Speak Easy, Speak Love Read online

  DEDICATION

  To my sister Lauren, first reader and best friend

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Fallen into a Pit of Ink

  Chapter 2: Lady Disdain Are You Yet Living?

  Chapter 3: When the Age Is in, the Wit Is Out

  Chapter 4: Men of Some Other Metal

  Chapter 5: Courtesy Is a Turncoat

  Chapter 6: A Jade’s Trick

  Chapter 7: Not Till a Hot January

  Chapter 8: I Would My Horse Had the Speed of Your Tongue

  Chapter 9: A Church by Daylight

  Chapter 10: A Star Danced, and Under That Was I Born

  Chapter 11: She Speaks Poniards, and Every Word Stabs

  Chapter 12: He’s Not in Your Good Books

  Chapter 13: What His Heart Thinks His Tongue Speaks

  Chapter 14: Seek Not to Alter Me

  Chapter 15: Bait the Hook Well; This Fish Will Bite

  Chapter 16: Shall I Never See a Bachelor of Three-Score Again

  Chapter 17: Some Cupid Kills with Arrows, Some with Traps

  Chapter 18: There’s a Double Meaning in That

  Chapter 19: I Love Thee Against My Will

  Chapter 20: The Prince Woos for Himself

  Chapter 21: All Hearts in Love Use Their Own Tongues

  Chapter 22: Turn All Beauty into Thoughts of Harm

  Chapter 23: A Kind of Merry War

  Chapter 24: Are You Good Men and True

  Chapter 25: Our Own Hands Against Our Hearts

  Chapter 26: How Like a Maid She Blushes

  Chapter 27: Love Me! Why?

  Chapter 28: Done to Death by Slanderous Tongues

  Chapter 29: I Would Eat His Heart in the Market-Place

  Chapter 30: I Do Love Nothing in the World So Well as You; Is Not That Strange?

  Chapter 31: As the Greyhound’s Mouth, It Catches

  Chapter 32: Silence Is the Perfectest Herald of Joy

  Chapter 33: I Do Suffer Love Indeed

  Chapter 34: For Which of My Bad Parts Didst Thou First Fall in Love with Me?

  Author’s Note

  Sources

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by McKelle George

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  FALLEN INTO A PIT OF INK

  Benedick Scott was on his way to freedom or profound failure or, if the usual order of things held up, both. Two chests, strapped closed and marked for delivery to an apartment in Manhattan, sat at the end of his bed. On his person he needed only his typewriter, slung over his shoulder in a battered case. He’d stuffed the case with socks to cushion any dinging, along with his shaving kit, a worn copy of Middlemarch, and thirty-four pages of typed future.

  In the other bed his roommate snored like a cavalry crossing a bridge. Last year Benedick had heard his ungodly slumber three doors down, which was why he’d asked for him personally as a roommate this year and had been hailed as a martyr by the other boys. For a final time Benedick lifted his mattress and procured the old sheet rope. He tied it snugly to the bedpost and let it drop out his open window.

  Luckily Chapman Hall was at the back of school property, and his room on the third floor faced the poorly tended outer wall, far from the reach of professorial eyes. Under the shadow of a sycamore tree, the orange glow of a cigarette flickered in and out of darkness, catching the edge of a jaw, then a gloved fingertip as someone tucked it, still smoking, behind his ear. Benedick gripped the windowsill.

  Last chance, a faraway voice said; a voice that sounded an awful lot like his father. Last chance to stick with the gilded lot life has seen fit to hand you.

  Benedick checked his pocket watch. Half past three. Not for all the bourbon in all the bathtubs in all of Brooklyn. He slipped out of his window with the ease of a ritual many times repeated and descended hand over hand, toes digging into the grooves of worn brick. He passed the second-floor window and nearly fell the rest of the way down when he heard a voice: “Why am I not surprised?”

  Claude Blaine leaned out his window, arms crossed over the sill. His eyes gleamed in the darkness.

  “Go back to bed, Blaine,” Benedick muttered, adjusting the shoulder strap of his typewriter case.

  “I figured when you weren’t celebrating with the rest of us, you’d be passing through later.” Claude inhaled a quick breath, gazing past Benedick to the sycamore tree. “Is that”—he lowered his voice, meeting Benedick’s eyes again with comic gravity—“a bootlegger?”

  Benedick sighed. Claude Blaine was one of Stony Creek Academy’s finest, the sort of student who glowed. Admired by the boys and all the girls crazy over him. His family lived in London, and his ancestors were half royal or something, the type that had only ever been rich, whose wealth sank back so many generations their bones were practically diamonds. The type Benedick found utterly uninteresting and possibly contagious.

  He continued down the makeshift rope without answering. Claude wasn’t a snitch at least; in the many times he’d caught Benedick passing by his window, he’d never uttered a word to get him in trouble.

  The rope grew taut with extra weight, and Benedick’s head snapped up. Claude, already dressed, was climbing down after him. “What,” Benedick whispered, “do you think you’re doing?”

  The grin Claude shot down at him sparkled.

  The sheet started to tear. Benedick swore and hurried down, clearing the last window, but not fast enough. With a doomed ripping sound, the fabric rent apart. He swung his typewriter up to his chest to hug protectively as he fell and slipped on the dewy grass. His back hit the ground with a lung-flattening thud.

  Claude landed on his feet with barely a stumble, the bastard, the sheet rope dropping around his shoulders like a fashionable scarf. With a breathless laugh he whispered, “Lucky we weren’t at the top, eh?”

  Benedick seethed in silence. And he was pretty sure he’d heard a smothered laugh from the direction of the tree. When he’d got his breath, he pushed to his feet, ignoring Claude’s offered hand.

  Claude leaned in. “So, we’re going to a speakeasy, is that—”

  Benedick clamped a hand over Claude’s mouth. His eyes went meaningfully to the window at the far corner, and he mouthed Winston. The head boy of Chapman Hall, a bluenose as dry as the noonday desert, had been placed there precisely because it was the easiest dorm to slip out of. Benedick released Claude and pointed to the sycamore tree. Claude nodded.

  They arrived under rustling leaves, and Prince detached from the darkness. A weight rolled off Benedick at the sight of him. His face was shadowed, but Benedick recognized his expression nonetheless: What fresh nonsense is this?

  “Hello,” Prince said, taking the cigarette from behind his ear with the polite poise of a king. “Who are you?”

  Claude absorbed Prince with wonder. “Claude Blaine. Classmate of Ben’s.” He held out a hand.

  Prince glanced briefly at Benedick, with only a trace of amusement at Claude’s posh accent. Benedick cleared his throat. They had to lose the fancy-pants, and in the dark Prince cut a dangerous silhouette. Depending on what Prince had been doing before he picked Benedick up, he might even have a knife or firearm hidden under his jacket.

  But Prince winked at Benedick and shook Claude’s hand. “You can call me Prince.”

  Benedick glared.

  “Prince?” Claude asked. “What an odd name.”

  “Nickname.” Prince corrected him, with a wry smile. “Pedro Morello, more formally.”

  “I confess I’ve wondered where Scott sneaks off to every other week.” Sometimes Stony Creek’s more
daring students took the train from Brooklyn to underground gin mills in Manhattan: for cocktails, rebellion, and girls with white arms and an astonishing capacity for cigarettes.

  Benedick, who had more than once climbed back into his room smelling of gunpowder and moonshine, with some bruise or other purpling his skin and a sneer for propriety on his face, apparently suggested a different sort of adventure. Claude would be disappointed.

  Claude continued. “No one else would dare the night before the regents exam—”

  “I’m not coming back,” said Benedick.

  Claude looked at him suspiciously.

  “They’ll send the rest of my things to my father, I suppose, but I don’t care about any of it.”

  “What about your exam? And graduation? You’ll miss it, and they won’t let you make it up, not with your record—”

  “That’s the idea.” Benedick’s voice was like winter.

  He’d judged the necessity of this course of action weeks ago, during breakfast with his father. No sooner had Benedick buttered his toast when his father said, unprompted, “You’re not really going to waste more time trying to write those silly novels, are you?”

  “Yes,” Benedick replied, “I really am.”

  To which his father made a few points clear: First, that was not a man’s work; second, Benedick had two options his father would continue to support and fund, university or a job his father approved of (in the same stock company where he worked); and finally: “You’re not a sap, son—I’ll give you that—but you’re vain as a dollar. Sure, I like it when people like me, but your emotions go on the inside, not in some flimflam story, begging for approval. What about the papers? The Post, that’s different.” At least journalism had a ladder to climb, which was more than anyone could say for some ink-stained penny novelist. Oh, and might he also find a nice deb girl in the meantime? Their money, though by no means insubstantial, lacked pedigree and history—and was further stained by his mother’s sudden exodus to Hollywood.

  “Don’t look so scandalized, Blaine,” Benedick said. “In fact I don’t mind if you tell them you saw me running off—”

  A light swung toward the trees. Prince grabbed Benedick and Claude by their jackets and yanked them behind the trunk of the sycamore.

  “Who’s out there?” a voice called.

  “Winston,” Benedick muttered under his breath; at the same time Claude whispered, “Now we’re in it.”

  Benedick’s fingers dug into grooves of sticky spring sap. The corner of his typewriter case pressed into his hip where Claude leaned against him. A second beam of light flickered through the leaves.

  Prince adjusted his newsboy cap snugly on his head. His eyes danced with a giddy thrill Benedick hadn’t seen in months. “Better run now,” he whispered, “before he’s close enough to catch us.” Then off he went, silent as a deer.

  Benedick patted Claude’s shoulder. “Good luck,” he said, and ran.

  He was unsurprised, but still annoyed, to hear Claude’s steps pounding after him. “Stuff your good luck,” Claude hissed.

  Up ahead Prince reached the top of the back wall and disappeared from view. Benedick scrambled up the old ladder. “Stop! Stop at once or I’ll have you expelled!” Winston’s shouts chased over the grounds, coming closer. Benedick swung over the pocked stone wall, held on a beat, and dropped the nine feet. Claude vaulted over a moment later like an Olympic athlete and landed easily with a few loping steps.

  The Tin Lizzie waited on the side of a weedy dirt road. Prince hunched in front of the engine cranking. He glanced up at Benedick. “Get the ignition, would you?”

  Benedick hurried to the driver’s seat. He reached in and pulled down the spark retard until the pistons growled into a deep rumble.

  “Hurry up, Blaine,” Prince drawled, as if it were nothing, and Claude, grinning like a fool, clambered into the backseat.

  Benedick slid over to the passenger’s side. Prince got in and put the car into gear. They lurched forward, and the engine popped like a gunshot. Prince kept the headlights off, and Benedick loosed a breath.

  “Should I take you around to the front?” Prince asked, glancing back at Claude. “Not too late not to get expelled.”

  “Oh, they won’t,” Claude said, with such breezy confidence that Prince shook his head in his what-will-the-rich-say-next? expression. Claude leaned forward, forearms crossed over the seat. “Say, are we going to a speakeasy, then?”

  “Only the finest on Long Island,” Prince said. He coughed. In a lower voice he added, “After a quick stop.”

  “What kind of stop?” Benedick asked flatly.

  “Like maybe don’t wear your best shoes, but no need to say your prayers either.”

  Benedick stared at him.

  “What?” Prince asked. “The Masquerade’s this Saturday. He’s your interloper. That’s not my fault.”

  “I won’t be a problem,” Claude interjected. “I swear it. Only tell me one thing: Will there be gangsters involved?”

  Prince showed his teeth in a sharp smile. “How do you know I’m not a gangster?”

  Claude’s eyes grew round. “Are you?”

  “No,” Benedick said. “He’s not. And wherever we’re going, you’re going to stay in this scrap heap of a vehicle and guard my typewriter like your golden little life depends on it. By the way, where the hell is the car, Prince? Why’d you pick me up in this hayburner?”

  “I like the Tin Lizzie better. Anyway, Hero said she and Leo need it to pick up her cousin in the morning. If something happens, they’ll have a good car.”

  If something happened on their quick stop. Sure. “Hero has a cousin?” asked Benedick.

  “Who’s Hero?” asked Claude.

  Claude truly did not seem perturbed to be rattling along in a dark car to god knew where. Perhaps Benedick wasn’t the only one to feel suffocated inside Stony Creek’s walls.

  They reached the main road, and only then did Prince flip on the headlights and shift to a faster gear. Stony Creek Academy was nothing more than a series of dark lumps behind them. “Hero Stahr,” Prince said to Claude, “is the hostess and darling of Hey Nonny Nonny. You’ll like her.”

  Benedick said, “She’ll like him, too, I bet. She goes nuts over accents.” She went nuts over fat pockets, rather, but that was just a slight tweak in semantics.

  Prince raised an eyebrow at him.

  Yes? Benedick returned the look. Claude ought to compensate for being such a pain in the ass by way of lovesick donation. “Look, the fourth-year exam isn’t until the afternoon. How about Leo drops him back at Stony Creek on their way? Where’s the cousin?”

  “North Manhattan, near Inwood, I think.”

  “Swell. There you go, Blaine; you won’t even have to bribe anyone.” Not to mention, it was a little more incentive for Prince to stay out of trouble tonight.

  Claude sniffed. “I wasn’t worried. But if you don’t mind, where precisely are we going tonight?”

  “First,” Prince said, “the coast.”

  Rum Row looked like a floating city, a line of rusted freighters, steamers, and rebuilt submarines shrouded in fog. Prince squatted on Breezy Point’s rocky shore, his arms resting on his knees, the tips of his ears turned the color of apples.

  Benedick, quiet and hunched in the chill of predawn, remained a few feet back. Beside him, Claude leaned in and whispered: “What exactly are we waiting for?”

  “Shh.” Benedick quieted him, but in truth he’d been wondering the same thing. Side trips when Prince picked him up were not uncommon, but usually they were a bit livelier. Not nearly so much time to stare at the mist-drenched horizon and doubt one’s recent life-changing decision.

  Prince glanced back over his shoulder, one side of his mouth hitched up in that smile of his. Benedick could not fathom the source of his good mood. Prince stood and from his jacket passed Benedick a tin flask, which, after a careful sniff, was determined to be one-third full of a liquid that was likely to be one-thi
rd brandy. Two-thirds guts and glory. Benedick sipped and grimaced.

  He handed the flask to Claude, who knocked back a rousing mouthful, managing it with a fist thumped on his chest. “Bloody coffin varnish,” he said hoarsely.

  Prince regarded him; after deciding something to himself, he pointed. “That’s the maritime line,” he said. “Ten or so miles out. Past it, liquor is legal again. So. What you’re looking at is basically floating warehouses of booze.”

  “And no one stops them?” Claude asked.

  Prince said, “They’re not doing anything wrong yet. They send rumrunners at night to get their cargo to shore, but plenty of it goes missing. Sometimes because of storms, but also because the runners will stuff canvas hams with rock salt, which they can throw overboard to be sunk if the coast guard catches them. After the salt dissolves, the sack will float back to the surface and get picked up by the runners, if they can find them again. Or sometimes they mark the current and send out crates to float to shore under the fog.”

  Claude had the unfortunate look of an adventurous puppy: devil minded and bored for the past half hour. “I see. And this—rather, are we some sort of rumrunners then?”

  “You’re definitely not.” Prince grinned. “But for that matter, neither am I, since I keep to shore, but I’ve got a lookout who wires me the good spots for strays and—see there; they’re starting in.”

  Half hidden among boulders made black by decaying moss, wooden crates appeared on the crests of incoming waves. Probably four that Benedick could count, spread widely among one another, along with the brownish heads of floating hams, all carried by the same tide.

  “Are those ours?” asked Benedick.

  “Catch that one before it hits!” Prince bent and dragged a crate through the sand.

  Benedick went after the other crate and heaved it up before it smacked against a boulder a second time. A wave crashed into his shins, and ice-cold water seeped through his pants, stinging his ankles and leaking into his shoes. He skittered out of the water. “Cold—son of a—”

  Prince kept laughing. “I told you not to wear nice shoes.”

  “These aren’t my nice shoes.” They were not Prince’s worn boots either, but Benedick didn’t own a pair of work shoes that matched Prince’s definition. Work, in his family, meant looking polished and ready for business.