Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Do you really want to know? People ask, but they never listen when I tell them.”
“I can believe that. One only has to watch someone’s eyes glaze over as you try to explain the distinctions between lepidopterans to know that such queries are seldom sincere. Mine is, I assure you. Tell me.”
She resettled her spectacles on her nose. “Very well. Granfer was fascinated by the work of Lockyer and Janssen in discovering an element they detected in the emission line of the sun’s atmosphere. They called it helium.”
“After Helios, the sun god?” I asked.
“Exactly,” Effie said. Her face was suffused with enthusiasm, eyes agleam as she spoke. She explained that while her grandfather was content to search for traces of helium on earth, she was more intrigued by the fact that it had been discovered during an eclipse.
“With the developments in scientific instruments, the observations that could be made during eclipses would be orders ofmagnitude greater than anything that has been possible before. We might further our understanding of how fast the stars are moving, what comprises them, and if it would ever be possible to reach them.”
Her dream of humankind sailing amongst the stars seemed farfetched at best, but I was in a mood to humor the girl. Too many people had been content to shatter her illusions; I would not be one of them.
“And what would it take for you to continue your research?”
“Well, it would help a very good deal if Charles were not selling my equipment out from under me,” she replied tartly. “But if I am honest, there are more advanced instruments with which I could do more. I have clung to Granfer’s orrery because it is of sound quality, and it is so beautiful. Its very antiquity is what makes it valuable to Charles. But a proper observatory with the latest, most sensitive telescope would enable me to do so much more.” A rueful smile touched her lips. “There is no point in wishing. Such a laboratory is quite beyond my means.”
“Yes, I understand a proper telescope alone is costly,” I mused. “I belong to a club for extraordinary women—philosophers, botanists, mathematicians, that sort of thing. We have a pair of astronomers amongst our members and only last year we were able to finally provide funds to establish them in an observatory of their own. It took a good deal of effort, but we secured enough contributions to purchase a tiny ruined castle on the shores of Loch Doon. Apparently the night sky there is quite unsmirched by the fogs and smogs of the cities.”
“Are you speaking of the Marvell sisters?” she asked, her eyes rounding.
“Oh, do you know them?”
“Know them! They are legend,” she breathed. “And you have met them?”
“Once or twice in the course of raising the funds necessary toestablish them in Scotland.” The Marvells, Henrietta and Lucy, were somewhere beyond forty, vague, wispy-looking women with flyaway hair and the habit of trailing off in the middle of sentences as though they had lost the thread of their thoughts. Privately we joked that it was the result of spending too much time lost amongst the stars, but we jested only with the deepest affection. I went on. “I am afraid we shall see nothing of them now they have their Scottish aerie. They send monthly reports to the club and seem thoroughly content.”
“I am not surprised,” she said, her small hands curling into fists. “They have managed to make a life for themselves doing what they love. As you have.”
I smiled at her. “It was rather easier for me. Lepidopterists require only a butterfly net and a good deal of perseverance—along with considerable luck.”
“Sometimes,” she said, her eyes quite blank behind the smudged spectacles, “you have to make your own luck.”
CHAPTER
14
I made my way to the Long Gallery to speak with Stoker. The time had come, I told myself firmly, and I must seize the moment, grasp the nettle, take the bull by the horns. I had exhausted my catalog of metaphors, so I paused on the threshold, steeling myself. There were few moments in my life that had ever required such courage, I reflected. I had been shipwrecked, menaced by villains, abducted—more than once, in fact. In short, I had been in peril so many times I could scarce count them.
And yet. Nothing frightened me so badly as the notion of revealing to Stoker what I had taken such pains to conceal.
“This will not do,” I said aloud, summoning all my resolve. I put my hand to the knob and turned it, striding into the room as I began to speak. “Stoker, I must—”
“Veronica!” he called in a tone I had seldom heard him employ outside of intimate congress. He was, in a word, enraptured. His eyes shone, his color was high, even his hair seemed to wave more exuberantly. He was standing on the far side of the room, his attention fixed upon something I could not see. “Come and see!” he urged. “It is magnificent.”
I went to him and saw that he had found it at last. “The thylacine!” I exclaimed.
He must have only just uncovered it, for the dust sheet had been thrown back, motes still dancing in the light of the lamps.
“Thylacinus cynocephalus,” he breathed. “At last.”
It was rather smaller than one might have expected for the ferocity of its reputation, scarcely larger than a medium-sized dog, but its expression belied any domestication. The snout was pointed, and the lips curled back to reveal a set of teeth clearly meant for ripping. The ears were small and neat and slightly rounded, the jaw heavy. Stripes, subtle near the head, became more pronounced as they proceeded to the back, ending in a long, whippet-thin tail.
“I quite understand what you mean about the jaw,” said a familiar voice. I realized then that we were not alone. I had been sufficiently distracted by Stoker’s discovery to have overlooked his companion. Harry, in his guise as Jonathan Hathaway, was standing in the shadows behind Stoker, peering around him to look at the creature.
“Is it not a glorious sight, Hathaway?” Stoker asked, his voice as contented as a cat’s.
Hathaway.He did not correct Stoker, but then I had not anticipated that he would. He was smiling at me, but I caught the pleading expression in his eyes and turned away.
