It was beginning to break her heart.
She should not have come.
To tea, to Brighton—any of it.
“It is stunning, truly,” Lord Marsden said, summarizing his thoughts on the Pavilion. “However, though I am appreciative of His Majesty’s support in several matters in Lords, I cannot help but feel a niggle of philosophical unease when I behold such a structure. What is itfor?”
“It is a royal residence,” Lord Harcourt said.
“Yes, I know. I meant the question in a more elemental sense. Amoralsense. It’s taken numerous years and an ungodly sum to build it. It’s been expanded, and to hear it told, made over on the inside more than once to accommodate His Majesty’s whim. The man already has any number of perfectly acceptable houses.”
“One could argue, and many do, that the monarch’s attention has raised Brighton’s profile in the eyes of Englishmen and foreigners alike,” Lord Harcourt said.
“Yes, yes, but . . .”
There was so much to unpack in every statement either of the gentlemen—the speaking gentlemen—made.However, though I am appreciative of His Majesty’s support in several matters in Lords . . .This would seem to indicate that Lord Marsden was a Whig.
Normally, Julianna would be quite interested in this conversation, but she kept having to force herself to attend to it. Now the two earls were arguing good-naturedly about how many houses they each had and if criticizing the Pavilion was therefore hypocritical.
She sneaked a glance at Effie, and there he was, the same as ever, staring but silent. She wanted to rail at him.Say something!She understood that he could not treat her with the same familiarity that characterized their letters, but neither did he have to act as if she were a stranger—a stranger he didn’t quite approve of, no less, judging by those assessing looks from behind the rim of his teacup.
The flash of ire that had her wanting to shout at him was suddenly quashed by the most ridiculous urge to cry. This wasn’t the person she’d corresponded with all those years. The person who sent her poems, all of them good, even the ones she declined to publish. And what of his identity as Mrs. Landers? He gave such measured, encouraging advice, and he somehow managed to be amusing while doing so.
Where wasthatperson?
Perhaps it had never been him. Perhaps, as she’d feared earlier, he was engaged in some kind of ruse.
The tears marshalling felt heavy, capable of displacing everything else—that ire from before. Her own sense of pride.
No. The last time Julianna cried was at her father’s funeral. She’d awakened the next day, swollen and miserable, and decided that crying wasn’t worth it. It achieved nothing. It hadn’t made her feel better. It hadn’t brought Father back. All it had done was make her look like a wet turnip. So she had turned herself into the kind of woman who never cried. And if Julianna were going to make an exception to the no-crying rule—which she absolutely was not—sheneverwould have done it in front of them. Ofhim.
She merely had to get through tea. They’d drunk three pots and eaten all the mediocre sandwiches, so presumably it would be over soon.
Then she could go home. Shewouldgo home. Tomorrow.
She sat up straighter, and in so doing felt something inside her harden, as if her spine were being preserved in amber. Julianna wore invisible armor. She always had—an unmarried woman pursuing a career needed to protect herself from an unkind world.
Normally, she appreciated her armor. She needed it when she took meetings with Mr. Glanvil. When she was cast aside by her printer. When she listened in on Amy with her friends.
When she stopped working long enough to think about how alone she was in this world.
She had never—never—had to wear her armor when it came to Effie.
Again, the urge to cry rose. Again, she quashed it.
There was nothing for it but to don her placcate and her gauntlets and get on with it.
She physically turned away from Effie and ordered herself to attend the earls, who were still arguing about how many houses was too many.
Lord Harcourt surprised her by saying, apropos of nothing, “I have read and enjoyed your magazine, Miss Evans. You should be quite proud of yourself.”
How . . . unexpected.
“I concur, though I admit I have only read Effie’s poems,” Lord Marsden said. “But anyone who prints his work is all right in my estimation.”
Effie’s friends had read his poems? Did that mean the verseswerein fact his?
The gentlemen asked a few questions, and she found herself telling them about the magazine’s history—her father’s founding of it, the fact that she’d grown up underfoot, trained in all aspects of producing it. “The only thing I absolutely cannot do myself is draw or engrave.”
