Chapter 14 #3
They came to a vertical ladder. He went up to open the trapdoor, then came down again so she would have someone beneath her while she climbed.
The cupola at the top of the manor was sizable when viewed from ground level. Up close it was huge—only the house’s spectacular size prevented it from overwhelming the whole structure.
“My observatory,” he said, once he’d climbed up and closed the trapdoor.
She should have realized it was the cupola, since she never saw a dome anywhere from inside the manor. But could any telescope be big enough to need such cavernous housing?
“Ready?” he asked.
She hesitated once more. It was not the telescope she was not ready for; it was always him. “Oh, why not?”
He took her hand again—not interlacing their fingers this time, only holding her wrist. All the same, it was nearly impossible to think of anything else except the sensation of his touch.
Lowering, really, considering that he touched her in far more unspeakable ways and far more unspeakable places on a daily, sometimes hourly basis.
“Now look up.”
Belatedly she realized that they had come to a stop, but she was staring down at those fingers that encircled her wrist. She pulled her hand free and tilted her head up.
And emitted a choked sound. “My God. My God!”
She had never before taken the Lord’s name in vain, at least not aloud. An absolute beast of a telescope lens loomed above her. “Please forgive my language. What…what’s the aperture size?”
“Sixty-four inches.”
It was almost incomprehensible that such a marvelous monstrosity could exist. She laughed—the sound oddly unfamiliar in her ears, as if she hadn’t heard it in a very long time—and kept laughing, too awed and astounded to say anything else.
He tugged at her elbow. “Come see more of it.”
She followed him reluctantly, not wanting to let the telescope out of her sight.
But inside the observatory, she was even more dumbstruck.
Yes, the aperture was magnificent, but she had not imagined the telescope would be more than forty feet in length.
And this leviathan was mobile, by the look of it, mounted on a system of rails and manipulated by an intricate arrangement of pulleys, in order to track across the sky and maximize its utility.
She caressed the thick barrel incredulously. “You had this built?”
“It took five years.”
She placed her cheek on the cool steel casing of the barrel. “That long?”
“Not the actual construction, but it took many tries to arrive at a design that would allow me to realign the telescope by myself.”
She glanced toward him. “I admire that. I admire that tremendously.”
He shrugged, almost as if the compliment didn’t sit well with him.
“I know this will sound silly,” she asked, still breathless, “but is this the biggest telescope ever?”
“No.” He smiled. “The Earl of Rosse’s telescope at his castle in Ireland measures seventy-three inches across. I have visited it. It is truly a juggernaut. But mine has the advantage of being mobile.”
She kept feeling the barrel up and down, the sheer size of the thing. “I can’t get enough of it.”
“Yes, I know. You said so every night last week.”
Her face grew warm at his teasing. “Ha. I will never be impressed with your puny instrument again, now that I’ve seen this monster.”
“Well, good luck getting this monster inside your—”
She gasped.
“—house.” He laughed. “What? What did you think I was going to say? I had to have the roof specially reinforced, and we assembled the monster piece by piece right here. It isn’t going anywhere.”
She whacked him on the arm.
Faintly she realized that they hadn’t been so easy or playful with each other since their wedding night. But she couldn’t seem to care too much.
“Let me see if the Stargazer can show you something good,” he said.
He consulted two notebooks, changed the telescope’s coordinates, then sat down before the eyepiece to ascertain that he had what he wanted. “I’m sure you won’t need me again after tonight, now that you have met your one true love,” he said, yielding his seat, “but I hope you’ll remember me fondly.”
Impulsively, she gripped his shoulder as she passed him.
He glanced at her as if startled.
Their eyes remained locked for several seconds before she, a bit awkwardly, let go of him to see what he had found for her.
* * *
Before the eyepiece she gave a trembling, almost orgasmic sigh. “Is it—my goodness—it is Neptune? It really is blue, like the ocean.”
Her pleasure was bittersweet in Felix’s chest. He watched her. He had been watching her ever since they met and he suspected that he would go on watching her for the foreseeable future.
When she had admired Neptune as much as her heart desired, they went outside the observatory. It was a magnificent, moonless night, the stars a million gems carelessly strewn across a swath of black velvet, with the hazy stream of the Milky Way flowing from north to south.
She tilted her head back; the Swan and the Lyre dominated the zenith of the sky.
“Deneb, Vega, Altair.” She whispered the names of the stars that made up the Summer Triangle.
The strand of pearls twined into her hair glowed, tiny stars in their own right against the rich darkness of her hair.
The soft blue lisse of her skirts billowed in the night breeze, a nimbus of captured starlight.
Her sleeves, made of translucent gauze, were rings of fairy dust pooled around her upper arm.
“Thuban. Polaris. Capella.” He joined her in the naming of old friends, faithful companions of his nocturnal life.
She took his hand in hers. Next came something even more amazing: She rested her head on his shoulder.
He reciprocated by putting his arm around her waist, the chaos in his chest expanding to the size of the universe.
A sensation of agony, almost.
He could no longer deny it: He was hopelessly in love with her.
* * *
Louisa fought against the words that kept rising to the tip of her tongue.
This is the most perfect night of my life. You are the most beguiling man I have ever met. And I have this most terrifying urge to tell you that I love you. That I have loved you all along.
“Do you have a favorite star?” he murmured.
She was thankful to give an answer that had nothing to do with the impulses of her heart. “Algol.”
“The Demon Star?”
The star’s luminosity varied every few days, which fascinated her. “Yes. What about you?”
“The North Star, always.”
How odd that he should prefer something constant and stalwart, while she was drawn to the mysterious and ever shifting.
In the case of Algol, there was a scientific reason for its inconstancy: The star was most likely a binary system, the weaker star of which periodically passed before the brighter star, reducing its luminosity as seen from Earth.
But what was his reason for being unpredictable? When would his thoughtfulness and consideration again be eclipsed by an inexplicable onset of distance and coldness?
Keep your secret a little longer—it is something that cannot be unsaid.
* * *
“Thank you for a memorable evening,” she said, as they entered her bedroom.
“Is it?” Felix searched her face, hoping for something that would make him feel less desolate.
Such a lonely feeling, being hopelessly in love.
Once he had told her that he found her more opaque than he’d expected, when it came to matters not directly related to physical desires. It was only truer now. If she were a book, then there were crucial passages written in languages entirely alien to him.
She pushed him into bed. “Of course. I love a monster instrument. And I love even better going from one monster instrument to another.”
He was rock hard. But her decided preference for his body he already knew—they had been ragingly in lust with each other from the beginning. But what of her mysterious heart and her enigmatic soul?
“Is that all you need to be happy, a pair of monster instruments?” He could not help himself.
The look she gave him was as veiled as the surface of Venus. She lifted his hand and sucked on his index and middle fingers, the inside of her mouth soft and moist. He grimaced with the jolt of pleasure.
“I also have your pretty face and your vast fortune. So, yes, my happiness is complete.”
She kissed him, lips, teeth, and tongue. Climbing atop him, she opened his shirt to the waist, nibbling each inch of torso she uncovered. But her eyes were on him, watching.
Could she detect it on his face, his need to intermingle their molecules and meld their atoms? Could she see through to all the deep, secret, cobwebbed places in his heart?
She undid his trousers. Her lips followed her hands, her tongue swirling about him in scalding, indecent ways. His hips flexed involuntarily, even as despair swamped him. She took him deep into her mouth; his grunt of pleasure echoed against the walls.
“I love the size of you,” she declared, “the texture of you, the taste of you.”
And the rest of me?
He shut his eyes tight against the pleasure, against the pain, against the possibility of betraying all the yearning in his soul.