The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

by Olivia Waite

  “For science, of course,” Lady Moth said. Her gaze stayed low, on her plate. She pressed the tines of her fork down until they punctured the morsel of meat, but didn’t lift it to her mouth. “He wanted to be a discoverer of something. Anything. A planet, a comet, it didn’t matter, so long as he could attach his name to it. Or failing that, to be first, or best, or most memorable in some field.”

  “He was a very accomplished astronomer,” Lucy offered.

  “Yes.” Lady Moth’s gaze flicked up, and Lucy smothered a gasp. That glance was sharp enough to cut. The countess dropped it again almost immediately and went on: “He would have been happier in an earlier age. Making that daring first voyage to Otaheite, standing beside Charles Green observing the transit of Venus. He spoke of it often, lamenting that he was born too late for that one and too soon for the next. They only come around every century, you know. If George could have boarded a ship that sailed across the years instead of the seas, I think he’d have left us all behind to try it, and thought it an excellent bargain.”

  “Probably easier to live until the next one, instead,” Lucy offered. “Fifty years is a distance off, but at least you’re already traveling the right way down the road.”

  Her hostess stilled, wineglass against her lips. When she spoke, her words were deliberate and her tone was wry. “I’m sure his death came as a great disappointment.”

  Lucy went scarlet.

  Brinkworth stepped forward into the silence and refilled her glass, but Lucy didn’t dare drink any more. Her tongue was clearly loose enough.

  Lady Moth raised a delicate eyebrow. “I am quite taken with the decoration on your gown, Miss Muchelney. Did you embroider it yourself?”

  And just like that, Lucy’s mouth was full of ash. “N-no,” she stammered thickly. “It was done by a friend.”

  “She has a very talented hand.”

  “Yes,” Lucy all but whispered. “She did. Does.” Good intentions were cast aside as she reached for the wineglass. The alcohol burned against the rawness in her throat.

  Lady Moth’s gaze was still on her, too keen.

  Lucy cast about for something inoffensive to say. “She has lately married.”

  Lady Moth smiled. “I’m sure her husband’s waistcoats will be the richer for it.”

  To her horror, Lucy felt a tear tip over the sill of her eyelid and slide headlong down the slope of her cheek. She dashed it away, humiliation scalding her from the inside out. The countess looked startled as Lucy pushed herself up from the table, chair scraping hard against the floor. “Please excuse me, my lady. I’m afraid the journey has worn me out more than I thought.”

  Lady Moth nodded, her golden hair bobbing in the candlelight. Her eyes were still keen, but puzzled.

  Lucy, burning with shame, turned away without another word.

  By the time she reached the door Brinkworth held for her, the tears were coursing down her cheeks. The butler’s gaze was distant, but in one hand he held out a handkerchief. Lucy murmured an embarrassed thanks and made her escape.

  By the time she reached her bedroom, the handkerchief was soaked.

  Catherine’s toilette was a treasury of scent pots, powders, pomades, and stray pieces of jewelry. A perfect dragon’s hoard.

  Catherine certainly felt like a dragon: irritable and scaly. There had been no call to be so sour to the girl at dinner last night. Apparently two years of widowhood had blunted her ability to rein in her tongue around company. She would have to polish up her manners before Mr. Hawley’s dinner party later this week.

  “Narayan,” she said, as her maid’s light brown fingers slid the last hairpin precisely into place, “will you tell me when Miss Muchelney is awake?” The girl deserved an apology, or at least an olive branch, after having been run out of dinner in tears.

  “But Miss Muchelney has been up since dawn, ma’am,” the maid said at once. “I brought her toast and tea, then she asked to be shown to the library.”

  “Oh,” said Catherine, surprised. “Thank you.” Narayan curtsied and departed. Catherine looked at herself in the mirror—hair pinned just so, face powder-pale, a decorous string of pearls around her neck—and made a face. “If only you were half as sweet as you looked,” she muttered, then went to the library to speak to her guest.

  And stopped, with her hand on the knob and her heart in her throat.

  Pausing to listen at this door was second nature by now. The muffled whap of books being pulled from the shelves and tossed to the table, the low rumble of her husband’s voice arguing with imaginary interlocutors, the sharp thunk of footsteps against the floor as he paced restlessly, struggling with some turn of phrase or feat of logic or mathematical formula—the symphony these made would tell her what kind of mood George was in, and how best to approach him. Guessing wrong meant the difference between a mollified husband happy to attend a Society dinner, and one who insisted on locking himself and his wife away until the vast, slow glacier of his anger had melted away again.

  But George was gone, and no matter how hard she strained her ears, all she heard from the library was a silence she had no way to interpret.

  She let out the breath she was holding, then pushed the door open. There was Miss Muchelney, in a deep gray gown, perched in George’s favorite armchair. Catherine looked for telltale signs of her mood—the set of her mouth, or the tension in her posture—but the girl was frustratingly relaxed. She was resting her back against one arm and had her knees pulled up tight against the other. Her hair shone black as a crow’s wing in the morning sunlight, and she was biting her lip as she turned the pages of her book. Catherine recognized the mulberry leather of the cover: she’d found the Oléron, drawn directly to it like a magnet to a lodestone.

  So this young woman had been the mind behind all those long strings of numbers. George had always been so thrilled whenever a new set of charts appeared, built in no small part from observations collected on his many journeys. He’d perched in this library like an ancient alchemist in his workshop, poring over the arcs of celestial objects, checking them against earlier published catalogs to see if he’d managed to find something new. Once or twice Albert Muchelney had shown George to have confirmed a nebula spotted only once before, or a star that was known in Europe but had never been observed in the Southern Hemisphere. “For all he lets his imagination get the better of him,” George had said, “there’s a brilliant mathematical mind in the old man yet.”

  But it had been the old man’s daughter all along.

  George would have been livid. Even now, two years after his death, Catherine felt herself wilt a little inside imagining him angry.

  Miss Muchelney turned another page, completely oblivious to Catherine’s scrutiny. The silence looked likely to go on forever. Catherine gave a delicate little cough.

  Miss Muchelney flushed charmingly. She yanked her legs down, closed the book, and tugged her skirts into some semblance of order.

  Catherine put on a smile and sat on the sofa nearby. It creaked beneath her—the springs were old and in need of replacing. “My, you are early to work today, Miss Muchelney.”

  Miss Muchelney blinked in apparent surprise. “But I slept quite until dawn, Lady Moth. Besides: there’s nothing so rejuvenating as a new proof, eloquently laid out in clear language.” Her smile was shy and self-effacing. “It’s better than tea.”

  “I am glad to know you’ve had both, then.” Catherine fidgeted slightly. “Please allow me to apologize for being such a poor hostess last evening.”

  “Apologize?” Miss Muchelney stopped fussing with her skirts and looked up, cocking her head. “What for?”

  Catherine pressed her lips together and tried not to squirm with embarrassment. “Surely it’s not a good thing to send a guest running from the dinner table in tears.”

  Miss Muchelney’s head cocked a little farther. “But all you did was compliment my gown.”

  “I . . .” Catherine stopped, and took a breath, and groped for words. And l
et the breath out again in a frustrated huff.

  Miss Muchelney’s lips quirked in amusement. “Did you mean it as an insult?”

  Now it was Catherine’s turn to blush. “Of course not.”

  “So what is it you’re saying you’re sorry for?”

  The words were gentle, almost laughing, but Catherine winced as though they were shards of glass. Because the truth was that she did not know—and it was mortifying to have it pointed out. She swallowed hard and tried again. “I am glad to see you are feeling better this morning.”

  “Oh yes.” Miss Muchelney reached into her sleeve and pulled out a folded linen square. “Your butler was kind enough to loan me this last night—could I ask you to see it is returned to him?”

  “Of course.” Catherine took the handkerchief back, flattening the folds against her knee. Someone had embroidered it in white work: it looked plain and simple from far away, but close up her fingers could trace the hidden texture of a chevron pattern, all fierce points and lines of impeccably straight stitches.

  Just seeing it made Catherine itch to escape this room and go back to her own sewing, to the vines and buds and blossoms that soothed her when she felt awkward or out of place.

  But she couldn’t abandon her guest so easily as that. Catherine’s blush deepened, and she cast about for a change of subject. Science was a safe choice. “Do you think Oléron is going to be very difficult to translate?”

  Miss Muchelney shook her head. “Oh no—the French took a little getting used to, I’ll admit, but the mathematics are beautifully clear. It’s a great achievement: tying together nearly fifty years’ worth of work on gravitation. I can see why the Society is so interested in making it available in English.” Her long fingers stroked the cover tenderly.

  Catherine wondered what that touch would feel like if—but no, such thoughts were not to be entertained. She put that vision away in the same place she hid all the others, and folded her hands deliberately around Brinkworth’s handkerchief. “Have you started writing out your translation yet?”

  The girl shook her head. “Oh no, I’m still in the preliminaries. I worked through the table of contents, and now I’m just skimming to get a sense of the author’s style. To just dive in headlong would be like trying to map a place you’ve never been before.” She smiled, a dimple appearing at the corner of her wide mouth. “Probably not sound cartographic practice.”

  Catherine’s smile felt a little more natural this time. “Certainly not to any mapmaker I know.”

  Miss Muchelney looked up again, her amusement dissolving. Her fingers twisted round and round one another. “May I ask a favor of you, my lady?”

  In Catherine’s experience, favor meant trouble. She braced herself. “Of course.”

  “Will you introduce me to the Society properly? The whole Society, I mean—not just Mr. Hawley.”

  Catherine frowned. “But your father was a Fellow—surely you must already be known to them as his daughter.”

  Miss Muchelney shifted in her seat, eyes evasive.

  Catherine’s puzzlement deepened and darkened. “Or did you not manage all his correspondence?”

  “No.” An embarrassed pink was creeping up Miss Muchelney’s neck. “He had me respond to your letters specifically, since you were the one who most often sent us figures. He wrote monthly to Mr. Hawley, Mr. Chattenden, and Sir Eldon. Less frequently to a few others.” Her hands were white-knuckled, wrapped so tight the grip had to be painful. “His genius was of a quicksilver, meandering variety. He could see how the calculations were to be done, but he would leave the actual working of them to me. It was mere labor at that point. He would rather spend time allowing his mind to stray into the higher regions of natural philosophy, stretching the bounds of what we presently imagine, trying to pierce the veil between our sight and the grand truths of the universe.” The girl bit her lip. “Or so he liked to say.”

  “Yes,” Catherine said slowly. “I remember Sir Eldon reading us a letter about cities on the moon. It caused a great sensation at the time; they argued about it for months afterward.”

  Miss Muchelney’s head tilted, the briefest of flinches before she forced herself upright again. “My father loathed being joked about. But science always wounds the ones who love her.”

  Catherine bristled instantly. “Science does nothing of the kind,” she retorted. “Science merely exists. She can’t raise a hand to anyone. It’s people who do all the wounding.”

  Miss Muchelney was staring openly now, startled by Catherine’s vehemence.

  Catherine was a little startled herself, and forced her tone into a gentler register. “Let me tell you about my first scientific voyage. George and I had been married two months before we departed. It seemed like such an adventure: traveling to the far side of the globe, visiting new islands in southern seas, sleeping beneath new stars. And the islanders were so very friendly, so happy to see us. At first.” She found she had balled up the handkerchief, and made herself smooth it back out and fold her hands as primly as she could. “There was a terrace we found near where the ships landed—a beautiful, wide thing made of black coral, with a large central altar. The islanders would bring food there, and flowers, to honor their ancestors. They told us about this, as soon as we had picked up a little of one another’s languages.” Catherine took a long breath. “And then our geologist took his pickax to one corner, breaking it apart for a sample. Our botanist plucked the flowers and named them after himself. And my new husband swept aside all the offerings to the dead and set up his telescope on the altar, because the clearing was free of trees and he wanted the best vantage into the skies. When one of the islanders protested, and tried to push George away, Captain Lateshaw had the man flogged. Because order had to be maintained.” She pressed her lips together, the anger and disappointment still sharp even all these years later. “The islanders weren’t so friendly after that.”

  “I see,” Miss Muchelney murmured.

  “I know the men of the Society,” Catherine went on. “They are devoted to knowledge, and they do not shy away from arguing with one another. They will run roughshod over maidenly feelings and reticence. They will question your assumptions, your theories, and your facts. Are you very sure you want to open yourself up to their attacks?”

  The girl’s gray eyes flashed, her mouth settling into a mulish line, and for a moment Catherine went cold with dread of the outburst to come. George had always let loose the most vicious edge of his tongue whenever she’d doubted him, no matter how slightly. She tensed her fingers to hide the shaking of her hands and focused on breathing, out and in. A strike sometimes hurt more if you braced against it.

  But when Miss Muchelney spoke, her voice was cool and quiet. “I am an astronomer, too,” she said. “So long as they confine their arguments to points of theory and observation, I have nothing to fear from them, however fierce they may be. I assure you I can be just as ardent in defense of my own theories, and just as quick to point out the flaws in someone else’s argument.” She looked down at Oléron, and back up again. Her eyes were warm and liquid as silver. “It is kind of you to worry about me.”

  Catherine could only stare. That the blow hadn’t come had left her dizzy. The library walls seemed to spin around her, and when her hands tightened around each other she felt the bones of her fingers grinding together. She parted her lips, trying to catch her breath.

  Miss Muchelney’s eyes dipped down to Catherine’s mouth, and that silver gaze grew warmer still.

  The countess felt heat curl tight and low in her belly.

  Then Miss Muchelney looked away again, and the moment was broken. “You mentioned that there might be other candidates for the translation?” she asked. A little too diffidently.

  Catherine coughed slightly, clearing unaskable questions from her throat like so many cobwebs. “Yes . . . I believe Mr. Hawley has someone in mind he knows here in town, and Sir Eldon’s younger son has expressed an interest as well. There may be one or two oth
ers brought up, as the wider membership writes in with opinions, but those are the likeliest men you would be collaborating with. The Society is taking more of an active interest in this publication than they have in the past. They hired out someone to edit Captain Lateshaw’s final botanical journals two years ago, and the results were infamous: meandering poetry, expurgated passages, and none of the man’s celebrated tables of species or orchid illustrations.” Miss Muchelney’s horror was evident. Catherine arched an eyebrow, relishing the coup de grace of this particular tale. “Apparently the editor we hired had traded the original drawings all to his local pub one by one, in exchange for glasses of gin.”

  Miss Muchelney sputtered most gratifyingly.

  Catherine’s lips tilted up again. “So you see why Mr. Hawley is keen to avoid repeating the experience.”

  “I should think so!” Miss Muchelney reflected a moment.

  Caroline stared at where her teeth bit into that long lower lip.

  The girl tapped a fingertip against Oléron, thoughtfully. “If I were to translate just the first chapter, would you read it over for me? A sort of experiment, to make sure my work is up to the Society’s standards.”

  “I am not sure how much use I could be,” Catherine demurred. “The mathematics are well beyond my reach, believe me.”

  “I can promise you there will be no poetry.” Catherine laughed at that. Miss Muchelney offered her a rueful smile. “It makes me a little nervous, to be honest. I haven’t done any translating from French since my school days—and those were short passages. Short enough that I did them two or three times, in styles varying from more to significantly less formal.” Her generous mouth stretched out in an unabashed, girlish grin. “Once, we found a shocking play by Molière that some mischievous former student had slipped into the library. We had the first act written all out in limericks before they caught us at it and confiscated the book.”

  For a moment she glowed, remembering, and Catherine caught her breath—but then the light flickered out and Miss Muchelney looked so bereft that Catherine nearly handed her the handkerchief again.