The duke’s warehouse loomed in the not far distance. The building had been imposing during the day. It was downright spooky at night.
Eleanor planted her feet and shook herself. This blasted Linotype always made her skin crawl.
Lillian rested a hand on Eleanor’s shoulder, as one might do to a spooked horse. “We don’t need to do this if it’s going to upset you.”
“Or if it’s going to make you want to set it on fire.” Mabel gave her a small smile. A peace offering.
“I already want to set it on fire,” Eleanor mumbled. “But I won’t,” she added as they looked at her, alarmed. “I just want to see the Linotype in action without an audience watching to see how I’ll react. I want to get the full measure of it so that I know how to fight it.”
“Then let’s get started,” Lillian said. They walked the final length in silence, close to the buildings, with Mabel on the lookout for witnesses.
The nearer they came to the duke’s warehouse, the faster Eleanor’s heart thudded. As they finally stood in front of it, she felt like her ribs were about to break open.
Lillian rapped on the door. If the warehouse was guarded, they would get what they needed without breaking the law. She and Mabel would press the guard into helping them look for the missing purse, and Eleanor would get her moment to face the enemy.
There was no response.
“Break and enter it is, then,” Lillian whispered, with far too much joy. Eleanor wanted to be sick. She prided herself on being accountable and this was so illegal that she could never admit to or apologize for it. Not that the duke deserved an apology. He certainly hadn’t apologized for befriending her under false pretenses. What a disappointment he had been.
“Got it.” Lillian whooped, pulling Eleanor from her brooding. She put a shoulder to the door and pushed it open with a grunt.
With a racing heart, Eleanor scooted past. The plan was simple—her friends would stay by the door to keep watch and to distract anyone who arrived unexpectedly while Eleanor made her way to a Linotype in one of the obscured corners.
There were fewer lamps lit now than there had been earlier in the day. Eleanor tensed, as though waiting for the duke’s grim future to manifest into corporeal form and launch itself at her from the shadows.
In the background, she could hear Mabel prattle nervously. She had not hesitated before joining tonight’s scheme, even though it made her uneasy. Eleanor had good friends. Steadfast friends, the kind who would support her no matter how the future panned out. She searched for comfort in that.
Finally, she reached the opposite side of the room and did a quick turn into one of the rows. The Linotype was truly monstrous—as tall as she was, and twice as wide. The chutes that stretched from the top of the machine to the middle looked like dozens of sharp teeth. Hesitantly, she sat on the stool in front of it, her heart catching as the Linotype loomed. Freezing, she waited to see what it would do, if it would attack her.
Silly. Irrational. It’s an inanimate machine. It has no power to harm you.
But while it was all well and good to say that to herself, it didn’t feel true. Not according to her gut. Not according to the hairs on her arms. Not according to her feet, which tapped incessantly as if trying to flee.Oh,Eleanor…Her mother’s voice was eerie in this cavernous room.How can you walk so confidently through those print rooms of yours, but be so fearful now?
She shook out her shoulders, trying to shake off the jimjams.She had only a few minutes to learn as much as she could about this thing that was set to replace her. She studied the bank of keys. There were two sets of the alphabet—upper and lower case—arranged in four columns. In the middle was a separate block of keys with all the non-letters one used—a full stop, a comma, an apostrophe, an exclamation point, alongside a row of numbers. Resting neatly on a lip was the manual.
“Righto,” she whispered as she flicked through it. “Let’s do this.” Following the instructions, she engaged the drive belt and jumped as the thing roared into life. She held her breath, but there were no shouts, no footsteps. She exhaled and turned her attention back to the keys. She searched until she found the capitalTand pressed it, flinching at the resultingclack. The scratch it made as it slid down the chute sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Gritting her teeth, she jabbed out the rest of the sentence.
THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR.
Maybe if she said it often enough, she’d believe it. She stared at the words in front of her. Then she typed the phrase out again, this time deliberately interchanging thehand theiand studying the way they came together on the line. As far as she could tell, there was no quick way to fix the mistake. There was no access to each letter like there was in her typecase.
Eleanor was so engrossed that she didn’t hear footsteps behind her. The first inklings she had of the duke’s presence were the goose bumps that prickled across her arms and the clearing of his throat. She leapt to her feet, knocking over the stool. Thethunkof wood against cement reverberated through the room.
“Your Grace,” she said, hand to her chest.God, was she about to be arrested?Maybe she could convince him that her friends had nothing to do with it, that she had strong-armed them into joining her.
He was angry. A muscle along his jaw ticked, and his hands looked like they had been pried open from fists. “Miss Wright.” His words were as cold as the machine she’d backed up against. “What a surprise to see you, here, in the middle of the night, in a building that I know that Andrew and I locked as we came in.”
“Your Grace,” she replied, swallowing. When she’d confronted him two nights earlier, it had been with confidence borne from justified outrage and the knowledge that she had been in the right. Here, now, she was very much in the wrong.
She clasped her hands before they could tremble. Her palms were as clammy as her mouth was dry. “I lost my purse this afternoon. It has very important papers inside that I must have tonight.” Thank God for Lillian’s cover story and the way she’d drilled it into them.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked, sarcasm dripping.
He knew. He knew that there was no lost purse, and that she’d come to the warehouse looking for something else. But she’d be damned if she was going to admit that she’d been looking for an answer, an omen, a solution. She grabbed her purse from beside the fallen stool.
“Found,” she said with a false smile.
“How fortunate, then, that you and your colleagues each found a purse. Irresponsible, though, for all three of you to have left one behind.” His smirk made her want to shrink into nothingness. He stood there, arms crossed, waiting.
