Talk Sweetly to Me (2 page)

Rose had not. Her stomach clenched at the very thought. “How could I leave you, when Dr. Wells will not return from his tour of duty for more than a week yet? I
promised
him.”

Patricia’s husband was a naval physician. He’d bent sent to Sierra Leone around the time Patricia had realized she was with child, and Rose had come to attend her sister in his absence. But it wasn’t just her sister’s welfare that had Rose worried. Their parents lived in London—so close, and yet impossibly far from the Royal Observatory. At her father’s house, there would be no computations, no comets.

No Mr. Shaughnessy to set her nerves on edge.

“You know,” Patricia said, “you
know
that he is the most incredible rake.” She did not say who
he
was. She didn’t need to.

Rose set the oranges in a bowl, refusing to look at her sister. “He’s never once offered to seduce me. I don’t even think he’s thought of it.”

“He’s thought of it,” Patricia said dryly. “And frankly, Rose, the way he’s talking to you? I don’t think he’ll even need to offer.”

Rose let out a long breath and shut her eyes. It was, unfortunately, true. Mr. Shaughnessy was…well, he just
was.
His name had been on all the ladies’ lips since Rose was seventeen, when he’d earned renown—or infamy, depending on who was speaking—as the first man to write a column of advice for the
Women’s Free Press
, a radical paper that Rose should not have enjoyed nearly as much as she did. In the five years since his first column, he’d only built upon that reputation. He’d published four novels. His books were called “masterpieces of satire” by some, and “dangerous rubbish that was best burned unread” by others.

They had, by all accounts, sold well—and those who harrumphed about setting bonfires with them were the ones most likely to furtively purchase them in brown paper packaging.

Mooning after Mr. Stephen Shaughnessy was foolish. She knew how they looked, sketched to scale. Socially speaking, if he were an orange in Westminster, she was…an elderberry, somewhere in the vicinity of Tanzania.

“I love you, Rose.” Patricia sighed. “And I know you’ll make a good marriage, one as brilliant as mine. But you have to remember that most of the men who look at you won’t be seeing
you.
They won’t see that you’re clever and amusing.” Her sister came forward and took Rose’s hand in her own. “They’ll see
this.”
She rubbed the back of Rose’s hand. Dark skin pressed against dark skin. “It doesn’t matter how respectably you dress or how much you insist. Most men will see only that you’re black and they’ll think you’re available. So please take care, Rose. I don’t wish you hurt.”

Rose polished the last apple with a towel. “Don’t worry about that,” she said softly. “I won’t do anything foolish.”

She didn’t say anything about getting hurt. There was no point worrying about that. She thought of Mr. Shaughnessy’s smile, of the wicked gleam in his eye. She thought of him asking her about oranges and comets, of him looking at her and saying in that dark, dangerous, lilting tone
I love it when you talk Sweetly to me.

She’d also seen the notes about him in the gossip column. He was utterly outrageous, and no matter how he made her feel, the last thing she needed was an outrageous man.

No, there was no point worrying about getting hurt.

At this point, pain was already inevitable.

Chapter Two

O
F ALL THE WAYS
that Stephen Shaughnessy had ever decided to torment himself, this one had to be the most diabolical.

There was a slight musty smell to the offices a few streets from the Royal Observatory, as if the windows were not often opened. The books on the shelves around him ranged from an ancient set of Newton’s
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
to a report on something called spectroscopic observations; the walls were a yellowing whitewash over which charts had been tacked year after year, until only a few spots remained bare.

The room was, in short, little better than a dingy pit, the only decorations a celebration of mathematics—a subject he had never excelled at, and, until recently, had never found interesting.

Which was precisely what made his next sentence so shocking.

“Yes,” he heard himself saying aloud. “It is a real pleasure to meet you, Dr. Barnstable. I’m terribly impressed by your work.”

Even more shockingly, the statement was true.

“No, no. The pleasure is assuredly all mine.” Dr. Barnstable caught Stephen’s hand in his and gave it a few enthusiastic pumps. “I cannot believe you’ve heard of me—and that you follow astronomy.” He smiled bemusedly. “Truly, I feel dazed by the prospect.”

He could hardly feel as dazed as Stephen himself. It had taken him almost a month to realize what was happening and another four weeks to succumb to utter madness. Or mathematics; he wasn’t sure there was any distinction at this point.

Dr. Barnstable was an older man in his sixties, with six inches of white beard as proof of his age. But there was nothing fusty about him; he shook Stephen’s hand with a firm grip.

“Your paper on the orbit of double stars is a true classic,” Stephen said.

The point when Stephen had read it, searching for any hints of Miss Sweetly’s contribution to the piece, was the point when he’d known that it was over. It had been like a newspaper headline printed in two-inch type:
There’s no use struggling, Stephen. You’re well and truly caught.

“My wife is an absolute enthusiast of your work.” Barnstable’s eyes sparkled. “She reads me pointed bits from your column. I ought to take you to task—giving away all our masculine secrets—but ah, well.” That last was met with an amused shake of his head.

“They’re not secrets,” Stephen explained. “Women already know everything I say. The only reason anything I say is amusing is because a man is saying it.”

“Ha!” Barnstable jabbed Stephen’s shoulder in a friendly fashion. “You’re just as clever in person as you are on paper. Well. I can’t say I disagree. Times are surely changing, and for the better. You have no idea how much easier some of those recent advances have made my work.”

Stephen actually had every idea. One of those “advances,” he suspected, was Miss Rose Sweetly—and from what little he could tell, she’d done very well for Barnstable indeed. The man had better praise her.

“But never mind that,” Barnstable said. “We can talk politics some other time. What can I do for you?”

“I’m doing research on astronomy,” he said.

“For your next novel? Are you writing an astronomer, by chance?”

Stephen considered this and decided it was as good an explanation as any other he could offer. “Yes.”

He’d made something of a career of speaking outrageous truths, but there was a time and a place for outraging people. Even he knew better than to admit what was really going on.
No, I’m just fascinated with a woman, and I want to know everything about her
would not go over well.

Barnstable nodded thoughtfully. “What would you like to know?”

“Oh dear.” Stephen sighed. “I’ve tried to swot up on my own with woeful results. I need help with every detail, starting from how to calculate astronomical distances by parallax, on up through Kepler and the theory of planetary motion.”

Barnstable blinked. “That is…quite a lot.”

“Oh, I don’t expect you to instruct me yourself. I’m sure you’re too busy for that. I had imagined you would fob me off on someone else,” Stephen said. “An assistant or a student—someone who wouldn’t mind a little extra income.”

“Ah.” The man’s expression cleared momentarily, but then he shook his head and frowned. “Hmm. My student is in the Bermudas at the moment—he’s observing the transit of Venus, lucky boy. Were it not for my knee…” Barnstable trailed off, shaking his head. “That leaves only my computer. And…” He hesitated delicately. “She’s a woman.”

“Your computer?” Stephen asked with studied nonchalance. This was what he’d hoped for, after all. “What’s that?”

“Precisely what it sounds like: a person who computes. Absolutely necessary for those of us engaged in any sort of dynamics. All those calculations come to a dreadful mess; if I had to do them all myself, I’d have no time to think of anything. And yes, my computer is a woman.” He cleared his throat. “A woman of African descent. Those of my colleagues who are prejudiced on that score only deprive themselves of Miss Sweetly’s assistance.”

“Surely you don’t think I would share their prejudices,” Stephen said. “Your wife has been making you read my work, yes?”

Barnstable’s smile became pained. “It isn’t that. Or it isn’t only that. You see, she’s a woman. And you…”

“Oh.” Stephen smiled. “That. I suppose I do have something of a reputation.”

It was hard-earned, that reputation. Occasionally inconvenient, but it was what it was.

“Yes,” Barnstable said apologetically. “That. And Miss Sweetly is, alas, a very young woman. She’s not quite of age yet. I’ve an arrangement with her father—my wife must be with her at all times in the building. He’d not like to see anything happen to her, and quite selfishly, I’d not like to lose her, either. She would be ideal if only she were a man. But…”

Stephen wouldn’t be here if she were a man. He still couldn’t quite believe he’d come.

“Maybe she could manage a lesson or three? Just something to get me started until your student returns. Your wife might stay in the room with us, of course, to avoid any impropriety.”

“I don’t know…” Dr. Barnstable rubbed at his beard.

“Ask her what she thinks,” Stephen suggested. “After all, ‘not quite of age’ for women often means we’d send younger men into battle. Or to the Bermudas to watch the transit of Venus.”

Barnstable nodded thoughtfully at that.

“And I do have a reputation. I won’t pretend I haven’t earned it. But I’ve never seduced an innocent before. In truth, I do more acquiescing than I do seducing. So unless you fear that your computer will seduce
me…”

Barnstable snorted. “Well. I suppose a few hours with her, with my wife present, could not hurt. If she agrees, that is.”

The older man left, and Stephen paced to the window. From here, he could see bare tree branches and grass, once a brilliant green, now fading to a less vibrant color.

He really wasn’t sure what he was about. He
wasn’t
planning to seduce her, not really. It would be a terrible thing for a man like him to do to a woman in Miss Sweetly’s position, and he had a very firm rule that he did not do terrible things to people in general, and to women in particular. Liking a woman—even liking her very well—was more reason to adhere to the rule, not less.

As far as he could tell, he
was
just tormenting himself.

A noise sounded in the hall; he caught the low murmur of voices, and then the office door scraped open. Stephen turned from the window to face the newcomers.

Barnstable stood in the doorway. Behind him were two figures. The first was a heavy silhouette of an older woman with a substantial bustle; the second figure, far more familiar, hid herself behind the other woman’s bulk. She was scarcely visible in the dim hall light. Still, Stephen felt his pulse begin to accelerate.

He stood and addressed himself to the first woman. “You must be Mrs. Barnstable.”

“Mr. Shaughnessy, this is my wife, Mrs. Barnstable.” Dr. Barnstable stepped to one side.

The woman behind him moved into the room, all smiles. “Oh, Mr. Shaughnessy! It is such a pleasure to meet you. After all these years of reading your words! I adore—absolutely adore—everything that you write.”

“Of course you adore what I write,” he said. “You must be a woman of excellent taste. I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.”

“I shall have palpitations of the heart,” Mrs. Barnstable announced. “Listen to me, going on like a green girl. I sound like a chicken, squawking away. What must you think of me? I’m not silly. I’m not. It’s just that I’ve been reading your work for years now. Can you…” Her lashes fluttered down. “Can you do the
Actual Man
thing?”

It was how he ended all his columns. The advice column he wrote was entitled “Ask a Man”—and women wrote to him in droves to do just that. He signed every column almost precisely the same way.

“If you’d like.” Stephen looked into Mrs. Barnstable’s face.

The woman’s eyes grew wide; a hand drifted up to touch her throat as if to touch nonexistent pearls. He let his voice drop down a few notes and imbued his next words with all the wicked intent that he could muster.

“I’m Stephen Shaughnessy,” he said. “Actual Man.”

Mrs. Barnstable let out a wavering sigh. “Are you as wicked as the gossip papers say, young man?”

He didn’t
feel
wicked. “Oh, no,” he said, lowering one eyelid in a lazy wink. “The papers don’t know the half of it.”

“If you’re that bad, then I mustn’t introduce you to my charge.”

In direct contradiction to these brave words, Mrs. Barnstable turned around. She took Miss Sweetly by the elbow, drawing her into the room. “Miss Sweetly, look who it is! It’s Stephen Shaughnessy—and I know how you delight in his column.”