Linda Needham by My Wicked Earl Page B

civilly disobedient woodcuts.” She had worked her way around the table to his elbow, pointing to four delicate, fine-lined engravings on a single large sheet of thick paper, the top two panels upside down. “I need hardly explain to you that this nested starling was designed to incite the heart of any weaver to rise against his master. Sedition, to be sure. And due to my customer in just two weeks.”
    She was marvelous to watch, dancing with her words to distract him from his investigation of her bloody beloved Adam. He took the page from her when she offered it—a marvelous display of intricacy. A common nuthatch in every detail, down to the faint lines of the small feathers at its eye.
    “Who is your customer for this?”
    “The Dunsmere Avian Society. For theirChristmas volume. I have another hundred copies to print and bind.”
    A disorienting art, this printing business; different rules from those he was used to. “Why are these two upside down from the others?”
    “This was drying, my lord, when it was packed. And ruined here where the ink smeared across the wing.”
    “My apologies.”
    She glanced sharply up at him, doubt in her eyes or surprise that he could apologize for anything. “Yes, well, I was still to print another set of birds on the reverse of this page. Two sides of a sheet of paper folded twice for a total of eight pages, four per side. Upside down, because of the deckling on the edge.”
    “Which is…?”
    “When the pages are cut in half and assembled correctly, the uneven edges appear consistently at the bottom and the right edge and the cleanly cut edges across the top and inside the binding.”
    She was very good, if this was truly her work and not MacGillnock’s. Though the business had been her father’s.
    “And you printed this on your Stanhope? Just you?”
    “You still don’t believe me! The Tuppenny Press is mine. See.” She stuck out her hands, flipped them palm up. “These are the hands of aprinter. Ridged with ink, smelling of linseed. Inspect them if you will; you’ll find all the proof you want.”
    Charles slipped her hand inside his—selfishly, for no reason but the chance to lace his fingers between hers.
    Long fingers, strong and beckoning; neat fingernails, healthy half-moons, clean, trimmed, and unmistakably inked. Her delicate wrists were still chafed from the handcuffs.
    “Not linseed-scented, madam.” Peaches and warm summer days. Though he shouldn’t be noticing another man’s wife. Especially this particular wife.
    “The printer’s brand, my lord. A handful of ink. It’s probably in my veins.”
    “And does it flow as readily through your husband’s veins? Is he a printer?”
    Hollie couldn’t reply; her heart was still stuttering from the man’s singular touch, the lightning and its afterglow that skipped across her skin and pooled low in her belly. Worst of all, she couldn’t recall what she’d told him last night, what—if anything—she’d said about her husband’s job when he wasn’t out being the dashing Captain Spindleshanks.
    Should Adam Gillcrest be a printer? No, not Gillcrest, MacGillnock! Or was he a scholar? Or a newspaper reporter from New York? Yes! In America, where the press was free and uncensored. She opened her mouth but shut it again quickly. She’d told him that her Captain Spindleshanks was from Scotland.
    “My husband is an accomplished printer.” And she was becoming an accomplished liar. “He’s every bit as good as I am. Better, I think. Though I might be seeing him through the eyes of a loving wife.”
    Everingham studied her in silence, a tic of impatience at the corner of his mouth. “What was the last item Adam MacGillnock printed in your shop?” He was good, this commissioner of inquiry into the massacre in St. Peter’s Fields, surprisingly insightful for a peer of the realm. “Is it here?”
    “Why?”
    His eyes narrowed, deepening the demon look of him and reminding her that she couldn’t let