Page 68 of The Luckiest Lady in London

He walked into the drawing room ten minutes after she withdrew from the dinner table. She was at the rosewood secretary, writing a letter. A day rarely went by without a letter from her to her family. In the predawn hours, sometimes he would check the salver that held all the correspondence that was to go out on the early post, weigh her letters in his hand, and wonder what lies and omissions undergirded the narratives within.

She looked over her shoulder. “Finished with your cognac so soon?”

“I have something I’d like to show you, if you are not busy.”

“What is it?”

“The best private telescope in England—we’ve talked about it before.”

She blinked, and turned around more fully. “You want me to see it now?”

Belatedly he remembered that she had asked about his telescope once and only once. What if she was no longer interested? “If you’d like.”

“Would I have to travel for it?”

“A short way.”

She turned the fountain pen in her fingers. It felt as if it were his heart that she held, tilted one way, then the other.

It occurred to him that she was stalling, as if she, too, were hesitant. He couldn’t see why: It was not her intentions and her offerings out in the open, with rejection a very real possibility.

After an eternity, she blotted her letter and capped her pen. “Yes, I would like that,” she said. “Lead the way.”

* * *

He led her by the hand.

Though they made love night and day, they rarely held hands.

The warmth of their interlaced fingers made it difficult for Louisa to remain wary.

The entirety of his demeanor, since the end of the house party, made it difficult to remain wary. He was a solicitous husband, an attentive and insatiable lover, not to mention the perfect mentor, whose encyclopedic knowledge of the night sky paved the path for her growth as an amateur astronomer.

Sometimes the terrible days at the beginning of their marriage seemed to have taken place aeons ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. It was only the depth and bleakness of her erstwhile misery, the memory of which still made her cringe, that still fed her caution.

A diet that was apparently less than plentiful, for as she glanced at him, walking beside her, she did not want to doubt his motive, but to kiss him on his cheek—or some other such silly, girlish gesture.

“Why now?” she made herself ask, as they climbed yet another set of stairs. “Why do you want me to see your telescope tonight, out of the blue?”

If she did not protect her heart, who would?

“I was waiting for a clear night.”

“I mean, why do you want me to see your telescope at all?”

He looked at her askance. “Because I have ulterior motives?”

She felt a little sheepish at her suspicions being so plainly identified. “Don’t you?”

“Of course,” he said, his tone glib.

This time he gazed straight ahead and she could not quite judge what he meant.

They came to a vertical ladder. He went up to open the trapdoor, then came down again so she would have someone beneath her while she climbed.

The cupola at the top of the manor was sizable when viewed from ground level. Up close it was huge—only the house’s spectacular size prevented it from overwhelming the whole structure.

“My observatory,” he said, once he’d climbed up and closed the trapdoor.