“It matters not,” Julianna said. “I have been told that I may not commission any plates of the interiors, only describe them in words. I shall tell them you are making rough sketches merely in order to aid the memory of my writer.” She gestured to Simon, thereby anointing him the student of architecture.
“Well, then, it’s settled,” Effie said. “I am the assistant.” What fun. What an adventure. Was it tomorrow yet?
They spent the next while skipping stones into the sea and making up names and histories for the characters they were to inhabit—histories almost certainly more elaborate than would be required. But the laughter flowed, and the stones skipped and they kept going.
“Perhaps I ought to write a poem about the Pavilion,” Effie said, attempting to balance on a large stone. He had to admit that boring leather boots were more practical for beach frolicking than were court shoes.
“Or about three peers and a magazine editor who break into the palace in Brighton,” Archie said.
“We’re not breaking in,” Julianna said. “We’re gaining entry under false pretenses.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon, that’s quite different, then,” Archie retorted.
He adored the way Julianna and the boys were getting on, teasing one another as if they were long-standing friends.
After an hour had passed, Julianna said she needed to be getting back. As yesterday, they offered to walk her; as yesterday, she declined. “You all have spent part of each of the last two days with me, and you’re to join me tomorrow morning. I believe that’s quite enough gate-crashing on my part. I will see you tomorrow at ten o’clock.”
She started to turn away but swiveled her head back toward them. “Please endeavor to look less like the aristocrats you are.” She frowned at Effie. “That goes doubly for you. For heaven’s sake, find some reasonable footwear.”
Chapter 6
Subterfuge
When Julianna arrived at the agreed-upon meeting space in the Pavilion gardens, the gentlemen were already there. Well, Lords Harcourt and Marsden were there, but they seemed to be accompanied by an older, white-haired gentleman wearing a bottle-green coat and looking as though he were visiting from the previous century. He was . . .
“Effie?” she exclaimed. And immediately corrected herself: “Lord Featherfinch!” It felt wrong to call him that, but what choice did she have? “What has happened?” She answered her own question: “You have cut your hair!”
“Yes, and powdered it.” He kicked up a heel. “I thought it would complement the court shoes you told me not to wear.”
“My . . . goodness.” The long, shiny hair she gathered he was known for was simply gone.
“We tried to talk him out of it, Miss Evans,” Lord Harcourt said. “The haircut and the entire . . . look.”
“Well,Idid,” Lord Marsden said. “You didn’t try very hard, Harcourt. He’s wearing your coat.”
“I have embraced the challenge of subterfuge,” Effie, ignoring his friends, said.
“You certainly have.” On the one hand, he looked nothing like himself. His dark hair had been cropped close to his head and, indeed, powdered quite thoroughly, making him look like an elderly Julius Caesar. He was wearing one of his famously outrageous waistcoats—this one was sunshine-yellow embroidered with red, which, she had to admit, matched the red heels on his shoes perfectly. With the addition of his borrowed green coat instead of the black he’d been wearing the two other times she’d seen him, he looked like a confection one might find in the court of Marie Antionette. Subtle it was not, but counterintuitively, it did work as a disguise.
“I have also decided that I’m your husband, not your assistant.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You are already wearing a ring.”
“Yes, but . . .” But what? Why did it matter what roles they adopted for a brief tour that would be conducted by someone they would never see again? And more to the point, what was this feeling in her stomach? It was a slow sort of . . . churning. Yesterday there had been seagulls flapping through her head. Today it felt as if worms were coming to the surface of the soil after a rain, slow but insistent.
“I can be your husbandandyour assistant,” Effie said. “Your husband whoisyour assistant.”
“That would never happen,” she said, choosing to focus on the minutia of the conversation at hand, rather than the upending of her insides. “More common in my industry is the husband is the proprietor of the magazine and the wife is the editor.”
“No, no, I am not the proprietor.”
“Well, you cannot be my husband who is my assistant. That would raise more suspicion than your”—she eyed him up and down—“personage.”
“All right, all right. I shall merely be your assistant. I just thought if I was your husband, we might dine together after our tour. I know you said we’re not meant to concern ourselves with your reputation, but I thought I could accompany you back to the hotel and . . .”
Julianna very much wanted to know how Effie had been planning to finish that sentence. But more than that, she wanted to dine with him after the tour. Her face was growing hot. She didn’t care for that. She sniffed. “Very well, be my husband. Perhaps it shall be amusing to have one of those for a day. And we all know how accomplished you are at concealing your true identity.” She did not wait for his agreement as his friends chortled at the barb, merely turned and said, “Come along, all of you.”
