Page 69 of The Luckiest Lady in London

She should have realized it was the cupola, since she never saw a dome anywhere from inside the manor. But could any telescope be big enough to need such cavernous housing?

“Ready?” he asked.

She hesitated once more. It was not the telescope she was not ready for; it was always him. “Oh, why not?”

He took her hand again—not interlacing their fingers this time, only holding her wrist. All the same, it was nearly impossible to think of anything else except the sensation of his touch. Lowering, really, considering that he touched her in far more unspeakable ways and far more unspeakable places on a daily, sometimes hourly basis.

“Now look up.”

Belatedly she realized that they had come to a stop, but she was staring down at those fingers that encircled her wrist. She pulled her hand free and tilted her head up.

And emitted a choked sound. “My God. My God!”

She had never before taken the Lord’s name in vain, at least not aloud. An absolute beast of a telescope lens loomed above her. “Please forgive my language. What…what’s the aperture size?”

“Sixty-four inches.”

It was almost incomprehensible that such a marvelous monstrosity could exist. She laughed—the sound oddly unfamiliar in her ears, as if she hadn’t heard it in a very long time—and kept laughing, too awed and astounded to say anything else.

He tugged at her elbow. “Come see more of it.”

She followed him reluctantly, not wanting to let the telescope out of her sight. But inside the observatory, she was even more dumbstruck. Yes, the aperture was magnificent, but she had not imagined the telescope would be more than forty feet in length. And this leviathan was mobile, by the look of it, mounted on a system of rails and manipulated by an intricate arrangement of pulleys, in order to track across the sky and maximize its utility.

She caressed the thick barrel incredulously. “You had this built?”

“It took five years.”

She placed her cheek on the cool steel casing of the barrel. “That long?”

“Not the actual construction, but it took many tries to arrive at a design that would allow me to realign the telescope by myself.”

She glanced toward him. “I admire that. I admire that tremendously.”

He shrugged, almost as if the compliment didn’t sit well with him.

“I know this will sound silly,” she asked, still breathless, “but is this the biggest telescope ever?”

“No.” He smiled. “The Earl of Rosse’s telescope at his castle in Ireland measures seventy-three inches across. I have visited it. It is truly a juggernaut. But mine has the advantage of being mobile.”

She kept feeling the barrel up and down, the sheer size of the thing. “I can’t get enough of it.”

“Yes, I know. You said so every night last week.”

Her face grew warm at his teasing. “Ha. I will never be impressed with your puny instrument again, now that I’ve seen this monster.”

“Well, good luck getting this monster inside your—”

She gasped.

“—house.” He laughed. “What? What did you think I was going to say? I had to have the roof specially reinforced, and we assembled the monster piece by piece right here. It isn’t going anywhere.”

She whacked him on the arm.

Faintly she realized that they hadn’t been so easy or playful with each other since their wedding night. But she couldn’t seem to care too much.

“Let me see if the Stargazer can show you something good,” he said.

He consulted two notebooks, changed the telescope’s coordinates, then sat down before the eyepiece to ascertain that he had what he wanted. “I’m sure you won’t need me again after tonight, now that you have met your one true love,” he said, yielding his seat, “but I hope you’ll remember me fondly.”