Talk Sweetly to Me

“Mr. Shaughnessy.” Her voice shook. “Did you do this?”

He’d had to talk with Barnstable about how to manage it.

“Well. Yes. I did.”

One couldn’t look at the sun directly, not without risking damage to the eyes. But with the proper telescope lens, it was no difficulty at all.

“You’ve mounted an entire theodolite telescope in the window. How did you get…” She shook her head in wonder. “No, never mind that. I can tell how. No one who owned a theodolite telescope would willingly loan it to you, not with the transit today. Never say you bought it just for this.”

“As you wish.” He smiled. “I won’t tell you that I bought it. But…”

She shook her head. “And were no doubt charged treble in light of the transit.” She reached out and touched the base lightly, almost reverently.

“Do you have a telescope, Miss Sweetly?”

“No.” Her voice was low and reverent. “I don’t.”

“Well, then. Do you want one?”

“Yes, Mr. Shaughnessy.” She bent over it, set her eye to the eyepiece. “I want one very much. But we both know you cannot make a present of this to me. It is too dear.”

“Then I won’t.”

“It seems an extravagant purchase on your part,” she said.

He’d had years of scrimping and saving before he’d come to prominence; it was not in his nature to make pointless expenditures. But when the shopkeeper had quoted him the cost of the telescope, he hadn’t even blinked.

She was enraptured. The light from the window illuminated her figure, casting a golden glow all around.

“It was worth it,” he told her. He would have purchased a score of telescopes just to see the look on her face now.

“But to buy such a thing for a single use… I suppose you can sell it.” She trailed her fingers longingly down the tube.

He’d never intended the use to be singular. She adjusted the inclination, her head bent like a woman in prayer.

One day. One day, he hoped she’d look at him with half that amount of emotion, that wonder. One day he’d make her feel just a little breathless.

Today, though…

“I don’t understand you,” she said, still peering into the telescope. “Surely after going through all the trouble and expense of setting this up, you expected some return on your investment.”

“Oh, I have it already,” he said nonchalantly.

She glanced up at him.

“I told you,” he said. “I just want to give you your heart’s desire.” Their eyes met, the moment stretching.

She looked back down with a shake of her head. “It must be about time.”

He didn’t speak. He could see her excitement in the tap of her gloved fingers against the scope, in her breath catching. “It’s starting,” she said.

Somewhere, a clock tolled the two o’clock hour.

“Come here.” She gestured to him.

“I don’t want to take your time…”

She made an impatient noise. “It will never again happen in our lives, and you don’t want to see it? Don’t be ridiculous.”

The telescope, fitted with a solar filter, showed the image of the sun clearly—a bright disc the size of a sixpence. A dark spot, the merest speck, had just broached the edge.

He’d never stood so close to her. He could smell the sweet fragrance of rosewater, of something else he couldn’t identify, something enticing and lovely. Her shoulder brushed his. If he turned to her now…

He’d distract her, and she’d never forgive him. “How long will this last?”

“Until the sun sets just after four or the clouds intervene.”

“Well. Then maybe we can take turns.” He gestured her back to the telescope.

She took her place once more. But after a few moments of staring into the eyepiece, she spoke again. “However did you convince Father Wineheart to let you set this whole thing up?”

“He likes me,” Stephen said. “Even though he hears my confessions—which I must admit are shocking—he likes me.”

“That’s not what I meant. Why did he agree?”

“The same reason that Barnstable did. I told him I was writing a book about an astronomer, that I needed a little experience.” Stephen shrugged.

She straightened and glanced at him. “When are you going to tell him that you were using that as an excuse to try and seduce a woman? I would not think that a man of the cloth, no matter what his denomination, would acquiesce in such a scheme.” Her words were severe, but her tone was light and teasing.

“I told you already. I’m not trying to seduce you.” But he couldn’t help but smile. “If it happens, it will be a happy side-effect.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“But he’ll find out when he hears my next confession.”

She shook her head, and leaned down once more. “I can’t do what you do, you know.”

“What do I do?”

She waved a hand—a very general hand-motion that he decoded as I don’t want to say, and I’d be obliged if you inferred it without any more effort on my part.

“Do you mean that you couldn’t write novels?”

She snorted.

“That you couldn’t write my columns? You’re right, Miss Sweetly. I think you’re a little too earnest for them.”

“No. You know that’s not what I mean. I mean, how do you…do the things you do with women and not fall in love?”

“Ah.”

He pushed away from her and looked out the window. The sun was a dusky gold; with his naked eye, he could see no hint that anything extraordinary was taking place.

“That’s easy enough to answer. The first time, I did.”

She did look up from the telescope at that.

“I was nineteen, which according to some, is rather late to start on such matters. But I’d been concentrating on my studies, and, well…” He shrugged. “I had just started writing for the Women’s Free Press, and there was some gala event that I was invited to. I met this woman. She was ten years my elder, widowed, and absolutely lovely. I was charmed, delighted, seduced, and I promptly fell head over ears in love.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I think it took me a week to propose marriage. She kissed me on the cheek and laughed at me. You see, I was not the sort of man that a woman like her would marry. And she told me why in great detail. I hadn’t any money, any station. I was Irish and Catholic. I was too young and far too radical. Women would adore me, she said—and I could offer them a great deal—but I shouldn’t expect to marry them.”