Regret rose, bitter as bile. But she could not strike what had been done. And if she didn’t put the telescope back in the garret, wash her face, change her dress, and go straight to the Atheneum, she’d probably lose her position on top of everything else.
The cool, quiet interior of the library soothed Hannah’s ragged nerves. For the next eight hours, her actions were simple and straight as nails. She logged half of an archive, filed a stack of periodicals, and gave a brief tour to a handful of tourists from Virginia whose loud voices rattled her nerves.
At two o’clock, desperate for occupation, she turned to the cabinet of curios with her duster and polishing cloth. Hannah had personally begged, borrowed, or otherwise acquired each item in the collection over her years at the Atheneum, including the cabinet itself. It was as nearly as long as a coffin, and fashioned of English rosewood, with a series of double glass doors that each had its own tiny brass lock.
Inside, carved ivory chessmen from Cameroon nestled near Scottish scrimshaw. There was a feathered, embroidered headdress from Feejee and an elaborate gold filigree bracelet from Egypt. And on the very top shelf, a tiny carved wooden girl sat upon an equally tiny chair, her chin resting in her hands. The captain who’d donated it to the Atheneum said it was Japanese, and it had the classic, simple lines of art from that nation. The girl sat like a comma, a gesture in wood. Hannah had never been fond of dolls, but the little figure had tugged at her from the moment it had arrived. She put the girl in a different spot in the cabinet each time she opened it, as if it would benefit from viewing the other artifacts at a new angle.
She’d just dusted the wooden girl and put her in the center of the headdress when Isaac Martin walked into the Atheneum. He entered the room and removed his cap when he noticed a pair of young ladies who’d been browsing through pattern books looking at him. They stared at him for a moment, then one nudged the other and she nodded to acknowledge the gesture. Then they ducked their heads back down into the pages like plovers diving for dinner.
Hannah kept command of her features, though a lurch of fear roiled her belly. What was he doing here? She hoped no one would notice that her hands were shaking. In case they should, she crossed her arms as if she felt a chill.
He crossed the room, a book tucked under his arm. Hannah’s eyes darted to his face, then away, but in that brief moment she could see that he was struggling to keep his face from showing anything but a student’s polite distance.
Hannah put her hands in her pockets and fumbled for the miniature key-ring, then the key for the door in front of her, relieved to busy herself locking it.
“I have,” he answered, sliding it across the top of the cabinet. It was her book, from the night before.
“I thank thee,” she said. “I hope you found it illuminating.” She stared at him directly, willing him to be cautious. He didn’t look nervous in the least.
“I have many questions,” he said. “I am finding it difficult to under stand.”
“It’s not so complicated,” Hannah said, glancing around to see who was near. There was the pair of women, who seemed engrossed in a catalogue; Miss Norris, who was copying out a passage for an elderly trustee. Hannah turned back to Isaac.
“The rules that govern the Universe are quite clear,” she said. “I should think our lessons would have helped thee grasp that concept.”
He nodded, but kept his hand on the book.
“And yet, you have instructed that these rules cannot explain all things in the Heavens,” he said. He seemed amused, but Hannah felt the opposite. “Are there not elements that are not obeying these rules?”
“What is thy question, exactly?” Hannah snapped. Miss Norris looked up, as did her visitor.
Isaac leaned forward over the cabinet slightly, so that only she could hear him. The scent of his skin reached her, and with it the memory of his body beside her. Hannah swayed a little.
“Can I come this night?” he asked. “For a lesson? Time is short.”
Say no.
But the tentacles reached into her throat, down into her chest, deeper, into her very core, sucking the words away. She nodded.
“Come at dusk,” she whispered.
He straightened his back, took his hand off the book, and left the building, not looking at anyone, though everyone in the room turned to watch him go. Hannah put her hand where his had been. It was warm.
At four o’clock, she watched the last of the day’s visitors—a boy of about twelve, with hair the same orange color as his father’s and every one of his three brothers: a lesson in hereditary properties if ever there was one—bound down the steps and race toward home. She was about to close the door behind him and finish the day’s tasks when a familiar figure appeared on the steps and hailed her.
“Dr. Hall.” Hannah opened the door again and stepped forward to take his elbow, feeling a flush creep up her neck when she remembered how she’d run away from the Coffey dinner table the evening before. “Come in, please.”
He glanced at the key in the lock but didn’t pause.
“Good,” he said, and stepped through the portico. Hannah pulled the door closed behind him, flipped the card to
Closed
, and followed the clack of his cane into the shadowy space.
He paused before her desk, then settled into the chair in front of it and laid the cane across his knees. Hannah settled in her own chair, hands folded on her desk like the pupil she had been, attentive and diligent. When he did not immediately speak, she cleared her throat.
“I regret taking my leave so abruptly last night,” she said. “I was not myself.”
He shook his head.
“Regret is a wasted emotion, Hannah,” Dr. Hall said. “It offers no comfort to the soul, for what’s done cannot be undone. This, on the other hand . . .” He picked up the cane and swung it in an arc, indicating the bookshelves surrounding them. “Shakespeare. Milton. Plato. Euclid. Here is where comfort lies. In knowledge. Especially when shared.”
She flushed, remembering his pointed comment at the table the night before, then glanced at him, hoping she could gauge his intentions. Maybe she’d been mistaken in thinking his attention was anything besides the sincere interest of an aging mentor, lonely for company.
Dr. Hall’s thinning tuft of grey-black hair was swept up off his high forehead, silver spectacles dangling from a chain around his neck, giving him the look of a ruffled snowy owl.
“We’ve rather traded positions, it seems,” he said.
“I’d be loath to even try and approximate thy command of the classroom.”
He brightened, then fiddled with a magazine on her desk before peering up at her with a curious expression.
“On the subject of students, I’m interested in hearing more about thine. We didn’t get to finish our conversation on the matter the other evening.”
Hannah hoped her face didn’t reveal anything.
“Did we not?”
“Thy private student. A Negro crewman of the
Pearl
, I believe?”
“Second mate. He’s from the—the Western Islands, I believe,” she answered. Hannah wondered first where he’d gotten such detailed information, and then if he was about to subject her to a lecture about the man’s prospects for advancement. Or worse.
She paused and slipped the lesson she’d been preparing for Isaac under a pile of papers on her desk.
“I didn’t realize thee had a passion for the improvement of the lower classes,” he added. “I never saw it in thee before.”
“I harbor no such passions,” Hannah said, unspooling each word with caution. “It is a matter of a fee for services. Nothing more or less.”
“I hope it doesn’t interfere with thy own work.”
“I don’t see how it would.”
“Well, I thought thee fully occupied by thy position here, and I’m told the Coast Survey contract has materialized.”
“It has,” Hannah said, seeing an opportunity to change the subject. “We’re hoping for new instruments from Washington.”
She stopped short of saying more: any discussion of the Coast Survey was sure to lead to one about Hannah’s future.
Dr. Hall was nodding as if there was more he wished to say, and then he held up a hand as if to stop her from going on.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m aware. But there is something about which I’ve been remiss in not speaking to thee directly. I shall speak it now, if thee will hear me.”
Hannah flinched. Her efforts to hide her lapse in Discipline— not to mention reason— had not gone unnoticed, after all.
“I believe thy father has spoken with thee of my . . . I don’t wish to say offer. Nor can I say feeling, for though I hold thee in the highest regard, I certainly cannot profess a romantic sentiment of the kind exalted by thy peers—or, of late, thy brother—in these times.”
He waved his hand in front of his face as if to dismiss all sentiment from the ether.
Hannah moved her hands from her lap to the edge of her chair and held on, trying not to be overtaken by the urge to laugh wildly from the combination of relief and disbelief. Had any woman, anywhere, ever entertained a proposal that began thus?
“In any case,” he went on, pinning her in place with his stare, “what I wish to say is that thy position is untenable. When thy father removes, thee will be in need of a new situation, whether it be now or a year from now. As I say, I do not pretend to veil this situation with any kind of romantic puffery. Rather, we are two like-minded adults, and should we commence to join as husband and wife, I believe the result will be mutually beneficial. Thee might remain here and continue thy astronomical work and studies—indeed, I would insist upon it.”
“And what can thee expect to gain from this . . . arrangement?” Hannah asked. She no longer felt like laughing. Instead, she was confused. His interest wasn’t a matter of romance, as he’d clearly stated.
“I’m not a young man, Hannah. I don’t travel as I once did, and without the school . . . well, thy intellect as a daily companion would alone be enough to suggest the idea’s prudence. And thee will find me agreeable to whatever work thee wishes to pursue.”
A pleading note crept into his voice, though his eyes held a hard certainty.
“You want to marry my mind?” she said.
The vulnerability he’d allowed a moment before vanished.
“I didn’t mean to offend thee,” she said, hoping to soothe him. “It’s only that I’m surprised. Thee has the best mind I’ve ever known. And there is good sense in what thee suggests.”
Her words vibrated with their own truth. There
was
good sense in his reasoning. He offered ballast, a means for her to stay on the Island and continue her work. At least there was no emotion attached to the offer, which removed the awkwardness she’d felt about George’s proposal. What Dr. Hall’s lacked in warmth it made up for in practicality. And what other options did she have?
She felt the sensation of Isaac’s hand upon her shoulder, curling her body toward his in sleep. Hannah flushed.
“I will consider it,” she said. “I cannot give an answer at present.”
Dr. Hall nodded once and rose, hooking the cane over his arm, suddenly nimble. Hannah kept her head low as she followed him to the door, where she stepped in front to hold it as he passed through. But he paused and seized her arm.
“Take thy time. But, in the meantime, resume thy visits,” he said. “I have missed thy company.”
He held on a moment longer, though she didn’t utter another word, then went down the steps in the last of the late afternoon sun, leaving her with an uneasy mind and the faint impression of his hand upon her arm.
annah was still unsettled when she went out into the humid late afternoon, and once she was at home waiting for Isaac to come for his lesson, everything she touched went wrong. In the space of an hour, she burned the leftover mince pie she was heating for her dinner, pinched her thumb in the kitchen cupboard, and knocked over the small ceramic bird that had sat upon the windowsill for as long as she could remember. It landed on the floor and broke in two, its tiny bird head flying across the room like a bullet.
Everywhere in the kitchen there were signs of a woman: two fresh aprons upon a peg, the chowder pot scrubbed to gleaming, the wood floor swept, and the two long benches arranged neatly at either side of the table, like good students. Apparently Mary’s first order of business as a Price had been to tackle the mess Hannah had made preparing for Shearing Day.
Hannah wanted to think that Mary had hired a girl to come in and do the work, but she felt a wife’s hands in the order of the room. There was a warmth that had not been there before. Then she remem bered how cruelly she’d spoken to Mary, and winced. She’d been too harsh. Sinking onto one of the benches and looking around at the sparkling cookware, Hannah waited for tenderness to descend like a butterfly and land softly in her heart. But she still saw Mary as a gilded bird, not a worker bee. So what if Mary had swept a floor and scrubbed a pot? That didn’t make her a good match for Edward.
Her thoughts flickered to Dr. Hall. She’d always considered him a clear thinker, with morals as straight as a slide rule. Hannah smiled again when she thought of his proposal. What was the phrase he’d used to disclaim any sentiment associated with the institution of marriage?
Romantic puffery.
He’d gotten that much right: Mary and Edward were perfect specimens. It was clear that he assumed Hannah was like- minded on the subject and bore not a shred of sentiment. That she would view his offer as the only practical choice for a woman in her position, a reasonable outcome for two people bound by an intellectual passion and a shared community. All of which was true.
The longer she turned his proposal over in her mind, though, the more it troubled her. Dr. Hall’s age wasn’t the problem. The intensity of his gaze at the engagement dinner and his grip on her arm at the Atheneum had demonstrated his vitality; he might as well have stood up and beaten on his chest. But as her thoughts drifted from the practicality of a union with him to sharing his bed, his small body in his nightclothes, his hands reaching for her under the covers, she shuddered, then shook her head to clear the grotesque vision.
Hannah brought her hands to her face and massaged her temples. She felt bruised all over from her night on the ground beside Isaac, and fatigue weighed on her as if her bones had turned to iron. How had she fallen to such a state? And why had she invited him to her house? She should have told him to stay away. But it was already done.