Rakes and Radishes Read Online Free PDF Page B

time.”
    ***

    Henrietta left the gentlemen downstairs in stiff, awkward conversation. She told them she needed to change. Now fifteen minutes after her maid had left, she still sat at her commode, dreading having to go downstairs and play the charming hostess.
    She wore her new gown in honor of her father’s good news. The dress was lower than any in the village, exposing a generous amount of her breasts. This was supposed to be for Edward. For the man she loved. As she’d hemmed it a week ago, she had imagined the skirt’s ivory shimmer cast in candlelight, sweeping over the floors of Edward’s London home as they welcomed their literary guests to some party or such. She would have hung on his arm, saying so casually, “Have you read my husband’s latest volume?” or “Did you not read my husband’s reviews in the newspapers?”
    My husband.
    Hot tears formed in her eyes. She rubbed her mother’s ruby pendant.
    Oh, Mama, just get me through this evening without breaking down.
    ***

    Downstairs, Henrietta surveyed dinner—a sad meal for a celebration. Boiled lamb floated in a muddy sauce of limp celery. What looked like herrings hid under thick mustard butter. Greasy duck. A soggy head of cauliflower and a bowl of quince pudding. She wished she had remembered to tell Mrs. Potts to prepare something fancy. They must look like flats to the eloquent, continental Mr. Van Heerlen.
    Mr. Van Heerlen waved off the footman and drew out Henrietta’s chair.
    “I’m sorry. I’m sure you are accustomed to finer food in your travels,” she said, trying to point out that while their table was not so elegant, at least she perceived the difference.
    “It is not the food I enjoy, but the company.” Mr. Van Heerlen’s cheek brushed her ear. His skin felt soft, as if he had just shaved.
    He took the seat to Henrietta’s left, while Kesseley unceremoniously dumped his large frame in the seat to her right. Samuel curled up at his feet.
    The footmen brought forth the vinegary red wine and poured it into everyone’s glasses. How Henrietta wished she could have sent the servant back for a prized Spanish red or such. But they never had anything so impressive, just the wine available at the merchant’s in Ely.
    “Mr. Watson, may I be so presumptuous as to give a toast on this momentous evening?” Mr. Van Heerlen appealed to her father.
    “Please, consider Rose House as your own home,” her father replied.
    Mr. Van Heerlen stood and held his glass before him. “A-a-astronomy,” he began.
    “Pardon me, I am a little nervous this evening. Astronomy is the work of envious mortal men, whose eyes are always lifted to the heavens, enchanted by her beauty and mystery. She lures us, seduces us, whispers in our ears that inside her whirling wondrous world is everything we long for, everything we lack. Nothing in this world can hold to the beauty of the stars, no art, poem or music. And we astronomers grow jaded, discontent in our skins, finding this world vulgar and base.”
    He paused. Henrietta thought he was finished and started to raise her glass, but he cleared his throat and continued. “At least that is how I felt when I received an invitation to Rose House. For Mr. Watson declared a preposterous thing for a relatively unknown astronomer. He had mathematically proven another planet existed behind Uranus. Of course, this had been speculated for years, but always came to nothing. My first thought—I shamefully admit—was to decline the invitation. But something, I dare not say what, told me to accept. A divine intuition, some would say.”
    Kesseley’s chair creaked as he settled deeper into it. He ran the fingers of his free hand under his cravat. He looked at her, his gray eyes appearing black and almost dangerous in the low light. She could see his pulse throb along his neck. Her gaze drifted down his sloppy cravat to his chest. Was it still the skinny flat board of a boy’s? From the rise of his coat, she could only