The Luckiest Lady in London

by Sherry Thomas

  “Utterly.”

  “Well, that will not do, will it?”

  “You could teach me Newtonian mechanics,” she said tentatively, not at all certain how he would react to such a request.

  He shook his head. “That would be like teaching you to do a handstand on a galloping horse, when you don’t even know how to ride.”

  Her hopes shriveled.

  But before she could say anything to shield herself from embarrassment, he went on. “I would have to start you with the fundamentals and assume that you know nothing beyond elementary arithmetic.”

  “But I can solve—” She stopped, self-conscious. “Saying I can solve paired equations now would be like telling a safari hunter that I once stepped on an ant, wouldn’t it? Or that I once caught a mouse in a trap?”

  “You once caught a mouse? I run from those satanic creatures.”

  She had the urge to giggle at the image he brought to mind, but suppressed her mirth. She did not want to be disarmed by his humor—it would be even more difficult to be wary when she was dissolving in laughter.

  Instead, she cleared her throat. “Will you actually teach me?”

  For a moment he seemed disappointed that his joke wasn’t better received. She felt a strange pang in her chest. She had to remind herself that with him, there was no such thing as simply wishing to please her. Always he aimed to exert more control, to reap more power.

  He tapped a pencil against the barrel of her telescope. “See, this is why so many gentlemen never marry. You get yourself a pretty wife, you spend half of your waking hours pleasuring her; then you spend the other half eradicating her ignorance. Soon your estate smolders in neglect and your personal hygiene suffers. Your tenants complain, your staff depart, and your wife won’t let you near her anymore because you are poor and malodorous.”

  Something about his tone—a barely perceptible melancholy—made her want to reach out for his hand. But it was probably her mind playing tricks on her. She needed to defend against him, not comfort him.

  “I had eleven pounds and eight shillings of emergency money set aside,” she said briskly. “I will earmark it for soap, so you never need to reek, no matter how poor you become.”

  He looked at her a moment, his expression inscrutable. “Well, in that case, I must test you to see exactly how undereducated you are. Then we will need to spruce up the schoolroom—a dismal place. After that, I will try to teach you, provided you can refrain from seducing the professor.”

  A tactical retreat, she thought. She’d done the same herself, steering a conversation into the somewhat less complicated realm of the bedchamber. She fluttered her eyelashes. “Will you rap me on the hand with a yardstick if I do try to seduce the professor?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I might even have to bend you over the table and spank you.”

  “Oh, my.” She touched her throat. “I suppose I had better let you know that I’ve never been in the presence of a learned professor without somehow becoming naked in the process.”

  That had led to a very good time in bed, including a few playful thwacks on her bottom. But now it was the middle of the next afternoon, his lordship was sequestered with his secretary, and she was alone in the schoolroom, looking about.

  She wouldn’t go so far as to call it dismal, but compared to the rococo airiness of his apartment, it was undoubtedly dull and uninspiring, all dark panels and somber drapes. Much of one wall was taken up with a big blackboard. Near the windows stood a lectern; in the middle of the room, a desk and a chair.

  Inside one glass-fronted cabinet was a rock collection, with each mineral’s name, provenance, and date of sampling recorded in a meticulous hand. Her attention snagged by the sparkling interior of a geode, she didn’t realize for some time that all of the rocks came from locations on the estate, in the neighboring countryside, or from parks in London during the Season.

  She had assumed that since he’d never had to submit to the fixed schedule of a school, he might have visited interesting, glamorous places when other boys were stuck in drafty classrooms. But if anything, his childhood had been almost as geographically circumscribed as her own.

  It was disconcerting to think of him not as a man who marshaled wealth, beauty, and cleverness to obtain everything his heart desired, but as a possibly lonely little boy who could no more control the events of his own life than he could change the tilt of the Earth’s axis.

  She shook her head: She was reading too much into a room that he hadn’t visited in a decade. If anyone was born able to manipulate, it would be him. His nannies probably ran themselves to the ground to please him. His parents would have lavished him with presents. And what father wouldn’t be thrilled to have sired such a son?

  All the same, she left in a pensive and perhaps mildly forlorn mood.

  • • •

  Felix felt as if he were in the middle of a long stretch of a high wire, unable to go back to where he’d started, nor reach the relief of the far end—if there was such a thing as the relief of the far end.

  He needed a safety net: If she were already in love with him, then perhaps it wouldn’t be so terrible if he were to fall off his shaky perch.

  Looking back, it was shocking that he hadn’t been particularly concerned about the state of her heart. Whether she loved him had been immaterial; it had been enough for him to hold her mesmerized and unable to escape.

  Now he was the one mesmerized and unable to escape.

  As much as he pleased her in bed and as much as she couldn’t seem to get enough of him, like a racetrack, the bed was a closed venue. All the distances covered, all the thunderous finishes, and still they were in the exact same place as before.

  He needed to do something that would open the terrain, that would in fact break through the confines. The decision to invite her to his observatory was not made lightly. It was a door that, once opened, could not be so easily closed again, the door to almost the entirety of his private life, something he shared with no one else in Society.

  Even after the decision had been made, he still hesitated: It would be no different from the gifts he’d presented to his parents, in the hope of pleasing them and pleading his case.

  The weather, overcast when it wasn’t actively raining, gave him a valid enough excuse to postpone the visit night after night.

  But eventually the sky cleared.

  He walked into the drawing room ten minutes after she withdrew from the dinner table. She was at the rosewood secretary, writing a letter. A day rarely went by without a letter from her to her family. In the predawn hours, sometimes he would check the salver that held all the correspondence that was to go out on the early post, weigh her letters in his hand, and wonder what lies and omissions undergirded the narratives within.

  She looked over her shoulder. “Finished with your cognac so soon?”

  “I have something I’d like to show you, if you are not busy.”

  “What is it?”

  “The best private telescope in England—we’ve talked about it before.”

  She blinked, and turned around more fully. “You want me to see it now?”

  Belatedly he remembered that she had asked about his telescope once and only once. What if she was no longer interested? “If you’d like.”

  “Would I have to travel for it?”

  “A short way.”

  She turned the fountain pen in her fingers. It felt as if it were his heart that she held, tilted one way, then the other.

  It occurred to him that she was stalling, as if she, too, were hesitant. He couldn’t see why: It was not her intentions and her offerings out in the open, with rejection a very real possibility.

  After an eternity, she blotted her letter and capped her pen. “Yes, I would like that,” she said. “Lead the way.”

  • • •

  He led her by t
he hand.

  Though they made love night and day, they rarely held hands.

  The warmth of their interlaced fingers made it difficult for Louisa to remain wary.

  The entirety of his demeanor, since the end of the house party, made it difficult to remain wary. He was a solicitous husband, an attentive and insatiable lover, not to mention the perfect mentor, whose encyclopedic knowledge of the night sky paved the path for her growth as an amateur astronomer.

  Sometimes the terrible days at the beginning of their marriage seemed to have taken place aeons ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. It was only the depth and bleakness of her erstwhile misery, the memory of which still made her cringe, that still fed her caution.

  A diet that was apparently less than plentiful, for as she glanced at him, walking beside her, she did not want to doubt his motive, but to kiss him on his cheek—or some other such silly, girlish gesture.

  “Why now?” she made herself ask, as they climbed yet another set of stairs. “Why do you want me to see your telescope tonight, out of the blue?”

  If she did not protect her heart, who would?

  “I was waiting for a clear night.”

  “I mean, why do you want me to see your telescope at all?”

  He looked at her askance. “Because I have ulterior motives?”

  She felt a little sheepish at her suspicions being so plainly identified. “Don’t you?”

  “Of course,” he said, his tone glib.

  This time he gazed straight ahead and she could not quite judge what he meant.

  They came to a vertical ladder. He went up to open the trapdoor, then came down again so she would have someone beneath her while she climbed.

  The cupola at the top of the manor was sizable when viewed from ground level. Up close it was huge—only the house’s spectacular size prevented it from overwhelming the whole structure.

  “My observatory,” he said, once he’d climbed up and closed the trapdoor.

  She should have realized it was the cupola, since she never saw a dome anywhere from inside the manor. But could any telescope be big enough to need such cavernous housing?

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She hesitated once more. It was not the telescope she was not ready for; it was always him. “Oh, why not?”

  He took her hand again—not interlacing their fingers this time, only holding her wrist. All the same, it was nearly impossible to think of anything else except the sensation of his touch. Lowering, really, considering that he touched her in far more unspeakable ways and far more unspeakable places on a daily, sometimes hourly basis.

  “Now look up.”

  Belatedly she realized that they had come to a stop, but she was staring down at those fingers that encircled her wrist. She pulled her hand free and tilted her head up.

  And emitted a choked sound. “My God. My God!”

  She had never before taken the Lord’s name in vain, at least not aloud. An absolute beast of a telescope lens loomed above her. “Please forgive my language. What . . . what’s the aperture size?”

  “Sixty-four inches.”

  It was almost incomprehensible that such a marvelous monstrosity could exist. She laughed—the sound oddly unfamiliar in her ears, as if she hadn’t heard it in a very long time—and kept laughing, too awed and astounded to say anything else.

  He tugged at her elbow. “Come see more of it.”

  She followed him reluctantly, not wanting to let the telescope out of her sight. But inside the observatory, she was even more dumbstruck. Yes, the aperture was magnificent, but she had not imagined the telescope would be more than forty feet in length. And this leviathan was mobile, by the look of it, mounted on a system of rails and manipulated by an intricate arrangement of pulleys, in order to track across the sky and maximize its utility.

  She caressed the thick barrel incredulously. “You had this built?”

  “It took five years.”

  She placed her cheek on the cool steel casing of the barrel. “That long?”

  “Not the actual construction, but it took many tries to arrive at a design that would allow me to realign the telescope by myself.”

  She glanced toward him. “I admire that. I admire that tremendously.”

  He shrugged, almost as if the compliment didn’t sit well with him.

  “I know this will sound silly,” she asked, still breathless, “but is this the biggest telescope ever?”

  “No.” He smiled. “The Earl of Rosse’s telescope at his castle in Ireland measures seventy-three inches across. I have visited it. It is truly a juggernaut. But mine has the advantage of being mobile.”

  She kept feeling the barrel up and down, the sheer size of the thing. “I can’t get enough of it.”

  “Yes, I know. You said so every night last week.”

  Her face grew warm at his teasing. “Ha. I will never be impressed with your puny instrument again, now that I’ve seen this monster.”

  “Well, good luck getting this monster inside your—”

  She gasped.

  “—house.” He laughed. “What? What did you think I was going to say? I had to have the roof specially reinforced, and we assembled the monster piece by piece right here. It isn’t going anywhere.”

  She whacked him on the arm.

  Faintly she realized that they hadn’t been so easy or playful with each other since their wedding night. But she couldn’t seem to care too much.

  “Let me see if the Stargazer can show you something good,” he said.

  He consulted two notebooks, changed the telescope’s coordinates, then sat down before the eyepiece to ascertain that he had what he wanted. “I’m sure you won’t need me again after tonight, now that you have met your one true love,” he said, yielding his seat, “but I hope you’ll remember me fondly.”

  Impulsively, she gripped his shoulder as she passed him.

  He glanced at her as if startled.

  Their eyes remained locked for several seconds before she, a bit awkwardly, let go of him to see what he had found for her.

  • • •

  Before the eyepiece she gave a trembling, almost orgasmic sigh. “Is it—my goodness—it is Neptune? It really is blue, like the ocean.”

  Her pleasure was bittersweet in Felix’s chest. He watched her. He had been watching her ever since they met and he suspected that he would go on watching her for the foreseeable future.

  When she had admired Neptune as much as her heart desired, they went outside the observatory. It was a magnificent, moonless night, the stars a million gems carelessly strewn across a swath of black velvet, with the hazy stream of the Milky Way flowing from north to south.

  She tilted her head back; the Swan and the Lyre dominated the zenith of the sky.

  “Deneb, Vega, Altair.” She whispered the names of the stars that made up the Summer Triangle.

  The strand of pearls twined into her hair glowed, tiny stars in their own right against the rich darkness of her hair. The soft blue lisse of her skirts billowed in the night breeze, a nimbus of captured starlight. Her sleeves, made of translucent gauze, were rings of fairy dust pooled around her upper arm.

  “Thuban. Polaris. Capella.” He joined her in the naming of old friends, faithful companions of his nocturnal life.

  She took his hand in hers. Next came something even more amazing: She rested her head on his shoulder.

  He reciprocated by putting his arm around her waist, the chaos in his chest expanding to the size of the universe.

  A sensation of agony, almost.

  He could no longer deny it: He was hopelessly in love with her.

  • • •

  Louisa fought against the words that kept rising to the tip of her tongue.

  This is the most perfect night of my life. You are the most beguiling
man I have ever met. And I have this most terrifying urge to tell you that I love you. That I have loved you all along.

  “Do you have a favorite star?” he murmured.

  She was thankful to give an answer that had nothing to do with the impulses of her heart. “Algol.”

  “The Demon Star?”

  The star’s luminosity varied every few days, which fascinated her. “Yes. What about you?”

  “The North Star, always.”

  How odd that he should prefer something constant and stalwart, while she was drawn to the mysterious and ever shifting.

  In the case of Algol, there was a scientific reason for its inconstancy: The star was most likely a binary system, the weaker star of which periodically passed before the brighter star, reducing its luminosity as seen from Earth.

  But what was his reason for being unpredictable? When would his thoughtfulness and consideration again be eclipsed by an inexplicable onset of distance and coldness?

  Keep your secret a little longer—it is something that cannot be unsaid.

  • • •

  Thank you for a memorable evening,” she said, as they entered her bedroom.

  “Is it?” Felix searched her face, hoping for something that would make him feel less desolate.

  Such a lonely feeling, being hopelessly in love.

  Once he had told her that he found her more opaque than he’d expected, when it came to matters not directly related to physical desires. It was only truer now. If she were a book, then there were crucial passages written in languages entirely alien to him.

  She pushed him into bed. “Of course. I love a monster instrument. And I love even better going from one monster instrument to another.”

  He was rock hard. But her decided preference for his body he already knew—they had been ragingly in lust with each other from the beginning. But what of her mysterious heart and her enigmatic soul?

  “Is that all you need to be happy, a pair of monster instruments?” He could not help himself.

  The look she gave him was as veiled as the surface of Venus. She lifted his hand and sucked on his index and middle fingers, the inside of her mouth soft and moist. He grimaced with the jolt of pleasure.