Chapter Thirty-One
“So not a governess, then?” What a relief. Peter couldn’t imagine her moving into a tiny room in some lord’s home where she’d have to account for her comings and goings. The lack of freedom would destroy her.
Their feet had taken them back to Bowen’s Kitchen and, with wry smiles, they’d taken a table by the window and ordered coffee and cheese scones. Now the sun hung lower and filtered through the window, imbuing her dark hair with a warmth that made him want to sink his fingers into it.
“I don’t think so,” she said, oblivious to his thoughts. “Not now that you’ve described what dull curriculum young girls are expected to learn. Perhaps an opera singer?”
Peter raised his eyebrows. “Can you sing?”
“Not a note, but you’re the one who encouraged me to explore options that did not currently align with my skill sets.”
He chuckled and pushed the last of his scone across the table. She’d scoffed hers so quickly. “Perhaps your confidence in attempting new things swung a little too far.”
She turned her coffee cup in circles until the handle pointed at his. “So, we should not add soprano to the list.”
“It is your future. It is your list.”
For an hour they had filled every piece of notepaper she carried with potential career paths and their various benefits and drawbacks.
It was the same paper, with the same distinct flax-colored weave, that she’d written her letters on.
That she carried it with her made him giddy.
The Captain was always there. She was ready to share a thought or observation the moment it occurred, as though he walked through life next to her.
When her sheets of paper had been exhausted, Peter had pulled out his—the ones he reserved especially for her, which he had tucked into his breast pocket at all times.
She tilted her head, her lips quirking as he handed them over.
She recognized the paper, but it didn’t appear that she’d made the connection.
That was all right. She would eventually, or they would reach the point where it felt right to tell her.
“But not a librarian,” he confirmed, circling back to his initial suggestion. “Or a bookseller?”
She shrugged. “It is an option. I would still work with books, but the pay is not much and I don’t know what I’d strive for. The number of books you lend in a day is not in your control.”
He picked up his mug and pressed the porcelain and its fading heat to his lips. “You need something that will push you.”
“Yes.”
There was only one solution. He relaxed in the chair, kicking his feet out beneath the table and letting their ankles settle against each other’s.
“Then you need to work for yourself. You could build a business. That requires ambition, tenacity, and an unholy amount of effort, and you would answer to no one. You could go to the zoo whenever you like.”
She dropped her head into her hands. “Yes. But how? All I know is typesetting. I can’t build a business on that. Not anymore.”
He drained the last of his coffee as he mulled it over.
There was the obvious option but she hadn’t mentioned it, and there was likely a reason.
Eventually he gave up waiting for her to suggest it.
“You could start your own publishing house. You know more about the industry than half of the men who launch one. What stops you?”
When she looked up, it was with a weary expression.
Her fingers had created furrows in her pulled-back hair, and her eyes were tired.
“The future of publishing does not excite me.” North and South sat in the middle of the table.
She ran a finger along the raised edge of the title.
“You do know that the Linotype is going to be the end of books like these, don’t you?
Mass-produced books will need thin paper and cheap covers to be viable.
Eventually, they’ll find a way to glue the pages together reliably, and then even the stitching will go. ”
He did know that. It had been on his list of things to feel guilty about since he’d first signed the licensing agreement.
“I know. The next iteration of Linotypes will have two different font sets, but that’s hardly the variety of lettering that we see now.
” He thought of the many boxes of fonts he’d seen in her flat.
“Advertisements will still allow for creativity. Someone will need to typeset those in the traditional manner.”
She snorted. “Yes, I could search for the perfect font to sell pomade.”
“Could you possibly design one for it? Or design the entire thing?” Learning the skill would challenge her, and she could use typeset advertisements with her existing fonts until she was happy enough with her own.
“Impossible. I’ve never done anything like it. Where would I even go to learn such a skill?”
She was open to learning it; that was progress.
“Eleanor, I have never met someone who notices color and form the way you do. I see it in the way debutantes scowl at you, envious that you’ve taken the clothes they wear and improved them.
I recognized it in your home. Even cluttered with moving trunks, it was decorated with intention.
Just now you adjusted your coffee cup to be perfectly angled toward mine. ”
Scowling, she pushed her coffee cup away as though it had actively conspired with Peter to force her somewhere uncomfortable.
But then she turned it until the handle was parallel to the table’s edge.
Her lips pursed and her scowl became contemplative, as though she was considering the idea.
“I enjoy those things,” she said, “but I am by no means a master at them. Certainly not master enough to design advertisements for a living.”
He sighed. “But we’ve already determined that you don’t need to be a master. Not yet.”
The way she rubbed her temples was as if she were physically wrangling her thoughts. “It is a compelling idea, but I don’t think I could sell my soul to advertise hair curlers to housewives.” Letting her forearms drop onto the table, she shook her head. “It is off the list. What else is there?”
Another hour passed. Their ideas had been forced to an end by a lack of paper.
Not one more thought could be crammed onto the pages that were folded and tucked inside North and South.
She’d been mid-sentence when he’d handed it to her, and too distracted to notice.
He’d felt a little oomph of satisfaction as she’d slipped it into a purse that was, unsurprisingly, large enough to carry several books. He should have expected as much.
“I do not understand it,” she said as they strolled down a street near where she lived.
“That is because you do not have siblings.”
“They dragged you, unconscious and half-dressed, around your room while covering you in snow?”
They had, and he was grateful every day that he had no memory of it. “The snow came afterward, as did the nose hair plucking. That last was my youngest sister, when no one was looking.” Winnie had been a devil child at times. They all had been. Almost. Only Meg had been easy.
Eleanor snickered. “At least it came from a place of love.”
She bumped her shoulder against his. Instead of the zing of attraction that he usually felt when they touched, this was deeper, slower, more settled in his chest than skipping along his skin.
They were at an intersection that would take Eleanor home. In a few moments, they would be at her building and another afternoon with her would have slipped away. All he could hope was that there would be another, and another, and more after that.
She hadn’t kissed him again, yet there were still signs that she felt something more than friendship.
Unconsciously, she’d rested her hand just inches from his as they sat across from each other.
She walked closer to him than she had in the past. Now and then, she’d look at him, blush, and then look away.
The pace she set slowed the closer they came to her building, as though she were trying to drag out their time together.
The uncertainty of it was making him mad. The more time they spent together, the more he knew that she was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, but he could not make sense of her feelings. He was not even sure that she could understand them.
At the time, it had seemed sensible to hide his identity from her until she could come to love him despite his title and the damage he’d done to her, but now he was wondering if he had become his own obstacle.
Were her feelings so split between him and the Captain, so confused, that they’d never develop deep enough to love either version of him?
Against all his better judgment, he asked, “Have you met your mysterious pen pal yet? The one who stands between us and friendship.”
She stiffened. “Not yet.” Her tone was clipped and anxious, and the languid, leisurely stroll changed. Her steps lengthened and she pulled away.
“But you’re still corresponding with him,” he said, refusing to cede the distance, edging closer to her.
Her nod was sharp. Defensive. “We are. Almost daily.” She shifted her purse from one hand to the other, so that it acted like a wall between them.
He shouldn’t press. She did not want to talk about the Captain, but not knowing was killing him. Her building was close. He had a few minutes at most. “Do you like him?”
“I do like him. We’re friends.”
He took a deep breath and steadied himself. “Are you more than friends?”
Fine lines formed around her eyes. There was an indentation beneath her lip, as though she were biting the inside of it.
Her eyes trained firmly forward as she shook her head.
“No. Nope. That is not your business.” Her strides were so long, her march so quick, that she was practically racing.
They would reach her building and he would be left with this sense of cavernous uncertainty.