VIOLET HAD always thought of scientific men as sober and staid, but there was an air of giddy excitement at Gresham College tonight.
Catching Ford’s gaze lingering on her bodice as they made their way through the narrow gatehouse off Bishopsgate Street, she folded her arms over her chest. She’d never appeared in public in such a daring gown, and it made her nervous, despite Ford’s equally showy attire. Perhaps a man could dress himself in the latest fashions and still be taken seriously, but would she be seen as frivolous and superficial?
“This was once the home of Sir Thomas Gresham,” Ford said as proudly as if the mansion belonged to him. “Founder of the college.”
Hand in hand—hers tingling—they crossed a simple courtyard toward the house, Violet’s knees feeling embarrassingly shaky. She tried her best to relax and concentrate on what he was telling her. After all, this was a place she’d always wanted to visit.
“When did the college open?” she asked.
“At the end of the last century, following Gresham’s death and that of his wife. He had no living heirs, you see, so he gifted his home to the people of London. He wished to make scholarship available free to every adult citizen.” Pushing open a heavy oak door, he guided her into a large chamber that looked medieval. “Here is the Reading Hall, where the lectures are given.”
“Oh, I wish I knew Latin so I could attend them.” Beneath a lofty scissor-beam ceiling painted in dazzling hues of red and gold, rows of wooden benches faced a lectern, behind which rose an exquisite oriel window. “What a heavenly place to learn.”
“I imagine when the Greshams lived here, this would have been their great hall.” Ford walked her through the soaring chamber, their footsteps echoing on the well-worn stone floor. “The college’s seven professors have lodgings here at Gresham and are each required to give one public lecture a week.”
Whom might she meet here tonight? Breathless with anticipation, she peeked into some adjoining rooms, a bit disappointed when she found them unoccupied. “It just looks like a big, old house.”
“It was, remember. But you will see in a moment that although his family lived here for years, and his widow afterwards, Gresham had a college in mind when he built it.”
Another small courtyard lay outside the Reading Hall, leading to an arched passage that opened into a massive, grassy square with colonnaded buildings on all four sides.
“See?” Ford said. “It’s essentially a college quadrangle.”
Flaming torches bathed the space in a warm glow. Musicians were tuning up in one corner. Talking animatedly in small groups, guests dressed in every color of the rainbow crowded the enclosure, their chatter filling the air.
She was here. Finally, she was here. A serving maid handed her a goblet of canary, and she sipped the sweet wine, turning in a slow circle, imagining how the area might look in the daytime. Peaceful and meditative. Shut off from the hubbub of London by the buildings all around.
“I can picture it quiet,” she said, “students leisurely crossing the grass, or perhaps hurrying if they’re late.”
“Can you picture it paved over and crammed with shopping stalls?”
She looked down at the fresh green grass beneath her feet. “Was it?”
“Until recently. After the Great Fire, the whole administration of the City moved into the buildings, and the tenants of the Royal Exchange set up here in the quadrangle until it was rebuilt. A hundred small shops.”
People strolled by, men alone and some couples, nodding acknowledgments without interrupting their conversation. She and Ford seemed to be among the youngest attendees. ”How long has the Royal Society been meeting here?” she asked.
“Since 1660, save during the past seven years. We were incorporated under Royal charter in 1662. On the fifteenth of July. So something good happened that particular St. Swithin’s Day,” he mused. “It must not have rained.”
She shot him a sidelong glance. “What do you mean?”
“Never mind.” A private smile curved his lips as he began walking her around the perimeter, pointing out all the professors’ lodgings. There were professors of music, physics, geometry, divinity, rhetoric, astronomy, and law—and by the time she heard about all of them, she was dizzy with new information.
Or maybe dizzy with something else. It was like a fairytale, being here in this place, among these extraordinary people…with Ford.
“Do you like to dance?” he suddenly asked. The musicians had begun to play. A lilting tune wafted over the quadrangle. A temporary floor of wood had been constructed over a patch of the new grass.
Although she’d had lessons along with her sisters, Violet had never danced much. At the balls her family had managed to drag her to, she’d always done her best to fade into the background—so much so that Rose had taken to calling her a wallflower, claiming she clung to the walls like Father’s flowering vines.
But this was a magical night—a night that called for her to rise above her normal fears. In her whole life, she might never see a night like this again, and she was determined to make the most of it.
“I cannot claim to have much experience,” she heard herself saying. “But I wouldn’t mind giving it a try.”
Immediately she thought about taking back the words, but clamped her lips tight. Handing their goblets to a passing servant, Ford led her closer to the music.
The tune ended and another began. A minuet. Taking her by both hands, he swept her onto the makeshift dance floor.
She knew the steps, and for the first time, her vision sharp through her spectacles, she didn’t worry about tripping. His dancing was precise if not precisely graceful, exactly as she would have pictured. She was watching him, smiling to herself, when she suddenly realized her own feet were keeping pace.
Perhaps dancing wasn’t so tiresome, after all—when one happened to be dancing with the best-looking member of the Royal Society.
Cool night air breezed over her skin. She met his eyes, and her cheeks flushed at the intensity of his gaze. She wondered what he was thinking. Here beneath the stars, he seemed different, in his element. Not that he was reserved in any circumstances, but she’d expect a man of science to be more like her, preferring solitude to social occasions. Which just went to show how little she could trust her preconceived notions.
He took her hand again as they turned, and she found herself enjoying this particular social occasion more than she’d thought possible. For once, she had no desire to hide out, no wish to stay safely at home.
They rose on their toes, and he pulled her closer. Closer than the dance required, close enough to make butterflies flutter in her stomach. To make the Master-piece’s words flash in her mind.
Pushing those thoughts away, she broke eye contact, needing a moment to compose herself.
The dance floor had become crowded. Gentlemen outnumbered ladies by double or more, and the wooden platform was surrounded by clusters of them absorbed in conversation. Violet caught more than a few glances aimed her way. She suspected people were wondering what she was doing here with Ford.
Or wondering about her spectacles. Did they look odd with her formal gown and hairstyle? A niggling thread of insecurity invaded her dreamy, perfect evening, lodging itself in her stomach.
No sooner had she and Ford made their way off the dance floor than they found themselves besieged by curious men. Instinctively, Violet crossed her arms over her chest again.
“Trentingham’s eldest, are you not?” One of the gentlemen offered her a courtly bow. “I’m pleased to meet you,” he added. “Christopher Wren.”
She struggled to keep her face neutral. Christopher Wren! Mathematician, scientist, architect…the man personally chosen by the king to rebuild all of the City’s churches that had burned in the Great Fire. She was surprised to find him no taller than she.
And she was surprised that he knew who she was. She’d thought she’d been invisible to society, hidden away on her family’s estate.
“Violet Ashcroft.” She bobbed a curtsy. “I’m glad to make your acquaintance.”
“Are those a new sort of spectacles?” he asked without further preliminaries. Not at all the imposing personality she’d pictured, he seemed cheerful and open. She guessed him at around forty years of age. “May I see them?” Before she gave permission, he reached out eagerly.
She slipped the spectacles off and handed them to him. “Lord Lakefield made them for me.”
“I’m not surprised.” Mr. Wren turned them in his hands, then raised them to his own lively brown eyes and blinked. “Do they help you to see?”
“Very much. They’ve changed my life.”
Mr. Wren nodded thoughtfully, his wavy brown periwig moving along with his head. Beneath a patrician nose, his mouth curved pleasantly, as though he smiled often.
He turned to Ford. “This frame to hold them on the face, it’s brilliant. Why didn’t I think of it myself?”
Ford laughed. “You’ve thought of plenty. Give another man a turn.”
Another face peered over Mr. Wren’s shoulder. “What have you there?”
“Spectacles,” he replied. “Designed by Lakefield here, with a clever frame to hold them on the face.” Leaning forward, he gently slid the eyeglasses back on Violet.
“Lovely,” the newcomer said. “Both the spectacles and the lady.” A few years younger than Mr. Wren, the man topped him by but a couple of inches. His physique somehow looked crooked, his face twisted and much less than beautiful. But his large, pale head was crowned with a wig of dark brown curls so delicate they made Violet envious.
“Robert Hooke,” Ford introduced him. “May I present Lady Violet Ashcroft?”
“I’ve read your book Micrographia,” Violet gushed, overwhelmed to find herself encountering yet another great name. “It’s marvelous.”
“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.” Mr. Hooke’s gray eyes smiled along with his thin mouth, but in contrast to Mr. Wren’s, his face crinkled in a way that suggested he rarely grinned. “The gardener’s eldest, are you not?”
“Is my father’s hobby so well known, then?” she wondered aloud.
“Legendary.” Mr. Hooke shifted his awkward form. “Charming man, though,” he added after a moment.
Ford touched Violet’s arm. ”Mr. Hooke is Gresham’s Professor of Geometry,” he told her. “He lives here, right under that new observatory they’re building.” He indicated a corner of the quadrangle, where a small, square tower poked up from the roofline, surrounded by scaffolding.
“Convenient,” Mr. Hooke said. “If I fall down stumbling drunk, I’m close to my bed.”
They all laughed.
“How go the plans for St. Paul’s?” Ford asked.
The two older men exchanged a glance, the kind shared by friends with secrets between them. Odd to think that such a cheerful person and a curmudgeonly one would be close.
“I’m working on a model,” Mr. Wren said carefully.
Hooke let out a snort. “Twelve carpenters are working on it, and he’s sunk five hundred pounds into it already. We can only pray the king likes it and the clergy give their approval.”
“Approval for what?” someone asked in a voice with an Irish lilt. And before she knew it, Violet was introduced to Robert Boyle, a tall, thin man who also wanted a look at her spectacles.
No sooner had he finished exclaiming over them than another fellow walked up. Mr. Boyle handed him the lenses, and without them on her face, all Violet could tell about the newcomer was he was short and a bit stout.
“They belong to you, my lady?” he asked after examining them closely. He returned them with a bow. “Isaac Newton, at your service.”
“Lady Violet Ashcroft,” Ford introduced her. “The Earl of Trentingham’s daughter.”
“Ah, of course.”
With the spectacles safely back in place, Mr. Newton looked to have five or so years on Ford. Under a broad forehead, his brown eyes were set in a sharp-featured face with a square lower jaw. He was handsome despite the prematurely gray hair peeking out from beneath his wig.
“We’re pleased you remembered to attend,” Mr. Boyle teased him.
Everyone but Violet laughed, and her expression must have shown her confusion. “Mr. Newton is known to be a bit absentminded,” Ford explained.
“That is an understatement of the greatest magnitude,” Mr. Hooke said, eliciting more laughter. “He once entertained me for supper and went off to fetch more wine. An hour later I found him in his study, working out a geometrical problem. He’d completely forgotten I was there.”
“It was an important problem,” Mr. Newton protested good-naturedly. Violet couldn’t help noticing that, compared to the others, he looked rather slovenly. His suit was finely made, but so wrinkled she wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’d slept in it.
Mr. Wren rubbed his chin. “Tell her about that time you rode home from Grantham.”
“That could happen to anyone.”
“I think not.” Mr. Wren turned to Violet. “He dismounted to lead his horse up a steep hill, and at the top, when he went to remount, he found an empty bridle in his hand. His horse had slipped it and wandered away unnoticed.”
Even Violet had to laugh at that.
And so an hour passed while it seemed she met most every Englishman connected with modern-day science. Between examining her spectacles and regaling her with stories, they talked casually of their various projects—while Violet could do naught else but listen in wonderment.
The king’s most favored architect, Mr. Wren had recently written a paper explaining how to apply engineering principles in order to strengthen buildings. He’d also patented a device for writing with two pens at once, and invented a language for the deaf and dumb, using hands and fingers to “talk.”
Besides Mr. Hooke’s improvements on the microscope that had allowed him to research and write Micrographia, he’d developed astronomical instruments that revealed new stars in Orion’s belt. Ford whispered that he’d show them to her one night. Mr. Hooke had also formulated a new law of physics, asserting that the extension of a spring is proportional to the force applied to it. A lively discussion broke out over his proposal to introduce the freezing point of water as zero on the thermometer.
Since Mr. Hooke often assisted Robert Boyle, the two talked about their experiments with the new air pump Hooke had built. Using it to create a vacuum, Mr. Boyle had proven that the pressure of a gas is inversely proportionate to its volume.
“That is now called Boyle’s Law,” Ford told her.
Violet drank it all in, silently thrilled to be in such company. Although some of these great men were aristocrats, many were not. Here, dukes learned alongside commoners. The Royal Society was open to men of every rank and religion, so long as the proposed member held an interest in promoting discovery and science.
As each new arrival exclaimed over the genius of Violet’s new spectacles, Ford basked in celebrity. And she didn’t feel uncomfortable wearing them at all. Being the center of attention wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d feared.
But as more eminent scientists gathered to praise Ford, she began to wonder if showing off his brilliant invention had been his real motivation for bringing her here. Disappointment took her by surprise, making the canary wine seem to sour in the pit of her belly.
True, he had never breathed a word about courting her. And she should have known better than to take his invitation as anything more than a friendly kindness.
But she suddenly realized that, somewhere deep inside, she’d begun to hope.
More fool her.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course Ford didn’t mean to court her. That wasn’t how the world worked—not for girls like Violet. She’d reasoned that out for herself at a young age, and seen nothing but corroborating evidence ever since. His kisses didn’t mean anything; she was simply the most convenient girl to hand.
It was slim pickings out in the country, after all.
Had displaying the spectacles been his true motivation for inviting her, or had it been something else? Sadly, if there was a meaning behind his kisses, it could only be one thing: that he wanted her inheritance.
She couldn’t decide which option was worse.
Her insides knotted with humiliation and anger—at both Ford and herself. She couldn’t seem to swallow past the lump in her throat, nor breathe through the ache in her chest. It didn’t matter that she should have known the truth all along. No amount of telling herself so lessened the hurt.
“Is Locke here yet?” Ford asked the ever-growing assembly.
“Inside,” Mr. Boyle said, waving to a chamber off the quadrangle. “Holding court.”
“Excuse us, gentlemen.” Taking Violet’s hand, he drew her away.
Her other hand came up to rub her churning stomach. ”I was enjoying that conversation,” she protested, pleased that the words betrayed no emotion.
“And they were enjoying you.” He smiled down at her, appearing as warm and sincere as ever. “We’ll talk to them again later.”
Her head spun with confusion.
The chamber Mr. Boyle had indicated turned out to be the refreshment room. Along one wall, long tables were laden with bottles of canary, Rhenish wine, and claret. Guests filled their plates from platters piled with fine cakes, macaroons, and marchpanes. Splendidly dressed gentlemen and ladies chatted while they ate, seated at small round tables. At one of these, a tall, slim figure stood with one foot perched on a chair, talking to a group that had clustered around him.
“John Locke,” Ford said, nodding in the fellow’s direction.
There was little in his appearance to suggest greatness. Although his speech was animated, his eyes looked melancholy, set in a long face with a large nose and full lips. Like Ford, he wore no wig, but his hair was straight and pale. His hands moved when he talked, his long fingers waving from the ruffled cuffs at his wrists.
As they drew close, Violet could hear his words. “Government,” he said, “has no other end but the preservation of property.”
A squat, balding man crossed his arms. “How can you speak such blasphemy? I’ve never heard such a thing.”
“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.”
“He’s quite busy now,” Ford whispered. “An introduction must probably wait for later.”
“Oh, but may I stay and just listen?” And spend a while apart from you, so I can think. She waved an arm toward the tables bulging with refreshments. “Go have something to eat. You look starved. I’ll be right here.”