“You’re thinking we’ll all write at the same time?” Brody asked.
“Precisely. Thirty pages per day between the three of us. Beginning, middle, and end. We’ll stitch everything together once we’re finished and smooth out the transitions.”
Callum straightened. “Has such a thing ever been done before?”
Anthony shrugged. “I’ve no idea, but it does seem like the most efficient way forward.”
“It’s certainly an interesting challenge,” Brody muttered with more excitement than he’d shown thus far. “How do we begin?”
Anthony stood and went to collect some blank sheets of paper and a pencil. “By coming up with an interesting plot, I should think.”
5
Excitement swirled in Ada’s stomach as soon as she woke the next morning. She tried to enjoy her breakfast, but found it hard to sit still. Today, she would see Mr. Gibbs again, perhaps for the very last time since his business with Between the Pages would be completed. He’d have no reason to stop by again. Unless he chose to. Which she supposed he might since he did like to read and might need a new book once he finished the one he was buying today and–
Oh, why was she getting wound up over this? He was just another customer.
A handsome one, to be sure, and one who’d happened to help her too. But it was ludicrous of her to make more of their brief encounter than that. It was certainly irrational of her to let his impending visit tangle her nerves.
“Is something the matter?” Uncle James inquired.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because we’re having kipfels and you always eat them with gusto, except you’ve barely eaten more than two bites this morning.”
Ada looked at her crescent shaped pastry, fresh from the bakery next door. She’d sliced it open and buttered the inside, just as she liked it. “I’m afraid I don’t have much appetite today.”
“Oh?”
“There’s still the embossing to be done on Mr. Gibbs’s order.”
“I thought you finished it yesterday.” Uncle James’s spoon clinked against his teacup as he added sugar and stirred. “It doesn’t usually take you this long to complete a binding.”
Ada groaned and sent him a helpless smile. “I couldn’t decide whether to make the spine simple or decorative. The floral motifs I designed would look pretty against the blue background, but what if he thinks it too feminine?”
Uncle James sipped his tea. “I believe Mr. Gibbs will appreciate a personal touch. Use the stamps you’ve designed, Ada.”
For some peculiar reason, doing so caused her heart to beat faster. She nodded and took another bite of her kipfel before excusing herself from the table. “I’d best get on with it then. The gold paint needs time to dry, and it’s already nearing eight o’clock.”
Leaving her uncle to finish his breakfast, she descended the stairs to the storage room and crossed to the heavy worktable she used. The books she’d bound the previous day were neatly positioned side by side. Ada checked the volumes to make sure they were ordered correctly then searched her collection of stamps until she found the right ones.
She opened the cover of the first book and placed it over a wooden block before cleaning the surface with a damp cloth. Using a ruler as a spacer, she heated the first stamp, positioned it, and gave it a few sharp hits with a hammer before checking the imprint. A lovely border had appeared with floral arrangements in each of the corners. They were joined by thin lines running the length of each side.
Satisfied, Ada repeated the stamping for the back of the book as well as for the other volume before stamping the spine with floral imprints to match. Once this was completed she went to work preparing the titles, complete with volume number and author name. Letters were carefully positioned in a tray and locked into place before being correctly aligned and stamped, both on the front and on the spine.
“How’s it coming along?” Uncle James inquired when he came downstairs.
Ada looked up from the bowl she’d just filled with some egg whites she meant to use as adhesive glair. She grabbed a brush. “Very well, thank you.”
“I’ll leave you to it then, shall I?” He unlocked the door leading into the shop and stepped through it, pausing only briefly to wish her good luck before shutting the door behind him.
Alone again, Ada painted on the glair with swift strokes then left it to dry while preparing the gold leaf.
She straightened briefly to rotate her shoulders and stretch her arms before bowing over the table once more. Moving with practiced ease, she laid the gold leaf over the areas she had prepared and brushed it with oil to secure it. Lining up the stamps she’d initially used with the marks already made, she took a deep breath and impressed the gold into those areas.
Please be perfect.
It was funny, in a way, how she always dreaded mistakes no matter how many times she completed a binding. But she prided herself on perfection – on completing exceptional work – and did not want to discover an offset between the initial indentation and the subsequent one, or a variance in the gold. Unable to accept such a thing or deliver it to a paying customer, she’d have to start over.
