Talk Sweetly to Me, Page 2

  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.”

  That was not a proper introduction. It wasn’t even an improper introduction. It left Miss Sweetly at a horrendous disadvantage, after all, putting her directly into the class of enthusiasts like Mrs. Barnstable.

  Miss Sweetly was many things, but effusive she was not. She dropped him a little curtsey. “I do read your column, Mr. Shaughnessy.” Her voice was quiet and subdued in comparison with Mrs. Barnstable’s.

  When she looked up at him, though, she seemed anything but subdued. Her dark hair, just a little frizzy, had been tamed and wrestled into a bun. She wore a demure gown—not one of the fashionable creations that a lady might wear, but a sensible, high-necked muslin, a thing of long sleeves and buttons that his fingers itched to undo. The fabric hinted at curves of breast and hip; her bustle, less pronounced, could not quite hide her figure.

  Her eyes were dark and still, and he felt as if he’d been struck over the head—as if he were looking up into a night sky, bright with stars.

  He gave her a little bow. “Miss Sweetly.”

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Barnstable said, shaking her head as if she had just now remembered her duty. “Mr. Shaughnessy, this is Miss Rose Sweetly, Dr. Barnstable’s computer. She is very young, although I suppose to a thing like you, she’d not seem so. But she’s ever so clever.”

  “I’m always happy to meet clever young ladies,” Stephen said. “They’re my second favorite kind.”

  Miss Sweetly gri
maced at this in embarrassment and lifted a hand to adjust her spectacles.

  She had no idea what that simple motion did to Stephen. It made him want to do the same himself—to run his fingers up the line of her nose, slowly tracing that elegant curve. To hook his finger under the bridge of her glasses and slide them down her face, and then…

  But Miss Sweetly did not ask about his favorite kind of young lady, and the answer that he’d come up with to that obvious question went to waste. Over the months of their acquaintance, she’d always forced him to deviate from his usual responses. When he was around her, he had to think, to pay attention—because she never said what he expected.

  She did not mention that she knew him. She did not, in fact, say anything at all. She simply looked over Mrs. Barnstable’s shoulder, out the window, as if she had more important things than Stephen Shaughnessy on her mind.

  It had always been like that with her. The first day he’d met her, he had run into her on the street—quite literally, as they had both been distracted, and neither of them had been watching where they were going. He’d asked what had her so deep in thought, and she had told him.

  It had been the most intense experience of his life, seeing her transform from a shy, nervous miss into a magician who intended to coax secrets from the sky. He’d never found mathematics erotic before that day, but watching her lips form the words “parabola” and “Newtonian step” had been utterly riveting. He had been riveted ever since.

  “Mr. Shaughnessy wants someone to show him around a slide rule,” Mrs. Barnstable was saying to Rose. “And teach him a few tricks. It’s for his next book. And he’s even offered to pay—what was that again, Mr. Shaughnessy? Three shillings per lesson? Is that what you said? Isn’t that generous!”

  He hadn’t said anything of the sort, but he had to smile at the effrontery of the woman. Three shillings per lesson was downright exorbitant.

  “Of course,” Mrs. Barnstable said, “most of that fee will go to you, Miss Sweetly, but as I will have to chaperone, I’ll expect sixpence per lesson, and another sixpence for my help in the negotiations.”

  No, Mrs. Barnstable was not the fluttery mother hen she made herself out to be. But right now, it was not Mrs. Barnstable’s approval or her heart, mercenary though it might be, that he cared about. It was Miss Sweetly’s.

  “Are you going to do the Actual Man thing to me, too?” she asked, not looking up at him.

  “No,” he said with a shake of his head. “You sound apprehensive about it, and I try to do that only where it’s appreciated.”

  She sniffed.

  “Don’t look so disbelieving, Miss Sweetly. I’m a simple man. I like being appreciated.”

  “At three shillings a lesson,” Mrs. Barnstable put in, “you could appreciate him a little.”

  Miss Sweetly shut her eyes.

  “Oh, dear.” Mrs. Barnstable said. “That did come out rather unfortunately. I didn’t intend…”

  But she couldn’t even say what she hadn’t intended. Normally, watching others struggle with the ridiculous strictures of propriety was one of Stephen’s favorite pastimes. He usually waited until all the feathers were smoothed and everyone was on the verge of sighing in relief. Then he’d come out with something utterly inappropriate—blasting all the careful wordings and euphemisms to bits with a brazen determination.

  Now, however, he held his tongue. It was an unfamiliar skill, as untrained and as poorly understood as his mathematics.

  “You don’t have to appreciate me,” he said to Miss Sweetly. “Just teach me to use a slide rule and explain a few basics, and I’ll appreciate you.”

  She looked over at him. For a long while, she seemed to contemplate this. Finally, she nodded. “I suppose I might. If Dr. Barnstable would not mind.”

  Permission being granted all around, she escorted him to a smaller office, one that was even dingier than the last, which he hadn’t thought possible. A typewriter sat at one desk; Mrs. Barnstable sat behind it, fussing about her piles of paper, before settling on one and picking it up.

  Miss Sweetly’s familiar portfolio graced the other desk; she gestured him to a chair next to hers. He sat.

  “Miss Sweetly,” he whispered in a low voice, “I know I’ve rather trapped you into this, but if you’d prefer I leave, that I not bother you, you’ve only to say the word.”

  She looked up at him. “But we speak on the streets all the time. Is this so different?”

  It was not so different; it was simply an escalation.

  “If you wish for a more robust chaperone than Mrs. Barnstable, I’m happy to find someone else.” He met her eyes, holding her gaze for a long, fraught moment, before adding, “Only if you wish it, of course.”

  She raised an eyebrow and glanced behind them. “Mrs. Barnstable,” she told him in a low voice, “falls asleep at her desk in the afternoons. She means well, but she is sixty-three.”

  “Oh, no.” He leaned forward and pitched his voice even lower. “How dreadfully unchaperoned that will leave us.”

  She pursed her lips. “The door is open. Chaperones are for ladies; I’m a shopkeeper’s daughter. So long as I have recourse if you forget yourself, whatever could happen?”

  “Whatever indeed?”

  She had looked back at him as he spoke; now she was looking into his eyes, swaying in place a little, almost mesmerized. He felt the slightest twinge of conscience.

  He didn’t intend to seduce her. But he expected he could; it wouldn’t prove too difficult. But he didn’t want this to end with her guilt and self-recrimination. In point of fact, he didn’t want this to end at all.

  “If you’re going to write a book that touches on astronomy, we had better teach you the basics. Let’s start you off with multiplication.” Her voice, when she spoke, was a little squeaky.

  “Naturally,” Stephen said, pitching his voice too low for Mrs. Barnstable to hear. “It’s a Biblical command, after all: Be fruitful and multiply.”

  She did not look terribly impressed by that. Instead, she undid the metal fastenings of her slide rule case and took out the instrument.

  “I should let you know,” he went on, “I’ve managed to avoid being fruitful thus far. But I do enjoy a good session of multiplication.”

  She swallowed. “Mr. Shaughnessy,” she said reproachfully, glancing over at Mrs. Barnstable.

  But the older woman just smiled at them, oblivious to the improper turn of the conversation.

  “Ah, was that too much?” he asked. “I can hold myself back, if I must.”

  She looked down at her hands. They were poised over her slide rule, her skin contrasting with the pale, graduated celluloid of the instrument. “Hold yourself back from the Bible, Mr. Shaughnessy?” She smiled faintly. “Why would I want you to do that? I imagine you need all the godliness you can muster.”

  “I imagine I do. Let’s multiply, then.”

  She gave him another level look. But instead of reproaching him, she moved the slide rule between them, caressing it with a light touch.

  “This is the slide.” Her long, slender fingers demonstrated, moving the middle bar in a motion that he could not help but find analogous to another act. The thought of her fingers touching him in that slow, steady manner sent his mind whirling down another path altogether, one that left him feeling uncomfortably aroused.

  “The left index,” she said. “The right index. This metal window is called the cursor.”

  He nodded and tried to think of mathematics.

  “So to multiply two numbers—let us say three and two—you move the left index to the three and set the cursor on the two.” She demonstrated, her fingers working with a swift, practiced precision. “Then you can read the answer from the bottom scale.”

  He looked down. “Six,” he said.

  “Excellent.” Her tone was almost brisk and business-like—almost, but for that slight hint of a quaver in it. “Now I shall write out a few problems. I expect you to calculate them using the slid
e rule.”

  She took out a piece of paper and began writing numbers down the side—lots of numbers, as if he were a child tasked with working problems. She wrote swiftly, in a clear, defined hand and slid the page over to him.

  He knew he had an effect on her—the same effect he had on most women. He could dazzle her temporarily. But she did not stay dazzled, and he was not used to being so flummoxed in response.

  “Let me know when you’re finished,” she said.

  He looked at the paper. “You’re not going to multiply with me?”

  “No,” she said somewhat severely. “You’re going to multiply on your own. But I’ll make you a wager. If I can finish my calculation of the projected cometary trajectory without the use of my slide rule before you can multiply a few piddling two-digit numbers…”

  He took the paper from her. “What will I win, then?”

  “Another lesson on multiplication.”

  He laughed softly. “And if I don’t?”

  “Then we’ll head straight to division,” she said briskly.

  So saying, she opened her portfolio. He saw a bewildering column of numbers—interspersed with a few Greek deltas and epsilons—before she bent her head over them.

  He’d heard her talk about her work. She’d occasionally done complicated long division in her head as she explained something to him on the streets. He’d known she was a genius—she spilled genius all around her without even having to think of it. But watching her work was one of the most astonishing things he had ever witnessed.

  The paper was divided into five columns, each carefully labeled. She had to have been multiplying nine-digit numbers in her head without a moment’s hesitation, marking them down on the paper as swiftly as she could write. He vaguely recognized something that he thought might have been the gravitational constant, if only his woeful knowledge of dimly recalled physics meant something…

  “You’re not multiplying,” she said severely. But she didn’t look at him. Instead, she adjusted her spectacles on her nose.

  “Miss Sweetly, why on earth do you even have a slide rule?” he asked in amazement.