Talk Sweetly to Me

Rose polished the last apple with a towel. “Don’t worry about that,” she said softly. “I won’t do anything foolish.”

She didn’t say anything about getting hurt. There was no point worrying about that. She thought of Mr. Shaughnessy’s smile, of the wicked gleam in his eye. She thought of him asking her about oranges and comets, of him looking at her and saying in that dark, dangerous, lilting tone I love it when you talk Sweetly to me.

She’d also seen the notes about him in the gossip column. He was utterly outrageous, and no matter how he made her feel, the last thing she needed was an outrageous man.

No, there was no point worrying about getting hurt.

At this point, pain was already inevitable.

Chapter Two

OF ALL THE WAYS that Stephen Shaughnessy had ever decided to torment himself, this one had to be the most diabolical.

There was a slight musty smell to the offices a few streets from the Royal Observatory, as if the windows were not often opened. The books on the shelves around him ranged from an ancient set of Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica to a report on something called spectroscopic observations; the walls were a yellowing whitewash over which charts had been tacked year after year, until only a few spots remained bare.

The room was, in short, little better than a dingy pit, the only decorations a celebration of mathematics—a subject he had never excelled at, and, until recently, had never found interesting.

Which was precisely what made his next sentence so shocking.

“Yes,” he heard himself saying aloud. “It is a real pleasure to meet you, Dr. Barnstable. I’m terribly impressed by your work.”

Even more shockingly, the statement was true.

“No, no. The pleasure is assuredly all mine.” Dr. Barnstable caught Stephen’s hand in his and gave it a few enthusiastic pumps. “I cannot believe you’ve heard of me—and that you follow astronomy.” He smiled bemusedly. “Truly, I feel dazed by the prospect.”

He could hardly feel as dazed as Stephen himself. It had taken him almost a month to realize what was happening and another four weeks to succumb to utter madness. Or mathematics; he wasn’t sure there was any distinction at this point.

Dr. Barnstable was an older man in his sixties, with six inches of white beard as proof of his age. But there was nothing fusty about him; he shook Stephen’s hand with a firm grip.

“Your paper on the orbit of double stars is a true classic,” Stephen said.

The point when Stephen had read it, searching for any hints of Miss Sweetly’s contribution to the piece, was the point when he’d known that it was over. It had been like a newspaper headline printed in two-inch type: There’s no use struggling, Stephen. You’re well and truly caught.

“My wife is an absolute enthusiast of your work.” Barnstable’s eyes sparkled. “She reads me pointed bits from your column. I ought to take you to task—giving away all our masculine secrets—but ah, well.” That last was met with an amused shake of his head.

“They’re not secrets,” Stephen explained. “Women already know everything I say. The only reason anything I say is amusing is because a man is saying it.”

“Ha!” Barnstable jabbed Stephen’s shoulder in a friendly fashion. “You’re just as clever in person as you are on paper. Well. I can’t say I disagree. Times are surely changing, and for the better. You have no idea how much easier some of those recent advances have made my work.”

Stephen actually had every idea. One of those “advances,” he suspected, was Miss Rose Sweetly—and from what little he could tell, she’d done very well for Barnstable indeed. The man had better praise her.

“But never mind that,” Barnstable said. “We can talk politics some other time. What can I do for you?”

“I’m doing research on astronomy,” he said.

“For your next novel? Are you writing an astronomer, by chance?”

Stephen considered this and decided it was as good an explanation as any other he could offer. “Yes.”

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…”