Talk Sweetly to Me

It had been the most intense experience of his life, seeing her transform from a shy, nervous miss into a magician who intended to coax secrets from the sky. He’d never found mathematics erotic before that day, but watching her lips form the words “parabola” and “Newtonian step” had been utterly riveting. He had been riveted ever since.

“Mr. Shaughnessy wants someone to show him around a slide rule,” Mrs. Barnstable was saying to Rose. “And teach him a few tricks. It’s for his next book. And he’s even offered to pay—what was that again, Mr. Shaughnessy? Three shillings per lesson? Is that what you said? Isn’t that generous!”

He hadn’t said anything of the sort, but he had to smile at the effrontery of the woman. Three shillings per lesson was downright exorbitant.

“Of course,” Mrs. Barnstable said, “most of that fee will go to you, Miss Sweetly, but as I will have to chaperone, I’ll expect sixpence per lesson, and another sixpence for my help in the negotiations.”

No, Mrs. Barnstable was not the fluttery mother hen she made herself out to be. But right now, it was not Mrs. Barnstable’s approval or her heart, mercenary though it might be, that he cared about. It was Miss Sweetly’s.

“Are you going to do the Actual Man thing to me, too?” she asked, not looking up at him.

“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “You sound apprehensive about it, and I try to do that only where it’s appreciated.”

She sniffed.

“Don’t look so disbelieving, Miss Sweetly. I’m a simple man. I like being appreciated.”

“At three shillings a lesson,” Mrs. Barnstable put in, “you could appreciate him a little.”

Miss Sweetly shut her eyes.

“Oh, dear.” Mrs. Barnstable said. “That did come out rather unfortunately. I didn’t intend…”

But she couldn’t even say what she hadn’t intended. Normally, watching others struggle with the ridiculous strictures of propriety was one of Stephen’s favorite pastimes. He usually waited until all the feathers were smoothed and everyone was on the verge of sighing in relief. Then he’d come out with something utterly inappropriate—blasting all the careful wordings and euphemisms to bits with a brazen determination.

Now, however, he held his tongue. It was an unfamiliar skill, as untrained and as poorly understood as his mathematics.

“You don’t have to appreciate me,” he said to Miss Sweetly. “Just teach me to use a slide rule and explain a few basics, and I’ll appreciate you.”

She looked over at him. For a long while, she seemed to contemplate this. Finally, she nodded. “I suppose I might. If Dr. Barnstable would not mind.”

Permission being granted all around, she escorted him to a smaller office, one that was even dingier than the last, which he hadn’t thought possible. A typewriter sat at one desk; Mrs. Barnstable sat behind it, fussing about her piles of paper, before settling on one and picking it up.

Miss Sweetly’s familiar portfolio graced the other desk; she gestured him to a chair next to hers. He sat.

“Miss Sweetly,” he whispered in a low voice, “I know I’ve rather trapped you into this, but if you’d prefer I leave, that I not bother you, you’ve only to say the word.”

She looked up at him. “But we speak on the streets all the time. Is this so different?”

It was not so different; it was simply an escalation.

“If you wish for a more robust chaperone than Mrs. Barnstable, I’m happy to find someone else.” He met her eyes, holding her gaze for a long, fraught moment, before adding, “Only if you wish it, of course.”

She raised an eyebrow and glanced behind them. “Mrs. Barnstable,” she told him in a low voice, “falls asleep at her desk in the afternoons. She means well, but she is sixty-three.”

“Oh, no.” He leaned forward and pitched his voice even lower. “How dreadfully unchaperoned that will leave us.”

She pursed her lips. “The door is open. Chaperones are for ladies; I’m a shopkeeper’s daughter. So long as I have recourse if you forget yourself, whatever could happen?”

“Whatever indeed?”

She had looked back at him as he spoke; now she was looking into his eyes, swaying in place a little, almost mesmerized. He felt the slightest twinge of conscience.

He didn’t intend to seduce her. But he expected he could; it wouldn’t prove too difficult. But he didn’t want this to end with her guilt and self-recrimination. In point of fact, he didn’t want this to end at all.

“If you’re going to write a book that touches on astronomy, we had better teach you the basics. Let’s start you off with multiplication.” Her voice, when she spoke, was a little squeaky.

“Naturally,” Stephen said, pitching his voice too low for Mrs. Barnstable to hear. “It’s a Biblical command, after all: Be fruitful and multiply.”

She did not look terribly impressed by that. Instead, she undid the metal fastenings of her slide rule case and took out the instrument.

“I should let you know,” he went on, “I’ve managed to avoid being fruitful thus far. But I do enjoy a good session of multiplication.”

She swallowed. “Mr. Shaughnessy,” she said reproachfully, glancing over at Mrs. Barnstable.

But the older woman just smiled at them, oblivious to the improper turn of the conversation.

“Ah, was that too much?” he asked. “I can hold myself back, if I must.”

She looked down at her hands. They were poised over her slide rule, her skin contrasting with the pale, graduated celluloid of the instrument. “Hold yourself back from the Bible, Mr. Shaughnessy?” She smiled faintly. “Why would I want you to do that? I imagine you need all the godliness you can muster.”

“I imagine I do. Let’s multiply, then.”

She gave him another level look. But instead of reproaching him, she moved the slide rule between them, caressing it with a light touch.

“This is the slide.” Her long, slender fingers demonstrated, moving the middle bar in a motion that he could not help but find analogous to another act. The thought of her fingers touching him in that slow, steady manner sent his mind whirling down another path altogether, one that left him feeling uncomfortably aroused.

“The left index,” she said. “The right index. This metal window is called the cursor.”

He nodded and tried to think of mathematics.