Lucy leaned carefully back, untangling herself from the web of someone else’s hopes and demands. “You need me.”
Mr. Hawley gently corrected her. “I would say, Miss Muchelney, thatscienceneeds you.” He set his cup down and stretched his hands out entreatingly. “You have a great talent, my dear. You could do wonderful work. All you need is a little tending from an expert hand.”
Lucy recalled how precisely Mr. Hawley had used the forceps on the flytraps, so carefully and tenderly feeding them bits and pieces of other living things. All for science, of course. “You think I need a mentor.”
He smiled approvingly. “Just so.”
“Someone who encourages me, supports me, advises me when I feel lost, and aids me when I struggle.”
“Yes, yes, and yes.” He rubbed his hands together.
“I have one.” Lucy let her lips spread in a smile of such poisonous sweetness that by rights Mr. Hawley should have perished on the spot. “Lady Moth has been an invaluable mentor since the very instant I sought out her help on my arrival in town.”
Mr. Hawley’s returning smile was brittle as dried leaves. “Lady Moth has always been a loyal patroness of the Society, and I know her husband valued her abilities enormously.” He leaned back on the sofa, fingers pressing against one another pyramid-like, his gaze radiating earnest concern. “But there are times I’ve been moved to wonder whether George St. Day might have flown higher if he’d been allowed to give his ambitions full scope. Not many people are aware of this, but... I trust you can be discreet with what I am inclined to reveal to you.” His voice lowered still further, as if he were laying out state secrets of great international import. “His wife’s inheritance was a family trust and remained within her control, you see. The previous countess had arranged it before she died, and there was no getting around whatever legal framework that aged lady had so cunningly set up. So rather than being able to direct his household funds as he saw fit, into expeditions and experiments and such, poor George was compelled to persuade and cajole when he ought to have been able simply to command.”
Lucy could see it so clearly. A younger Catherine, reeling with grief, virtually alone but far from penniless; she’d have been ready prey for someone as self-interested and ruthless as George St. Day had been. No wonder he had treated her so abominably—he had expected to get access to her fortune, and he’d been prevented. So, resentfully, he had turned cold and cruel, browbeating her until she forgot she had any power over him at all. “That must have been terrible.”
Of course Mr. Hawley misunderstood. “It was a great strain on him, poor man. He once confided in me that Lady Moth, though outwardly so dainty and dutiful, was often a termagant to him in private: shrill, disdainful, and capricious.”
Lucy bristled a little more with every adjective.
Mr. Hawley sighed again and shook his head. “But above all other criticism, it must be pointed out that she is not herself a naturalist. I do not believe she has the necessary connections to help you progress in your work and in the Society.”
Because you shut her out,Lucy realized, the cruelty of it sharp as a knife in her breast.You shut her out and then you tell everyone she’s useless.It was a perfect, insidious kind of poison. She wondered how many other fledgling botanists, chemists, and natural philosophers he’d given this precise speech to. Did it always feature Catherine specifically, or did he switch names occasionally for variety’s sake? She should ask Mr. Frampton—he’d strongly implied that he’d had just such a conversation with Mr. Hawley. Maybe more than one. No wonder he was reconsidering his position in the Society. It was by its very nature treacherous.
Her eddying thoughts were interrupted when the president leaned forward and clasped her hands in his. “Will you do this, Miss Muchelney?” he asked. “Will you take up this challenge, for the noble cause of science? Think of your father’s legacy, and the good you could do for the intellectual vitality of all England.” His voice was sincere in its intensity, almost pleading, as he asked: “Will you help?”
Help,Lucy thought numbly.He praises Mr. Frampton’s mind and offers him lavish profits, but he pleads with me to help him by praising my father’s work, not mine.Her answer had never been in doubt, but this last touch put her beyond sympathy. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hawley,” she said, disentangling her hands from his and folding them tightly in her lap. “It is quite impossible.”
He started, and went mottled red and white with consternation. “My dear Miss Muchelney, you cannot be serious.”
“Please do not think I disparage your eagerness to help, sir,” Lucy replied, “but I do not see why I should abandon my own completed volume to try and salvage Mr. Wilby’s failed efforts.” She cocked her head. “Youwereplanning on keeping Mr. Wilby’s name on the book, I assume, even after I made emendations?”
The president’s mouth went so flat so fast that Lucy knew she’d struck home. He held on to his composure by a thread. “It would be cruel to cut him out entirely. He may have failed, but his efforts must be acknowledged.”
“Must they?” Lucy shot back. “How much of the profits would you still allot to him, after everything was done?”
“Percentages can be negotiated—”
“So his failures deserve to be rewarded, while my successful work is refused and denied and scorned until you are desperate for my help—and even then I shouldn’t presume I deserve a full author’s share.” Mr. Hawley spluttered, but Lucy wasn’t finished. Her voice was a whip crack in the cozy parlor. “Would you put up my name as a full Fellow of the Polite Science Society?”
Mr. Hawley’s eyes flashed, and he visibly bit back a reply. His mouth was now a tight line, lips thinned, a light sheen of perspiration glistening on his temples. “That would be asking a great deal,” he said, then winced slightly at whatever he saw in Lucy’s expression. “I would absolutely be willing to consider it.” It was a wild final cast, a lure flung hopelessly into the heavens.
Lucy saw this for the refusal it was. “Mr. Wilby is made a Fellow already by his uncle, even though his work clearly fails to meet scientific standards. But you deny me the same honor on account of my sex even as you say I could foster the, how did you put it? The intellectual vitality of all England.” She felt her mouth twist. “If I may be perfectly blunt about it: the Society seems to care less that their Fellows are men of science, and more that their Fellows are men.”
Mr. Hawley choked as Lucy rose from the uncomfortable chair. He was still choking, and still seated as she walked to the door and turned. His mouth was open quite as wide as his flytraps, and in the rush of her anger and decision, Lucy had to rein in the urge to laugh and speak the comparison aloud. “When you wish to offer me full Fellowship in the Polite Science Society, you may write to me again,” Lucy said. “In the meantime, I shall remain an independent scholar.”
“Independent!” Mr. Hawley cried, finding his voice at last. “You are entirely dependent upon the constancy of your patroness.” He rose, his brow thunderous. “Be wary of Lady Moth, my dear. She has survived fever, foreign exploration, and her astronomer husband—she will not scruple to cast you aside if you disappoint her.”
Lucy yanked on her gloves and bonnet under the eye of the scornful footman. She felt utterly sure in refusing Mr. Hawley’s offer, but even so, unearned regret for what she’d said in the heat of her anger was settling in, like a bruise that turns purple long after the blow has landed. She ached all the way back home—Catherine’s home, of course. Familiarity had caused her to lose sight of how old and venerable the London house was: the supercilious curls on top of the columns, the arched-eyebrow curves that topped the windows, the lofty peaked roof like an admiral’s cap.
But it was also Catherine’s home, with Catherine inside. If Lucy couldn’t trust Mr. Hawley’s promises for her future—and she was bone-sure she couldn’t—then there was no reason to trust him about Catherine’s fickleness, either. The countess hadn’t loved her husband by the end, but she’d still traveled with him and assisted him and put herself in his service.
Of course, she’d had to, hadn’t she? Short of an Act of Parliament, there was nothing she could do to escape George St. Day’s hold on her. Making the best of a bad situation was not the same as loving, fulsome support.
Lucy and Catherine could have no such ties. The relief was a cold one, a lump of ice in her throat untouched by the glittering sun in its azure sky.
She’d barely gotten her bonnet strings untied before Catherine flew out of the parlor and into the foyer, her eyes wide and crinkled at the edges with concern. “What did Mr. Hawley want? I hope he apologized.”
