“About the marquise being—the marquise?” He leaned in close. “In one of her early letters, she used a phrase—a very distinctive French idiom—which I’d only ever heard from my grandmother and her sisters from Saint-Domingue. It felt like a wild supposition—but every instinct I trust told me it was true.” He hid a smile behind the amber liquid in his glass. “All the same, I was very relieved to greet her tonight and discover for sure that I was right.”
“And it won’t hurt your career any, to be known as a friend of Oléron.”
“A very welcome benefit, I assure you.” His gaze over the top of the glass was untroubled. “She really is the great genius of our age.”
“I know,” Lucy said, and rested a hand on his arm. He stilled, surprised. “Thank you. I am greatly in your debt.” She paused. “Have you put your name forward as a Fellow?”
“Not yet,” he said. “The issues with Mr. Wilby rather put me off, as you can imagine.”
“Would you consider trying now? You’d be assured of the marquise’s support, of course, and Mr. Edwards, among others. And mine, if the vote goes my way.”
He grinned. “Let’s both put our names up, and race each other to the Fellowship. Or else confuse our enemies so much they let one of us slip through in the chaos.”
“And then that one can nudge the door a little wider as they go through,” Lucy laughed. She bid him good-night, and went to find Catherine and Aunt Kelmarsh.
It was time to make her exit, while things were still triumphant.
The journey across the courtyard of Somerset House was completely different this second time—though if anything, it had gotten colder and icier since the Symposium began. Lucy held tight to Catherine’s arm, as Aunt Kelmarsh anchored the countess’s other side.
Lucy raised her head and looked beyond the rooftops of the city—and there above her were the stars, shining only faintly in the London light but still gleaming, eternal and reliable. For a moment she felt she was almost one of them, her heart a glorious, shimmering piece of silver in her breast.
Then Aunt Kelmarsh grumbled something about the food, and Catherine laughed gently, and Lucy found herself back on earth. But a different earth than the one she’d walked just a few hours before. A wider earth, with more space to expand and grow into the best version of herself.
She couldn’t wait to begin.
Lucy’s inner glow of satisfaction lasted nearly an entire day—which was quite long, in her experience. But, as always, the ethereal feelings faded as mundane reality reasserted itself. She was left with the itching, irrepressible question: What on earth was she going to do next?
Translate the next volume and send it to the marquise, obviously—but what had once seemed bold and challenging now felt... routine. Her energies were expanding to meet the scope of the work she chose—which was good, obviously, because it meant she was making progress. But it also meant Lucy had to cast about now for something new to aim for.
Catherine—beautiful, quiet, stalwart Catherine, whose pride and love shone out undimmed every time she looked at Lucy—turned out to have something already planned. She and Lucy left Aunt Kelmarsh dozing comfortably in the parlor—helped along no doubt by the splash of brandy she’d taken in her tea—and made their way to the library.
Lucy expected Catherine would take out her silks or her sketchbook, but instead she brought out a sheaf of papers from her writing desk and sat down on the sofa in a very formal, expectant kind of way. “I have a proposal to make to you.”
Lucy’s heart leaped before good sense reasserted itself. The countess couldn’t have meantthatkind of proposal, obviously. “Please,” she said instead.
Catherine bit her lip, and Lucy realized with a small shock that the countess was nervous. More nervous than Lucy had seen her since perhaps that first kiss.
Lucy’s spine straightened in anticipation, and she leaned forward in the stiff wooden library chair.
Finally, the countess spoke. “I’ve been writing to the women fromPolite Philosophies.”
“Which women?”
Catherine smiled. “All of them.”
Lucy was thunderstruck.
“Well, all of the ones we could find, anyway. Many of them wrote back—some to tell me they were done with that part of their life, but others to tell me quite eagerly what they’d been working on since then. And there’s so much work! Chemistry, astronomy, botany—a great deal of botany, it’s astonishing—but every field of natural science is represented, more or less. And they often know other women who are doing similar things in small corners of the country. Writing books to educate children, running small experiments, collecting and cataloging samples, that kind of thing. I’ve compiled rather a long list of names in the past few months, and no doubt there are many more to be found...” She caught herself, coughed, and smiled wryly. “I may be straying from the topic.”
“Yes,” Lucy agreed, marveling. “What are you proposing, exactly?”
“A fund,” Catherine said, and grinned a little at the way Lucy’s jaw dropped. “A rather substantial fund, administered by you and me, for the purposes of publishing women’s writing on the natural sciences. We would partner with Griffin’s, solicit women of science to be authors, and arrange to have them checked thoroughly for accuracy before offering them to the public.”
“That...” Lucy had to swallow against a dry throat. “That sounds like an immense amount of work.”
“Oh, it will be, I assure you. It will tie us together legally, and financially, and probably take us the rest of our lives to accomplish.” She bit her lip again, looking down at the papers in her hand. “It is really a very long list of names.”
Lucy slipped out of the hard chair and went to her knees on the library rug. Her hands closed over Catherine’s, letters rustling a protest between their fingers. Lucy didn’t care. She couldn’t take her eyes off the countess’s face—because Catherine was blushing, was laughing silently, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears.
