Talk Sweetly to Me (5 page)

The back of Rose’s neck prickled. But the doctor shook his head, and that hint of a scoff disappeared from his face.

Maybe she’d imagined it. Maybe he simply didn’t like jelly.

Chillingsworth was a tall, elderly fellow. He always had an air about him that Rose disliked. It was not exactly disdain; it only smacked mildly of disapproval.

She tried to tell herself she was seeing things that weren’t there. He’d come so highly recommended after all. Before he’d retired to civilian practice, he’d spent thirty years as a naval physician. Maybe that air of his was nothing more than residual military discipline.

Patricia’s husband didn’t have that air—but then, he was only thirty-two. Maybe, she thought dubiously, it took years to develop.

Chillingsworth took off his galoshes, an outer coat, a scarf, and finally, a blue-striped hat. He came forward.

The examination was brief, almost cursory. Patricia’s eyes squeezed shut and her breath hissed when he set his stethoscope against her belly. The metal must have been ice cold. But she didn’t complain.

The doctor straightened after he’d finished. “Well,” he said. “I was roused from bed for nothing.”

Patricia blinked.

“Mrs. Wells is having false labor pains,” he announced.

At first, Rose had no idea who he was addressing—the room at large, perhaps?—until she followed his line of sight to Mr. Josephs, who was doing his best to wipe up the water that had splashed in the entryway when they had arrived.

How odd of him to talk of Patricia’s health with the servant. But then, people sometimes made that mistake. Mr. Josephs may have been a servant, but he was the only man—the only
white
man—in the household, and people often got confused or uncomfortable as a result. It never did to make a fuss about it. They’d all feel better if they just imagined Chillingsworth making pronouncements to the room.

“It is not yet her time,” Chillingsworth said. “The baby has not even turned, and she is not dilated. Women like her are often given to dramatics. Next time, make sure the contractions are coming closer together before sending for me in the middle of the night.” He glanced back at the entrance. “In the cold rain.”

“Yes, Doctor Chillingsworth,” Patricia said contritely. “I’m sorry. It’s my first time, and I don’t know what to expect.”

“Humph.”

“Would you like a cup of tea to warm up?” Rose offered.

“I’d like my bed,” Doctor Chillingsworth said curtly. He stalked back to the entry without looking at her, stamped into his heavy galoshes, and gathered up his things. He muttered to himself as he wound his scarf about his neck. Then he picked up his umbrella, tapped it against the floor—sending droplets of water all over the entryway—and left.

“Dear.” Patricia stared after him. “That went…not so well as one would hope.”

“That was rude,” Rose pointed out.

Patricia waved this away. “Nobody likes being woken in the middle of the night for no reason.”

Then maybe he shouldn’t be a physician,
Rose thought with annoyance. But she did not say that. Instead, she helped her sister to her feet.

“There we are,” Patricia said cheerily. “It looks like the bloated duck is here to stay for a few more weeks. And thank God. That means Isaac will be home after all.”

M
ISS
S
WEETLY HAD MOVED
their lesson outside on the next day. Stephen didn’t know if she’d done so to cool off his imputed ardor, or if she’d just thought it a good idea. Either way, she’d brought them out along the river past the docks. They stood on the water’s edge, in the lee of a lamppost that provided not one whit of shelter from the wind.

The people who made their way past reminded him why he had moved to Greenwich. Here, he wasn’t the lone Irish interloper in a hoity-toity neighborhood. The nearby docks brought visitors from around the world: lascars from India, midshipmen from the West Indies, swarthy sailors from Portugal…and yes, a goodly number of Irish toiling on ships and in warehouses.

Here, an Irishman standing with a black woman might get an idle second glance, no more. Stephen caught sight of a dock-laborer that he knew from church and gave the man a nod.

The wind gusted around his collar as he did so, bringing in a damp chill off the Thames. Stephen’s nose was cold; his hands were going numb. But Miss Sweetly stood beside him, looking as if she were comfortably warming her hands over a fire instead of holding a metal disc in her gloved hands. If
she
didn’t feel the cold, he wouldn’t, either.

Mrs. Barnstable, by contrast, had given up in the first five minutes. She’d decamped to a nearby tea shop, promising to keep up her vigil from the window.

“To make a measurement by parallax,” Miss Sweetly was telling him, “you must be able to determine angles and distances. You can obtain angles on land most simply by using a prismatic compass. Hold the compass—”

He held out his hand; she dumped it unceremoniously into his palm. The metal was cold; he’d been taking notes, and one could hardly wield a pencil while wearing gloves. His breath hissed in.

“Now look through the eyehole, and adjust the prism until the wire contacts the object you are measuring. Read the magnetic angle here.”

Someone else might think those words devoid of emotion.

But when she said the word “prism,” her lips formed almost a kiss. She reached out and adjusted the compass in his hand, her fingers brushing his palm. And when she looked up after her explanation, she glanced into his eyes and the flow of her words tumbled to a halt. She stood in place, her fingers on the compass, and her eyes widening.

He fascinated her. He was
good
at fascinating women; he didn’t even really try to do it. The only difference was that Miss Sweetly thought him both fascinating and frivolous, all at the same time—and he was fairly certain that she was right.

He pulled his hand away and made the measurement, focusing on the building she’d chosen, lining up the wire, making a notation of the angle in his notebook.

“Now to make a second measurement. It must be from a different angle, and a known distance away.” She adjusted her spectacles on her nose.

He wondered if her nose was cold. It had to be; they stood in the same wind. But she didn’t seem to flinch at all from the weather. He paced off a distance and measured the angle without saying anything. He made a diagram in his little notebook; she came to stand behind him, looking over his shoulder.

“Having you watch me calculate is like…” He paused, searching for an appropriate analogy. “It’s like having Beethoven attend a child’s first recital on the pianoforte.”

She gave a little snort behind him. “I shouldn’t think so. There are a few salient differences.”

“True. Beethoven isn’t female. Beethoven isn’t lovely. You’re far more disconcerting.”

“Mmm. You’re not thinking this through. You see, Beethoven isn’t alive. I imagine it would be rather more alarming to be visited by the corpse of a composer.”

“Does that make him a decomposer?”

She let out a startled choking noise.

Stephen smiled to himself. “I suppose the analogy does rather break down upon examination.” He subtracted the magnetic angles and started on the calculation of the triangles. She watched him in silence for a little longer.

“I don’t understand why you want me to teach you about astronomy,” she said.

“I don’t want you to teach me astronomy.” As he spoke, he flipped the slide and consulted the trigonometric tables. “I want you to teach me to see the world the way you do.”

“How do I see the world?” she asked in puzzlement.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t need to learn, would I?” He shrugged. “But I know how you see me. You think I’m an outrageous flirt, a frivolous fellow who thinks of nothing beyond the next joke.”

“And you’re going to tell me there’s more to you?” She sounded dubious.

“If there is, I can’t see it myself. But I do wonder sometimes if you might.” He shoved the slide over a few inches, read a number off the bottom scale, and marked it down.

“Are you trying to intrigue me by hinting at hidden depths, Mr. Shaughnessy?”

He shrugged. “Why would I? I don’t even have hidden shallows. I am very much as you see.”

“No hidden traumas, no childhood disappointments, or lingering resentments?”

“Not a one. Oh. Wait. I suppose I do have one. When I was twelve, I was whipped at the stake for rabble rousing.”

She turned to him, blinking. “How dreadful.”

He dropped his voice, beckoning her closer. She leaned in despite herself. “Do you want to know what I thought when the lash landed? Shall I disclose the solemn vow I made?”

She made no answer, but her eyes sparkled with the light of curiosity.

He bent his head to hers. “I thought: Ouch.”

She waited, holding still, as if expecting more.

“That’s it. I’m finished. ‘Ouch.’ Never get whipped as punishment if you can help it, Miss Sweetly. I don’t recommend it.”

“Thank you,” she said solemnly. “I’ll keep that in mind.” But she bit her lip as she spoke, and he could tell she was suppressing a smile.

He lined up the last numbers on the slide. “It’s two hundred and fifty-seven, by the way,” he told her.

“Two hundred and fifty-seven what?”

“Feet. To that building over there.”

She blinked, as if only now remembering that she was giving him a lesson. “I had judged it at two hundred and fifty-four,” she said slowly.

“Ah. Drat.”

“But given that your measurement of distance was done by pacing off the length, your answer is certainly within the margin of error.” She smiled at him. “Well done. Now should you like to try something difficult?”

“That wasn’t difficult? There were sines. And arctangents. I didn’t think any problem should be thought easy if it involved arctangents.”

“Hush, you great big baby.” She shook her head, but she was smiling at him. “All you had to do was look up a number in a table. Was that too difficult for you?”

“A great and mighty table, ringed by fearsome logarithms, with their terrible, terrible…” He trailed off. “Oh, very well. Set me another problem, Miss Sweetly. My resolve is firm and my angles are acute. But beware—if I have to draw another diagram, things may become graphic.”

She raised her hands in surrender. “No more mathematical jokes,” she said in horror.

“Why? Afraid we might go off on…a
tangent?”

“It’s not that.” She bit her lip. “Mathematics are a serious business, for one. And your jokes are terrible, for another.”

“I can’t help myself.” He winked at her. “I was born under an unfortunate sine.”

One hand went to her hip. “Mr. Shaughnessy, must I eject you from the pier?”

“Oh, I should think not. Not unless you make me use calculus. I’m afraid my calculus jokes are derivative.”

She groaned. “Does your adoring public know that Stephen Shaughnessy, Actual Man, makes truly terrible puns?”

“Sadly, no. I keep trying to put them in my columns, but Free—my editor; that’s Frederica Marshall-Clark—keeps taking them out.” He made a face.

“Have you finished your little spate of jocularity, Mr. Shaughnessy?” Her words might have sounded harsh, but she was suppressing a smile. “I had intended to set you a problem, if you recall.”

“Of course. Go ahead.”

“Do you see that ferry?”

“The one in the middle of the Thames?” It was surrounded by choppy waters.

“That very one. Figure out how far away it is, if you please. But here’s the catch—this time, no pacing off the distances. In fact, you’re not allowed to move your feet at all. You may move your hand a quarter of an inch—no further.”

“But the ferry’s moving.”

“So it is.”

“Very well, then.” He took out the compass, peered through it…

“May I move my feet over to the railing, just to set the compass down?”

“No,” she told him with a calm smile.

It was impossible to hold his hand steady enough.

He blew out a breath. “But the needle in the prism is vibrating. I can’t get an accurate read on the angle, and if I can only move my hand a quarter inch, I shall need a very accurate read.”

As if to emphasize this, a cart rumbled past and the needle trembled.

She smiled at his dismay. “So you can’t do it.”

“Did I say that? I can. Of course I can.”

He tried stabilizing his hand against his other arm, then holding the compass between thumb and forefinger. The wind picked up, making his grip all the more tenuous—and his fingers even colder. He managed to get an almost decent read once—he thought—but by the time he’d moved his hand the allowed quarter inch and tried to stabilize the needle once more, the ferry had moved so much that the first number was useless.

She watched his struggles with a beatific smile. And that was what finally tipped him off. If the problem were
possible,
she’d be aggravated that he was doing it wrong.

“Miss Sweetly,” he said straightening, “would you set me an impossible problem just to watch me struggle with it?”

She put one hand over her heart. “How could you say such a thing? You must think me needlessly cruel.”