“Mr. Glanvil and I do not always see eye to eye on editorial matters,” Julianna said, feeling that a mite more explanation was in order. “But I’m sure that if you sign your name to the piece, Lord Marsden, Mr. Glanvil will be happy to publish whatever you would like to say.”
“But how can I sign my name if that visit was meant to be anonymous?”
“Ah. You are right, of course.”
“I’m sure we can work something out,” Lord Harcourt said. “Perhaps Marsden can write it, deliver it to Mr. Glanvil, and explain to him the need for anonymity. It wouldn’t even be a lie. You wouldn’t want to hamper your efforts in Parliament next year, would you?”
“No, indeed,” Lord Marsden said.
“Perhaps,” Effie suggested, “you could make it seem as if you are engaging him in a secret. Mr. Glanvil, from what I gather, likes to feel important. What could make him feel more important than a peer of the realm taking him into confidence?”
“I think something like that could work,” Julianna said, smiling anew at Effie. He was sogoodat this. He knew the compromises required in the business of magazine-making. He knew Mr. Glanvil.
But, of course, that last bit wasn’t strictly true. He’d never met the man. If Effie seemed to know Mr. Glanvil, it was because Effie knewher. Regardless, he was acting the true helpmeet, and it was immensely gratifying, though she had to tell herself not to grow accustomed to it.
“What do you say, Lord Marsden?” she asked, ordering herself to stop grinning at her counterfeit husband/assistant.
“I am flattered. If you will guide me, Miss Evans, I will give it a go.”
After a bit more discussion, they made to part ways. The gentlemen, as she had discovered was their habit, offered to walk her back to her hotel. As was her habit, she declined. She truly believed she’d monopolized enough of their holiday.
“Ah, but your husband must walk you back,” Effie said with a twinkle in his eye, “for isn’t your husband going to the same destination? Aren’t we to dine together?”
Oh. Her cheeks were heating. Was she . . .blushing?
No. It must be the uncharacteristically hot September sun. Julianna did not blush.
“Very well, then.” She pressed her lips together. It wouldn’t do to appear too enthused.
He offered his arm, as he had in the Pavilion. The difference was, they had no audience now for their pretense, so it was an unnecessary nicety.
Well, they did have an audience, in a sense. She wondered if the other gentlemen, given that they had previously been so concerned about propriety, would object, but they did not. In fact, they looked more like indulgent papas as they smiled at Effie and told him not to trip over his heels. Perhaps it had only been theappearanceof propriety that concerned them earlier. Perhaps they truly cared about her reputation.
Why would they do that? She was a stranger to them. A common stranger.
She sneaked a glance at Effie, who somehow managed to look both handsome and ridiculous at the same time, with his powdery hair. She supposed the answer to her question was that the lords cared about her reputation because they cared about Effie, who in turn cared about her.
It was a heady feeling.
Which meant she needed to get a hold of herself. “Playacting at marriage,” she said with a gaiety she hoped did not sound too forced. “As close as I shall ever come to the real thing.”
She had playacted once before, if not at marriage, at love wrapped in an imagined domestic contentment. She had learned what a quick road to heartbreak such a masquerade was.
“So you have said on a number of occasions,” Effie remarked. “You are awfully opposed to the institution.”
“A woman my age may be a spinster, a wife, or a widow. I wouldn’t mind being a widow, but not at the price of having been a wife first.”
“Is that price so high, assuming you were to marry someone you loved? Someone who . . . lifted you up?”
Yes, the price was too high. What he was suggesting was an impossibility. It only led to being left behind. She didn’t say that, though, turning instead to a more practical, though no less important argument against matrimony. “If I were married, all my property would become my husband’s.” She had told him this already.
“Your property is already your stepbrother’s.”
“But you know that is because the magazine was my mother’s, and upon her marriage to Mr. Glanvil Sr., it became his.”
“Yes, my point is merely that—”
“If I were married, I could not incur debt without my husband’s consent.”
