Uncommonly Intelligent Chapter 32: Feet of Clay, a pride and prejudice fanfic

Author's Note: You guys are so great! Thank you for being so understanding about my pace of posting. I was not able to post last weekend (I had a chapter completed, but when I was proofreading it, I thought it was boring. I'm new at writing, so I don't know all the rules, but I'm pretty sure that if the author finds it boring, the readers will, too. I wasn't happy with it, so I revised it and then was able to complete another, so I'm posting them together as a double-bonus-length chapter today. Please tell me by review or PM if the stretches without dialogue are still too long and boring.

The school term is now over, so I should be able to speed up my posting. Nothing like the pace of pros like sysa22 or LPK9, but better than I've been doing.

In a somewhat related note, Lizzy will express doubts about Darcy in this chapter, and my lovely readers may wonder what is taking so long for them to get together, but it is only my glacial speed of posting that makes it seem that long. Remember that in story time, they have known each other for only three weeks. At this point in canon, Lizzy detested him. I promise there will be an HEA.

Old Business: Hooray! Email notifications are working again. It looks like they began to work very shortly after I posted my previous chapter with the author's note complaining about it. It's probably just a coincidence, and I don't want to imply that I had anything to do with it, but… let's just say… I am entirely responsible for getting it fixed.

This Chapter: … will have some math jargon. If you're not into math, don't think of it as math, just think of it as jargon, as if you were watching a medical drama like House, and the doctors were discussing a case of coreopsis* of the liver or whatever. All you need to know is that the captain is testing Lizzy's knowledge.

Chapter 32 - Feet of Clay

Longbourn, Hertfordshire, Oct 23, 1811

"Just be careful," her father repeated.

"Yes, papa," she said over her shoulder.

"And nothing from the New Testament!"

"Yes, papa," she said more sharply, but immediately turned and gave him a smile to let him know she was joking before she closed the door behind her.

She had not been joking, but she did not want him to know that.

Lizzy was careful to close the door gently as she left her father's study, but she wanted to slam it. What was wrong with her? She had been growing less patient with her father's well-meaning advice for some years, culminating in the fiasco of last May, but lately it seemed as if she were especially prickly. Perhaps it was due to the stress of Mr. Collins' visit? And speak of the devil, there he was, hovering in the hallway to intercept her, looking pathetic. He opened his mouth to speak, but she was too quick for him.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Collins, but I have an urgent matter to discuss with my sister," she said.

Yes, she thought as she brushed past him, of course her irritability was due to the stress of Mr. Collins. Not only his presence, not only his unwelcome attentions toward her, but also her father's close-minded dictates about him. Her father's mind was made up about Collins the moment he read his first letter, long before meeting him. Lizzy had tried to persuade him to keep an open mind, but to no avail. While he certainly had the right to give his opinion, he did not have the competence to give commands to Lizzy on how to handle Collins. And while it was perfectly correct for him to take precautions with a total stranger under their roof, he had no right to tell her not to allow Collins in the house after his death, possibly years from now. They did not know Mr. Collins, and so they could not know whether he might be a perfectly acceptable master for Longbourn, especially if Mary were telling him what to do.

And Lizzy thought it entirely plausible that Mary could persuade Collins to transfer his unquestioning obedience from Lady Catherine to herself. They needed to be cautious, of course, but they should give him a chance, for there would be many advantages to her sisters staying at Longbourn after their father died. The ability for them to say, "Yes, I live at my father's estate in Hertfordshire" when meeting an eligible bachelor at a London ball was just one of them (once he was secured, there would be plenty of time to explain that their father was the owner emeritus). The possibility of making more improvements that required long-term investments was another. Buying more land, setting up a mill and a brickwork, and even indoor plumbing were all in her plans.

Collins could hardly do less than her father, she thought, and then was immediately ashamed for it, but it was true. Her father had never been a proper master. He had retained his brother's steward and let him run things, then he had let Lady Rutherford's steward run things, and then he had let Lizzy run things.

Mary had just finished dressing and was about to leave the bedroom when the door burst open, and Lizzy entered, still frowning.

"Lizzy, what is wrong?" She smiled sympathetically. "Was it Mr. Collins, or papa?"

"Yes," answered Lizzy.

"Then I will leave you to collect yourself," said Mary with a giggle, but as she started to leave, Lizzy stopped her, and closed the door.

"Mary, I fear that we will need to keep our thoughts on Mr. Collins a secret from our father," said Lizzy. "He is quite opposed to any connection with him. If Mr. Collins proves to be suitable, our father may or may not come around in time, but if we are open in our plans, he may send Mr. Collins packing and forbid him to return, which would end any chance of determining whether he might suit you."

Mary nodded. "I see. What about our sisters?"

"Jane always sees the best in everyone, so she should be safe. But for now, I believe that concludes the list."

"I understand." She looked at Lizzy closely. "Why do you not lie down for a while longer? I could feel you tossing and turning last night, and you seem as if you could use more rest. We can get together after breakfast and talk further." Mary hugged her and left the room.

Lizzy thought that was an excellent idea, for in truth she had not slept well. She flung herself onto the bed, heedless of her dress. If it became wrinkled, so much the better. The last thing she wanted to do was entice Mr. Collins.

Her thoughts swirled. She so wanted to help dear Mary. Jane would always be first in her heart, but it was Mary who understood her best. None of her sisters were dullards, but Mary was the most intelligent. Although Lydia might well be her equal, for while she was not as studious as Mary, she seemed to be very quick in learning something that interested her. It occurred to Lizzy that Lydia might pretend not to care about the more traditional areas of study because she knew that she could not compete with Lizzy, and she hated to be second best in anything.

Mary was not only intelligent, but perceptive. She had guessed one of Lizzy's smaller secrets - that she had outgrown Longbourn. But one of her larger secrets was that she had also outgrown her father.

As a young child, she thought her father knew everything, for he taught her Latin, Greek, and ancient history, and expounded on the meaning of difficult English words. But as she grew older and found that he could teach her little about any other subject, she began to realize that he was reasonably intelligent, but no more than that. Perhaps not even as intelligent as Lydia.

Mr. Bennet would have been astonished if he had known her opinion, for he had always deceived himself about his intellect. As a student at Eton and Oxford, he had been near the top of his classes in Latin and Greek, not because of any extraordinary ability, but because most boys found the subjects dull, and made little effort in them. He considered his high marks in the classics as proof that he was more intelligent than his classmates. He was average at best in his other classes, but he did not care because he found them dull, completely missing the inconsistency. His belief in his innate superiority was reinforced when he lectured to the same type of uninterested students at Oxford. While it was true that he was not acknowledged by his peers on the faculty as brilliant, he ascribed that to jealousy. And when he became master of Longbourn, he continued to use Latin and Greek as his yardsticks for estimating a man's intelligence. He therefore disdained the company of his fellow gentlemen in Hertfordshire, who were not scholars. But he would have been astonished again to learn that Lizzy would sooner trust the judgment of her uncle Philips, or even Sir William Lucas, over that of her father on any subject other than the classics.

Her father simply knew nothing about the wide world. He thought his experience and wisdom more than made up for Lizzy's breadth of knowledge, but in truth, he had very little of either. He had been cloistered at Eton, then Oxford, then Longbourn almost his entire life, places where everything was provided for him and decisions could be left to others. He had had only one good friend in his life, a Mr. Haskell, who was also a cloistered professor at Oxford. He might be able to find his way around the Acropolis or the Roman forum, but you could drop him three streets from Hyde Park, and he would have difficulty finding it.

He had never demonstrated wisdom or good judgment when acting on his own. There had been only one romance in his life, and in that, he had been completely duped. His former steward had stolen from him for years, and he had never detected it. He had been swindled in a stock deal, and only learned his money was gone several months later. Even now, as the master of a profitable estate, he was all but helpless in business and contracts without the assistance of Lizzy or his brothers by marriage. Worse, the availability of that aid, combined with his natural indolence, meant that he had no incentive to learn.

In short, though he was not foolish, he was unqualified to advise even someone like Mr. Bingley, let alone Lizzy. That was one secret that Lizzy could never reveal to anyone. But there were others.

For the past few years, she had been allowing everyone to believe that as she was reaching physical maturity, she had also leveled off mentally. It was very easy for them to believe, for what they already knew of her would have seemed impossible had they not seen it with their own eyes. But the truth was that her mind continued to increase in power and scope.

Her brain was now always in what she had used to call "attentive mode." When she was younger, she had excellent recall of what she saw, heard, or read, but she had to concentrate while reading or observing if she wanted to remember things in minute detail. Now, she no longer had to concentrate. She could remember everything she experienced as if the book or scene was right in front of her, even if she was not paying much attention at the time - as with Mr. Collins' inane conversation in the dining room this morning.

Her ability to reason and correlate information was also increasing. As a child, she could do arithmetic in her head almost instantly; now she could do the same with differential equations. She had always read a typical book rapidly and with great retention, but she could now read a page of virtually any book, no matter the difficulty or the language, almost at a glance, with near-perfect recall and understanding.

And though Lady Rutherford had told her that she would never master the art of reading people, she very nearly had. She constantly reminded herself that she could be wrong, especially with strangers, but she had not been wrong for quite a long time. She believed that she must be seeing tiny cues that did not register on her conscious mind, but that gave her a nearly infallible intuition. Her immediate impressions were usually right, but when they were not, her subconscious mind corrected her within a very short time. It had happened recently at Netherfield, when she was miffed at something Mr. Darcy had said, but within a few minutes realized that he had been trying to help. And most recently, she had revised her opinion of Mr. Collins. His straying eyes seemed to be due to a lack of decorum, rather than an aberrant character. He was no more lecherous than any young man, but being raised by an illiterate tenant farmer, he simply did not know how to behave in polite society. She wondered whether her mind might continue to gain in power so that she could one day read people correctly at a glance, just as she could now do with the page of a book.

She began to feel cold, so she pulled the covers over her, dress and all. She drifted in and out of a half-awake state, her thoughts running free.

She should not be so hard on her father. Even though he sometimes vexed her, it was with well-meaning advice, not like the cruel jibes he had used to inflict on her mother.

Still, it was time to leave Longbourn. Her mother was provided for, her sisters had good dowries and good educations, and they would no longer run a mile to catch a glimpse of an officer. Fate had given her the final proof that she could leave with a clear conscience - at the most critical time of the year, when the contracts for the crop sales were drafted, Lizzy had been at Netherfield, tending to Jane. She had handled the contracts by correspondence, and they had never had a better year for income. If she could do it from Netherfield, she could do it from London.

She had nearly six months until her majority. As intelligent as Mary was, that would be plenty of time to train her. She would be just a few hours away if something arose that Mary could not handle, and as smoothly as things were running now, she could not imagine anything short of a real disaster - a flood, or an epidemic - that she could not right in a day or two.

She had been given a great gift, and she was wasting it in Hertfordshire. She had read every book in her father's library and had walked every trail within five miles of Longbourn. She needed to move to London, with all the opportunities it held. There, she would have access to countless books, along with the museums, plays, and concerts that brought them alive. She would be able to find people from whom she could learn Asiatic and African languages, for she already knew all the European languages, other than provincial dialects. She had taught herself to read Mandarin and Hindi from books and foreign newspapers, but without native speakers at hand, she could not speak or understand those languages, and she knew that both China and India had other dialects with millions of speakers.

Most of all, she would be able to help her uncle Gardiner manage his burgeoning business. He would not challenge her father's authority, but he agreed with her that she was wasting her potential at Longbourn. He was as eager as she to let her become his de facto partner in his rapidly growing business.

And, she thought, he had no idea how successful they would become.

Even now, her increasingly large bonuses from her uncle attested to the value of her insights on business opportunities. The newspapers from all over the world her uncle sent her were read, digested, integrated, and correlated into invaluable advice. But she could do so much more if she were with him in London. In a business where time was of the essence, if she could attend meetings with him, rather than hearing the highlights by letter a day or two later, they could close deals much more quickly.

And it was not just the fact that her uncle could ask for her opinion sooner. He could bring her along to the meeting as "my young niece, had to take her because we have a social engagement in this area later today, hope you don't mind, she won't make a peep," and she could sit quietly while the men discussed business. She could not only hear the discussion first-hand, but could memorize any documents visible, observe the morale of the employees, and in general learn more about the other company than they would ever believe. And imagine what secrets she might learn if they met with the principals of a Chinese or Indian firm who conferred in their native language, secure in the knowledge that no Englishman could understand them!

She was confident that she could double or triple her uncle's business in a relatively short time, and that he would be happy to give her a percentage of the company in return, in addition to her father's 30%, which would no doubt also revert to her when her father passed. Her father's ownership was not on paper, and neither would hers be, but her uncle's word was as good as gold. The richest men in England were not the estate owners, but the merchants and industrialists. If the war ended any time soon and trade with Europe was restored, she might be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds within ten years.

And she had big plans for such a sum. She had always known how fortunate she was to have her gift, and that it was her responsibility to use it to the benefit of mankind. Five years earlier, she had thought that she might become a physician so that she could save lives, hence her semi-secret apprenticeship with Mr. Jones. But even then, she knew that it was a forlorn hope, for few people would accept the idea of a female physician. A midwife, yes. An apothecary, only if she were well known to them. A physician, never.

But as her uncle's business, and Bennet's share of that business, continued to grow, she realized that she had been thinking too small. As a physician, even if people accepted her as such, she could help perhaps a dozen people a day. But what if she founded a training and research institution for physicians? She could employ men to be the public face, if necessary, but she would make the decisions. She could offer medical training with very reasonable tuition, and waive even that for people who came from areas without adequate medical care, and who agreed to return to those areas to practice. She could have a hospital on the premises where physicians and students offered free treatment. And she could have laboratories where better medicines might be developed.

It would take a great deal of money, but she might help hundreds of people a day. If her institution became a favored charity among the ton, she might be able to expand into other cities, even other countries. The thought made her head swim as she daydreamed, beginning to doze again.

All of this would prevent marriage, she thought dreamily, at least for several years. She must have complete autonomy to see this through, and a married woman had virtually no autonomy. Her husband could forbid her to participate in trade, forbid her to visit anyone he did not wish her to see, forbid her even to leave the house or correspond with anyone. And he could beat her if she disobeyed.

Now why did Mr. Darcy's face appear in her mind when she thought about marriage? She did want to have children, and she imagined a little boy who looked like a young Darcy. Perhaps in ten years. Once the institute had too much headway to fail without her. She knew herself well enough to know that once she had children, she would devote herself to them, with perhaps only an hour here or there to help her uncle, much as she was doing now.

Her thoughts drifted back to Darcy. He would not beat her, she knew. But she was not so sure that he would allow her to soil his family's name by direct participation in trade.

No, she could not marry yet, she thought as she drifted more deeply into a doze. Unless there were a way to ensure his full-fledged support for her plans, she could not take a husband, no matter how cute his dimples. Stop that!

Her thoughts wandered back to her duty to help mankind. She could contribute in other areas, too. She could help scientists and craftsmen solve problems in various areas by writing papers under an assumed name, or more likely, several assumed names, to make it less obvious that the person writing about an improved design for a stove was not the same as the one writing about the latest discoveries in science or mathematics.

In fact, this had been the earliest source of contention between herself and her father. He had allowed her to help him with the papers he submitted to a group of fellow classicists, for there were only about twenty of them, and they were mostly as reclusive as he was. But he did not permit her to write papers in any other field, for he was afraid of being found out. He could understand Lizzy's papers about ancient Greek texts, but he could not understand her papers on science or mathematics, and he feared that even under an assumed name, someone might discover that he had submitted the paper. He would not fool anyone asking about it for a second. It might lead them to Lizzy.

Lizzy thought she had a solution when she informed her father that she had written to her uncle Gardiner, and he had answered that it would not be difficult for him to use his contacts to make it appear as if her papers were submitted from Russia. Instead of being pleased with this solution, her father became angry. He forbade her to discuss the subject with her uncle again, and had some harsh words for Gardiner about undermining his authority.

Lizzy had been deeply disappointed, but she knew that she could not expect a perfect life, or a perfect father. Her father was responsible for everything she was, and she could never repay him. Even if he had done it for his own amusement or curiosity rather than out of duty, and even if Lady Rutherford had been the true impetus, he had managed to give her one of the best educations in the world. She had often wondered whether there were other people like her, but who did not have the great fortune of being the daughter of an English gentleman. What if there were someone just as clever as she who had spent her entire life working from sunup to sundown in a rice paddy in China? Or herding sheep in Scotland? Or mending nets on the Isle of Man?

And in the grand scheme of things, what did it matter if she had to wait until her majority to start submitting papers? After all, it was not as if she had made any truly momentous discoveries.

And then, last May, she did.

A spike of anger brought her to wakefulness.

She thought again about that day some five months ago, when her father's intransigence had irreparably severed the bond between them. He would always be her father, she would always love him, and she would always treat him with respect and affection, but once she reached her majority, she would no longer defer to him, nor would she live under his roof. Next year, she would write to her uncle on April 13 to tell him to proceed, she would celebrate her 21st birthday on April 15, and she would step into the carriage that her uncle sent for her on April 16. Her biggest secret of all was that her uncle and she had already chosen the colors for her bedroom in the new home he was in the process of buying.

Coincidentally, it had been almost exactly ten years before the argument with her father last May that the entire improbable chain of events had been set in motion. Or perhaps even five years before that.

One of her father's rare visits to London occurred when Lizzy was quite young, and as usual, her father spent almost the entire visit reading in the library of his brother Gardiner. The highlight of that trip was when her uncle gave her a tour of the main warehouse of Mathers Imports, where he was a rising star. Lizzy was fascinated by the strange items from all over the world, and she became very interested in geography, and especially Africa, with its burning deserts, mighty rivers like the Nile and Congo that were so long that no one knew their source, and exotic tribes like the Hottentots and Zulus, who wore headdresses of fabulous plumage and capes of leopard skin. What maps she could obtain had great voids in the interior of Africa, because no civilized man had ever explored them. She dreamed that one day, she would lead an expedition to those mysterious climes.

While such dreams eventually went the way of most childhood fancies, her interest in geography did not wane, and a few years later, when her father and Lady Rutherford were in the midst of finding masters of all sorts to give Lizzy practical experience,* Lizzy asked whether they might find someone to teach her how ships were able to navigate the trackless sea.

As luck would have it, her uncle Gardiner knew of a man in Meryton who might suit. Very early in his career with Mathers Imports, Mr. Gardiner had become friends with the captain of one of the merchant ships employed by the firm. Captain Josiah Trent was nearly 50 years old and had just married a woman twenty years his junior, which was not unusual in a city filled with women whose only alternative to a marriage of necessity was a life of servitude. Sea captains at least had the advantage of being gone most of the time, which allowed a woman to have a roof over her head without the unpleasantness of an ill-humored husband underfoot, or under sheets.

Happily, this marriage turned out to be better than most. Captain Trent was a good man, and vigorous for his age, and his wife was a good woman. They soon had a daughter named Amy, and Trent doted on both of the women in his life.

Then disaster struck. In 1798, Captain Trent's merchant ship was captured by French privateers, and Trent himself was thrown into a miserable prison for nearly a year. He was then transferred to a slightly less miserable prison, whose jailers at least allowed him to write a letter to his wife, for he told them that she would pay a large ransom for his safe return. It was a lie, for he knew that by then she must be completely out of money due to his long absence. He had spent like a sailor before he married, so he had only a few hundred pounds in savings, and most of that was invested with an old and trusted comrade who had bought his own ship, and was now somewhere in the vicinity of China. He received a return letter in which, to his great relief, his wife informed him that Mr. Gardiner had been paying for his family's rent and food, and that they were well. Unfortunately, he could not explain to his jailers, who of course had read the letter before confronting him with it, why his rich wife needed assistance with her rent, so he was permitted no more letters and had his already spartan rations halved, but at least the agonizing worry about his family was relieved.

He was eventually repatriated, only to suffer a final blow when an epidemic of fever took his family scarcely a month after his return. Why his previously healthy wife and daughter should succumb while he survived, despite his own health being poor from over a year in prison with barely enough food to keep a man alive, only God knew.

He was broken in both body and spirit, and he told Edward Gardiner, now the owner of Gardiner Enterprises, that he had neither the ability nor inclination to sail again. Mr. Gardiner understood completely. Though it was not required, for the cargo had been lost, Gardner had paid Trent generously for his last voyage, and had also refused to be repaid for the funds he had spent on Trent's family, saying that as Trent had been imprisoned while in his service, it was only proper that he not let the burden of that fall on his family. Between that, and the success of his investment with his fellow captain, now back from his profitable voyage to China, Trent had nearly a thousand pounds, which would pay him 40 to 50 pounds a year in interest. That was more than sufficient for him to live on, for he became a recluse, living in a rented cottage in Meryton - another debt he owed to Gardiner, who had known of its availability because of his annual Christmas visits to that town. It satisfied Trent's requirements of a low rent - a bit over ten pounds per year - and a location of anywhere but London. Captain Trent had no desire to ever see London again.

Meryton, Hertfordshire, May 29, 1801

"Mr. Bennet," said Captain Trent, "I understand that you are Edward Gardiner's brother-in-law, and he is a man I respect. It is out of that respect that I reluctantly agreed to meet with you and your daughter, who he tells me is very intelligent. But I agreed only because I owe him a great debt, and I promised nothing beyond a meeting." He looked at Lizzy. "I told him that I had no inclination to tutor a female, and when I said that, I expected her to be a young lady, not a child. He did not tell me that she was merely..." He addressed Lizzy. "How old are you, little girl?"

Lizzy resented being called "little girl," but her father had admonished her that this man was not a tutor, that he likely had no desire to be a tutor, and that she would have to be on her best behavior to keep him from showing them the door the first time she acted out. So Lizzy resisted the impulse to hold up four fingers, as a little girl might, and simply said, "I had my tenth birthday last month, sir."

"Hmph. You do not look it." He looked at her father skeptically. "How old is she in truth?"

"Ten. She is small for her age."

Trent still looked skeptical, but shrugged and turned back to Lizzy. "In any case, we do not start teaching boys navigation until they are thirteen. Can you not get your brother to show you something until you are a proper age?"

As always, Lizzy had prepared for her practical instruction by quickly learning all she could about the theory of the subject, so that she could save everyone time by asking intelligent questions. She therefore said, "I do not have a brother, and I will not need much of your time, sir. I only need you to show me how to use the instruments of navigation. I dare say you could do it in a day or two."

Trent snorted and looked heavenward. "'A day or two', she says." He looked back down at Lizzy. "See here, little girl, there is much more to navigation than using a sextant and taking measurements. You need to know how to apply those measurements to the charts, and that takes mathematical knowledge that would take you years to learn. If you could learn it at all. I would not trust many of my midshipmen to guide me across the Thames."

"I repeat, sir, I do not intend to take more than a day or two of your time, let alone years. I only wish for you to teach me the instruments. I do not require you to teach me mathematics."

He scowled and stood up. "If you think you can navigate without mathematics, you are even more foolish than I thought. I have fulfilled my promise to Mr. Gardiner. I have met with you and considered your request. The answer is no. Good day."

Lizzy looked at her father imploringly. Reluctantly, Mr. Bennet decided that the captain would need to know about Lizzy's ability in mathematics, at least.

"Captain, I fear you misunderstood my daughter. She is not saying that she does not need to know mathematics. She is saying that she does not need you to teach her, for she has already learnt."

The captain snorted again. "Hmph. When most people say they know mathematics, they mean they know arithmetic. Navigation requires spherical trigonometry. Few boys learn plane trigonometry, let alone spherical trigonometry, even at Eton. Even at Cambridge."

"I know trig- trigonometry, sir," said Lizzy, stumbling over the word due to her fear that the man's refusal had been final.

Trent looked at her askance. He had not missed the stumble, and assumed that it was because she had never even heard the word before. "Oh you do, do you? What is the cosine of 30 degrees?"

"Root 3 over 2, but that is too simple. Give me three sides of a triangle, and I will tell you the angles."

The captain smirked. "Two, six, and ten."

Lizzy smirked back at him. "I apologize for being unclear, sir," she said. "Give me three sides of a triangle that is possible to construct."

For the first time, the captain smiled. "Heh. You would be surprised how many boys I've caught out on that," he said, "but very well. Five, twelve, and thirteen."

"That is still too simple, for that is a Pythagorean triple, but the answer is 90, 22.6, and 67.4. I can give you more decimal places if you wish."

Trent looked startled for a moment, but quickly recovered. "You gave yourself away by answering too quickly, little girl," he said, but he was looking at her differently now. "You obviously memorized those values. Still, I own that you do seem to have some knowledge of mathematics."

"Well, of course I memorized them!" said Lizzy. "But if you like, I will work them out by Taylor series."

"Taylor… " The captain looked confused. "Just a moment. Are we talking about the same thing? I meant that you memorized the answers for the first few Pythagorean triples. What did you mean?"

Lizzy drew herself up. "I meant that I have memorized the trigonometric functions for any angle."

Trent looked at her, then at her father, who shrugged, for he had not understood anything either had said for some time. Trent looked back at Lizzy, and then walked to a bookshelf and took out a well-worn tome, thumbed through it, and said, "What is the sine of 41 degrees?"

"Point six five six zero six. Would you like more digits?"

"No, that will do admirably." He shook his head. "Mr. Gardiner did not exaggerate, after all. I have never seen the like." He walked back to Lizzy and handed her the book. "Very well, little girl. You may take this home with you and start reading it. Come back in a week and we will see what you can do."

Lizzy accepted the book and looked at its cover. The Practical Navigator, by Moore. She handed it back to Trent and said, "I thank you, sir, for I believe that this book must mean much to you, and I am honored that you would loan it to me. But there is no need, for I have already read it, as well as the American version by Bowditch."

Trent shook his head again. "And I suppose you have memorized them, as well. No, don't tell me; I don't want to know. I will need a day or two to think about how best to teach you, for you are not like the midshipmen I have taught. Would Monday suit?"

"It would suit me perfectly, sir," said Lizzy, bouncing on her toes in excitement.

In fact, it had taken only a few hours for Trent to teach her to use the sextant, but the barrier between young and old had been breached, and he offered to show her more. Like her own father, he had often longed for a worthy student. Unlike her father, he had been very lonely, though he had not realized it. Lizzy visited him as often as she could, and every day at Longbourn, she would use the cheap sextant her father had obtained from his brother Gardiner to take a noon sighting. Whenever she visited, Captain Trent would compare her data with his, and then retrieve the log of one of his voyages and show her the sightings he had taken for that day, have her plot the progress his ship had made since the previous day, and determine the course for the next day. Over the summer, they "sailed" all the way to India together. In the late autumn and winter, when the sun set quite early, he taught her navigation by the stars, and then even more about astronomy, for like many sailors, he had fallen in love with the night sky.

But one day she approached his cottage only to find it buzzing with activity. Mr. Jones, the apothecary, was there, along with some of the neighbors. She learned that Captain Trent had fallen off his roof while attempting to patch a leak, and had broken his hip.

"Imagine," he scowled at her. "Forty years and more climbing 100-foot masts in the worst gales you ever saw, and I am done in by a ten-foot roof in calm weather."

Pushing sixty and still suffering from the effects of mistreatment and malnutrition in prison, the captain would likely not walk again, according to Mr. Jones. A second cousin and her husband generously agreed to take him in at their home in Norfolk.

And that was the last time that Lizzy saw Captain Trent, though she continued to correspond with him, writing letters every fortnight or so that her father would mail for her, giving him her latest data on the sun and stars, and telling him about her adventures in Hertfordshire. She was sad to see his handwriting deteriorate over the months, until a letter in a fresh new hand told her the captain would be dictating his letters henceforth.

Finally, the letters ceased. Lizzy feared the worst, and her fears were realized when shortly after her birthday in April of 1809, five weeks after she had received her last letter from the captain, Mr. Philips appeared on Longbourn's drive in a wagon, accompanied by a man she had never seen before. A few minutes later, her father asked Lizzy to join them in his study. She was not surprised to be informed that Captain Trent had passed away, but she was amazed to learn that he named her in his will. Mr. Hill and Freddie brought in a medium-sized sea chest from the wagon.

She sniffled through her tears. "But would it not mean more to his family or close friends?"

The stranger, who had been introduced as a solicitor from Norfolk, said, "His only family was his cousin and her husband, who are childless, and he left what money he had to them. And from what I have learned, you and your uncle are his only living friends."

Lizzy had not expected the chest to be full of pirate gold, but now wondered what the chest might contain if Captain Trent had left all his money to his niece. She was wondering what she would do with musty old clothes when the chest was opened to reveal riches beyond her imagining - the captain's logs from several of his voyages, his copy of The Practical Navigator, and his sextant and telescope, both very fine instruments, much more expensive and precise than the ones she owned. They became her most treasured possessions.

The telescope, especially, was priceless to her. It was an astronomical telescope, rather than a terrestrial one. When light passes through a refracting lens, the image is inverted. Terrestrial telescopes, binoculars, and opera glasses use extra lenses to make the image right-side up again, but every time light passes through a lens, some of it is absorbed.

An astronomical telescope does not do this. It uses fewer lenses, so the image stays inverted, but more light gets through, so fainter objects can be seen. The fainter the stars, the more there are of them, and the more precise tracking of a moving object like a comet or planet can be done against the background of fixed stars. It is as if you are measuring the length of an object with a tape marked every millimeter, rather than every meter. Her telescope was so powerful that she had to design and build a mount for it, because she could not hold it steady with only her hands.

Lizzy immediately began to track the progress of the planets across the background of fixed stars. Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter all paraded brightly across Hertfordshire's southern sky. And almost exactly centered between the brightly shining Mars and Saturn was a dim spot, barely visible to the naked eye, that was the newest planet in the solar system.

It was so new that it still did not have an official name. William Hershel, who discovered it in 1781, modestly declined to have it named after himself, but there was a method to his madness. He instead proposed that it be called George's Star, in honor of the king, and he received royal honors and a lifetime pension in return. Unsurprisingly, this name was not very popular outside of England, and so it did not stick. Various other names were proposed, including Minerva, which Lizzy favored. But the name that had the most momentum behind it was Uranus, the Greek god of the heavens, which Lizzy dared not utter within the hearing of Kitty or Lydia.

Lizzy rolled over and snuggled more deeply into the covers. In her imagination, she could hear Lydia's teasing voice saying, "Mr. Collins, were you aware that Lizzy was using her telescope to observe Uranus last night?" She resumed her half-dream.

Lizzy was most interested in the planets that were farther from the sun than Earth, and carefully recorded their progress. While she could easily memorize her data, a good scientist kept meticulous records so that his results could be verified by others. Once she had a few months' worth of data, she decided to see whether she could calculate the planets' orbits. Mars was the most amenable, for it moved the most quickly. Jupiter moved five times as slowly, and Saturn three times again as slowly as Jupiter.

Last, she turned to Minerva, which was twice as far from the sun as Saturn. This meant that it scarcely moved in the sky from one month to the next - less than half the distance covered by the tip of her little finger held out at arm's length - so she did not have enough data to calculate its orbit by the end of 1809, but she continued to stay up late or wake up early to gather her data whenever she could.

Finally, in the late spring of 1811, she felt she had enough to make a start. And she was astonished to see that her calculations did not match reality.

As unlikely as it was, Lizzy first had to assume that she had made a mistake. But unlike anyone else, she knew that she had not accidentally misread a measurement, or had written it down wrong, for her near-infallible memory allowed her to review everything she had done. She had not made a mistake in measuring, nor in transcribing her data.

Next, she reviewed her calculations. It was no trouble for her to do them in a different order, to see if she got the same answers. She did, and she did.

So, the anomaly was real. What could cause a planet to change speed?

She knew of three possible explanations. The first was only a matter of perception - the farther a planet was from the sun, the slower it moved. Minerva was *very* far from the sun, and took over 80 years to complete an orbit. That meant that the earth lapped it in their race around the sun in just a little over a year. When the earth passed it, it appeared from the earth's perspective that Minerva was moving backward, just as one carriage being overtaken by another will appear to move backward to a passenger inside the faster carriage, a phenomenon called "retrograde motion." This motion was what forced ancient astronomers to come up with complicated circles within circles to explain planetary motion when it was assumed that the earth was the center of the universe, and the much simpler explanation given by a heliocentric system was one of the reasons that it was so rapidly adopted, once Copernicus made his breakthrough.

But this was easily accounted for, and there was no possibility that the time of retrograde motion was miscalculated, for it could only occur when Minerva was on or near the line formed by the earth and the sun, and determining that time was as easy as looking at the sky.

The second possibility, however, had to be seriously considered, for it was a real change in the speed of a planet, rather than just a matter of perspective, and it was much more difficult to calculate when it occurred. It had to do with the fact that the orbits of planets were not perfect circles. They were ovals, formally called ellipses, and they were of various "ovalness," some nearly circular, some less so. One end of the oval was closer to the sun than the other. And according to the laws discovered by Kepler and later proved by Newton, the planet traveled fastest when it traversed the close end of the oval, and the slowest when it traversed the far end of the oval.

Although the motion itself was well understood, it was not so easy to determine how circular the orbit was, and how the ends of the oval were oriented. Again, it took Minerva over 80 years to orbit the sun, and it had only been discovered 30 years ago. That meant that astronomers had only observed it for a third of its orbit, although they were busily scouring older records of observations that might have mistaken Minerva for a comet or a star. That meant that they could easily be wrong about the orientation of Minerva's orbit, and therefore wrong about when it should speed up or slow down.

Lizzy, who had been observing Minerva for only parts of three years, did not have enough data to know whether that would explain things. And besides, she was much more interested in the third possibility.

Minerva had been out there for all of time, and had only been recently discovered. It was so far away that it was just barely visible to the naked eye, only if the night were very clear, and only if you knew exactly where to look.

What if there were another undiscovered planet out there? One perhaps too far away to see at all without a telescope. One so far away that it moved too slowly to notice, so that anyone who did happen to point his telescope at it would assume that it was just another dim star? One that was nevertheless large enough to exert a gravitational force on Minerva when the two were in the same general direction from the sun, enough to cause the anomalies in her data?

She devoured Laplace's text on perturbation theory and quickly taught herself to calculate the effect of one planet on another. She tested her knowledge by calculating the effects of Jupiter upon Mars. Both planets were among the brightest objects in the sky, and both planets had centuries of positional data available. And Lizzy's calculations matched their observed motion exactly. If she could get enough accurate data on Minerva, she could figure out precisely where the unknown planet should be. It would no doubt take a more powerful telescope than hers to find it, but she could write a paper and tell the professional astronomers where to look, and they would find it, and she would still get the credit.

It was almost too exciting for her to contemplate. What if she could discover a new planet? What if she could obtain royal honors, like Herschel did? What if the world decided to name the new planet "Lizzy"?

She needed more data. She needed to see the data accumulated in the 30 years since Minerva had been discovered, and possible sightings even before that, when it was mistaken for a comet or a star. And there was only one place that data could be found: the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.*

With great enthusiasm, she explained to her father what she had done, what she had calculated, what she suspected, and what it would take to confirm it.

And then her world came crashing down when her father forbade her to write to the Observatory for data, or to anyone else to discuss her theory.

She begged, she pleaded, she cried, all to no avail. Her father was adamant. "I know best, Lizzy. You will understand when you are older. You are an innocent who does not understand the conniving and backstabbing that occurs even in academic circles. They would chew you up and spit you out."

Have you ever been close to someone, perhaps a friend, perhaps a lover, perhaps a family member, who one day said or did something that changed your relationship forever? They may not have realized that anything changed, especially if you continued to be on good terms with them, but you knew that something had been lost.

How would it hurt her if someone stole her idea? Well, yes, it might hurt, but at least she would know she was right, and people close to her would know she was right, and there was at least a chance she would get some credit for the discovery, even if she had to share it with the astronomers who had the data. With her father's approach, she would never know whether she was right, and she would never get any credit. How could he not see that?

Lizzy realized with shock and hurt that the true reason her father forbade her to submit her discovery was that he did not want to be troubled by the eventual fame that might accrue to her. He would either be forced to entertain visiting scholars at Longbourn, or to escort her around London to meet them, and either way he would be inconvenienced. It was not Lizzy he was protecting; it was himself.

Longbourn, Hertfordshire, Oct 23, 1811

She woke up, breathing hard, as angry as she had been at that moment in May. Six months, she thought. Just another six months, and she would be able to do as she wished.

She could smell breakfast. She climbed out of bed, put her slippers back on, and smoothed her hair a bit. She did not care how she looked, and she would wash and dress her hair later today, assuming the rain stopped so that the Netherfield party could come for dinner.

She would go down to breakfast, be pleasant to her father, and then have a long discussion with Mr. Collins on the Bible, with the goal that he would be so confused that he would never wish to discuss it with her again.

And nothing from the New Testament, she thought.

*When I did this with "sudoku," some reviewers reminded me that readers using a translator will not realize it's a joke, so: yes, I know it's a flower. This is a reference to "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," one of the most famous short stories in American literature. It's about an insipid man who fantasizes about being the hero of various scenarios. In one, he is a world-renowned physician called in to save the life of a patient suffering from coreopsis.

*Lizzy's "practical experience" phase was mentioned in Chapter 6.

*It turned out that astronomers did not have enough data at that time to confirm or disprove Lizzy's conjecture. But in 1846, the planet Neptune was discovered in exactly the way Lizzy proposed.

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