Talk Sweetly to Me (9 page)

“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.”

She did not look up from the telescope. “Mr. Shaughnessy,” she said slowly, “that sounds suspiciously like a hidden depth.”

He let out a gasp. “You’re right. It is!” She wasn’t looking at him, but still he played it for all it was worth, setting a hand over his breast. “I
do
have a secret trauma—my many prior love affairs. There can be no sharper pain then to make love to a vast number of women—but I have masterfully accepted it as my due. I soldier on under the burden.”

She shook her head. “Are you ever serious?”

“I suppose some other man might have been wounded by that. But I’m like a cashmere jumper: comfortable, soft, and as fabric goes, not much given to wrinkling.”

“No wrinkles? Not over even one of them?”

“Aside from the obvious, it was all to my advantage. If one wishes to be a grand, outrageous name in society, one must do a few grand, outrageous things. Absinthe is too dangerous; gambling is too expensive. Opium is a dreadful habit—one has only to look at those in an opium den to know the effect. No; if I was going to be an outrage, I wanted the safest, least expensive vice I could find. So women it was.”

Rose inhaled. “Are you telling me that you seduce women as a calculation?”

“It’s been mutual. And I don’t seduce women—at least not the way you mean it. The Countess of Howder wanted an affair with me to let everyone know she was out of mourning and didn’t intend to be a pattern card of propriety. I’m an outrage, and the women who are so placed as to wish to be outrageous, well…” He shrugged. “And besides, I
like
women. I like them a great deal.”

She straightened. But instead of upbraiding him, as he’d expected, she gestured to the telescope. “Come take a look.”

He did. It was unnerving to not be able to see her—not after what he’d confessed. The dark spot had begun to traverse the sun’s disc.

“Aren’t there dangers in using women that way?”

“There are. There are also ways to minimize those dangers. Technically, they’re also forbidden to me, but…”

A longer pause. “Do you confess those ways to Father Wineheart as well?”

“I confess all my sins.”

He could hear her behind him, but with his eye on the disc of the sun, he could not see her. He had no idea if she was outraged or interested, if he’d disgusted her forever or set her mind at ease.

“I can’t imagine that. You tell all these salacious details to Father Wineheart, and in turn, he lets you put a telescope in the spire.”

“I only moved to this parish three months ago, Rose.” He shrugged. “I met you almost the first day I was here. I’ve had nothing to confess since that moment.”

She inhaled behind him, sounding almost shocked. “Nothing at all?”

“Nothing but lust, which he rather expects from a man my age.” He straightened, gesturing her back to the telescope. “You’d better take it back, Rose. The clouds are coming in—I’d hate to have you miss anything.”

She held his eyes for a long moment. He didn’t know what she was seeing, didn’t know what she was thinking. She bent back down.

She had to adjust the telescope yet again to track the sun in its descent. She didn’t say anything for a while, but he could see her hands nervously tapping against the optical tube. Her breath was uneven.

“Tell me, Mr. Shaughnessy. Is that what you had hoped for from me? To…” She stopped briefly, swallowing, and then continued. “To seduce me and then not fall in love?”

“No,” he told her. “I’m tired of having to remind myself that the women who are after me wish only an experience or a reputation and not a lifetime. I’m tired of holding myself back. I’m tired of having to flatten all but the barest hint of affection.”

Her breath caught.

“I’m tired,” he said, “of not letting myself fall in love.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time. “They’re idiots,” she finally said. “Complete idiots, the lot of them.”

“No,” he replied. “They aren’t. I don’t tend to hold idiots in affection.”

“No?”

“Of course not,” he said. “Why do you think I like you best of everyone?”

She didn’t say anything. He could see the clouds coming closer now, dark swells creeping across the sky.

“I am not outrageous.” Her voice was small. “I don’t wish to be outrageous.”

“I know,” he said. “And I’ve forgotten how to be anything but the most flagrantly outrageous man ever.”

She drew in a breath. “This was supposed to be the last time I saw you.”

“It’s the only sensible thing to do. We sound like the most ridiculous match; I know we do. But I can’t help but think, Rose, that if we could get over this awkward beginning bit—if we could just get to the part where you tell me about mathematics over breakfast and I buy you telescopes and we spend half the evening kissing—”

She made an annoyed noise.

“Too much? A quarter of the evening kissing?” he amended.

“No.” She straightened from the telescope. “The sun’s gone behind the clouds.” She glanced at him. “We’ve lost it for now. Maybe the weather will clear up.” She glared out over the city.

He didn’t put the chances high. The clouds had gone even darker; they stretched as far as he could see. She rubbed her gloved hands together briskly, and he realized that she was almost certainly cold.

He was, too—his hands and feet were uncomfortably chilled. He just hadn’t noticed, because…he’d been watching her. Hell, he’d been spilling his heart out to her, such as he did these things. He’d just told her he hoped to marry her, and he wasn’t even sure if she had noticed.

“An eighth of the evening kissing?” He looked over at her. “I can go lower if necessary.”

She shut her eyes. “Stephen.” That single word, long and drawn out. It was neither yes nor no; he wasn’t sure what it was.

“Every time I’m with you,” she said, “I tell myself I must beware. That this is what you do—make women comfortable, make us forget ourselves, principle by principle.” She rubbed her forehead and slowly opened her eyes. The light in the spire was waning even as she spoke, and yet for some reason, it seemed to find her, glinting in her eyes, reflecting off the warm brown of her skin. It caught a faint tilted smile on her mouth.

“So why is it,” she said, “that I have just now noticed that you’ve only ever come to me about me? You’ve asked about my work, my thoughts, my wants. You set this up for me, and when I balked, you handed me the keys and walked away. If you wanted me to forget myself, you wouldn’t keep reminding me of who I am.”

“Rose, love,” he said in a low voice, “I think you know why that is.”

She inhaled and spread her hands against her belly. Then, very slowly, she walked closer to him—close enough that her skirts touched his trousers, close enough that he could have drawn her to him. She swallowed; he could have set his fingers against the hollow of her throat and felt the movement, so close was she.

She looked up into his eyes. “I don’t want to dream timid dreams.” Her voice was soft, with just a hint of a catch in it. “I want to dream large, vivid ones. I want to dream that you’ll fall in love with me. That…” She bit her lip, but continued on. “That I could dare to reach out to you, that I needn’t fear what would come.”

She lifted her hand tentatively. He had thought that she might brush his cheek. But she didn’t. Instead, she took his hand. They were both wearing gloves; he should not have felt a thrill at the brush of cloth on cloth. But he did, and it swept him from head down to toe, settling particularly in his groin, warming him in the cold air.

“But I do fear.” Her hand clasped his. “You’re clever and never off balance around others. You’re handsome and sweet and outrageous. You could hurt me so badly, and I’m afraid to let you do it.”

He swept his thumb along the side of her hand. “Sweetheart, if you don’t trust me yet, there’s no assurance I can give you that will put your mind at ease. All I can do is keep on not hurting you, and keep on, until you know in your bones I never will.”

Their fingers intertwined, their hands coming together, palm to palm. He was enchanted, enraptured. She let out a long slow breath and slowly reached out with her other hand. This one she set on his shoulder. His skin prickled through his coat, his whole body tensing with her nearness. She drew a finger down his collarbone and then laid her palm flat against his chest.

He couldn’t move.

“I trust you.” Her voice was low, so low. “God knows I shouldn’t—but I trust you.”