The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics (Feminine Pursuits, #1)

by Olivia Waite

but even the smallest candle looked bright at midnight.

This was specific: George St. Day had treated her abominably.

Lady Moth, Lucy decided, had been stifled.

“He’s not an astronomer. He’s an artist.” “Then he’s doomed to be wrong his whole life.”

It was as though someone had taken the case off the universe, and let the reader peer at the naked machinery that powered the stars.

Falling in love with a genius was a daunting thought.

“They don’t let you have anything whole, you know. If you don’t follow the pattern. You have to find your happiness in bits and pieces instead. But it can still add up to something beautiful.”

but she had never openly acknowledged that the reverse must be true as well: love could exist—could even thrive—quite apart from the paper forms of marriage and classifications of sex.

Turning someone into a project was a terrible way to woo them.

“Do you like it?” Lady Moth asked. Lucy looked up, English and French and the language of astronomy spinning madly together in her brain. “I am trying very hard not to cry on you again,” she stammered, “but it’s difficult—because this may be the single loveliest thing I have ever seen.”

Her indignation was perfectly adorable and made Catherine’s fond heart beat faster.

Catherine,” she said more softly, “this is art. You are an artist.”

I’m reasonably certain he doesn’t want to marry anyone. He has rather radical thoughts on the whole institution. He wrote a pamphlet once.”

Lucy saw this for the refusal it was.

“If I may be perfectly blunt about it: the Society seems to care less that their Fellows are men of science, and more that their Fellows are men.”

Catherine took a deep breath and let it out again in a rush. “I am trying to tell you I love you,” she said, adorably grumpy, “and you are making it impossible.”

“And belladonna?” “Italian for lovely lady—but it also stands for silence.” “Because it’s poisonous.” Catherine bit her lip. “Because a love silenced is something like death.”

it might look like a gown, but she knew already it would feel like a suit of armor. Perfect for walking into a soiree and slaying society dragons.

When I look back, the wonder is not that we parted—it’s that we managed to hold on as long as we did.”

Maybe an artist is simply one who does an artist’s work, over and over. A process, not a paragon.”

Oh, it made her heart ache to see that even now, when he was calling at the home of a countess, he still had paint stains on his sleeve. Before she could even speak he raised both his hands and said: “I have been a perfect ass, and if you want to ask your countess to order the footmen to beat me senseless I wouldn’t blame you a bit.”

You could never sit back and let the official pieces of paper do the work for you, oh no: you had to choose the other person over and over again, every time. What’s worse, you had to trust them to choose you. It was horribly frightening—as though you started every day by reminding your heart to keep beating.

“Oh, my lady.” Mrs. Griffin’s other hand came up to cover both of hers. “When you get about a half dozen of those fantastical designs, will you bring those in, too?” Catherine blinked. “Do you really think women would want to wear them?” “I think some women will set the world on fire for the privilege,”

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.”

As soon as the first shock had passed, she was flooded with chagrin at one simple, telling fact: the possibility of Oléron being anything other than a white-skinned man had quite simply not occurred to her.

I learned how vicious things could get when a dozen people are all trying to prove they are the cleverest one in the room.

Lucy’s inner glow of satisfaction lasted nearly an entire day—which was quite long, in her experience. But, as always, the ethereal feelings faded as mundane reality reasserted itself.

“That . . .” Lucy had to swallow against a dry throat. “That sounds like an immense amount of work.” “Oh, it will be, I assure you. It will tie us together legally, and financially, and probably take us the rest of our lives to accomplish.” She bit her lip again, looking down at the papers in her hand. “It is really a very long list of names.”