“Ratafia?” Archie tried, and Effie nodded vigorously.
If the housekeeper found the request odd, she said nothing, and after a few minutes, she arrived with several bottles of the sweet wine. “Shall I take your bird, my lord?” she asked.
“Thank you, no,” Effie said. “I could do with some old linens for my room, though. He will need to spend time outside his cage, but I shall confine him to my bedchamber, and protect its furnishings with anything you might see fit to lend me. Does anyone in the household paint? At home, I use inexpensive muslin for this purpose.”
“I have to say,” Archie said, “Mrs. Mitchell took that in stride. I don’t know many a housekeeper who would be so sanguine about a houseguest announcing that their giant pet bird is going to shit all over the house.”
“I think,” Simon said, “that you underestimate the eccentricities of the average nobleman.”
“Do I?” Archie asked. “Ought I to take up an idiosyncratic yet destructive pastime?”
“And,” Simon said, ignoring the question, “I believe the purpose of the linens was so the bird willnotshit all over the house.”
“Point taken, but perhaps if one travels with a creature that is going to shit erratically, one ought to bring one’s own linens.”
As he listened to the boys banter, Effie poured himself a glass of ratafia and downed it before delivering glasses for the others and returning to the sideboard to refill his own.
Simon made a face as he took his first sip. “We ought to have asked for Scotch as well, so—”
“I am in love with a woman named Julianna Evans!” Effie shouted, unable to keep the secret-creature inside anymore—the bars of his chest-cage were dissolving, after all—and equally unable to keep his voice down, though he wasn’t sure if it was glee or dismay that had him yelling. He said it again, at a more suitable pitch. “I am in love with a woman named Julianna Evans.” Then, for reasons he couldn’t explain, he lowered his voice yet again, making the last entry in his spoken trilogy a whisper. “I am in love with a woman named Julianna Evans.”
The boys were silent, which was fair. It was a lot to take in, even for him. He had never said those words aloud before. Perhaps that is why he’d needed to repeat them twice over.
“I am in love with a woman named Julianna Evans!” Leander shrieked, and after a beat of collective shock, the three of them fell into laughter.
“Yes, Isaidthat,” Effie said. “Several times.”
“There’s your complete sentence, though,” Simon said.
Effie laughed again. “I can only surmise that Leander was waiting for his first sentence to be one of great import.”
“Are you going to tell us more?” Archie asked.
“Yes, such as: Who is Julianna Evans?” Simon asked.
“She is my editor atLe Monde Joli,” Effie said, his words extinguishing the amusement provided by Leander’s interruption. “I have never met her, but we write to each other quite a lot, and I am not sure how I am to survive a fortnight without word from her!”
He had shocked them. Well, he had shocked Simon, whose mouth was hanging open like a haddock. Upon further reflection, Archie didn’t look shocked so much as quizzical. Assessing. As if he were piecing together a puzzle.
“Say something!” Effie cried. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“We are surprised,” Simon said after a beat of silence.
Had Effie made a mistake, confessing the contents of his heart? He hardly thought the boys would care that Julianna worked for a living. Had he misjudged them?
No. This was Archie and Simon.
“Ef,” Archie said gently, “please, won’t you come and sit?”
Oh. Yes. Effie had made his pronouncements from where he was standing by the sideboard. His skin prickled as he crossed the room. Was that . . . shame?
No. He refused to be ashamed of any of this: of whom he loved, of confiding in his friends. It was more of this mixed-up-ness, this sense that he was changing into someone new, someone he did not know. The only conclusion he could come to was that he was mightily befuddled.
His friends gazed at him for a moment after he’d settled, making him feel unpleasantly like a boy under his grandmother’s quizzing glass.
Archie leaned toward Effie with his forearms on his thighs. “You will forgive me if I overstep, but if I am surprised, it is only because I always rather thought your . . . inclinations did not tend toward ladies.”
Oh.Oh.Effie looked at Simon, who raised his eyebrows in a way that seemed to signal concurrence.
