“You can charm anyone, my lady. You are Lady Rosalin, not your cousin. Perhaps, remember that when you feel discouraged—this might all be a ruse where you look like him, but you are not him. You’reyou.Smart, brilliant, and capable, but also considerate and kind.”
“Thank you, Anna,” I said, buoyed by her words and the wise reminder that Iwasn’tAnsel, and though I was walking in his shoes, the choices I made were all mine.
“Speaking of being charming, the duchess sent a messenger yesterday, and she expects you in London by this evening,” she said, carefully pouring a pitcher of water over my head to rinse the suds away.
I groaned aloud. After my first week at Cambridge, I’d much rather curl up in my bed and get a head start on my reading than put on a pleasant face to try to catch a husband. The mere thought of it was exhausting. “Perhaps I can say that I’m ill.”
“The Duchess of Harbridge’s ball is important, and your presence will certainly be missed. Your mother will be very disappointed.” Anna wrapped a length of toweling around my wet locks and squeezed gently. “And Her Grace might curtail your visits to Delmont Park, if you go back on your word to be present for the season.”
“Very well,” I said, knowing my mother was single-minded enough to do just that and thwart all my carefully laid plans. “Instruct the cook to prepare a basket of food for us, and Henry to ready the carriage. I suppose I can read on the way.”
Not willing to squander the opportunity in my lap, I would make the best of things. Six hours of being cooped up in a carriage meant a stretch of uninterrupted study time. I’d have to learn to manage my reading load as well as my mother’s machinations for the season…or this arrangement would fail.
Shortly after I finished my bath and dressed, we were ensconced in the carriage on the way to London. I held the worn volume ofOpticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Lightby Sir Isaac Newton in my hand and traced the lettering on the front cover. It was an older edition, but it appeared exceedingly well cared for. There were lightly penciled notes in the margins.
I wondered if they belonged to St. Clair. The lettering was precise and bold, the notes encapsulating different calculations as well as general observations. A strange thrill wound through me at the notion of our ideas and opinions intersecting…or better yet, clashing. I blinked and scowled at myself.
This absurd, fabricated rivalry I had with my tutor had to stop.
I thumbed through the pages, stopping at one of my favorite chapters. In all honesty, I’d read the book before, though it was some years ago—my father had a first edition in our library at Delmont Park, and I’d adored reading about Newton’s prism and lens experiments, particularly about the refraction of white light into multiple visible colors. Some of the concepts werefamiliar; others were vague, because I had only paid attention to the sections that had interested me.
Like his telescopes.
Older telescopes used glass lenses, which impacted how colors could be seen, and the resulting images were fuzzy and out-of-focus. In truth, Newton’s brilliant design incorporated mirrors instead of glass lenses, which reflected the image back to the eye. It fascinated me that his first instrument, built in 1668, was a mere six inches long…almost ten times smaller than those of this century.
“That looks like it would give you a headache,” Anna remarked from her side of the coach, making me jump. Her brow wrinkled at some of the diagrams.
I smiled and tapped the top of the leather spine. “It’s an interesting book. I forgot how much I enjoyed it. Well, parts of it anyway.”
“And you’re reading itagain?” she asked with a horrified expression. “Forfun?”
“As a refresher,” I said, lips twitching at her reaction. “When you see the colors of the rainbow up in the sky after a rainstorm, it’s because of Newton’s experiments that we know they come from white light or sunlight.”
“How did he do them?” she asked, curious.
I warmed to my subject. “Via prisms and refracting a beam of light. In the old days, Aristotle and other philosophers thought that the different colors—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet—came from both light and darkness, from black and white, or from some effect of the rain on the rays of the sun. Thisauthor proved that they were all white light when he refracted them back into another prism and sunlight emerged.”
“Fascinating,” Anna said. “But all that numerical text and those calculations must be boring. Words are so much better, in my opinion. A sonnet is more relaxing than numbers.”
“That’s because you have the soul of a poet. Sums are not boring at all. I find them quite fun. I suppose I have the soul of a mathematician.”
Her repulsed expression made me giggle. “Honestly, my lady, no wonder no suitors ever meet your expectations if this is the kind of diversion you callfun.”
“Would you rather I spend these hours perfecting my needlepoint?” I replied, feeling the urge to defend my passion. “Hours upon hours punching holes into fabric, not to mention flesh, in my case. How tiresome! I’d much rather stretch the muscles of my brain and learn something new.”
“You could enjoy the colors of the rainbow in your fashion or coiffure. They’re pretty to look at, and that’s all that matters, at least for a lady of your station. Who needs to know where the colors came from?”
“I do,” I replied. “I savor knowing how things work, and besides, many men and women are employed as scientists and engineers based on this man’s theories.”
Anna sniffed and stared pointedly at my plain navy traveling costume. “Perhaps if you also focused onwearingthose bright hues, you might have more success with attracting a suitor.”
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing? You know I prefer dark colors.”
This was a bone of contention between my mother and me. It was currently de rigueur to wear Turkey red and saffron yellow, but I despised loud shades. Though the king’s death had been sorrowful, I rather enjoyed the reprieve of wearing somber colors. It’d been a blessing in disguise.
However, a return to the season hadn’t stopped my mother from commissioning dozens of gowns in colors that were designed to make me stand out like a peacock on display. Fortunately, I’d been able to sneak orders with Madame Marchand for a few other dresses in some more muted colors. Leave the posturing to actual peacocks…
At least this long carriage ride meant I would be free of primping for a few hours before I had to concede to my mother’s intrigues. I settled in, kicking off my slippers and then tucking my feet beneath me on the squabs, and concentrated on Newton. Eventually, I was lulled by the rhythm of the wheels, my eyes fluttered shut, and I was dreaming of telescopes and rainbows and obnoxious tutors with eyes so hypnotic, a girl could get lost in them.
