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.”