his body screamed at him not to. She smoothed her skirt and straightened her shoulders when she stood on her own two feet again, and then she made her way as promptly toward the door as if he had not just tupped her on a workbench in his printshop.

Once she'd flung the door open again, she turned to face him. Somehow, he had followed her from the bench across the shop and to the door. No thought needed. It would always be like this.

He dared to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. "I'm afraid I've entirely mangled your coiffure."

She patted it, scowled. "I'll put on my bonnet. It's in the carriage."

"Make sure to buy something spectacular, Lady Prudence. Though whatever you buy, no matter how pretty, it won't hold a candle to you."

Her cheeks blazed bright. "Benjamin Bailey… Whatever am I going to do with you?"

"I have a few suggestions," he grumbled.

She lifted her hand and pushed back the cuff of her gown. She wore a pink ribbon there, tied loosely. She untied it. "Hold out your hand."

He did, and she tied the ribbon around his wrist, hesitating only a moment when her fingers brushed against the black ribbon tied there. She swallowed hard but finished the pretty little bow, then clasped her hands before her.

"I trust, Mr. Bailey, that when we deliver the pamphlet, you will print it as is?"

He bowed. "Of course, Lady Prudence."

"Yes. Well, then." She gave a tight smile, and her eyes lingered on his frame just a moment more than was polite, and then she turned and left.

Ben stood in the door frame as the rain soaked his head and chest. He could not rip his eyes away from the sight of a pink ribbon and a black tied round his wrist. She still loved him. That was the only possible meaning of the little bit of pink velvet. She still loved him but was strong enough to punish him a bit for his sins before forgiving him. Brilliant, beautiful Prudence.

How much would it take to convince her of her worth?

He'd dedicate the rest of his life to finding out.