Talk Sweetly to Me, Page 5

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

  “ROSE,” PATRICIA 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,

  Stephen Shaughnessy

  Actual Man

  “You see?” Patricia said. “He’s flirting—publicly—with another woman. That’s the sort of man he is. Just keep that in mind the next time you encounter him.” She nodded as if she had proven a point.

  Rose shook her head. It wasn’t flirting, no more than the time he’d done the Actual Man thing to Mrs. Barnstable had been flirting. It was…kind of him, in a sweet, outrageous sort of way. It hurt to read it, not because she thought him unfaithful, but because she could hear him in it, all of him.

  I don’t have hidden shallows, he’d told her. Maybe he didn’t. She suspected that if she judged him by his column, she would see…

  A man who offered to dance with a woman who had been badly wounded. A man who mocked other men when they made too much of their own importance. A man who wished to make others laugh, even when they suffered. She had never looked at him and seen a bad man, and the more she looked, the deeper she fell.

  That, perhaps, made him the most dangerous specimen of all.

  He liked people. He liked her. She suspected he’d told her the simple truth: He wasn’t trying to seduce her.

  He was just succeeding at it.

  “THIS WILL BE OUR LAST LESSON,” Rose said, when Mr. Shaughnessy had settled himself into her office two days later. “There is only so much you nee
d to learn, and after tomorrow I shall be flooded with work. We’ll have data from the transit of Venus—and once we have that, there will be star charts to update, and I shall be up to my ears in calculations. I shan’t have time for you any longer.”

  Mrs. Barnstable looked up at that, but she had a report to type for her husband, and the noise of the typewriter drowned out their conversation.

  The truth was that Rose should never have made time for Mr. Shaughnessy. He was… Charming was the word she’d used, but charming sounded so sweet, so innocent. And by nature, Mr. Shaughnessy was never innocent.

  He was not watching her innocently now.

  That was the problem. She knew precisely what was happening to her. She could feel him coaxing her along the path to seduction. He made her forget herself every day she was with him, and one day, she would cross an uncrossable line. So long as he was around her, he would lead her astray.

  His lips thinned, but he nodded ever so slightly as if he were accepting her edict.

  “You’ll still tell me what you’re doing when we meet on the street,” he said. “And now I’ll understand it better.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think I should.”

  No; that was too wishy-washy. The clattering of Mrs. Barnstable’s machine was beginning to annoy Rose.

  “In fact, I know I mustn’t.”

  “Aw, Rose.” He looked into her eyes. “You know I love it when you talk Sweetly to me.”

  Her throat seemed to close at those words. She felt hoarse, almost ill. Her heart was pounding and her head seemed light. But this was no illness; she wanted more of it.

  Therein lay her problem. He’d told her that her enthusiasm was contagious.

  His lack of innocence, then, was a raging plague, and she was infected. The smallest glance in his direction sent her into an internal tizzy—the flash of his eyes, a glimpse of his wrist when one of his cuffs pulled up. The sight of him gave her ideas, and she didn’t need to be having ideas about him.

  Once she had it in her head that he might do things to her, she could not help but imagine those things. Kisses, and not just on the lips or the hand, but on her neck, her inner wrist, up her elbow. He might give her caresses, too—slow, languid, full-body caresses. He didn’t have to seduce her; she was doing all the work of seduction on her own.

  “Come, Mr. Shaughnessy,” she said briskly. “I’m sure you dream of more important things than listening to me ramble on. I don’t wish to be a way station on your way to bigger and better.” She looked down. “I have enjoyed—rather too much—spending this time with you. But I think I’ll be better off if our time together draws to a close.”

  He took this in silence. His lips compressed into an almost angry line, and he looked away.

  “Here,” she said. “I’ve set you some…some problems to work. Just a little parallax.” She actually choked as she spoke, as if she might cry over mathematics.

  Better that. Better to cry over maths than a man, especially a rogue like this one. He’d scarcely even exerted himself and already she found herself watching his fingers, hoping he might crook one of them at her…and fearing that if he did, she’d come running.

  He took the sheet from her and began to work.

  “You know,” he said, “I realized last night that you were granting me a signal honor when you let me use your slide rule. Thank you.”

  He didn’t sound as if he were making fun of her. She glanced suspiciously at him.

  “I don’t dream of bigger and better,” he said, making his first notation on the page. “I told you: I’m appallingly simple. There is no grand design.”

  “You’re a novelist. And a columnist. There’s nothing simple about you.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m exceedingly clever and exceedingly outrageous. But that doesn’t make me exceedingly devious.”

  “But you must have had some plan in order to ascend the heights so swiftly.”

  He smirked. “Here is the extent of my planning. When I was fifteen, I realized I was a poor Irish Catholic in England, a country with an excess of poor Irish Catholics. My only real skill was a talent for outraging others. Either I had to stomp out my only source of genius in order to have a go at making a living in the most menial fashion, or I had to indulge it to the fullest and hope for the best.” He shrugged. “Here I am. For the next few years, I shall be in demand enough to command a thousand pounds per book from my publisher. By the time that’s dried up—and the public’s capacity for any brand of outrage always dries up—I’ll have enough saved that I won’t have to care. See? There is no grand plan. No meteoric dreams. Just a dislike for manual labor and a talent for annoying others.”

  She sniffed.

  “You, on the other hand…”

  She shook her head. “We are not talking of me.”

  “You, I wager, do not dream timid dreams. You walk with your head in the clouds.”

  “Oh, no. The clouds are in the troposphere. My thoughts lie well beyond the mesosphere.”

  “Precisely. So tell me, Miss Sweetly. What is it you see for yourself, after you send me on my way? What is your grand plan?”

  Behind them, Mrs. Barnstable changed a page in her typewriter. Rose flushed and looked away. “There is no grand plan. My father is on the board of the African Times. It has been their mission for the last decades to see to the elevation of the race. They’ve sponsored a number of medical students in their work, starting from Africanus Horton.” She couldn’t look him in the eyes. “Patricia—my sister—married one of those students. They met over dinner, took one look at each other…and that was the end of it. Everyone expects that I’ll marry one of the two students arriving in the next year.” Rose traced a trailing vine on her skirt. “I suppose I do, too.”

  “And is that what you want?” he asked in a low voice. “To marry a medical student on scholarship? To have his children and to keep his home?”

  “I am not opposed to marriage. And yes, I should like children.” She still couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

  “Will your husband let you spend your days in computation? Will he listen to you talk of parallax and the transit of Venus? Or will he expect you to subside into compliance, to set your slide rule aside until it is dusty and warped?”

  Her chin went up. “How do you suppose I met Dr. Barnstable? He’s also on the board of the African Times—he was stationed in Cape Town, and didn’t like some of the things he saw. He heard about this ridiculous talent I had, and next thing I knew, he was pleading with my father to let me work with him. I know for a fact that there are men in this world who will allow a woman her interests.”

  “True. But would they adore you for yours? Where others see numbers and charts, you see a universe, vast and mighty. You can see the face of the cosmos in a few dancing lights. You shouldn’t have to trade the stars in the sky for a home and a marriage and babies.”

  She let out a shaky breath.

  “I admit,” he said, “it took me longer than one look at dinner. It took me five or six looks. But then, I cannot see five trillion miles away.”

  Her heart was pounding heavily. “Mr. Shaughnessy.”

  “I’m a clever fellow,” he went on. “I know I’m not your heart’s desire. I’m too outrageous, too frivolous to be the sort of man you dream about.”

  She couldn’t speak. She didn’t dare tell him what she truly longed for. If she did, he’d use it against her.

  Mrs. Barnstable, oblivious to this entire exchange, pulled the last page from her machine. “Miss Sweetly, I’m just running these down to Dr. Barnstable, if that’s all right with you.”

  No. Rose needed to say no. She couldn’t be alone with Mr. Shaughnessy, not even for so much as a minute. Especially not now.

  “Of course, Mrs. Barnstable,” she heard herself say.

  “I know I’m not your heart’s desire,” he said again in a low voice as soon as Mrs. Barnstable had quitted the room, “but I can still give you yours.”

/>   She looked up. “What do you know of my heart’s desire?”

  Looking into his eyes was a mistake. He gave her a smile—not a low, cunning smile, or a clever smile that hinted at seduction. It was a warm, welcoming smile—the sort that made her think she had come home.

  “I know what you want. It shows.”

  She wanted him, impossible rake that he was. She wanted him in love with her, faithful to her. Even she knew that was too much to ask.

  “It shows?” she asked in a low voice.

  “It does.” He gave her a duck of his head. “Miss Sweetly, I beg of you—that you will accept from me this one thing.”

  Her heart pounded.

  He stood. She looked wildly around the room—but with Mrs. Barnstable gone, there was no one to see. Nobody would see him coming toward her. Nobody would detect the look in his eye, that bright light that froze her in her seat.

  He got on one knee before her. She couldn’t think, couldn’t imagine what to say or how to say it. He wouldn’t really ask her to marry him—not now, ever, and even if he did, surely he wouldn’t mean it. Men promised things to women like her all the time, and never meant a word they said.

  But the thing he took from his pocket was not a ring. It was a bit of card stock, printed with a decorative border. He handed it to her; she took it. Stamped on the front were the words Admit One. Beneath that, there was only an address.

  “What is this?” she asked in confusion.

  “That?” He smiled smugly, as if he had just done something very clever. “That is your heart’s desire, Miss Sweetly: a ticket to the best viewing in all of Greenwich of the transit of Venus. Courtesy of… Well, that would be me.”

  If anyone had asked Rose about the things she wanted, watching the transit of Venus would assuredly have been on her list. Not the first item there, nor the second…but high on the list nonetheless.

  But it wasn’t the thought of astronomy that had her breath catching in her lungs. It was that he’d obtained this as a present. It was the most thoughtful gift she’d ever received. And he’d been the one to think of it.