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Such as will be the industriousness of all necessary preparations, today’s lecture will likely be the final one Francis will attend before they set out from Greenhithe, yet the lean line of a man who Francis cannot place from only the back of him deigns to take the empty seat directly in front seconds before proceedings are due to begin. A spike of irritation rises in Francis just as Sabine begins his talk — the man is tall enough to mostly block Francis’s view of the lecture — although curiosity is present too. Francis had thought he knew every member of the Royal Society whose primary interest was magnetics. Who is this upstart? Is he not aware that Francis is a Fellow? There is something familiar about the man, but nothing Francis can name. If only he would turn around.
It transpires that the lecture covers topics Francis understands already and could likely speak on with greater knowledge, though he concedes Sabine is the better orator, and so he spends most of the hour glaring in a perturbed haze at where the curled ends of the tall man’s hair meet the fine broadcloth of his coat collar.
Feeling as though his time has not been well spent, Francis moves to depart as soon as the lecture finishes, hoping to discretely catch the man’s face on the way out before going for an introspective stomp around the gardens of Middle Temple to try and lift his mood and then, if this attempt is unsuccessful, to return to the tavern he had been patronising earlier this afternoon. Instead — God above — he who has been plaguing his sightline this whole time comes striding cheerily to him directly when Francis is only halfway to the door, and Francis sours at the sight of the well-set mouth, presently upturned in happy greeting, of James Fitzjames. The coat he wears falls from the proud line of his shoulders to a tightly-cinched waist, but Francis will not let Fitzjames make him feel out of place on his own turf: Fitzjames’s civilian clothes are of a frivolous style and not at all practical, designed to be looked upon and admired, which Francis will not consent to do.
“Oho!” Fitzjames says, unfathomably pleased to have spotted Francis. He waves a sheaf of paper covered in careful handwriting and diagrams: the copious lecture notes Francis had been too distracted to notice him taking. “A most interesting set of theories, was it not?”
Francis’s expression must thunder instantaneously, for Fitzjames’s face falls most amusingly. Judging by the little pictures scribbled on his writing-paper, Francis was entirely correct in suspecting that Fitzjames has no prior scientific knowledge of this subject.
“I was already aware of them. Perhaps the Admiralty might have assigned the responsibility of research to the captain on the expedition who was made a Fellow for work on the very subject of interest before the age of fifty! But I daresay you thought the task, when in fact an exercise in patience for taking precise and repetitive readings, would be an amusing jape and an opportunity to decorate yourself in further glory, and so you flashed your pretty smile and made the humble request—”
“Pretty smile?” echoes Fitzjames in an odd sort of voice, far less buoyant than his previous tone, and Francis feels his own colour flush warm at his cheeks. Damn it all.
“I mean to say that I am sure you have the right sort of people to put the right sort of word in,” Francis snaps. He knows Fitzjames’s sort. They have bounded ahead of him his whole life.
“I had hoped to be taught a great deal from you, Francis,” Fitzjames responds in the same odd voice, slightly choked at the throat, and Francis flinches at the softly hoarse and entirely inappropriate use of his Christian name. Fitzjames really must think himself above Francis indeed. “It’s clear that was a wasted notion. I shall have to rely on my own note-takings and what books I can bring along. I see we are like two north poles who cannot be made to stick together.”
“Just learned about the poles, have you?” Francis says.
Fitzjames’s formerly calm eyes flash at him, and Francis takes this in with some satisfaction. “I did not ask for the responsibility,” Fitzjames replies coolly. “And when we meet tomorrow for the first inspection of the ships, I am sure we can forget that this happened and start our friendship afresh. I wish you a good day.”
What a fool Fitzjames is, Francis thinks, but at least he has found a legitimate hope to take over much of the work himself. Whether in insisting on trying to befriend him or in making sense of a dipping needle, Fitzjames will surely soon lose interest, and then the strange intensity of Francis’s own preoccupation will wane in the same manner. It must.