“You could walk away from your family,” Simon said after a few moments. “Some do.”
“Yes, but I’d still be earl when Father dies. I can’t walk away from the title, even if I could bring myself to abandon the responsibilities associated with it—which I can’t. As much as I loathe the idea of inheriting, and even if I don’t care about Father, Idocare about Sarah. I care about the estate. There are twenty-seven cottages at Highworth, and thirty-four servants. That’s not even counting the staff at the London house. We have a great many people depending on us.”
No one said anything, because there was nothing to say. Effie was well and truly stuck. He sighed. “It’s academic anyway, as she proclaims she will never marry.”
“Where have we heard that before?” Simon asked, raising his eyebrows at Archie, and Effie had to smile through his dismay. They had heard it on last year’s Earls Trip, from Archie’s now wife.
Archie grinned. “Yes, for what it’s worth, that particular impediment may not be as intractable as you believe.”
“Regardless, all these difficulties are not the point. They are indeed disqualifying, but there remains a larger reason I cannot be with Miss Evans. A more immediate and unscalable . . . obstacle.”Obstacleseemed an anemic word given the circumstances, entirely insufficient to describe the fortress his lies had built.
“And that is?” Archie asked.
“She thinks I’m a woman.”
Archie and Simon erupted, exclaiming and talking over each other. There. He had finally shocked them.
Archie got up and fetched a second bottle of wine from the sideboard. As he was opening it, Simon made a show of going for the third, which made them all laugh.
“You’d better start from the beginning,” Archie said when they were all refilled.
“What about dinner?” Effie said. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“You’re more important than dinner,” Simon said.
“Yes,” said Archie. “Tell us the story now, and we can consider it as we dine. Perhaps there will be some solution you have yet to think of.”
Effie’s throat tightened. His friends were the best of men. He couldn’t think why he had kept this from them for so long.
“When I submitted the poem she initially published,” he said, recapping what they already knew, “I did it under a pseudonym.”
“Yes,” Archie said.
Effie had known that publishing a poem under his own name would cause more trouble than it was worth in his family. And publishing a poem under his own name in a ladies’ magazine? All hell would have broken loose.
“I signed it E. Turner,” he said.
“Ah!” Simon exclaimed. “Your Miss Evans is corresponding with ‘Miss Turner.’”
“You will recall thatLe Monde Jolipublished a handful of my poems over the next few years. Miss Evans and I corresponded about the poems, but gradually, our discourse became more personal.
“One day a letter arrived in which she signed only her Christian name: ‘Julianna.’ She said she hoped she wasn’t being too familiar but asked me what mine was.” He could still summon echoes of the thrill he’d experienced on reading that letter—the progression from “Miss Evans” to “Julianna” to “JE,” had truly transported him. “I regret this now, but I equivocated. I told her, ‘My friends call me Effie.’ She must have decided ‘Effie’ was a diminutive for ‘Euphemia,’ for she thinks that is my Christian name. To my discredit, I have never corrected her.”
“Why ever not?” Simon, always the sensible one, asked.
“I imagine,” Archie said, “that the longer it went on, the harder it seemed to disentangle yourself from the lies you’d spun, lies that initially seemed minor.”
“Yes.”
Archie understood.
“Miss Austen was right,” Archie said. “Love does indeed make fools of us all.”
“You will perhaps recall how I’d sent that first poem around to a great many publications. I received rejections across the board from everyone except Miss Evans. She wrote me with her acceptance, and she had a few minor but exceedingly thoughtful suggestions that improved the work enormously. I was thrilled.”
“I remember,” Archie said, and Simon murmured his agreement.
“I didn’t realize until I saw the poem in print thatLe Monde Joliwas a ladies’ magazine.”
