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

by Olivia Waite

You couldn’t reason with ambition. All you could do was moderate the damage it did. Try to get ahead of it, imagine problems before they started, smooth out the road for the impractical person with their gaze on the heavens.

Catherine fidgeted slightly. “Please allow me to apologize for being such a poor hostess last evening.” “Apologize?” Miss Muchelney stopped fussing with her skirts and looked up, cocking her head. “What for?” Catherine pressed her lips together and tried not to squirm with embarrassment. “Surely it’s not a good thing to send a guest running from the dinner table in tears.” Miss Muchelney’s head cocked a little farther. “But all you did was compliment my gown.” “I . . .” Catherine stopped, and took a breath, and groped for words. And let the breath out again in a frustrated huff. Miss Muchelney’s lips quirked in amusement. “Did you mean it as an insult?” Now it was Catherine’s turn to blush. “Of course not.” “So what is it you’re saying you’re sorry for?” The words were gentle, almost laughing, but Catherine winced as though they were shards of glass. Because the truth was that she did not know—and it was mortifying to have it pointed out. She swallowed hard and tried again. “I am glad to see you are feeling better this morning.”

“I remember Sir Eldon reading us a letter about cities on the moon. It caused a great sensation at the time; they argued about it for months afterward.” Miss Muchelney’s head tilted, the briefest of flinches before she forced herself upright again. “My father loathed being joked about. But science always wounds the ones who love her.” Catherine bristled instantly. “Science does nothing of the kind,” she retorted. “Science merely exists. She can’t raise a hand to anyone. It’s people who do all the wounding.”

Catherine hadn’t known that Albert Muchelney had a second child. “Does your brother not encourage your pursuit of astronomy?” Miss Muchelney let out a wordless choked laugh. “He has talked about selling my telescope.” Catherine gasped. Miss Muchelney’s lips curved briefly at the sound. “The day I left for London, Stephen told me nobody would employ a female astronomer.” She stopped herself, then burst out: “I hate that he’s right.” “He isn’t right.” Catherine leaned forward and clasped her hands around Miss Muchelney’s. “He’s only an astronomer—and astronomers spend a great deal of time being wrong before they come to realize it.” “He’s not an astronomer. He’s an artist.” “Then he’s doomed to be wrong his whole life.”

The ancients imagined the earth was the central point of the universe. Newton’s discovery showed us that this is true, but it is not the complete truth. The earth is the center of a web of force that touches the moon, the sun, the other planets, and perhaps even all those distant stars that burn so far away. But every other moon, sun, comet, planet, and star is itself a center, and exerts its own force upon all the rest. Nothing in the universe stands alone.

“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.”

Catherine made herself comfortable in the opposite seat and finally opened up the box with the thoughts she’d been hiding away for most of her existence. The inescapable truth: women could fall in love with other women. Strange indeed that an idea could change your life so completely, and yet fit in so perfectly with all that came before. She felt the force of it in her very bones. It was less as if her biography were being rewritten, and more as though Catherine were suddenly able to read the other set of lines that lay crosswise on the familiar page. The way the curve of one woman’s waist had made her heart race. The elation when that Italian viscountess with dark hair and sparkling eyes had laughed at Catherine’s teasing. It was desire, the same as she’d felt for the attractive men she’d known, and some sly part of her must have recognized this all along because she had put a great deal of effort into keeping these thoughts and impulses from seeing the light of day.

Catherine wanted Lucy, but more than that, Catherine wanted Lucy to want her back. And Lucy wouldn’t, if she were still pining for the girl she’d lost. So Catherine let the days flow by like water while she put in stitch after stitch after stitch, as though each one were mending a small rent in Lucy Muchelney’s heart.

Let Future Lucy make the ultimate decision during revisions to the text. Future Lucy was always so much more decisive, somehow. Maybe because she was ever-so-slightly closer to death than Present Lucy?

“Do you think . . .” Lucy swallowed hard. This was a terribly impolite question to ask, but the truth often mattered more than manners, no matter what the etiquette books said. “Do you think your mother was happier with your father, or with Mrs. Kelmarsh?” Lady Moth stayed quiet so long that Lucy began to despair she’d truly offended. She was trying to compose apologies in her head—difficult when you couldn’t openly acknowledge how you’d erred—when the countess spoke again. “I don’t think love works like that. You might as well ask the earth whether the sun or the moon is more important.” She blushed a little pinker and raised her eyes, star-bright. “You can’t always judge by what came before. Sometimes, there is a revolution.”

The kiss went on and on, but when Catherine’s curious fingers slipped along the line of Lucy’s bodice, the girl broke away with a gasp. Catherine dropped her hand at once, panicked and aroused in equal measure. “Too fast?” She’d done it now: she’d lost control, tried to take too much, too soon . . . Lucy laughed and reached out to pull her back. Catherine stiffened automatically, shame at her unruly desire turning her yearning into ash. Lucy’s keen eyes watched her closely. “It wasn’t too fast for me—but perhaps it was too fast for you?” Catherine fought to loosen the tangled knots of her feelings, then huffed in frustration. “I don’t know.” Lucy took Catherine’s hands, gently rubbing them between her own. “Then we stop.” Catherine blinked. Her senses were still a riot, her breath still coming fast and hot in her throat. “As easy as that?” She didn’t know if she was protesting or demanding proof Lucy meant what she said. “Of course,” Lucy replied breezily, as though she hadn’t just said one of the most puzzling things Catherine had ever heard. “The whole point is to feel excited about one another, isn’t it? If you’re more anxious than excited, then we wait. Simple.”

Catherine narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you want to do more than kiss me?” Lucy laughed again, and the sultry echo of it slid like warmed honey down Catherine’s spine. “Oh, if you wanted me to write out my full list of wants, it would be Christmas before I was through.” She slipped a thumb over the inside of Catherine’s wrist; the countess’s pulse leaped to meet her fingers. “But all those ideas depend on you wanting those things done to you. Or wanting to do things to me. Because it’s not about you doing, or me doing—it’s what we do together.”

Lucy grinned. “You ought to have stayed home and learned about good old-fashioned English debauchery, as I did.” Catherine chuckled as Lucy pulled the sheets over them both. “If you’re offering to teach me, I expect you’ll be a proper scholar and do it rigorously.” Lucy snorted, and nipped at Catherine’s earlobe, enjoying the way it made the lady sigh and shiver. “I shall take careful notes, and make sure my experiments are repeatable.”

“I am tired of twisting myself into painful shapes for mere scraps of respect or consideration. Tired of bending this way and that in search of approval that will only ever be half granted.”

“You simply made room for me to do the work I chose to do. You gave me a space for it and time for it and you offered support whenever I struggled. All because you believed I could do it, and do it well.” “Yes,” Catherine huffed, “but it wasn’t just about the work, either. Not after a while.” Lucy blinked and looked down. Catherine’s mouth was turned down but her eyes shone up at Lucy with helpless, hopeful affection. Lucy slid wondering fingers along the countess’s jaw, as though any movement too quick or eager would shatter the moment like glass. “Oh?” Lucy whispered. “What else was it about?” 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.” Lucy fought the urge to laugh in pure elation. “So tell me.” Catherine bit her lip, then lifted her chin. “You first.” Lucy did laugh then. Was still laughing when her mouth met Catherine’s, the kiss tasting of sherry and sunlight and words still yet to be spoken.

Lucy’s words, spoken against Catherine’s temple, chimed softly against her very bones. “Loving you is entirely different. You make me feel expansive, as though my heart is big enough and strong enough to contain the whole world. As though I can become anyone I need to, or want to, without fear—I can reach higher and farther and not lose you for the striving. And oh, my love, do you know how great a gift that is?”

Her eyes were bright, and she smiled, but Lucy could see so much of the old shyness still lurking in the curve of her lips. “So I started thinking: maybe being an artist is also really about the work. It’s not about standing up and trumpeting one’s own genius to a throng of adoring inferiors, agog with admiration. Maybe an artist is simply one who does an artist’s work, over and over. A process, not a paragon.”

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.

She must get used to being a person who wanted things. No, Catherine corrected herself, taking a breath and letting the cool air fill her with the first taste of the coming harvest season, she must get used to being a person who got what they wanted. Even if it didn’t always last.

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.”

“And has the reception been what you hoped?” the marquise asked. “Do you feel you have claimed more minds for science?” Lucy’s eyes found Catherine again. “I would not compel anyone to choose the subject if they were not of themselves inclined to pursue it. Science is not the only noble endeavor in this world.” She raised her voice to cover the affronted murmur that bubbled up at this. “But anyone who yearns to discover more truths about the nature and order of our world—they ought to be encouraged, and not forced to rediscover what other people with better luck or more experience have already found out. Our energies are better spent if we work together than if we struggle separately—men and women of every nation and of every race.”