Jack is the sort of person who lets you feel as if you know them, but once you stop to think about it, you realize you don’t know a damn thing. She’s chatty and open, and gives the impression that she likes you, and that you could be friends . . . or at least friendly acquaintances. But she has perfected the art of talking a great deal without giving away one iota of truly personal information.
I don’t know how old she is, where she grew up, what sort of life she’s had, what her plans for the future are or her pains of the past. She could come from poverty or royalty. She could have two husbands and a child growing up with relatives. She seems like someone who has waltzed through life, spinning too deftly for anything to leave a scar. Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s a persona she adopts, like the masculine one she’s inhabiting as we cross the mound into the Old Town.
I am fascinated by Jack, and I’m also learning from her, even if she never realizes it. How she acts is how I must act toward most of the world . . . including her. My past isn’t something I can discuss, both because it took place over a century from now and because I’m inhabiting the body of someone who already has a past. What if I tell Simon that my parents were loving and incredibly supportive, only to have him remember that Catriona’s were cold or abusive?
I’ve never been a private person. Hell, meet me at a party and you’d walk away an hour later knowing my favorite color, the name of my childhood cat, and that I broke my arm in third grade, climbing a tree. Yes, I broke it climbing a tree, not falling from it, which is a certain kind of special.
On the walk, Jack chatters away. She tells me something funny Alice said and how Mrs. Wallace gave her shit for whistling, which she relates in a perfect imitation of the housekeeper. She points out a Princes Street shop that kicked her out last year when she’d been browsing “intimate ladies’ apparel” while forgetting she was still dressed masculine. Once we’re in the Old Town, she points out a close and tells me a friend swears it’s haunted by one of Burke and Hare’s victims. All very entertaining and companionable, and not revealing one scrap of personal insight.
“Did you grow up in Edinburgh?” I say, mostly just to amuse myself because I know how she’ll answer.
“Here and there, now and then.” She waves a hand. “You know how it is. You?”
“Same.”
She shoots me a grin, as if she knows I’m playing her game. She’s said many times that she knows something’s up with me, some secret she’s not privy to. That would make me nervous if I got the sense she was digging for answers. After all, she is a journalist, by practice if not by trade. But my sense is that this is a secret she’ll let me keep, as long as I let her keep all of hers, which seems fair.
It’s a clear night, crisp and decently lit with stars just visible through the smoke of a thousand fires keeping a thousand lodgings warm—or warm enough. We weave through a few neighborhoods before she slows.
“Here we are,” she says.
I look around, but I’m not even sure I recognize the area. She leads me to a building with no obvious storefront . . . and no obvious front door. We go to the side entrance, and she raps a few times in a pattern.
“Secret entry code,” I say, and then stop myself before adding a period-inappropriate “Cool.”
A moment later, there’s a snick, and I notice a peephole on the solid door. Another moment passes, and a lock clangs. Then the door opens a few inches, and the unmistakable smell of ink rushes out.
“You have something for me, boy?” a voice rumbles.
“Questions,” Jack says cheerfully. “I have questions.”
The door slams shut. Jack only sighs and knocks again. When it opens, it’s a scant inch, and the voice rumbles, “You come here with a stranger and questions? You’re lucky I don’t set Blackie on you.”
“Have you seen these?” Jack waves one of the pamphlet installments of Gray’s adventures. “I have it on good authority that the scribe is looking to change presses.”
There’s a pause. It’s long enough that I’m concerned, but Jack only waits.
“You know the writer?” the voice says.
“Would you like a peek at the next installment to prove it?”
More silence. The peephole snicks open again.
“Miss Mallory?” the voice says.
Thankfully, I don’t jump, though I will give Jack shit for not warning me. Or actually, maybe I won’t, because she probably thought I’d figure it out as soon as she waved around that pamphlet.
“Yes, the pamphlet is about the adventures of Dr. Gray and his lovely assistant, Miss Mallory,” Jack says breezily.
“I mean, is that Miss Mallory with you?”
Jack looks over at me and blinks, as if in surprise. Then she laughs. “Heavens, no. Miss Mallory with me? A pleasant thought. She sounds a right perfect little morsel. This one is a right perfect pain in the arse.”
I’m allowed to glare at her for that, and I do, but the door also opens to let us in, as if the person on the other side suspects I’m “Miss Mallory,” but they aren’t pushing for a positive ID.
The door opens into darkness. We slip inside, and I see the owner of the voice, a stout woman with her arms crossed over her chest. I glance around for the dog, Blackie, and instead see a hulking guy with jet-black hair and an equally black beard, his arms also crossed. The woman leads us past him, and I swear he growls . . . until I look up at him from under my lashes. Then his broad face colors, and he tips his grimy hat with a few mumbled words.
The woman takes us into what is obviously the print room, given the two printing presses. That’s where my attention goes: to those presses.
My parents talk of their childhoods, with no computers, just typewriters and mimeograph machines, and that’s always been hard for me to fathom. How do you write an essay if you can’t just pull up the file and edit it into submission? What if you need more than one copy? You couldn’t even go to the library and use the copy machine.
I remember once when they were explaining these concepts to me, and I blurted, “But what about books?” How did you produce a thousand copies of a book without printers? Did they live back in that time I’d seen in old movies, with massive printing presses and movable type? They’d thought that was hilarious . . . and then gently explained all the steps between ancient printing presses and modern ones.
Here, I expect to see one of those massive beasts that would take up an entire room. Instead, there are two presses. Both are much smaller than I expected, maybe double the size of those old library copy machines from my youth.
The room is cavernous, and I see what looks like living quarters to one side. The rest is boxes. Some seem to be finished products, and I squint into one and see flyers for a workers’ rights movement. And in the one beside it . . . fancy pamphlets arguing against the dangers of granting workers more rights.
“Your friend there should keep her eyes to herself,” the woman rumbles.
“Occupational hazard,” I say with a smile, mostly to watch her pause to decipher that very modern phrase. When she does, she eyes me. “You really are Miss Mallory, then? Of the stories?”
“Miss Mallory is sweet and gentle,” Jack says. “And knows not to poke her nose where it doesn’t belong.”
It’s a credit to her acting ability that she can say that with a straight face.
“I am only fascinated by the presses,” I say. “May I ask why there are two?”
The woman sighs, as if I’m being unreasonably curious, but her eyes light with the look of someone who actually likes talking about her work. The smaller machine is a jobbing press meant for simple low-print tasks like letterhead or business cards. It takes about fifteen minutes to set up and can print a thousand copies an hour. The larger one is the proper press and can do about half as many copies an hour. Both are manual presses. Newspapers use steam-powered ones, which can do about ten thousand pages an hour, but her business has no need for that.
I cut my questions short at Jack’s obvious impatience, and then she says, “I come tonight with questions about pornographic literature.”
The woman eyes me again. “If you’re not Miss Mallory and you’re looking for a few extra coins in your pocket, I can suggest an artist or two. Sketches are best. Photographs do not flatter as well.”
“And if I am Miss Mallory, and I were still looking to make a few extra coins? Would your answer be something different?”
“In that case, it would. I’d suggest your chronicler print a separate set of your adventures . . . for a different but better-paying sort of customer.”
I smile and shake my head. “I can imagine the poor mother who picks up the wrong one to share with her children. No, in either case, I am not looking for that sort of extra coin. I merely accompany Jack on his labors tonight.”
“His labors being the pursuit of pornographic literature?” she says.
“Questions about pornographic literature,” Jack says as she lifts a chapbook from a box. “Like this.”
The woman sniffs. “You do not want that. It is far too pretty for a young man like you. That sort of thing is written for Miss Not-Mallory over here.”
I take the chapbook from Jack. It’s only about twenty pages long. On a skim, I can see it’s a story about a young woman alone in the city, innocent and sweet. By page five, she’s no longer so innocent and sweet.
I wrinkle my nose. “This is written for men.”
Jack’s and the printer’s brows shoot up in unison.
I wave the chapbook. “Innocent girl. Big bad city. Oh, please don’t touch me there. No, wait, I like being touched there. There would be a female audience for it, but it’s mostly aimed at men.”
“We have others,” the printer says.
“Such as?”
“Not-so-innocent governess who goes to work for a lord and his longtime friend.”
“Is the friend actually just a friend?”
She meets my gaze. “No.”
“Huh. That might work. The key is the not-so-innocent part. Women don’t want to read about other women being ruined. They want to read about them having fun.”
Jack chokes on a laugh.
The printer says, “We also have an entire series called The Merry Widow.”
That makes me think of Lady Inglis, but I hide my reaction. “Even better.”
“The Merry Widow, you say?” Jack murmurs, moving forward. “So there is an appetite for such things?”
“The fellow who has them printed up certainly seems to think so.”
“And if someone came by asking about printing intimate letters written by an actual widow, you’d send them to him?”
She waves a hand. “No, it’s not that sort of thing. This fellow has a writer already. And they aren’t letters. They’re stories.”
“So if I had such letters . . . ?” Jack says.
She snorts. “Keep them.” Her eyes glitter. “Unless they were written by that most illustrious of widows. Adventures between her illustrious self and a certain Scottish servant?”
It takes a moment to realize she means Queen Victoria, and even I flush at that. I do recall the widowed queen was rumored to have an affair with a Scotsman who worked on her estate.
Jack rolls her eyes. “If I had those, I’d be a rich man. One such letter from Her Royal Highness, and my coffers would fill in the blink of an eye.”
“Or you’d wind up in the dungeons,” the printer says. “Never to be seen or heard from again.”
“True enough. But what if the letters were from a less illustrious personage?”
The printer shrugs. “If she has money and you took the letters without permission, you’d make far more by asking her to pay to prevent them from being printed.”
That gives me pause. “Do such things happen?” I ask.
“I’m certain they do. It does not involve me, though.”
“So if I brought you such letters, you would not print them?”
She meets my gaze. “I would not.”
“Would you know anyone who would?”
She shrugs. “A shop or two, but they’d only buy them for a few pounds, and then probably turn around and see if they could ‘sell’ them back to the writer. Why print such things written by amateurs when you can have them written by experts?”
“Experts using the full scope of their imaginations,” I say. “Rather than relying on fact.”
The printer points an ink-blackened finger at me. “Just so. I do not think you are going to find many merry widows with the temerity and the skill to write of their intimate adventures, and even if they did, they would not sell as well as the made-up sort.”
Jack asks a few more questions, but it’s clear that the printer hasn’t heard of anyone trying to sell such letters. From what I gather, this shop would be their first stop, as it’s well known for its underground publications. But the printer is correct, too, that no one is likely to print such a thing when the real money would be made in blackmailing the letter writer.
As we prepare to leave, I say, “You mentioned a Merry Widow series. Might I purchase those?”
The printer gives a low, rumbling laugh. “Caught your fancy, did they?”
“They did.”
“Well, I am only the printer, but I have some samples I’d be willing to part with for a few shillings. Do you want the governess one as well?”
I imagine Isla reading that story, with the governess, the lord, and his more-than-a-friend. “No, the Merry Widow ones will suffice.”
“Well, I shall throw that one in as an extra.” She winks. “You might find it more to your taste than you would expect.”
I make my purchase, and we leave. We don’t get more than a few feet from the shop before Jack says to me, in her more natural voice, “Getting a little lonely in that attic bedroom, is it?”
I make a noncommittal noise. I’m certainly not telling her who they’re for. Also, I probably will need to read them to make sure I’m not giving Isla anything so far out of her comfort zone that she might never recover.
“You do know there is an easy fix for that,” she says. “A mere two flights down. A very fine doctor who would happily provide whatever examination you require.”
I can feel her gaze on me in the dark, waiting for a reaction. I only shake my head. “If you mean our shared employer, that is inappropriate.”
She makes a rude noise. “Not unless you only agree because he is your employer. Otherwise, it is a perfectly fine arrangement.” She glances over. “It adds quite an exciting dynamic, as I say from experience.”
“I thought all your experiences were neither exciting nor dynamic.”
“Mmm, I will not say that one was excellent, but it was the best of the bunch. He was my first employer. First legitimate employer, that is.” She grins my way. “I had taken the position posing as a boy, which only added to the illicit allure. He enjoyed knowing my little secret and being the only one to see me in a dress.” She purses her lips. “Though there was that one time when he did not want me to change into a dress first.”
She peers at me and sighs. “You are quite impossible to shock, Miss Mallory.”
“Not really. You just need to tell me something shocking. Like that he invited three of his friends along for the ride.”
Her cheeks redden, and I laugh.
She scowls at me. “You enjoyed that.”
“You started it. Do not try to shock me in such regards, my dear, or I shall turn the tables faster than you like. Now, you promised me a pint, did you not?”
“I just helped you with your case. And helped you find reading material. I think you owe me a pint.”
“True, however, if you choose to dress as a lad, you must behave as a lad. It would not do for people to see a young lady paying for your pint. What would they think?”
She shakes her head and grumbles under her breath as she leads me to a pub.