Talk Sweetly to Me
“Miss Sweetly,” he said straightening, “would you set me an impossible problem just to watch me struggle with it?”
She put one hand over her heart. “How could you say such a thing? You must think me needlessly cruel.”
“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.”