Once she had it in her head that he might do things to her, she could not help but imagine those things. Kisses, and not just on the lips or the hand, but on her neck, her inner wrist, up her elbow. He might give her caresses, too—slow, languid, full-body caresses. He didn’t have to seduce her; she was doing all the work of seduction on her own.
“Come, Mr. Shaughnessy,” she said briskly. “I’m sure you dream of more important things than listening to me ramble on. I don’t wish to be a way station on your way to bigger and better.” She looked down. “I have enjoyed—rather too much—spending this time with you. But I think I’ll be better off if our time together draws to a close.”
He took this in silence. His lips compressed into an almost angry line, and he looked away.
“Here,” she said. “I’ve set you some…some problems to work. Just a little parallax.” She actually choked as she spoke, as if she might cry over mathematics.
Better that. Better to cry over maths than a man, especially a rogue like this one. He’d scarcely even exerted himself and already she found herself watching his fingers, hoping he might crook one of them at her…and fearing that if he did, she’d come running.
He took the sheet from her and began to work.
“You know,” he said, “I realized last night that you were granting me a signal honor when you let me use your slide rule. Thank you.”
He didn’t sound as if he were making fun of her. She glanced suspiciously at him.
“I don’t dream of bigger and better,” he said, making his first notation on the page. “I told you: I’m appallingly simple. There is no grand design.”
“You’re a novelist. And a columnist. There’s nothing simple about you.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m exceedingly clever and exceedingly outrageous. But that doesn’t make me exceedingly devious.”
“But you must have had some plan in order to ascend the heights so swiftly.”
He smirked. “Here is the extent of my planning. When I was fifteen, I realized I was a poor Irish Catholic in England, a country with an excess of poor Irish Catholics. My only real skill was a talent for outraging others. Either I had to stomp out my only source of genius in order to have a go at making a living in the most menial fashion, or I had to indulge it to the fullest and hope for the best.” He shrugged. “Here I am. For the next few years, I shall be in demand enough to command a thousand pounds per book from my publisher. By the time that’s dried up—and the public’s capacity for any brand of outrage always dries up—I’ll have enough saved that I won’t have to care. See? There is no grand plan. No meteoric dreams. Just a dislike for manual labor and a talent for annoying others.”
She sniffed.
“You, on the other hand…”
She shook her head. “We are not talking of me.”
“You, I wager, do not dream timid dreams. You walk with your head in the clouds.”
“Oh, no. The clouds are in the troposphere. My thoughts lie well beyond the mesosphere.”
“Precisely. So tell me, Miss Sweetly. What is it you see for yourself, after you send me on my way? What is your grand plan?”
Behind them, Mrs. Barnstable changed a page in her typewriter. Rose flushed and looked away. “There is no grand plan. My father is on the board of the African Times. It has been their mission for the last decades to see to the elevation of the race. They’ve sponsored a number of medical students in their work, starting from Africanus Horton.” She couldn’t look him in the eyes. “Patricia—my sister—married one of those students. They met over dinner, took one look at each other…and that was the end of it. Everyone expects that I’ll marry one of the two students arriving in the next year.” Rose traced a trailing vine on her skirt. “I suppose I do, too.”
“And is that what you want?” he asked in a low voice. “To marry a medical student on scholarship? To have his children and to keep his home?”
“I am not opposed to marriage. And yes, I should like children.” She still couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
“Will your husband let you spend your days in computation? Will he listen to you talk of parallax and the transit of Venus? Or will he expect you to subside into compliance, to set your slide rule aside until it is dusty and warped?”
Her chin went up. “How do you suppose I met Dr. Barnstable? He’s also on the board of the African Times—he was stationed in Cape Town, and didn’t like some of the things he saw. He heard about this ridiculous talent I had, and next thing I knew, he was pleading with my father to let me work with him. I know for a fact that there are men in this world who will allow a woman her interests.”
“True. But would they adore you for yours? Where others see numbers and charts, you see a universe, vast and mighty. You can see the face of the cosmos in a few dancing lights. You shouldn’t have to trade the stars in the sky for a home and a marriage and babies.”
She let out a shaky breath.
“I admit,” he said, “it took me longer than one look at dinner. It took me five or six looks. But then, I cannot see five trillion miles away.”