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Howard first sees her at the premiere screening of her first lead role. She's gorgeous, absolutely stunning, and stuck smiling politely as that bore of a wannabe, Calvin Chadwick, goes on about his plans to change America.
Such beauty shouldn't be wasted on him, Howard tells them, and sweeps Miss Frost away into a dance. She's giggling and trying to hide it, too caught up in making a good impression to have fun, and when she realises who he is she asks about his inventions faster than most girls. And she listens when he explains.
Howard likes that.
They make a show of it all night, her with the richest, handsomest, most brilliant man in America asking her for every dance, him with the shining star of the silver screen on his arm and stepping into his car after midnight. Everyone sees. Everyone whispers. Howard smirks and winks rakishly as they go.
Whitney was once Agnes, and Agnes knows there are only a few ways for a woman to get ahead in this world. She's a practiced lover, and Howard spoils her with old wines and a silk dressing gown in the morning, but something she says about contaminated silver nitrate ruining her last photograph sets wheels turning in his head, and he excuses himself for a minute that turns into an hour. She finds him in his lab.
He's buried in work, scribbling on the chalkboard and adjusting the heat on a bubbling beaker. She's quiet as she comes in, tucking herself into corners, and as she reads the formulae her eyes go wide.
"Potassium."
Howard looks up, blinking. "What?"
"Potassium. Potassium will stabilise the reaction."
He's staring like an owl, and for a second Whitney is afraid, seeing her false uncle and all the men who sneered when she spoke up, but she's right, dammit, and she holds her head high. "You're making a molecular nitramene compound. It needs a stabilising agent or you won't be able to store it long enough to get the bombs out of your lab without killing yourself. Potassium will work."
He looks at the chalkboard. At her. Then at the beaker. He's thinking too slow and Whitney can't stand that, so she pushes up the silky sleeves and finds the potassium herself. He keeps his supplies organised organised by atomic number and she can't help but nod in approval.
Her hands are steady; she cuts the raw silvery metal with a knife and has it measured out precisely inside of twenty seconds. She adds it to the beaker, takes it off the heat and watches the liquid thicken into a semi-solid state that, slowly, starts to let off a soft yellow glow.
Suddenly Howard is at her shoulder and planting a kiss on her mouth. He lifts her into the air and spins her and she shrieks, but she's pleased and proud, proud, and when he sets her down she preens as he braces both hands on her shoulders, looks her in the eye and says, "You are the most brilliant woman on the planet. What else can you do?"
Whitney tosses her hair back, smile turning smug as he looks at her like a person.
"What else have you got?"