Violet (Flower Trilogy) (22 page)

After all, this was a place she’d always wanted to visit.

‘‘When did the college open?’’ she asked.

‘‘At the end of the last century, following Gresham’s death and that of his wife. He had no living heirs, you see, so he gifted his home to the people of London.

His plan was to make scholarship available free to every adult citizen.’’ He pushed open a heavy oak door and guided her into a large, medieval-looking chamber. ‘‘Here is the Reading Hall where the lectures are given.’’

‘‘Oh, I wish I could attend one.’’ Beneath a lofty scissor-beam ceiling painted in dazzling hues of red and gold, rows of wooden benches faced a lectern, behind which rose an exquisite oriel window. ‘‘What a lovely place to learn.’’

‘‘I imagine when the Greshams lived here, this was their Great Hall.’’ Ford walked her through the soaring chamber, their footsteps echoing on the well-worn stone floor. ‘‘The college’s seven professors each have lodgings here at Gresham and are required to give one public lecture a week.’’

Whom might she meet here tonight? Breathless with anticipation, she peeked into some adjoining rooms, a bit disappointed when she found them unoccupied. ‘‘It just looks like a big, old house.’’

‘‘It was, remember. But you will see in a moment that although his family lived here for years, and his widow after, Gresham had a college in mind when he built it.’’

Another small courtyard lay outside the Reading Hall, leading to an arched passage that opened into a massive, grassy square with colonnaded buildings on all four sides.

‘‘See?’’ Ford said. ‘‘ ’Tis essentially a college quadrangle.’’

Flaming torches bathed the space in a warm glow.

Musicians were tuning up in one corner. Talking animatedly in small groups, guests dressed in all colors of the rainbow crowded the enclosure, their chatter filling the air.

She was here. Finally, she was here. A serving maid handed her a goblet of canary, and she sipped the sweet wine, turning in a slow circle, imagining the area solemn, shut off from the hubbub of London by the buildings all around.

‘‘I can picture it quiet,’’ she said, ‘‘students leisurely crossing the grass, or perhaps hurrying if they’re late.’’

‘‘Can you picture it paved over and crammed with shopping stalls?’’

She looked down at the fresh green grass beneath her feet. ‘‘Was it?’’

‘‘Until recently. After the Great Fire, the whole administration of the City moved into the buildings, and the tenants of the Royal Exchange set up here in the quadrangle until it was rebuilt. A hundred small shops.’’

People strolled by, men alone and some couples, nodding acknowledgments without interrupting their conversation. ‘‘How long has the Royal Society been meeting here?’’ she asked.

‘‘Since 1660, save during the past seven years. We were incorporated under Royal charter in 1662. On the fifteenth of July. So something good happened that particular St. Swithin’s Day,’’ he mused. ‘‘It must not have rained.’’

She shot him a sidelong glance. ‘‘What do you mean?’’

‘‘Never mind.’’ A faint smile curved his lips as he started walking her around the perimeter, pointing out all the professors’ lodgings. There were professors of music, physics, geometry, divinity, rhetoric, astronomy, and law—and by the time she heard about all of them, she was feeling dizzy with new information.

Or maybe dizzy with something else. She tugged up on her bodice, then dropped her hand when a spark of humor lit his eyes.

‘‘Do you like to dance?’’ he suddenly asked. The musicians had commenced playing. A lilting tune wafted over the quadrangle. A temporary floor of wood had been constructed over a patch of the new grass.

Although she’d had lessons along with her sisters, Violet had never danced much in the past. At the many balls her family had dragged her to, she’d always done her best to fade into the background.

But this was a magical night—a night that called for her to rise above her normal fears. In her whole life, she might never see a night like this again, and she was determined to make it memorable.

‘‘I cannot say I have much experience,’’ she heard herself saying. ‘‘But I wouldn’t mind giving it a try.’’

Immediately she thought about taking back the words, but clamped her lips tight. Handing their goblets to a passing serving maid, Ford led her closer to the music.

The tune ended and another began. A minuet. Taking her by both hands, he swept her onto the make-shift dance floor.

She knew the steps, and for the first time in her memory, she didn’t worry about tripping. He danced with an uncommon grace for a man, and her feet seemed to know what to do. The music matched the staccato beat of her heart. She could scarcely believe she was here at Gresham College, dancing with the most handsome member of the Royal Society.

Cool night air brushed along the skin that he’d heated in the carriage. She met his eyes, and her cheeks flushed at the boldness of his gaze. Here beneath the stars, he seemed different, in his element.

Not that he was shy and retiring in any circumstances, but she’d expect a man of science to be more like her, preferring solitude to social occasions. Which just went to show how little she could trust her preconceived notions.

They turned, and when his heady scent wafted to her nose, she found herself enjoying this particular social occasion more than she’d thought possible. For once, she had no desire to hide out, no wish to stay safely at home.

They rose on their toes, then he pulled her closer.

Closer than the dance required, close enough to make butterflies flutter in her stomach. He was touching her.

Just his hands, but he was touching her. Even though this sort of touch was not as intimate as his caresses in the carriage, she still felt that lurch of excitement.

That frisson of awareness. That building heat in her middle that seemed to illogically weaken her knees.

From just a touch. The
Masterpiece
hadn’t prepared her for that.

Men outnumbered women by double or more, and the dance floor was surrounded by clusters of them absorbed in conversation. More than a few glances were aimed her way. Violet suspected people were wondering what she was doing here with Ford.

And wondering about her spectacles. No sooner had she and Ford made their way off the dance floor than they found themselves approached by curious men.

‘‘Trentingham’s eldest, are you not?’’ One of them offered her a courtly bow. ‘‘I’m pleased to meet you,’’

he added. ‘‘Christopher Wren.’’

Christopher Wren. Mathematician, scientist, architect . . . the man currently engaged in rebuilding all of the City’s churches that had burned in the Great Fire. She was surprised to find him no taller than she.

‘‘Violet Ashcroft,’’ she returned. ‘‘I am glad to make your acquaintance.’’

‘‘Are those a new sort of spectacles?’’ he asked without further preliminaries. Not at all the serious, dour man she had imagined him to be, he seemed cheerful and open. She guessed him at a decade older than Ford. ‘‘May I see them?’’ He reached eagerly before she even gave permission.

‘‘Lord Lakefield made them for me,’’ she told him.

‘‘I’m not surprised.’’ Wren turned them in his hands, then raised them to his own sparkling brown eyes and blinked. ‘‘Do they help you to see?’’

‘‘Very much. They’ve changed my life.’’

Wren nodded thoughtfully, his long, wavy brown periwig moving along with his head. Beneath a patrician nose his mouth curved pleasantly, as though he smiled often.

He turned to Ford. ‘‘This frame to hold them on the face, ’tis brilliant. Why did I not think of it myself?’’

Ford laughed. ‘‘You’ve thought of plenty. Give another man a turn.’’

Someone else walked up. ‘‘What have you there?’’

‘‘Spectacles,’’ Wren told him. ‘‘Designed by Lakefield here, with a clever frame to hold them on the face.’’ Leaning forward, he gently slid the eyeglasses back on Violet.

‘‘Lovely,’’ the newcomer said. ‘‘Both the spectacles and the lady.’’ A few years younger than Wren, the man topped him by but a couple of inches. His physique looked somehow crooked, his face twisted and much less than beautiful. But his large, pale head was crowned with a wig of dark brown curls so delicate they made Violet jealous.

‘‘Robert Hooke,’’ Ford introduced him. ‘‘May I present Lady Violet Ashcroft?’’

‘‘I’ve read your book
Micrographia
,’’ Violet gushed, overwhelmed to find herself chatting with such a great intellect. ‘‘ ’Tis marvelous.’’

‘‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance.’’ Hooke’s gray eyes smiled along with his thin mouth, but in opposition to Wren’s, his face crinkled in a way that made Violet think he rarely grinned. ‘‘The gardener’s eldest, are you not?’’

She couldn’t remember ever meeting these people, but they seemed to know her. That was what came of hiding in corners, she supposed. ‘‘Is my father’s hobby so well known, then?’’ she wondered aloud.

‘‘Legendary.’’ Hooke shifted his awkward form, looking loathe to say more. ‘‘Charming man, though,’’

he finally added.

‘‘Robert is Gresham’s Professor of Geometry,’’

Ford told her. ‘‘He lives here, right under that new observatory they’re building.’’ He pointed to a corner of the quadrangle, where a small, square tower poked up from the roofline, surrounded by scaffolding.

‘‘Convenient,’’ Hooke said. ‘‘If I fall down stumbling drunk, I’m close to my bed.’’

They all laughed.

‘‘How go the plans for St. Paul’s?’’ Ford asked.

Hooke and Wren exchanged a glance, the kind shared by friends with secrets between them. Odd to think that a curmudgeonly man and such a cheerful one would be close.

‘‘I’m working on a model,’’ Wren said carefully.

Hooke let out a snort. ‘‘Twelve carpenters are working on it, and he’s sunk five hundred pounds into it already. We can only pray the King likes it and the clergy give their approval.’’

‘‘Approval for what?’’ someone asked in a voice with an Irish lilt. And before she knew it, Violet was introduced to Robert Boyle, a tall, thin man who also wanted a look at her spectacles.

No sooner had he finished exclaiming over them than another man walked up. Boyle handed him the lenses, and without them on her face, all Violet could tell about the newcomer was he was short and a bit stout.

‘‘They belong to you, my lady?’’ he asked after examining them closely. He returned them with a bow.

‘‘Isaac Newton, at your service.’’

‘‘Lady Violet Ashcroft,’’ Ford introduced her. ‘‘The Earl of Trentingham’s daughter.’’

With the spectacles safely back in place, Mr. Newton looked to be Ford’s age, perhaps a year or two older, and a handsome man, although gray hair peeked out from under his wig. Beneath his broad forehead, brown eyes were set in a sharp-featured face with a square lower jaw.

‘‘We’re pleased you remembered to come,’’ Boyle teased him.

The men’s laughter confused her, and her expression must have shown it. ‘‘Mr. Newton is known to be a bit absentminded,’’ Ford explained.

‘‘That,’’ Hooke said, ‘‘is an understatement of the greatest magnitude.’’ More laughter rang through the quadrangle as the assembled men apparently agreed.

‘‘He once entertained me for supper and went off to fetch more wine. An hour later I found him in his study, working out a geometrical problem. He’d completely forgotten I was there.’’

‘‘ ’Twas an important problem,’’ Newton protested good-naturedly. Compared to the other men, he looked rather slovenly. His suit was so wrinkled, Violet wondered if he’d worn it to bed.

Wren rubbed his chin. ‘‘Tell her about that time you rode home from Grantham.’’

‘‘That could happen to anyone.’’

‘‘I think not.’’ Wren turned to Violet. ‘‘He dismounted to lead his horse up a steep hill, and at the top, when he went to remount, he found an empty bridle in his hand. His horse had slipped it and wandered away unnoticed.’’

Even Violet had to laugh at that.

And so an hour passed while it seemed she met most every man connected with modern-day science.

Between examining her spectacles and regaling her with stories, they talked casually of their various projects.

The King’s most favored architect, Wren had recently written a paper explaining how to apply engineering principles in order to strengthen buildings.

He’d also patented a device for writing with two pens at once, and invented a language for the deaf and dumb, using hands and fingers to ‘‘talk.’’

Besides Hooke’s improvements on the microscope that had allowed him to research and write
Micrographia
, he’d developed astronomical instruments that revealed new stars in Orion’s belt. Ford whispered that he’d show her them one night. Hooke had also formulated a new law of physics, asserting that the extension of a spring is proportional to the force applied to it. A lively discussion broke out over his proposal to introduce the freezing point of water as zero on the thermometer.

Since Hooke often assisted Robert Boyle, the two talked about their experiments with the new air pump Hooke had built. Using it to create a vacuum, Boyle had proven that the pressure of a gas is inversely proportionate to its volume.

‘‘That is now called Boyle’s Law,’’ Ford told her.

Violet drank it all in, thrilled to be in their company. Although some of the men were aristocrats, many were not. Here, dukes rubbed elbows with commoners. The Royal Society was open to men of every rank and religion, so long as the proposed member held an interest in promoting discovery and science.

Ford basked in celebrity as each new arrival exclaimed over the genius of Violet’s new spectacles, and she didn’t feel uncomfortable wearing them at all.

Being the center of attention was not nearly as bad as she’d thought.

But as more eminent scientists gathered to praise Ford, she couldn’t help but wonder if he’d only brought her here to show off his brilliant invention.

Disappointment took her by surprise, making the canary seem to sour in the pit of her stomach. While it was true Ford had never implied they were attending as a romantic couple—he had invited her as a kindness so she could meet John Locke—she realized suddenly that, somewhere deep inside, she’d begun to hope he really liked her.