Chapter Five
Peter’s pen hovered over the letter he was writing as he tried to determine whether his words were witty or weird.
He could scratch them out and start again, but there were already four discarded pieces of paper in front of him.
One of the House attendants approached with a tea service.
Peter thanked the man and watched steam curl upward as the tea was poured.
Peter had his own office in the House of Lords, but he rarely used it.
Instead, he preferred to sit in the gallery, at a corner table beneath the portrait of Her Majesty, Aunt Charlotte.
It was where his peers gathered to work, to socialize, or to lie on the bench seats that ran the length of the room and nurse their sore heads.
Peter’s priority wasn’t reading upcoming bills or the information packets that came with them. He could do so at home in the evenings. It was making use of the influence he held over other voting members, and that couldn’t be exercised while he was holed up alone.
But perhaps he should have made use of his private space this morning, because every time a peer walked past, Peter found himself hugging the pages, trying to obscure their contents.
Of course, I am highly intrigued by this precipice of yours, he wrote once he was certain no one could see. How much of your new circumstances can you share before we blur the boundaries of anonymity?
It was starting to itch, how little he knew of this woman.
She was intelligent, well-read, and amusing.
She had a keen interest in the world around her, but what did she do with her days?
Did she have siblings as annoying as his?
Was she on charitable committees? Which ones?
What did she look like, sound like, taste like?
Those last three questions were keeping him up at night. In his mind, he pictured a woman with kind eyes and luscious lips, whose curves fit perfectly in his hands, whose laughter inspired men to give up all duty and spend their days writing pithy jokes to amuse her.
He was spending his days writing pithy jokes to amuse her, instead of devoting all of his time to his responsibilities as he usually did. He felt guilty that his focus—usually so fixed on what it should be—had been split. Yet the joy of her letters held more sway than his scruples.
She had mentioned that her usual willpower was rendered useless in the face of a good story.
With that one sentence, Peter had understood her.
How many times had he put his book down, wanting to savor the experience, only for his hands to reach for it of their own accord and his eyes consume it hungrily?
Only when the last page was turned at some ungodly hour of the morning did he realize he’d made an egregious error in staying up all night.
Today I am tired and sluggish. I was reading a history of the Roman Empire. I didn’t want it to end, but at the same time, could not stop turning the pages. By the time I closed the book, I was left half-wishing that the empire had never collapsed so that there were more volumes for me to read…
Eleanor fizzed in anticipation as she walked through the foyer of her building, just as she had every afternoon since she and the Captain had begun their friendship of sorts.
Then the porter said those magical words—“You have mail”—and her heart skipped.
She waited impatiently for him to retrieve it from the stack of letters behind his desk.
Only through forceful application of will could she stop herself from snatching the letter when he finally handed it over.
She put her typecase down just long enough to tear the envelope open, and by the time she’d walked up four flights of stairs, it was read. She scratched Baskerville behind the ears, turned on the gas stove, and filled the kettle.
While she cooked two pieces of fish, one for her and one for him, she mulled over the Captain’s letter.
What could she tell him without revealing too many details?
Declaring that she was now the companion of a crotchety lady of the ton might well reveal nothing, assuming that the Captain was not ton, but over the past year his sister had unwittingly left clues that she was, at least, a gentleman’s daughter.
The Tattler didn’t appear to work and had a penchant for expensive shoes.
Dear Captain,
You must tell me how England fares in this alternate timeline of yours.
Regarding my new circumstances, I have been given the opportunity to study something firsthand.
It poses no danger to me now, but I know it has teeth, so I’m somewhat wary of getting close to it.
Still, I’ve read all the secondhand sources and they’ve done nothing but stir my interest. I can’t not take this opportunity…
All the gossip columns and biographies and society-set novels in the world could not compare to a season actually among the aristocracy.
Well, she might not be among, but she would definitely be on the outskirts, able to watch in person.
Then she would face a conundrum—how could she share the experience with him without sharing the truth?
Her letter arrived just as Peter was walking to his carriage. He crossed paths with the messenger in the courtyard. “Good man,” he called.
The boy froze.
“May I see that?” Peter held out a hand.
The boy offered the package wrapped in brown paper with Booklover’s neat handwriting printed across it.
Peter undid the string holding it together and took the folded note that was lying atop a book. He then handed the book back. “Thank you. Please do me a favor and retie that before you deliver it.”
The boy nodded and scurried away. Peter barely registered the thump, click, and sway as his footman closed the carriage door and the driver moved into the traffic, so fixed was he on Booklover’s words.
I can’t not take this opportunity.
Of course she couldn’t. Booklover had a voracious appetite for knowledge, even more so than his own. It was the thing he admired most about her.
He reached into his satchel for the pencil he used to make notes in the margins of books and a fresh leaf of paper.
Dear Booklover,
If you must take this opportunity, please do me a favor and arm yourself accordingly.
I’d hate to lose a fellow scholar. Will you share your discoveries with the world?
I would love to read it. Although, I’ll never be able to point to it on a shelf and say “I know the author” because I won’t know it’s you.
…
Eleanor veered toward the desk, where the porter was waggling his eyebrows. Yet he remained frustratingly silent. She sighed. He was going to make her ask. “Roland, has anything come for me?”
He whipped the letter out from beneath his desk and held it out. Just as her fingers were about to grasp the envelope, he flicked it out of her reach.
“Who are you writing to with such frequency?”
“A friend.”
“You’ve never written to a friend so often before.”
“He is a new friend.”
“Just a friend?” Roland’s tone was sly, and his slow wink made her flush.
“The Captain is just a friend. I don’t even know his name.”
Roland’s face crumpled with a disappointment that matched hers. “How are you going to marry a man whose name you don’t even know?”
“Who says that I plan to marry any man?”
He frowned. “You’re too pretty to remain single forever.”
It was both a compliment and a frustrating reminder of what wider society expected of her—that her focus on her work would be a temporary diversion and that, eventually, she would settle down, swap her typecase for a purse, and exchange hours spent over a compositor’s table with hours spent over a stove or wiping food from children’s mouths.
She couldn’t bring herself to want that.
Never in her life had she looked at one of the babes thrust in her direction and thought, I’d like one of these.
On the occasion that a husband had flitted into her fantasies, it was at the thought of kissing him goodbye as they both walked out the door and to their work.
She tried not to make Roland the sole recipient of a lifetime’s frustration and smiled tightly. “You won’t be rid of me that easily.”
She dumped her typecase by the door and plopped into the armchair.
She would have only a few minutes to herself before needing to curl her hair with tongs and prepare for her first ball.
Baskerville bumped his head against hers, demanding a meal, but he would have to wait.
She contorted her arms so that she could read the Captain’s letter over him.
… The world is brilliant in my alternate reality, where the Roman Empire still stands. The Dark Ages never happened. The industrial revolution occurred centuries ago rather than decades, and our technical and social progress far outstrips what we have today.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m fully aware of the many issues with the Roman Empire, in particular the constant threat of war, but one can’t deny that it achieved incredible things.
I am facing my own alarming affair, though not quite a precipice. A gaggle of gossiping girls, my youngest sister chief amongst them. Pray for me. I may not come out of tonight’s event with my sanity in check.