Arch leaned back into his chair, but he was entertaining a smile. “There are few things more tedious than a friend who will not graciously receive.”Quincy could have explained that nine years of poverty might have something to do with it, but instead she just replied, “You must find me maddening, then.”Arch’s mouth twitched. “You, ma chérie, are something else entirely.

Quincy didn’t look away from Arch’s face, and she felt something burn in her chest, the same overwhelmingly fierce pride she had felt when looking at a perfectly inked Q sheet or an expansion report that exceeded even her high expectations.“You will never lose your passion for truth,” Quincy promised.Arch held his breath a moment, his eyes searching hers. “You say that so confidently.”“You shake with it, Arch,” Quincy said, lifting a shoulder. “I suppose it’s one of your greater virtues.

But Quincy knew that her heart beat with the rhythm of the presses in the back room, that her blood ran black with ink, and that her mind filled with reams of numbers and projections and plans. The Q was Quincy's only vital organ.

The music spread out of the f-shaped holes, spilling over the floor, easing and pulling, and Quincy gave herself to the personality of the sound. It was safe. It was straightforward.The sound of the violin was all the humanity that Quincy could stand.

Forgetting Arch, forgetting tailors and backstreets and cats, Quincy lost herself in the magnificent architecture built to house even more magnificent machines. The train Quincy loved: its perfection of movement and speed and sound; its possibility and potential; its ability to efficiently transport the masses. It was here that Quincy always found the gears of her own mind worked loose, set back in place.

If I owned a volume, I would beg you to print ten thousand copies on your presses and distribute them in the streets of every city in Europe.”“You’d have to show me a way to make a profit from it first,” Quincy responded evenly.“Arch tilted his head and raised an eyebrow, returning to his book as he answered, “I would build an argument so enticing and passionate you couldn’t deny me.

Quincy made a disagreeable noise; she had never cared for months whose names sounded frivolous. April was the worst of the lot. February was a close second.

By the time he returned to her small room, Quincy’s shock, like a typewriter, had come to the end of tis row, and her internal bell had rung. She was up, removing the blackened wallpaper to see what damage the wall had sustained.

When they exited onto the street, Arch hailed a hansom, and Quincy slipped inside before he could offer her any more chivalry. There was just enough room in the carriage for two reasonably sized egos, and any tendency towards Lancelotism, Quincy told herself, was to be avoided.