Catherine sent Lucy a glance that was full ofI told you so, while Mr. Frampton continued.
“It turned out to be an irreconcilable difference, and the partnership has been dissolved. Well, perhaps it is more truthful to say that my part of the partnership has been dissolved. Since I quit.” His mouth twisted bitterly, and he swallowed a mouthful of tea and anything else he might have wanted to say.
Lucy’s own mouth made sympathetic shapes. She knew how he felt all too intimately. “Did Mr. Wilby want to translate everything into Newton’s notation?”
Mr. Frampton shot upright on the sofa. “Yes! Even though several of the functions canonlybe worked with Leibnizian variables.”
Lucy huffed out her disapproval. “But surely he realized that Oléron was choosing the tools needed for the work.”
“Wilby seemed to be blinded by Newton’s status as a genius and an Englishman. Said it was close to treason to let foreigners stand so prominently in a work aimed at English scholars.” A weight seemed to have been lifted from his shoulders and he leaned back again, teacup in hand. “After three days of no work outside of this argument, I took the matter up with Mr. Hawley. I thought he might at least see my side of things—and I admit that he did. Or at least, so he said—he spent quite a lot of time telling me how well I’d done, and how clever I’d been to notice the issue I’d brought to his attention. It was intensely flattering.”
“But...” Catherine prompted wryly.
“But,” Mr. Frampton confirmed, “he said he couldn’t risk offending Sir Eldon by snubbing his nephew. Sir Eldon has stepped up to take your part regarding the financial outlay, Lady Moth.”
Lucy looked at Catherine, who only nodded, a resigned set to her mouth. “I supposed something like that might happen.”
Lucy was feeling less and less calm the more she turned the problem around and considered it from all the angles. “So because his uncle is financing it, he gets his way?” she demanded. “That’s awful. It’s venal. It’s—unscientific!”
“It’s the duty of the president of the Polite Science Society to ensure that funds for the enterprise remain reliable,” Mr. Frampton said, with the air of one quoting something he’d heard far too often. “Or else everyone’s pursuit of knowledge would be jeopardized.”
Lucy snorted. “As if there is no pursuit of knowledge that could thrive without Mr. Hawley’s supervision.”
Mr. Frampton’s glum looks intensified. “I can’t fault him entirely—he took it quite hard when you walked away from the translation, my lady.”
“When my money walked away, you mean.” Catherine lowered her eyes demurely and sipped her tea, then set the empty cup in the saucer and met Mr. Frampton’s gaze with confidence. “Were you thinking of asking to join Lucy’s work on Oléron, sir?”
Lucy gaped a little, surprised by this suddenly opportunistic interpretation.
Mr. Frampton had the grace to look chagrined. “It had occurred to me,” he admitted, “but it seemed so painfully presumptuous that I rejected it almost immediately. I thought instead to ask you to restore your promised funding to the Society, so that my word on Leibniz might carry some weight.” He let one gloved finger stroke down the spine of the teacup lizard, whose gaze now seemed reproachful. Mr. Frampton sighed again. “But I have changed my mind about that, too. Who knows? I am tempted to resign my Fellowship altogether. It has not been nearly so productive as I hoped at the beginning.”
Lucy had heard enough, and sat bolt upright on the sofa. “Allow me to share the indignation on your behalf, Mr. Frampton. I went into the archives and read your papers—you have a great gift, and one that should be more celebrated. But I do wonder something...” Lucy picked up a slice of bread and butter. “Was the Oléron translation a pet project of yours, or did you take it up at Mr. Hawley’s suggestion?”
“The latter,” the mathematician replied. “I had jumped around quite a bit in my studies, and my most recent work had been focused on astronomy. Some of the same charts you and your father produced, in fact.”
Lucy glowed a little at the acknowledgment—small though it was, it was more than she’d ever had. She bit into the bread and butter to hide her mixed pleasure and embarrassment.
The mathematician continued: “While he eventually admitted me as a member, Mr. Hawley hinted that my career would have to grow steadier if I was to make proper progress in the field.”
“I am sure he had an abundance of suggestions,” Catherine murmured.
Lucy swallowed and tilted her head as a thought occurred. “What would you be working on, if it were up to you entirely? If money were not an obstacle, and if nobody was steering you toward anything else.”
“Honestly?” Mr. Frampton looked stunned, then thoughtful.
Lucy leaned forward for his reply, as Catherine watched patiently from the other side of the sofa.
At length his voice returned, slow and careful. “During my first year out of school, I was working with one of your charts, Miss Muchelney. Point by point, you showed how the path of one particular comet arced across the sky, left, and came back again. And it occurred to me that you could build a machine for calculating exactly the kind of functions you and your father compiled from St. Day’s data,” he said.
Lucy, breathless, felt discovery peeking over the horizon, as though her skin felt the warmth of a sun that had yet to rise. “You aren’t talking about just writing out the solutions in a table,” she said slowly.
Mr. Frampton nodded, and his smile turned boyish as he saw Lucy had caught his enthusiasm. “I mean a machine that can do all the actual calculating, and present you with an exact result every time.”
Catherine let out a breath. “That sounds incredibly complicated.”
“It is,” the mathematician confirmed. “It is proving astonishingly difficult to construct. But I feel it can be done, and there are so many ways such a machine could be invaluable.”
“But you would need financing,” Catherine said. “Mathematics can be done admirably cheaply, but anything with machinery would entail manufacturing costs, testing, repairing, that sort of thing.”
