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“Not I, but I have the acquaintance of several young ladies of manner and breeding.” She beamed at him as inspiration struck. “I am, in the company of some of these young ladies, visiting the Panorama in Leicester Square this afternoon. You might look for us if you are interested in perspectives on nature.”
He nodded. “I would be honored to pursue an acquaintance. Rowden speaks very highly of you.”
She stopped in the street. “He does?”
Gibbs paused also. “You find that alarming?”
“Only…surprising. Rowden and I were once quite close, but we have not been so for some time.”
Her chest ached. All those years without her friend, and she still didn’t understand why. She couldn’t ask him, of course. This Rowden would not be forthcoming. The boy had been her intimate acquaintance, the companion of her days, the partner in all her pranks. They were the antidote to the other’s loneliness. But now—she didn’t know the man he’d become.
A guffaw erupted from a group of people to her left, standing in a cluster before a plate glass window. Each pane displayed a different satiric print, colored in bright hues. “If Mr. Rowden’s on the hunt for a new lady love, ye might get a crack at him, Sal,” said one wearing a working man’s duffle surtout and a dusty round hat.
The woman beside him, in a printed cotton gown and a bonnet laden with silk chiffon, cackled in return. “As if a swell like that’d take a taste to the likes o’ me! Him’s got the gentry mort on a tether, don’t him? Like she has a dowry he means to burn through like th’others.”
Sophronia inched close to the group, peering at the print under inspection. She must have misheard; Rowden being on her mind, she heard his name on every tongue. But one of the prints at bold eye level was doubtlessly him, with the distinct cut of his sideburns and his tousled hair. The caricature accented his figure, giving him broader shoulders and leaner flanks, the high cravat and broad lapels of a dashing young buck. And there was no mistaking the walking stick.
She pressed closer, drawing a huff from the woman named Sal. The print was quickly drawn, doubtless from the engraver rushing to take advantage of the current gossip. The title read “A Rowd About Town.” A red-cheeked woman with a silk gown accenting a generous bosom admonished Rowden with a speech bubble trailing from her pink lips: “Cad! Ingrate! After all I have done for you.”
On the other side of Rowden, a slender maid in virginal white held a hand to her eyes as if she couldn’t bear to watch. Rowden, with a leer on his face, poured coins into the upturned hands of a rotund gentleman whose eyes reflected the gleam of gold. From Rowden’s mouth emerged the speech: “And have you a likely daughter, squire? I’m in search of another fortune to squander.”
“Oh, fustian,” Sophronia muttered. She turned to Sal. “Are there more like this? Is he frequently in the satiric prints?”
Sal’s eyes widened in surprise at being addressed by a fine lady. Sal herself exuded strong hints of rose water and gin. “Aye, mum, all the times. Him’s a bestseller, that Rowden.” She cocked her head toward the window. “Fine-looking swell, him is, and no mistake.”
“This will not do,” Sophronia muttered. “How am I to get him married if he is a figure of fun?” At the last second, she recalled her manners. “Mr. Gibbs, stay a moment if you will. I have business to conduct.”
Sophronia marched into the store, where the small front of the printer’s shop was crowded with customers looking over the prints laid out on counter and tables. She commanded the attention of the young man behind the counter and pointed. “I want every copy you have of that print.”
His eyes widened. “Which’un, mum?”
“The Rowd About Town. All the copies you have made,” she stressed, “and the copper plate used to engrave them.”
“But mum, if we sell the plate we can’t make no more prints.”
“That is precisely the point.” She pulled her purse from her pocket. “I assume I can ask a discount since I am buying several copies at once?”
“I—ah—I mun ask m’father.” The boy vanished through the door leading to the back of the shop, where the creak of equipment gave away the existence of the press, which stopped suddenly.
Another man, older, his gray hair queued back in the style of a bag wig, hastened out of the back room. The creak resumed, the apprentices toiling at their tasks. “Madam has made an inquiry after one of our prints?”
“I wish to know the name of the artist.”
“I am Zebedee Meggett, at your service in this and all things, Madam.” Meggett bowed, the frill of his neckcloth billowing as he did. “But alas, I cannot share the name of the artist at this time. Is Madam interested in buying other prints?”
“Only that one,” Sophronia said. “And the copper plate.”
He patted the wooden counter as if this motion could soothe her ire. “But then we might print no more of them, Madam.”
“That is precisely my hope. Name your price, Mr. Meggett.”
The expression on the man’s face as he made his interior calculations was nothing short of comical. The desire to please her and make a sale warred with the desire to keep his investment, for the cluster around his window was remarking on Rowden’s print, not others.
Finally the boy leaned in to whisper in his father’s ear. Meggett cleared his throat. “Five guineas, Madam. For the plate and prints.”
“Twenty for all the plates you have featuring Mr. Rowden, all the prints, and the promise that you will sell no more caricatures of him.”
“Madam!” Pain twisted the printer’s face. “You cannot so obstruct commerce and the will of the public— Those prints are quite popular— The subject—”
