Chapter One #2
“She is the only daughter of the Duke of Thirwhestle. Of course there will be a next time,” Mabel said, as she and Lillian retrieved their purses and tucked their stools beneath Eleanor’s typesetting bench.
“Besides, I refuse to believe a woman as beautiful as Lady Cordelia Highwater could possibly end up a spinster.”
Lillian shrugged. “If the next lord possesses an ounce of intelligence, he will forgo the usual celebrations and whisk her away to Gretna Green.”
“That wouldn’t work,” Eleanor replied. “There are far too many ways for Lady Cordelia to escape on a three-day trip to Scotland. She’d end up bolting through a cow field, never to be seen again.”
“At least the entire ton wouldn’t be in attendance to watch.
” Mabel inched closer to the others as they made their way through the printing house toward the street.
She was still rattled by the scowls of the men who worked there and the insults they said just loud enough that Eleanor and her friends could hear but the foreman could not.
Eleanor had become accustomed to the bitterness. She was a woman working in a man’s space. Composing type was usually gendered work, and though the London Society of Compositors had relaxed its rules around women taking up the craft, most printing houses continued to employ men exclusively.
Unless they were in a bind. Unless there was a breaking story that stopped the press and speed was of the essence. That’s when they would send for Eleanor.
She held her head high as she strolled past the paper’s regular compositors, ignoring the way they glowered.
She could set type five times faster than her nearest competitor, and they resented her for it.
They also resented the rather obscene amount of money that she was paid to rescue an edition at the last minute.
Every aspect of the printing process had been stripped of human touch over the past hundred years, except for the setting of type.
That was a task that couldn’t be replaced by a machine.
Type was an art form. Some men might slap any font into a book or across a page, but for Eleanor, the decision came from a finely honed sense of tone, emotion, audience, content, readability, and budget.
Always, she asked herself, “What experience must the reader have?” If she didn’t have a font that was perfect for the project, she would locate one, then her fingers would dance across her type boxes to the innate rhythm of the text, flying faster than she could consciously think.
She was an artist. While newspaper columns required less artistry than books, she rather liked the ridiculous amount of cash she earned from them.
Even after hiring Mabel and Lillian as assistants, she still had more than enough money to meet her needs.
It gave her time to focus on the projects she was passionate about that paid slightly less well, like the Dictionary of Political Economy or The Autobiography of a Flea.
The foreman nodded as the three of them crossed the threshold of the printing house into the small, neat foyer that smelled of ink and paper despite being pristine, without a single smudge on the white marble floor.
Eleanor gave a satisfied little humph, as she always did when presented with something beautiful.
The way the light from the streetlamps refracted through the small, diagonal panes of glass that made up the mullion windows created a pattern of light across the floor that was reflected in the pattern of tiles across the roof.
That was what Eleanor loved about the architecture of this building—only when the sun had set and the building had closed to outsiders did that element of design reveal itself.
It was beauty reserved for those who worked the press, who put in long hours of toil and sweat.
Only for them did the building show itself to its fullest.
Otto, the Times’ porter, held open the door. “Good night, Miss Wright, Miss Thompson, Miss Cole. A cab awaits your convenience.”
“Good night, Otto,” the three trilled in unison.
The trip across town to the boardinghouse Lillian and Mabel lived in flew by as they engaged in the great debate of the day—was Lady Cordelia Highwater a fool, a villain, or a victim?
The author of the piece they’d typeset had clearly cast her in the role of man-hating shrew, intent on humiliating men for the crime of having the right to vote.
Lillian was leaning more toward “Cordelia the fool” because who in her right mind would turn down marriage to a duke when it meant a lifetime of security? Assuming said duke didn’t have a history of killing his wives, that was. In that case, a lifetime might be secure but short.
Eleanor and Mabel had more generous thoughts on the situation. Mabel had constructed her own fantasy that Lady Cordelia had fled in order to be with her true love. Eleanor was fairly certain Lady Cordelia was not running toward anything and was instead refusing to be her father’s pawn. Good on her.
What will the Captain think of this when he reads of it tomorrow?
Would he share her disdain for the aristocracy’s behavior?
Would he take the side of the man abandoned at the altar or the woman who fled?
She was impatient to know. She was impatient to check with her building’s concierge, to hear those three words that never failed to set her heart fluttering lately: “You’ve got mail. ”
Words were her entire life. By her calculation, she had read almost eighty million of them, yet never had a phrase sparked such effervescence.
Never had she reread a piece of paper so often that the edges were worn and the ink smudged.
Nor had she ever been motivated to run up the four flights of stairs to her flat so that she could ensconce herself in the corner of her armchair, slip a finger beneath the wax seal, and breathlessly read whatever the Captain had to say to her that day.
Oblivious to the turn of Eleanor’s thoughts, Lillian raised a metaphorical glass as the cab bounced down the rutted road. “Here’s to Lady Cordelia Highwater. We hope that wherever you’re laying your head tonight, you’re free.”
Captain of the Nautilus. I should have guessed it. It was right there in your annotations. Should I be concerned? Nemo was morally questionable at best. Must you be kept away from the aristocracy?
—Booklover
Yes, I should be kept from all lords and ladies, but not for the reasons you might imagine.
There are many aspects of Nemo that resonate with me.
I find myself preoccupied with the very frictions he embodies: progress vs.
morality, freedom vs. isolation. If you can look past the vengeance and murder, he’s a tragic figure.
Also, I saw what might be my only opportunity to captain a majestic marvel of invention, and I seized it. Truthfully, that was the primary driving force behind my choice. Thoughts on his character are justifications that, while true, were very recently devised.
—Captain (Obviously The Nonviolent sort)
I shall question your choice no further. Let ours be a dimension where we can express our hearts freely.
—Booklover