Talk Sweetly to Me (Brothers Sinister #4.5)(14)

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.”

She was still stirring her tea even though the sugar must have long since dissolved.

“So you see, it’s nothing, really. Just a little trick I do, something that brings me some amusement.”

“Right,” he said skeptically. “Just a little trick. Tell me, Miss Sweetly. How does one calculate the distance between the earth and the sun?”

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.”