Victorian Newspaper Princess
Book 1
Irish Potato Famine
CHAPTER 1: MEET THE PRINCESS
When the front door opened, I marched through and swung my small bag before my skirts, holding it with both hands. “Please inform your mistress that I have arrived.”
The tall man holding the lantern stood dressed in a night robe. The curls on his head twisted in every direction, indicating that he had rather recently risen from bed. I reached inside my coat’s inner pocket, pulled out a watch, and noticed the hands in the one o’clock position Dublin time.
“It’s after midnight, ma’am,” he said in a thick, Irish brogue, “and I fancy you’ve come to the wrong house.”
I slipped the watch back inside the pocket and withdrew a note. “This is the Kilkenny residence, is it not?”
“Yes, it is, lest—”
I stretched out my bag with one hand, and he took it. “The driver left my trunk at the base of the stoop.” I pointed through the open door. “Would you be so kind as to fetch it … after you have summoned Mrs. Kilkenny, that is?”
The man leaned back, and the sound of a wounded animal issued from his throat. “There is no Mrs. Kilkenny.”
I jerked my head bolt upright. “Of course there is. You are her servant, are you not?”
“I’m Mr. Kilkenny. I alone reside here. Now, do you mind explaining who the devil you are?”
I surveyed the foyer and down the hall past the front parlor for as far as the light would penetrate. Signs of his living alone loomed evidently; dust on the table by the foyer wall, pictures in the hall slightly askew, the wood floor populated rather ubiquitously with scuff marks—it was as plain as a hat on a rack that a bachelor resided here. I curtsied, fighting the red I felt invading my face. “My most humble apologies. I am Miss Annie Adams, correspondent on assignment for The Sun of Baltimore in the great American state of Maryland.” I curtsied again. “At your service, sir.”
“Where is Mr. Adams?”
“There is no Mr. Adams.”
He dropped my bag on the floor. I stared at it, gawked at him, and raised my eyebrows.
“Of course there is,” he said. “There must be a Mr. Adams, Miss Adams. I am scheduled to be at the Dublin docks tomorrow and fetch a Mr. Adams. Now, where is he?”
I shook my head. “I know not. Mrs. Kilkenny et al. from the Conciliation Hall government were supposed to have met me at the Dublin docks today. Now, it is the early morning of the day after ….” I brushed my hands together several times. “I had a simply wretched time getting here at such an ungodly hour, as you can very well imagine.”
Mr. Kilkenny groaned. “A female correspondent? How could any tabloid send a female … and a little girl at that?”
I snickered at his slight against my smaller-than-average stature. My actual desire coaxed me to grab his neck and squeeze, but I had gone through the very same thing when The Sun first hired me. Men hate it when a woman holds what men deem to be a man’s employment. I have learned to manage that by turning off the charm quicker than a lightning strike. “Indeed, I know I am not so very tall … even for a woman, but I will have you know my twenty-second birthday shall be two months hence … April the eighteenth, eighteen hundred and forty-six.” I folded my arms, leaned back, and popped my eyes open wider. “Have you any familiarity with anything I have published?”
“No, I haven’t.” He snorted.
“Then do not appraise a book ….” I hesitated.
“… by its subject matter?”
“I was, indeed, about to say, ‘by the sex of its author.’” I did not dare crack a smile, but I could not help an internal snicker.
He narrowed his eyes. “And I suppose you’ll cite Jane Austen as your prime example.”
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “I, doubtless, would not cite her at all. Her works are simply … there.”
He pointed at my bonnet. “I see your hair matches your temperament.”
I undid my bonnet and removed it. “Mr. Kilkenny, red hair affecting red tempers is an old wives’ tale. I do not anger, sir. I drive with determination. Please do not mistake one for the other in the matter.” I slapped my hands together, dropped them before my skirts, and allowed the bonnet to dangle from its strap. “So, you are the local government official who is to show me around Conciliation Hall.”
He nodded, and we fell into a rather uncomfortable quietude whilst staring at one another. However, I was the more comfortable by far because I felt at peace with myself most of the time. When found in situations such as the one confronting us, most people are ill at ease because they are, first and foremost, ill at ease with themselves.
I offered a smile as a truce. “Mr. Kilkenny, it is altogether far too late to accompany me to a hotel, so I suggest you offer me a room for the night.”
He drew back and opened his eyes wider. “Miss Adams, that is simply not possible.”
I extended a hand to my left. “You do not mind, do you?”
He thumped a finger on his chest in time with his words. “Whether or not I do is moot.” He pointed towards the front entrance. “I have neighbors … and a reputation to uphold.”
I swept my hand towards the door. “Then you prefer me to sleep on the stoop? It is February in Ireland, sir. I would suppose a young, unmarried, American woman freezing to death outside your home would, doubtless, be far worse than one sleeping rather comfortably inside it. Would you not agree?”
Mr. Kilkenny drooped his shoulders. “As soon as I bring in your trunk, I’ll show you to a room.”
I offered my friendliest smile. “I am gladdened that you have decided to give me leave to stay.”
“On the contrary, Miss Adams, as soon as I’ve secured your trunk, it’s me intention to walk three blocks and wake up a good friend to beg him to keep me for the night.”
I splayed a hand across my chest, batted my eyelashes, and smiled. “You would leave a lady alone in a strange house?”
“I wouldn’t leave a lady.” He walked outside, returned with my trunk, and set it down. “But I could leave you, for it shall be safer for you than for any intruder foolhardy enough to trespass.” He closed the door and bolted it.
I laughed. “You have the poet about you, sir, but, doubtless, so may most of your Irish brethren.”
He turned and sneered. “I’d say there’s some truth in that.”
“Well, since that is settled, please inform me of the situation in Ireland.”
He groaned. “It can wait till morning.”
“I was, indeed, anxious to hear a particle of the situation on the ride from the docks, only you never graced me with your presence.”
He walked closer and scrutinized me from head to toe, his face immobile. “It’s ‘An Gorta Mor,’ Miss Adams. That is what’s happening.”
“An Gorta Mor?”
“An Gorta Mor. Hard times. Do you know the core of it?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. I simply knew not the Gaelic term for it. It started in the fall of forty-five, I do believe. The potato crop failed last summer, and many tenant farmers, doubtless, could not earn enough to pay their loans for planting their potatoes or to feed their families.”
I looked at the door. “Even at this late hour, I noticed several people rather poorly attired against the cold. They walked along the docks and streets as my carriage transported me in relative comfort.” I nodded. “And what is the story concerning the band of vagrants waiting for my ship to dock on the quay? Is that normal, since the autumn of eighteen forty-five, I mean?”
His fiery glare could have melted the heart of the staunchest adversary, but never a hardened correspondent.
“An Gorta Mor,” he said. “Do you know the literal translation?”
“No, sir.”
“It means ‘the great hunger.’” He turned away again. “Moreover, the Irish people don’t like the English, Miss Adams, and that extends to those of English descent. So, you see, it’s not because you’re a female correspondent. It’s because you’re sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong. Requests to England have been made for assistance, but they offer up only a deaf ear.”
I felt my brows draw closer as I nodded. “I understand that it is a wretched and untenable situation. However, it is my intention to extract the truth and deliver it to the sympathetic ears of my Baltimore readers.”
“I, like most true Irishmen, feel the English have no right to rule the Irish at all, hunger or no.”
He had witnessed my empathetic offering, regarded it as feminine weakness, and decided to attack. By the bye, he would find his hurricane energies wasted against my Gibraltar-like stand. “If ample help did arrive, I would, doubtless, not be abashed if your own political agenda blinded you to it.”
He bounded towards me, shoulders hunched and leaning forward to better display his more prominent physical presence. “Just hard times.”
I leaned forward and met him nose to nose—my granite versus his papier-mâché. “Simply give me the facts, Mr. Kilkenny, and I will pen a fair account of them.”
Mr. Kilkenny sucked in his lips and lowered his eyebrows. He hurried into the front parlor and worked on starting a fire in the hearth. I suspected part of the reason for his hasty retreat lay in gaining time to lighten his reddened complexion.
I stepped under the archway. “I have come to report the situation, not to travel about boohooing and allowing my feelings to become bruised by a lack of sentiment towards the English or the descendants thereof. Whatever do you take me for, a woman?”
He ceased working at the hearth and turned his head. “Hardly that, Miss Adams.”
“Indeed, I am of recent English origin, and I could scarcely take equal offense. However, I choose not to be in a bad way over it.”
“Have you no feminine feelings?”
“I have, but I know when it is appropriate to display them. I will obtain that which I seek, and you shall not wrench a single feminine feeling from me until you have the wherewithal to open yourself to them.” He piled clumps of peat in anticipation of a flame that might soon fire them up. I stepped forward, clasped my hands together, and let them bounce off my skirts. “Mr. Kilkenny, the fire shall not be necessary. The hour is late, so if you would show me to my room, I will retire for the evening.”
He turned around. “You’ll not be wanting to partake in a little sustenance then before bed?”
“I am amply …” I swung an arm before me. “… sustenanced.”
He shook his head. “Strange grammar for a tabloid writer.” He abandoned his endeavors at fire-making. “I’ll build a fire in your room then.”
“There is absolutely no need. I am quite capable of igniting a fire.”
He glared at me. “Oh, I’m willing to wager you are.”
I shook my head. “Building one in a hearth … is my true meaning.”
He stood up holding his lantern, and I watched his frigid breath expel from between his thin lips and float towards the ceiling until it drifted out of the lantern’s range. His late-twenties handsomeness became him, piquing my curiosity over why he had never married. Of course, if his manners towards me were the same towards all women, it was not altogether difficult to ascertain the cause of any woman’s reluctance.
“I’m sure you are capable, Miss Adams … of building a coal fire. However, we use peat in Ireland, and there is a bit of a trick to it. I had better demonstrate.”
“We use wood where I come from. Have you water available?”
“There is a bowl upstairs. Is that sufficient?”
“And a pitcher?”
“You are a lot of trouble.” He marched towards me whilst holding the lantern.
“My editor does not believe so and has therefore dubbed me his Newspaper Princess.”
He smirked. “Well, there’s no accounting for taste.” He extended his free arm. I took it, and he led me up the stairs to the second floor. Upon entering a cold and cramped bedchamber, he lit a candle on the nightstand beside the bed, started a worthy fire in the hearth, left, and returned with a pitcher.
“This was me sister’s room. She married a few months back and moved to Prince Edward Island.”
“I see.”
“In Canada.”
“I know where the island is.” I scanned the claustrophobic but well-kept room. It appeared his sister had more expensive tastes in accommodations. The canopied bed sat rather majestically amongst the other mahogany furniture, and someone had dressed the windows elaborately with a generosity of lace. “You were fond of your sister, were you not?”
“How would you know?”
I harrumphed and surveyed the room, comparing the relative opulence with the shabbiness I had seen on the first floor. “Trust me, I know.”
He harrumphed back and then shook his head. “Ah, you’re a woman after all.”
I shrugged. “Indeed. That I cannot deny.”
“I hope you don’t rue the day you arrived in Ireland.” He marched to the door, spun around, and glared at me. “I’ll return with your trunk.” He pivoted around but turned back again. “And a charmingly beautiful female throwing away her assets to pursue the felonious profession of news correspondent … well, it’s … it’s ….”
“Appalling?” I offered, seeing a particle of humor in his ranting.
“I was going to say, ‘unforgivable.’” He squinted, buckled his lips, and spun away from me.
The sting hit my heart, and I had a notion of throwing something at him. “You think so little of me, then?”
He grabbed the door handle. “As little as possible.”
I dug a particle deeper for more of the infamous mischief my American benefactor, Miss Harlacher, so well credited me for. “And that has naught to do with my being female?”
A puff of steam burst through his lips. “On the contrary, it has everything to do with it.”
I eased towards him and stared into his eyes. “If you would, doubtless, treat me as simply another human being instead of a female, an obvious solution to my housing may have swiftly presented itself.”
Mr. Kilkenny hunched his shoulders. “Let us understand one thing, Miss Adams. You’re here to report on the condition of the bad times befalling me people. You may keep your womanly opinions in your head as long as you keep them out of your tabloid.”
Realizing our situation had spiraled out of control, I clasped my hands before my skirts. “To answer your concern of a moment since, I will not rue the day I came. I only hope you will not rue it.”
He stood still, apparently drinking in my inflection, endeavoring to decipher its interpretation. I wanted him to be certain of the sincerity in what I said—and what I hoped—and that these final departing words would avail us in setting straight our awkward beginning.
“I truly mean that, Mr. Kilkenny,” I said as forthright as I knew how.
He grimaced, turned, and left the room.
END SAMPLE CHAPTER
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