“You should read my poetry.”
“May I?”
Effie was not accustomed to conversing with people who were so earnest.
He regrouped. There would be time for poetry later—he hoped. For now, he wanted to make his proposal. “Here’s the thing, Kenver. I don’t want to be the earl.”
“Well, you hardly have a choice in the matter, my lord.”
“Will youstopwith the my-lording!”
“Well, you hardly have a choice in the matter,Effie,” Kenver said, rolling his eyes ever so slightly in a way Effie found brotherly and therefore thrilling.
When Effie didn’t say anything, Kenver held up his hands. “What are you implying? I don’t want to be the earl, either.”
Effie threw up his own hands. Who was this purehearted? “Truly? You truly do not? Why not?”
“Why don’tyou? Once our father is gone, I mean.”
Effie had asked himself that question. Father would be gone soon, apparently. Effie couldn’t marry Julianna, apparently. So what was stopping him from being the poetry-writing, court-pump–wearing earl that Julianna had teased him about?
He even had a brother-steward who would help him, of that he had no doubt.
“Because I have other interests.” Of course, his chief interest was Julianna herself. Since that was not an interest that could go anywhere, he was determined to develop some others. Beyond writing poetry that he sent to Miss Julianna Evans for her consideration.
Perhaps he should not have been so hasty in instructing Archie to dispose of Hamlet. He had already prevailed upon Simon to write again to the Earl of Stanhope.
“I have other interests, too,” Kenver said.
“What are they?”
Kenver looked stricken and did not speak.
“See? You don’t have other interests; you’re just inordinately attached to some antiquated notion of propriety.”
“If I am inordinately attached to anything, it is the idea of not committing a criminal and moral offense.”
Effie smirked. Apparently some peoplewerejust that purehearted. “Well, my plan doesn’t require the commission of any offense, criminal, moral, or otherwise. It merely requires a bit of creativity. I propose we enact a ridiculous plan by which we . . . enact Father’s ridiculous plan.”
“Have you been listening to anything I’ve said?”
“We enact it in our own, perfectly legal way,” Effie amended. “I’ll be the earl in name; you’ll be the earl in practice. You agree to keep my sister and mother in the style to which they are accustomed, and you can do what you like with the rest of it. Well, you’ve got to look after the tenants, and the servants too, of course.”
Kenver blinked a few times. “What about you?”
“I am planning for a new sort of life.”
“Whatever can you mean?”
“I will tell you, I promise, but not quite yet.”
“Whatever kind of life you want, you can have it. We can all live more than comfortably from the estate’s income. You won’t have to wait much longer, and then you can do whatever you want.”
You can do whatever you want.
Effie smiled. The refrain was everywhere lately. As if it had been there all along, just below the surface.
What he wanted was to be his own man.
