Still, her father had at least understood. Her brother never had. But Stephen’s dismissal of her work had never stung deeply until he was in a position to make her discontinue it.
Lucy had only this brief window to grapple with Oléron, and also perhaps to help another woman find her way toward science.
But how to do it? As the younger woman, Lucy would find it awkward in the extreme to assume a position of authority over the countess, and anyway, Lucy was no botanist. All her efforts had been focused on other worlds, other orbits, and the distant stars.
The same stars whose movements Oléron was explaining in this first section on the principles of gravitation. Lucy looked over the work she’d done with new eyes. The translation had offered no significant difficulties yet—the author’s writing was precise and elegant, but shied away from overadornment—except that, if you had no mathematics, it was incomprehensible.
Wasn’t that to be expected? The author was writing for fellow astronomers, after all. Even Lady Moth, who had spent her life in the company of learned men, did not think her abilities were equal to the text.
All of a sudden it struck Lucy that there were many more inexperienced people about than there were experts in this new field. The long-range reflector telescopes of the last forty years had seen a veritable explosion of new stars, nebulae, comets, moons, and even a new planet. Balloon ascents and royal astronomy grants had caught the public’s attention, and surely whetted countless appetites for knowledge. Why shouldn’t they want to read a book that helped them explore all these newly widened fields?
Her project crystallized in an instant: Lucy wasn’t going to merely translate Oléron’s words from French into English. She was going to make Oléron’s importance apparent to everyone, astronomers and amateurs alike.
She was going to write an introduction to astronomy for Lady Moth. Not a child’s schoolbook, but a celebration of the wonders of the universe and the forces that kept the stars spinning.
Lucy put a bold X through the plain translation, picked up a new sheet of paper, cast one more sidelong glance at the countess, and went to work.
It was only later, as Narayan helped her undress, that Catherine rediscovered the handkerchief she’d absently tucked in her sleeve. She returned it to Brinkworth the next morning when she went down to breakfast. “Thank you for lending it to our guest,” she said. “The white work is beautifully done.”
Brinkworth took the scrap of linen back as though it were made of pure gold. “Thank you, ma’am. My daughter’s work.” A little fond pride crept into his voice, before he caught himself and smoothed his features back to proper impassivity.
Catherine blinked. Eliza Brinkworth was the newest housemaid, just turned fifteen. A dutiful girl, with a pleasant manner—but her job had her more often cleaning fireplace grates and emptying chamber pots than doing delicate embroidery. Perhaps, though, if she were to be trained as a lady’s maid...
“Is there something else, ma’am?” the butler inquired.
Catherine shook off her meandering thoughts, and dismissed him.
The day of the Society dinner, Miss Muchelney wore the embroidered muslin gown again. Catherine’s eye traced anew the vines and flowers of the bodice, and an envious ember flared briefly in her belly.
The girl caught Catherine’s keen glance and shivered.
“Do you need a shawl, Miss Muchelney?” Catherine asked, chagrined. “It is an unseasonably cool night.”
“I don’t have one fine enough for evening company,” Miss Muchelney demurred, flushing.
“Then you shall borrow one of mine, of course.” The girl tried to protest, but Catherine was adamant. She fetched a green wrap of wool lined with silk, and told herself she felt no relief at seeing the infamous Priscilla’s handiwork hidden from sight.
They climbed into the carriage, Catherine spreading out her brown striped silk to avoid wrinkling before they arrived. Miss Muchelney held the wrap at her throat with one hand; the other clutched the papers of her translation of Oléron, which she had insisted upon bringing with her to the dinner.
“Better to have it and not want it, than want it and not have brought it,” she’d said, a practical attitude with which Catherine couldn’t argue.
“That’s a fair bit of translating in just a few days—you do work quickly.” Miss Muchelney flushed and bit her lip, but made no reply.
Nerves, surely. And no wonder. Catherine sat back and let the girl have a bit of quiet. Tonight’s event was only a cordial gathering of the members closest to London, and not one of the twice-yearly great symposia, but it would be Miss Muchelney’s first appearance before the Society.
But surely not her last. For nearly a week now Catherine had watched her guest work: steady, concentrated, focused bouts of effort. It was no longer difficult for her to imagine Miss Muchelney filling pages with exact calculations and figures—or fitting data to theories, or arguing upon observable evidence. She had watched enough men doing science that she couldn’t fail to recognize it when it happened right in front of her.
Perhaps she had not seen women doing it before because she’d spent so many years away from England.
It was not precisely a comfortable thought, and it decided her: she was going to throw her full support behind Miss Muchelney as translator. After all, the Kenwick fortune was partly sponsoring the work. George had used Catherine’s money to influence the results of similar Society arguments in the past, so she knew Mr. Hawley was susceptible to that line of persuasion.
Mr. Hawley’s cozy brick home was dwarfed by the glasshouses glittering to either side—the one a cool, shaded space for Alpine flowers, mosses, and lichens, the other a hothouse for tropical species, where the air had so much warmth and moisture going through the door was like walking into a cube of soup. His parlor had a smaller replica of this on a low table, so that Mr. Hawley could display his best specimens for learned guests.
Their host was showing off a star-like cluster of white blooms in this miniature edifice when Catherine and Miss Muchelney arrived. “Ah, my dear,” he said, his cheeks flushed red with excitement, “do let me introduce my latest discovery.” But instead of the flowers, he turned to a gentleman next to him with rich brown skin. “May I present Mr. William Frampton, our newest addition to the Society? His father is a musician at court, and Mr. Frampton has already published several mathematical letters that have been well received by the membership.”
The gentleman bowed.
Catherine introduced Lucy in turn, and Mr. Hawley exclaimed and clasped her hands warmly in both of his. “My dear Miss Muchelney,” he said. “My deepest sympathies on your family’s loss. Your father was one of our grandest lights, and Science’s sky is darker for his absence.”
