The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics Read online

  She would need Catherine’s library.

  It would gall her to have to ask—and to explain the reason why—but even at this highest pinnacle of despair, Lucy knew Catherine would agree. It was not in the countess’s nature to be cruel, or to enjoy someone’s suffering. Lucy would spend her days in the library, and Catherine would work separately in the parlor; they might meet for dinner, or they might not. In some ways that sounded even lonelier than finding a new lodging of her own: everywhere she looked she’d be haunted by happier memories.

  Nobody deserved to have their heart broken twice in the span of a single year.

  Tears sprang to the corners of her eyes, but a moment later she sat up and dashed them away again. She had no time to be maudlin. Until the Symposium, she would give herself the gift of not thinking much about anything else. She would focus on the work, and not fear for how much she was about to lose.

  Catherine still couldn’t sleep, even though the church bells had already tolled midnight. Her pulse pounded in her ears, her temples throbbed, and her heart beat erratically in her chest. It was a long few minutes before she realized: not all the pulsing she felt was the monstrous misery hammering against her veins.

  Some of the pounding was coming from the library.

  She lit a lamp, tugged on a dressing gown, and padded down the hall. As she grew closer, other, more unmistakably human sounds made themselves apparent: the squeak of the library ladder, the muffled percussion of footprints, and a low, angry muttering that had the unmistakable vehement quality of someone heartily swearing.

  It had to be Lucy. Nobody else would be in the library this late. And she sounded bloody furious.

  The countess froze with her hand on the doorknob as moments of years past speared her with sharp familiarity. How many times had she done precisely this? Stood here outside the looming double doors, while an irate scientist who no longer loved her raged in a mounting temper? This had been her life, when George was alive and they were not on expedition somewhere. She was just as hurt and unhappy now as she’d been before.

  What she wasn’t, was afraid.

  It was such an astonishing, irrefutable truth that Catherine had to stand there and turn it over a time or two, marveling at it. She was not afraid. It was a minor miracle. Oh, she wasn’t eager to open the door and confront Lucy again; the pain of their last conversation was still raw and tender. But the poisonous dread, the shame, the sick sense of danger she’d let silence her for years in her marriage . . . she felt none of that.

  A pall that had been cast over her for years—even after George’s death, during her ill-fated first affair—had somehow, in the past few months, slipped softly into nothingness while her attention had been elsewhere.

  Had Lucy done it? Or had Catherine done it herself without realizing?

  Another thump from the library broke through her reverie. Catherine pushed open the door before she could talk herself out of it and stepped into the darkened room beyond.

  A single lamp was turned up as high as it could go, casting a bright but flickering light and making the furniture loom and hunch like Gothic gargoyles. Lucy was high on the ladder, still dressed in the gown she’d worn out this evening. The stellarium shawl was wound around her neck with its ends thrown back across her shoulders like a general’s cloak, as she plucked a volume from the shelves that held the archives of Polite Philosophies. The collection was a complete archive of every issue since the first year of the Society’s formation: George had been thorough and had them bound specially in black and gilt. Lucy had worked her way back several decades at this point: as Catherine watched curiously, she pulled one bound book from the shelf, skimmed the first few pages, muttered at what she saw, and dropped the book to the floor. It landed with a thunk on top of a pile of other volumes, spines broken and pages splayed like scattered corpses in a heap.

  Catherine didn’t call out, for fear of startling Lucy right off the ladder. Instead she moved carefully forward to the table and set her own lamp next to Lucy’s. Turning up the wick brightened the room just enough to be noticeable, and made Lucy blink and twist around to peer down over her shoulder.

  Catherine was too curious to be tactful. “What on earth are you up to at this hour?”

  Lucy came down the ladder fast enough to make Catherine’s heart lurch up into her throat. The astronomer’s face was fierce as she began scooping up fallen books. “I am rediscovering lost geniuses.”

  Catherine shook her head and began helping, moving a few more books to where Lucy was stacking them on the library table. “I don’t understand.”

  Lucy’s eyes flashed, her jaw clenched so tight Catherine imagined she could hear her teeth grinding. “I thought I was the only one.” Lucy pulled out one volume and flipped to the front section—the bit where letters in reply were printed, naturalists and chemists and botanists and such writing in to offer their thoughts on the previous issue’s hypotheses. “Look, right there, see? Mrs. Jonathan Corwen, Kent. And here.” She pulled out another volume. “Miss Annabelle Barber, Sussex, 1789. And there’s more, so many more, once you know to look for them. Hiding behind initials and their husbands’ names.” She tossed the book onto the table; it slipped and slid and bumped up against Catherine’s lamp. “Half the comets discovered in the last century were first observed by Mr. Hawley’s sister—did you know that?”

  “I didn’t,” Catherine replied, and subtly moved the dry, old book away from the hot glass and flame. “And nobody told you?”

  Lucy flung one arm wide to indicate the towering book-filled shelves around them. “I thought they were all men!”

  Anguish silvered her eyes and twisted her lips; it was all Catherine could do not to reach out to hold her for comfort.

  “I believed I was the first woman to really try and advance the progress of astronomy—I fancied myself a brave pioneer, an explorer like you once were. A shining beacon to girls and women of the future. It was a great comfort, whenever people like Mr. Hawley and Mr. Wilby offered insults and dismissals. All I had to do to claim victory was to prove them wrong—and don’t men of science value proof more than anything? Once people saw what I did, really saw it and acknowledged it, they’d believe other women were capable of thinking, of learning, of discovering the world in the same way that men are. But tonight I learned that there were other women before me. So very, very many of them. They were here all along: spotting comets, naming stars, pointing telescopes at the sky alongside their fathers and brothers and sons. And still the men they worked with scorned them. Scoffed at them. Gave the credit and the glory to the men who stole their work—or borrowed it or expanded it. Rarely cited it directly. And then those men did their best to forget where the work came from. Women’s ideas are treated as though they sprung from nowhere, to be claimed by the first man who comes along. Every generation had women stand up and ask to be counted—and every generation of brilliant, insightful, educated men has raised a hand and wiped those women’s names from the greater historical record.”

  She slapped a hand down on top of the stack of Polite Philosophies, the sharp sound making Catherine wince.

  “I am going through the archives and finding every single one of those women. I am writing to those who still live and asking them if they’ve kept experimenting, still observing, still collecting specimens in their field. I am going to make sure someone remembers these women and their work, even if it is only myself.” She broke off, chest heaving on something that was almost a sob. Her voice dropped to a whisper, as if she were confessing her greatest, most agonizing secret: “Because I am sick to death of feeling alone.”

  “You never have to feel alone.”

  Lucy’s eyes snapped wide at Catherine’s whispered response. She caught her breath and turned toward the countess with questions written plain on her face.

  There were rare moments, Catherine knew, where even the steadiest compass could shift. Bring a magnet too close to one and it would twist around to point to the magnet in
stead of true north; sailors told strange stories of high and icy latitudes where compasses would spin and wobble like the legs of drunken men. For some months now Catherine had felt her own internal compass spinning helplessly as the terrain beneath her shape-shifted.

  But the needle had stopped spinning now: stone-steady, iron-true, and fixed irrevocably on Lucy Muchelney. “I remember what you wrote,” Catherine said. “Nothing in the universe stands alone. Everything is connected—in real, mathematical, provable ways—across the span of the entire cosmos. As long as we live, we influence one another. You and these women you’ve rediscovered . . . but also you and me. I was wrong to ask you to leave. To say there could be nothing permanent between us. We’re already forever.” Catherine reached out a hand and slid her lamp over to blaze beside Lucy’s, tapping the metal base with a deliberate finger. “We thought we were separate satellites, but we aren’t. We’re stars, and though we might burn separately, we’ll always be in one another’s orbit.”

  The book Lucy was holding slipped from her hands and thunked softly to the floor. “I was only leaving because I thought it’s what you wanted,” she said. A single silver tear spilled over and slipped sparkling down her cheek.

  “I want you,” Catherine whispered, and opened her arms.

  Lucy dove at her, her tall, slim body slamming into Catherine’s sturdier form, while her mouth opened desperately against the countess’s lips. It was a hard, harsh kiss, born of fear and flame, and it seared into ash everything that had come between them.

  Catherine gave over to it entirely as she buried her fingers in Lucy’s hair and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her until she could no longer taste the salt of Lucy’s tears.

  It was only when Lucy’s nails scraped Catherine’s collarbone and she gasped aloud that she realized Lucy had been swiftly, determinedly untying and unbuttoning and shoving aside as much as she could of Catherine’s clothing. The countess freed her hands to shrug hurriedly out of the dressing gown as Lucy’s fingers dove further into the opened neck of her nightdress, pinching her nipples and pushing the fabric down to bare one shoulder. Lucy nipped newly revealed skin while Catherine moaned and let her head fall back; the dressing gown clutched in Lucy’s other hand made a useful lever for her to pull Catherine down to the thick library rug.

  Everything was limbs and quickening breath and the tangle of fabric, too much to strip easily in their haste. Lucy pulled away to lean over Catherine, her bodice gaping and her hair a tangle, lamplight from the table above giving her a martyr’s halo as her panting breath swirled hot against Catherine’s skin. “Tell me what you need,” she demanded. “Anything. All of me. It’s yours for the asking.”

  “I want . . .” Catherine began, but couldn’t even wait long enough to finish the sentence. Instead she wrapped an arm around Lucy’s shoulders and pulled her down for another kiss. Catherine’s other hand yanked up yards of expensive, fashionable skirts with expert embroidery that the countess felt snag and pull beneath her hasty fingers. She swore to repair it with her own needle tomorrow morning.

  But tomorrow morning was an age away.

  Tonight there was only the woman above and the woman below, setting one another aflame.

  It had been less than a day since Lucy had kissed her farewell so solemnly. Less than three since they’d last shared a bed. But it felt as though Catherine had lived a whole, empty, lonely life in that short stretch of time. Decades waiting to press Lucy’s slim hip in her palm again, unseen but solid beneath the tumble of petticoats and skirts. Centuries until she could lick the sweet spot at the base of Lucy’s throat, her bodice and stays spread wide as a rose in summer and her breasts rising and falling beneath her chemise as she begged for more. And a star’s lifespan until Catherine could move lower and tongue the wet, hot folds between Lucy’s legs, her senses dizzied by the scents of sweat and linen and musk, until Lucy cried out and shivered with the force of her need. Catherine used everything she’d learned about curling her fingers just so, and pressing up firmly with the angled heel of her hand, all while she licked and sucked and tongued relentlessly until Lucy broke and came with a soft sound almost like a sob.

  Catherine kept going, fingers sliding through the sweet slickness and heat, until Lucy pulled back.

  Strong fingers curled around Catherine’s wrist, and silver eyes afire with resolve blazed against the darkness. “Bedroom. Now,” she growled, and Catherine thrilled at the urgency, her pulse beating a hot and hasty tattoo.

  Never had Catherine been so grateful her bedroom was close to the library. They extinguished one of the lamps and took the other with them down the hallway, mussed and heated and panting. Lucy’s grip on Catherine’s wrist never slackened until the door was shut behind them, and then she began stripping herself and Catherine of clothing so methodically that it made Catherine tremble. There was a fervency she hadn’t seen before, a desperation that reminded her of some of the darker moments of her past.

  She sucked in a breath on a shiver as her nightdress fluttered to the floor like a ghostly maiden, dead of a broken heart.

  Lucy turned to face her and tilted her head, eyes glinting in the dimness. Her voice was harsh, though she spoke low. “Afraid, my love?”

  Catherine swallowed. “A little. But I like it.”

  Lucy hummed satisfaction in the back of her throat. Gripping Catherine’s shoulders, she walked her back until the older woman came up hard against the bedpost. Strong hands slid up Catherine’s arms, pulling her hands high above her head. Lucy clasped her hands in place, twining them around carven oak. “Don’t move unless I say,” she said, and bit Catherine’s earlobe.

  Catherine let out a soft wordless cry, then nodded.

  Lucy murmured approval, nudged Catherine’s feet slightly apart, and proceeded to drive Catherine nearly out of her skin with pleasure. Lucy’s hands were everywhere, sliding and teasing, every caress a prelude to the heat and slickness of that generous, tormenting mouth. Catherine gripped the wood of the bedpost until she feared it might crack, eagerly following Lucy’s every whispered command: this way, a little more, hold still, don’t you dare come yet. Moonlight silvered the long line of Lucy’s back as she sank to her knees—not submissively, as one conquered, but as a queen kneels at a coronation.

  Catherine was wound so tight with it all that she nearly tumbled over the edge into climax when she felt Lucy’s sigh blow hot over the aching flesh between her legs. She let out a warning noise, barely more than a throaty squeak, and heard Lucy’s knowing laugh unroll like velvet in the darkness. “Just a little more, love.”

  She trailed one hand languidly up Catherine’s plump thigh, nudged her open a little wider, and slid a single finger inside her.

  Catherine’s head dropped back as Lucy thrust—one finger, then two. Then, while her tongue slid hot and hard against the nub buried in softly curling hair, a third. Catherine gasped as she stretched—more than she’d ever taken, a fit so tight it was almost like pain—but a good pain, one that sharpened every one of her senses and slid through her bright and cold as starlight as she teetered on the brink, panting as though she perched wavering on a high peak, about to step off solid rock and into the vast, welcoming nothingness beyond.

  “Now,” Lucy murmured, half demand and half promise. She gripped Catherine’s hip to hold her in place, gave one more wicked flick of her tongue, and thrust hard with all three fingers.

  Catherine exploded into orgasm with a wild, half-desperate keening. Every muscle seized and throbbed as brilliance tore through her, a flood of light and scintillation and sweet, sparkling relief. She clenched so tight around Lucy’s hand that Lucy had to stop moving—a pleased murmur vibrated from Lucy’s mouth into Catherine’s flesh and sent her tumbling into another endless climax.

  At length, as the waves faded and the world came slipping back, Lucy eased herself free and Catherine collapsed into her arms, knees weak and thighs aching with exertion. They stayed that way as Catherine’s frantic breathing slowed
, Lucy’s tall form a bulwark against the inward storm.

  Catherine’s mind was as slow to recover as her body. This had been . . . different. Darker, very close in some ways to the kind of things she’d done with, and for, Darby. But oh, how much better it was to give in to someone you loved, someone you trusted. Someone who cared what you wanted. She nuzzled into the crook of Lucy’s neck and kissed the sweat-salted skin there, feeling immeasurably grateful and pleasured and happy.

  Loved. That was the word she was looking for. She felt loved.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The full and fragile teacup slipped from the countess’s hand and crashed to the breakfast table in a shower of porcelain shards. “They did what?!”

  “Catherine!” Lucy gasped in shock. She reached out to the mess of spilled tea and cream and sugar and plucked out the lizard handle, which had broken off from the bowl. The bowl itself was unsalvageable, its elegant curves now resting in several jagged pieces on the tea tray.

  Catherine wanted to use them to slice all Mr. Hawley’s precious flytraps into thin green ribbons. Which she would then brew into a noxious tea and pour down the treacherous throat of Mr. Wilby, who was at least as much to blame as the Society president. The shock of it made her light-headed. “An imposter?” she hissed. “Because you refused to let them scribble their names on a manuscript you did all the work of translating?”

  Lucy set the poor lizard on a saucer. “Give me that before you break it, too,” she said, and tugged the serpent teapot from the countess’s tight-clenched fingers. While Catherine scowled and stewed, she added cream and sugar to another teacup and set it carefully in front of the countess. “It was cruel, but unsurprising. I was more hurt by Mr. Frampton’s apparently joining in with them.”