style="font-size:15px;"> He hesitated and in that hesitation she had her answer. ‘No, of course you do not. I wonder why you came.’
‘To save you from your own folly,’
‘Is it folly to stand up for the poor and oppressed? Is it folly to point out injustice when I see it?’
‘No, I admire that, but if it leads to your own downfall …’
‘Why are you concerned for my downfall? I should have thought you would rejoice at it.’
‘I do not rejoice at anyone’s downfall, Miss Wayland,’ he said, smiling to soften the fierce look she was giving him. ‘I suppose I like to think I am a just and fair person and you are—’
‘A woman!’ she finished for him. ‘And not equipped to deal in a man’s world, is that what you were about to say?’
‘There is some truth in that.’
‘Then I shall have to prove you wrong, my lord.’
‘So you will retract?’
‘There is nothing to gainsay. What I wrote was the truth. And I shall continue to write the truth, however uncomfortable it makes people feel.’
‘Making someone feel uncomfortable is only the half of it,’ he said. ‘There is the consequence to consider.’
‘A change of heart, perhaps?’
He did not think that would happen. ‘I meant an appearance in a court of law.’
‘I shall welcome the opportunity to have my say.’
‘I would not advise it. You might make matters a hundred times worse.’
‘Thank goodness I am not required to take your advice,’ she retorted.
He smiled and changed tack. ‘I believe your father and mine were often at loggerheads, Miss Wayland. Do you have to continue the feud, for feud I believe it was, though I have no idea how it started? It would be a pity to perpetuate it.’
‘It was not a feud, it was simply that my father published the truth as he saw it and that did not please the Earl who saw, and still sees, his position as unassailable. But I think it should be challenged.’
She had spirit, he would give her that, but did she really understand the implications of taking up swords against his father? ‘And you are determined to carry on where your father left off without even knowing why.’
‘I do know why. I have just told you: justice and fairness for those who cannot stand up for themselves.’
‘And who is to stand up for you?’
‘I can look after myself, my lord.’
This was sheer bravado. He could see the doubt in her expressive greeny-brown eyes. Beautiful eyes, he decided, bright and honest-looking. He doubted she could lie convincingly. ‘Then, as I cannot budge you, I will take my leave.’ He bowed, turned on his heel and was gone.
She watched him stop outside and look at the large sash window in which she had stuck the pages of the latest edition of the paper. Poor people could not afford newspapers. With tax duty of four pence they had to be sold at sixpence or sevenpence at least, which put them out of the reach of the ordinary working man and left her very little profit. She was convinced the tax was high in order to keep the lower orders from learning of things the government and those in authority did not want them to learn and so she had begun the habit of putting the pages in the window, so that it could be read aloud by those who could read to those who could not. His glance moved from that to one of Roger Blakestone’s posters advertising the rally on the common. As he walked back to his horse, she noticed he limped. She had read in the London paper that he had been wounded doing some deed of valour during the recent war with Napoleon and supposed that was the result.
Helen turned back to work, but the prospect of being sued was worrying. If she were heavily fined or sent to prison, then the Warburton Record and the printing business would have to be shut down and that meant no work for Edgar, who was the sole support of his mother, or Tom Salter, who had a wife and three children, or Betty, her maid, who was an orphan and whose only relation was a distant cousin too poor to help her. She had brought this on them in her pig-headedness.
Her father had spent six months in Norwich Castle for speaking out against the Earl enclosing common land which the villagers had worked since time immemorial. His crime had been called seditious libel. He had returned home after he served his sentence, a shadow of the man he had been. He was gaunt and thin, his hair had turned white and he walked with a stoop. It was a long time before he stood upright again and put on a little weight, but it did not seem to have taught him a lesson.
The fire in his belly against injustice wherever he saw it, and particularly against the Earl of Warburton, had been as fierce as ever. She had watched him and worried about him, tried to tempt him with his favourite food, tried to persuade him to rest while she ran the paper, but to no avail. His pen was vitriolic. She had no doubt that if he had not died of a seizure, he would have been arraigned again. That was her legacy, not bricks and mortar, not printing presses, but his undying passion, a passion she shared.
‘You are not going to let him bully you, are you?’ Edgar said from his desk where he had been setting out advertisements, one for a lecture at the assembly rooms called ‘At Waterloo with Wellington’ being given by some bigwig from London, Mr West advertising his agricultural implements, and the miller his flour. Another was for an elixir of youth at sixpence a bottle. Goodness knew what it contained, but she did not doubt it tasted vile and could not live up to its name.
‘I don’t want to, but it’s not only me I have to consider. There’s you and Tom and Betty.’
‘We’ll manage, don’t you fret.’
Tom came in from the back room in time to hear this. ‘Manage what?’
‘The Earl is threatening to sue me for defamation of character,’ she explained. ‘I am wondering if I ought to retract?’
‘But you said nothing that wasn’t true, did you?’
‘No, but the Viscount tells me that is no defence.’
‘He is only trying to frighten you. Call his bluff.’
‘You think I should?’
‘Yes, if you think you are in the right. Your father would have. We will stand by you.’
‘Thank you, both of you, but I fear I have made an enemy of the Viscount.’
In any other circumstances and if he was not who he was, she could have liked the Viscount. He had none of the arrogance of his father, but he was his father’s son nevertheless. Was he right about a feud? Her father had had no love for the Earl, but she had always supposed it was for altruistic reasons and not personal. But supposing there was something personal in their enmity, what could it possibly be? A wrong never righted? But why? Who was to blame? She sighed and went back to her work; she was unlikely to find the answer to that now.
Chapter Two
In spite
