1
I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.
-Michael Faraday
London
1845
"How do you manage to make the words 'You know best' sound like 'I know best'?"
"Because . . . I know best?"
Oh, for feck's sake.
A large man sat opposite Sam Fenley at a cheap but polished wood desk. Sam considered him a friend.
He also considered punching him.
That's how it was sometimes with men. Clap them on the shoulder one day, punch them the next-no hard feelings.
When Sam was younger, that was how it was with his sisters until they learned Sam couldn't stand it when they cried. They would simply wobble their lower lip and he'd wind up punching himself to keep them from sobbing.
"Listen to me, Fenley. I understand your crusade against the Corn Laws." The Earl Grantham rubbed his face with a gloved hand. Dark smudges beneath his blue eyes made him seem older than his two and thirty years.
Sam had bought a newspaper from the earl last year and within six months made enough of a profit to buy a second. It said a good deal about Sam's generosity of spirit that he let the earl sit in his office and tell him what to print after Grantham had gone and sold him The Capital's Chronicle. Then again, Grantham was a giant of a man and ridiculously stubborn.
"However," the earl continued. "The last article The Chronicle printed has overestimated the scarcity of Britain's wheat crop. Yours and other anti-Corn Law broadsheets will panic the population. More trouble will come from your reporting than progress."
Sam knew Grantham meant well, but this wasn't about the earl's fears. It was about money and power. Or the lack thereof. Pleasure from watching his sales grow leaps and bounds was undeniable, but Sam also gained satisfaction from publishing articles informing regular folk about what their government was doing and why it mattered.
"If I back down now," Sam said, "it gives more fuel to the pro-Corn Law fires. The Corn Laws pour money into landowners' coffers and take it away from the majority of England's working folk."
Sam wasn't telling Grantham anything he didn't know, but he continued anyway, blood boiling as it often did when speaking of the advantages the titled classes held over the rest of the population.
The Corn Laws taxed corn-wheat, barley, and all other cereal grains-from outside Britain. On paper, this appeared to help domestic agriculture, but the taxes made food more expensive for everyone, while political power stayed in the hands of wealthy landowners who profited from the rising price of domestic corn.
"In this great country of ours, if you don't own land, you don't get to vote. How is that acceptable in our day and age?" Simply saying the words out loud angered Sam. The landowners didn't benefit only from the artificial pricing, they also handpicked their Members of Parliament and told them how to vote. "Universal suffrage is the goal, and I'm not above embellishing when it comes to a worthy goal."
Grantham opened his mouth to speak, but Sam beat him to it.
"As you are not above embellishing when it comes to stealing women away from other men."
Grantham's jaw clicked softly when he clamped his lips together, and the tips of his ears went red. It said much about the earl's good nature that he didn't fall for the bait.
Sam had tried his hardest to charm the engineer Margaret Gault, but she'd gone and married Grantham, her childhood sweetheart. Why she didn't prefer Sam, a man who had made a fortune of his family's business, turned around a failing newspaper, and set his sights on expanding his holdings even further, was a mystery.
Sam had fallen at Margaret's feet. In the most literal sense, unfortunately. Fallen, tripped, tumbled-a product of Sam's adversarial relationship with immovable objects. Not exactly the stuff of fevered dreams when a man reaches for your hand, loses his balance, and hits the floor with his face.
Huh. Perhaps Margaret's decision was not mysterious after all?
"You are in a terrible mood. What ails you, Fenley?" Grantham asked, stretching out his legs and placing his hands behind his head, the picture of aristocratic indolence.
Sam knew well that Grantham was far from indolent, but the reclined pose annoyed him, nonetheless.
Everything annoyed him these days.
"Nothing ails me, my lord."
Sam had meant the honorific as a tease, but the words came out hard and clipped. One long earlish eyebrow lifted on Grantham's face at the tone.
"If I were to guess, I'd say you were in want of one of life's great necessities," Grantham opined.
Jealousy sprang to life deep in Sam's belly, kindled with myriad thwarted ambitions; obstacles a man without title nor a single drop of blue blood in his veins faced every day in this country.
Sam growled. "Simply because women used to fawn over you for the chance at being a countess-"
The pink spread from Grantham's ears to his cheeks as he dropped his arms and sat straight up in his chair. "I'm not talking about sex, Fenley."
What else might constitute one of life's necessities if not sex?
Food?
Wealth?
"I'm not hungry," Sam said. "I've enough money to buy the crown right off Queen Victoria's head, I own two broadsheets now, investments in property, plus half the family business. I'm seldom bored thanks to my four sisters and the never-ending catastrophes those scientists over at Athena's Retreat drag us into. There's not a single thing missing from my life."
With a patronizing sigh, Grantham ran his fingers through his hair, eyes rolling up to the heavens as though he communicated with God on a peer-to-peer level.
"I'm talking about love, Fenley."
What?
Sam nearly fell back out of his chair again.
"What? You're talking about . . . You're talking about sex, you mean," Sam said.
Grantham shook his head slowly, an obnoxious half smile pasted across his face.
"I'm talking about marriage."
Oh, for feck's sake. Sam jumped up from his chair and paced around the desk separating him and Grantham, then to the window overlooking a small courtyard shared by the building next door.
Love.
What nonsense was this?
"You've inhaled too many fumes over at Athena's Retreat," Sam said.
Yes.
Fumes.
That must be the reason those beautiful geniuses at the Retreat fell for Grantham's clumsy charms.
Athena's Retreat, a secret haven for women scientists, was the creation of three brilliant women. One of them was his older sister, Letty, a mathematician who'd also married a man with a title. She'd collaborated with her friend Violet Kneland, as well as a woman named Lady Phoebe Hunt.
While Sam knew Violet well enough to use first names, he'd met Lady Phoebe only a handful of times, and she'd provoked an intriguing mix of lust and intimidation. She was as much a genius as Letty and the daughter of a marquess, no less. She and Grantham were almost engaged before Margaret Gault returned to England.
Only a massive inhalation of fumes could delude a group of women with such impressive brains into finding Grantham appealing.
The scientists of the Retreat were a lively bunch, and Sam secretly enjoyed lending a hand when they got into various scrapes and tight corners. Although Letty and Violet were mothers now, they still put time into their scientific studies. Their third compatriot, Lady Phoebe, was no longer a member of the Retreat.
She'd gone and shot Violet's husband, then gotten mixed up with some sinister plots. Did she go to jail for this? No. She was shipped off to America and given a job because of her father's title.
Fecking titles.
What ailed Sam specifically was that his latest attempt to invest in a railway consortium had fallen flat. The consortium he'd approached had been full of second and third sons of barons and earls and that sort. Some secret code passed among them allowing them to recognize one another-a code excluding anyone who didn't bleed blue.
Grantham wanted to talk to him about love?
How about influence? That is what Sam needed.
"You remind me of myself before I married Margaret," Grantham said. The stupid half smile grew into a full-blown grin when the earl mentioned his wife's name.
"Carefree and ridiculously handsome?" Sam asked.
"At loose ends and needing to put your energy into something lasting, like a marriage."
"Marry." Sam scoffed. "Why would I want to do something so boring?"
The low throaty chuckle and knowing look Grantham threw him made Sam want to cast up his accounts.
"Marriage is anything but boring," said the earl, his smug tone grating in Sam's ears. "Weren't you lately seen with Flavia Smythe-Harrow? You could do worse than to marry a scientist."
Sam had indeed taken the scientist Flavia Smythe-Harrow out for a drive. Once her father heard of it, his further invitations were declined.
Flavia Smythe-Harrow was the granddaughter of a duke.
Sam was the grandson of an itinerant laborer.
"If marriage to a scientist is wonderful, then why didn't you marry the first one with whom you were engaged, eh? Lady Phoebe Hunt?"
Grantham's smile disappeared like quicksilver.
Sam turned to the window and studied the bark-brown clouds of fog creeping over the buildings' roofs.
"She was a founder of Athena's Retreat, has a more elevated title than yours, and was a villainess of majestic proportions to boot," Sam pointed out.
"Sam-" Grantham began with a warning in his voice.
"That's what's missing in my life. A feckin' title. A man who works as hard as I do gets nothing while Lady Hunt gets away with murder simply because her father's title is older than dirt," Sam continued, warming to the subject.
"Sam-" Grantham's voice rose an octave, and satisfaction washed through Sam. About time Grantham heard a few truths.
"In fact, the only thing a woman with a title is good for-"
"Sam!"
The reflection in the window shifted, revealing a dark figure behind him, backlit by the doorway. A cold brick of embarrassment sent Sam's stomach plummeting to his ankles.
"She's standing behind me, isn't she?"
Phoebe pulled air in through her nose and held it until her lungs hurt, then let it release. This was a trick she learned early on in her sojourn to America. Before then, words would spill from her mouth at the slightest provocation. Words with blades attached, meant to draw blood and flay skin.
Words that got a woman in trouble if she had no protector. Luckily Phoebe had found a profession that taught her how to protect herself.
"Hello, Grantham. Mr. Fenley."
Grantham stood as the Fenley boy turned around, his fair skin scarlet with embarrassment. Phoebe remembered him as being much younger than he appeared now. Life amid the secret scientists of Athena's Retreat must prematurely age a man.
"Lady Phoebe." Grantham was as handsome as ever. More so. It blunted the edges of his anger.
Phoebe was not supposed to be here.
Putting the confrontation off for the moment, she turned to the Fenley boy.
Man.
Man-boy.
"I understand you are the owner of this broadsheet?"
Sam nodded, the blush reaching the tips of his ears, turning them flaming pink. "I must beg your pardon, Lady Phoebe. I meant no . . . disrespect."
A laugh rattled at the bottom of Phoebe's throat, surprising her. She kept it trapped, however. No reason to let the man-boy off easily.
"I like the descriptor, villainess of majestic proportions. Makes me sound intimidating," she said.
"Oh, you are indeed," Sam agreed jovially, as though he considered it a compliment as well.
"How can we help you, my lady?" Grantham asked, sounding strangled. This must have been the warring emotions of righteous indignation and his ever-present urge to treat her like a wounded bird.
Irritation itched the back of Phoebe's neck. They had a history, she and Grantham.
She'd spent her last years in England riding a whirlwind of rage. Nothing quenched the anger that had built inside her for twenty-six years, and it had to come out somehow. At first, Phoebe turned the rage on herself; drinking, dancing, fucking-even cutting herself. None of it helped. So, she'd turned her rage outward. Grantham had tried to save her. By offering marriage.
They would both have needed rescuing from that.
If there was one thing that angered Phoebe more than being an object of pity, it was being held an object of pity by a man. Grantham may have had the best of intentions, but the more he tried to reel her in, the further out Phoebe ventured into the extremes.
So extreme, Phoebe had committed treason.
As punishment she'd been exiled from England with the threat of prison if she returned without permission.
One of the delightful parts of Phoebe's banishment to America was a life free of traditional expectations. In America, she was simply Phoebe Hunt, a new employee of a private detective agency-not the wreckage that was Lady Phoebe, the daughter of a marquess. No, a daughter of a marquess didn't ride horses astride while wearing trousers, she didn't carry a gun with her, and she certainly didn't wash her own clothes or cook her own meals.
That, however, was what Phoebe had been doing these last four years in America. Along with learning new hobbies such as how to braid her own hair and sew her own menstrual rags.
Keeping her gaze trained on Sam, Phoebe put off the inevitable confrontation with Grantham.
"I need an advert placed, Mr. Fenley. It should go out with this afternoon's edition and in every edition afterward for one week," she demanded.
Sam's brow quirked. "The clerk at the front desk couldn't help you?"
Like his sister, this one. Not cowed in the least by the presence of the aristocracy. The memory of Sam's sister Letty caught her by surprise and a sharp pain, almost like homesickness, pricked her heart.
Once upon a time, she and Letty had been friends.
"What are you here to advertise?" Grantham asked, bringing Phoebe's attention back to him.
She considered making a joke, but the sight of Grantham's clenched fists kept her from such stupidity. Phoebe was not welcome here anymore-an outsider in a home where she never quite fit.
She had changed.
Everything had changed.
"I was under the impression Mr. Fenley was in charge here now," Phoebe said, taking a few steps farther into the room, sizing Sam up with a glance. "Have you not tutored him in the fine art of servicing the peerage?"
The man-boy had filled out nicely. He was taller than Phoebe in her heeled boots, and his well-cut suit displayed his broad shoulders and strong legs to his advantage. He'd a handsome if unweathered face, white skin that had never seen a desert sun, thick blond hair, and eyes the color of a loch she'd once seen in the northernmost part of Scotland.
Copyright © 2025 by Elizabeth Everett. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
