Page 91 of Let Me Be Your Hero
There was no helping it; he was going to have to tell her. “See, right now, virtually all screws are made by metalsmiths, by hand. No matter how skilled they are, it’s impossible to make two screws that are precisely the same. So, you wind up with onebox of handmade screws, and another box of handmade nuts, and you waste a tremendous amount of time trying to find a screw and a nut that pair together even remotely well. But if you can build them with a machine that isprecise…”
He glanced at her, half-expecting to see her eyes glazing over. But instead, he found her watching him intently. “Go on.”
“If you can achieve precision,” he continued, “then every screw in that box will be precisely the same, and it will fit perfectly with each of the nuts as well. I realized the importance of precision a few years ago when I was obsessed with building locks. You see”—he picked up a file—“my grandfather started me working with hand tools at a very early age. I can build an unpickable lock by hand, but it takes me a full week to build just one. It’s terribly inefficient. But if each piece could be precisely engineered, so they’re interchangeable—”
“Then you could build a hundred locks instead of one,” Izzie said.
“Exactly! It’s not so much about making screws, although… that’s literally what I’m doing right now. Making screws. It’s about figuring out how to build things withprecision.” He gestured to his lathe on the table. “Take the central lead screw here. I had to figure out how to cut it so the threads wereperfectlyeven. This one is accurate to one ten-thousandth of an inch—”
“One ten-thousandth of an inch?” Izzie’s mouth fell open. “How do you even measure one ten-thousandth of an inch?”
“That was another problem,” Archibald said, grabbing a gadget that looked like a tiny brass table with a wheel on one end. “Because, of course, you don’t know if you’re building with precision if you can’t measure it. So, I had to figure out how to build an extremely precise bench micrometer. See?”
He showed Izzie how to measure the screw with the bench micrometer. “My men call it the ‘Lord Chancellor.’ Becauseif they’re arguing about whether something they’ve made is sufficiently precise, you can’t overrule the verdict of the Lord Chancellor.”
“That’s terribly clever!” Izzie said, seizing his forearm. She frowned. “But how did you cut the… the central screw, this long one—”
“The lead screw,” Archibald supplied.
“The lead screw, thank you. How did you make it precise to one ten-thousandth of an inch? Surely you didn’t do that by hand?”
“No. I’m good with a file, but nobody’sthatgood. I had to invent another device specifically to cut the lead screw. It’s over here if you’d like to see—”
“I would!” she cried.
Thus passed one of the most enjoyable hours of Archibald’s life. Izzie didn’t seem bored or unimpressed with his machines. Much to the contrary, she seemed delighted by everything he showed her. Standing behind his wife, with her framed between his arms, he demonstrated how you could change out the parts on his screw-cutting lathe, and even swap in a different lead screw, to make screws of all different sizes. She exclaimed in amazement over each variation and told him he was a genius six times. Archibald knew it was six because he counted. He even let her try her hand at making a screw, and she squealed with delight as it came off the lathe.
“I can’t believe I made this!” She gazed at him, eyes earnest. “Could I keep it?”
He laughed. “Of course.”
“Oh, thank you! I can’t wait to show Mama! She’ll never believe I made this.” Her eyes sparkled. “I fear I’m your opposite in this regard. I’m possibly the least dexterous person you’ve ever met. I can barely darn a pair of stockings, and the less said about my embroidery, the better.”
“That’s all right. I didn’t marry you because I wanted someone to sew my shirts and darn my socks.”
She laughed. “That’s fortunate. I know how severe the Duke of Trevissick is on your tailoring. I can tell you right now that any shirt I made would not pass muster.” She peered up at him, her expression growing serious. “Say, if you didn’t want someone to perform the usual wifely duties, then why, exactly, did you marry me?”
The timing of this question was fortunate because, for the first time, he had the courage to answer it.
He swooped Izzie up in his arms, ignoring her startled squeal, and carried her through the door. He made sure he was looking her in the eyes as he told her.
“I love you.”
She gasped, looking genuinely surprised. “You… you do?”
“Somuch.” He shook his head. “You have no idea.”
She looped her arms around his neck. “Oh, Archibald, I love you, too.”
He nodded. He was still having trouble fully believing those words. They seemed entirely too good to be true.
But he was slowly learning that he needed to trust Izzie and listen to what she said rather than assume the worst. His wife knew her own mind, and if she said she loved him, who was he to tell her she was wrong?
They had reached the stairs. He started up, as this was clearly going to end in their bedroom. “I fell horribly in love with you the very second I saw you.”
She looked both startled and pleased. “Did you really?”
“I did,” he said solemnly, turning down the hall. “It was the day of your sister’s wedding to Thetford. I remember thinking you were so beautiful you didn’t look human. That you looked like the daughter of the fairy king.”
