Talk Sweetly to Me (6 page)

“No. Of course not. But—”

She smiled. “Good. I should hate you to be deceived as to my character.”

He let the compass fall to his side. “Miss Sweetly. You’re mocking me. I’m absolutely delighted.”

And he was. Every day he spent with her brought her more and more out of her nervousness. The more he saw of her, the better he liked her, and he’d hardly needed to like her better.

She looked away, with a little smile on her face. “Let’s go join Mrs. Barnstable. I could use some tea; I’m a little cold.”

A little cold. Just a little cold. He shook his head. She set off in the direction of the tea shop and he followed behind her.

“I actually wasn’t trying to be mean,” she told him as they walked. “I was trying to illustrate a point. The closest stars are trillions of miles away. Even if we took our observations of a star from opposite sides of the globe, we’d only manage a few thousand miles of distance between the two points. I was generous giving you a quarter inch to measure the angle.”

He nodded and opened the tea shop door for her. Welcome warmth from the coal-stove inside hit him.

But she stopped just inside the shop, and he realized that her glasses had fogged up. She took them off, cleaning them carefully, and then set them on her nose once more. She gave him a suspicious look, as if daring him to laugh at her.

Not a chance. He was taken with a sudden fantasy of fogging them himself, of leaning into her and…

Mrs. Barnstable waved to them as they entered, but she was already seated at a table with another woman, with whom she was gossiping.

Stephen gestured Rose into a seat at the table next to Mrs. Barnstable. “So how is astronomical parallax calculated, then?”

Her eyes brightened. “If we measure the angle of a star in the sky twice yearly, taking into account…” She trailed off, waving her hand, then resumed, “…all the various factors we must consider, then we can have two measurements that are far more than a few thousand miles apart.”

“Ah. That is clever.”

And it was. A year ago, he’d never have guessed that he would find it all so fascinating. That was before he’d seen her get excited about it. Her eyes lit; her hands gestured. She looked like…like…

Why had he never realized how inadequate all analogies were for women in the throes of utter fascination? She looked like a woman talking about astronomical parallax, and that made her brilliantly beautiful.

“So it really is the same concept as measuring buildings from across the Thames, more or less,” she told him. “If I gave you two such measurements, Mr. Shaughnessy, could you determine the distance of a star?”

“I think so.”

She rattled off a pair of numbers. He began to calculate—and realized that he’d boasted too soon. He looked up to see her watching him with that same beatific smile on her face. A girl came with tea and biscuits; Miss Sweetly poured, but didn’t say anything else.

“Miss Sweetly.”

“Yes, Mr. Shaughnessy?” she said innocently.

“I spoke too soon. I can’t do a thing until I know the distance between the two points of measurement.”

“Ah,” she said with a long, drawn-out sigh. “That’s so.”

“It’s twice the distance between the earth and the sun—but how is one to measure that? Let a giant piece of string trail behind the earth as it passes, and then reel it back in? I have no idea. I think you must enjoy setting me impossible problems.”

“I’m merely making you comfortable with the notion of failure,” she told him, looking down. “When it comes to me, you should expect to fail. Often.”

He set his chin on his hands. “I’d rather fail at you than succeed at anyone else.”

She went utterly still. Her jaw squared; she glanced to one side, ascertaining that Mrs. Barnstable was not listening, and then she looked back at him.

“Too much,” she told him. “When you say extravagant things like that, I remember that this is all a game to you. You’d do much better if you used less effusive praise.”

“I’ll remember that, if I ever decide to seduce you.” He picked up his teacup and took a healthy swallow of warm liquid. “But it’s rather ironic, don’t you think? You were about to tell me how to measure the distance between the earth and the sun without using string. You can imagine numbers larger than I have ever dreamed about. And yet you can’t grasp hold of the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you really have brought me to my knees.”

She pulled back, giving her head a fierce shake. “Don’t be ridiculous. Women like me don’t—”

He set his hand on the table, interrupting this thought. “My father was a stable master,” he told her. “My mother was a seamstress. I’ve done very well for myself, but don’t imagine that I’m one of those gentlemen who look down on you.”

She looked away, dropping a lump of sugar into her tea.

“As for women like you… I don’t believe I have ever met a woman like you. Tell me, Miss Sweetly. How did you become the sort of woman who calculated cometary orbits?”

She picked up a teaspoon. “I’ve always been exceptional at maths. I do mean always. When I was four, we still lived with my grandfather in Liverpool. He owned a shop there, and one day, a man came to the register with a basket of goods. I knew what the total would be, so I said it aloud.” She shrugged. “My grandfather made a game of it. I could add a basket at a glance. Grown men would come to watch. A great many of them. By the time I left, there would be a crowd there every day.”

Her lips twitched as if she’d tasted something unpleasant.

“Miss Sweetly, that sounds like a hidden depth.”

“Unlike you, I have never claimed not to have them.” She dipped the teaspoon in her tea and slowly stirred the brown liquid. “It made me uncomfortable, all those people watching. And the things they would say… I was very glad when my father came to London to start his own emporium. I wasn’t on display any longer, not until my father tried to have me learn deportment.” Rose smiled. “It didn’t work so well—I didn’t like the idea of performing in society. Eventually, on Patricia’s advice, he bribed me to pay attention by offering me tutoring in higher mathematics.”

She was still stirring her tea even though the sugar must have long since dissolved.

“So you see, it’s nothing, really. Just a little trick I do, something that brings me some amusement.”

“Right,” he said skeptically. “Just a little trick. Tell me, Miss Sweetly. How
does
one calculate the distance between the earth and the sun?”

She looked up, her eyes brightening. “Oh, so many ways. But there’s really only one astronomical event that allows us to make a truly accurate measurement. We can observe the exact time it takes for Venus to cross between the earth and the sun. Two such observations taken at different latitudes would give the most exact distance possible.”

“You sound as if this has not yet been done.”

“It was attempted before, but there were difficulties…” She caught his eye. “Never mind the difficulties. The entire astronomical community has been preparing for this upcoming transit. Britain alone has twelve stations manned around the world for just this event.”

“A lot of to-do about one little number,” he teased.

“But I’ve already told you!” She sounded shocked. “It’s not just one little number. It is the only yardstick we have to measure the universe with, and we don’t know how long it is! If we knew that distance accurately, we’d know not just how far the stars were, but we could deduce the distance of all the planets in the solar system. We’d then know their mass, which would allow us to test our measurements of the gravitational constant, see if this so-called ether exists…” She trailed off once again, looking up at him. Slowly, the light drained from her eyes. Watching her slide back into self-consciousness was like watching a candle flame flicker in a sudden wind and then go out.

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “You were teasing me.”

“No,” Stephen said. “I was proving a point.”

She flinched. “What, that you can set me to babbling?”

“You keep looking for dark, complicated reasons, Miss Sweetly. I don’t complicate. I’m simple. I like hearing you talk about the solar system. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t ask.”

“You can’t pretend you’re a mathematical enthusiast. I’ve seen you wrestle with an arctangent, Mr. Shaughnessy, and I wasn’t sure you would win.”

Stephen leaned toward her. “It’s because your enthusiasm is a contagion. You look at the sky and see not pretty little lights, but a cosmos to be discovered. If I could listen to you talk and
not
smile in appreciation, I would be an unfeeling brute. And you think the praise I give you is over-extravagant? One of these days, you’ll realize how much I’m truly restraining myself.”

She stole a glance over at him—one that was both wary and hopeful all at once.

“So tell me,” he said. “When will Venus next intervene between us and the sun? The way you were speaking, it sounds as if it will be soon.”

Her fingers fumbled with a teaspoon. “It’s just days from now,” she told him. “On the sixth of December at almost precisely two in the afternoon.”

“And naturally, you’ll be observing this event.”

“Oh…” She looked down again. “From here in London, only about half of the transit will be visible, and that only weather permitting. The sun will set before it’s finished. I have a piece of smoked glass that I’ll be using to observe—which is hardly ideal, the planet is so small, and…” She trailed off.

“And I don’t understand. You work at an observatory. Surely you’d have access to better observational tools than smoked glass.”

“I’m not one of the astronomers,” she said in a low voice. “I’m just a computer. There’s only so much space, and everyone else wants to see it.”

Just.
She still didn’t believe him.

“Well, then.” He gave her his best smile. “Next time, you must attach yourself to one of the scientific teams going to…where was it you said? Bermuda?”

But she was shaking her head again. “No, no.”

“You think you can’t?” He paused, considering her. “The fact that you are female poses some difficulties. The race, I assume, is also a hindrance?”

She nodded.

“But then, those must be overshadowed by the utter brilliance of your mind.”

She smiled, but it was a shaky, wavering smile. “It’s not that, Mr. Shaughnessy. I mean, it
is
that, but in this case, it wouldn’t help.” She swallowed. “You see, the transit of Venus is a rare astronomical event—exceedingly rare. There is no next time, not in my life. It won’t happen again until June of the year 2004.” She gave him a sad shake of her head. “So yes, Mr. Shaughnessy. I’m not one of the people who will watch this happen in all its glory. Women like me will have to content ourselves with glimpsing the phenomenon in smoked glass.”

Stephen hadn’t known what he intended when he first approached Dr. Barnstable. But looking at her now, her head bent, disclaiming all importance… Now, for the first time, he knew what he wanted.

Chapter Four

“R
OSE,”
P
ATRICIA SAID THE NEXT MORNING
, “I particularly think you should read this.” She slid a paper across the breakfast table to sit alongside Rose’s teacup.

Rose looked up from her toast to see the
Women’s Free Press
opened to Mr. Shaughnessy’s latest column.

“I thought you didn’t want to encourage me in this.”

“This isn’t encouragement,” Patricia said gravely. “It’s a reminder of who he is, what he is. He’s flirting with you…”

Rose felt her cheeks heat. Patricia didn’t know the half of it.

“…and at the same time, he’s carrying on like this, in public. In a
newspaper.”

Rose had read a good number of Mr. Shaughnessy’s columns. She had an idea of the sort of things he wrote. She doubted anything he could write would shock her—and if Patricia only knew the sorts of things he was saying to her face, she’d know that she would need a more powerful arsenal than a few lines in a newspaper. Still, Rose dutifully picked up the paper.

Dear Man,
she read.
I am sorry to say that I have spent the last five years in a madhouse. My uncle and guardian had me put there when I refused to marry my cousin. I passed my time in that horrible place by making a list of all the things I would do if ever I were released. Now he is dead and I am free, but I find I cannot bring myself to do even one of them. How does one go about setting oneself free?

—Not Mad.

Rose swallowed hard and read on.

Dear Not Mad,

Normally I approach my columns with a certain amount of jocularity. (Never tell this to my readers; they would never believe it.) But your situation has moved me to seriousness. You must work yourself up to your desires, bit by bit. Before you can dance on your uncle’s grave (I assume this to be on your list), you must first visit it and stand upon the grass. On the next visit, be sure to tap your toe and hum a ditty. Before you know it, you’ll be waltzing in the cemetery.

Should you need a dancing partner, consider yours truly.

Sincerely,