They were able to scramble in, and there was no sign of Archie himself. Julianna had spent the short walk shivering, and he looked around for something with which to warm her. The bed was unmade, the servants no doubt believing he was still abed. He gathered up the counterpane and wrapped it around her shoulders, guiding her to sit on the edge of the bed. “Excuse me for a few moments.”
He made his way into a small attached dressing room and quickly changed into fresh garments.
He had intended to make haste so he could get back to Julianna, but once he was changed, something kept him pinned in place, like a deer facing a hunter but unable to rouse itself to flee. Exhaustion, he supposed. But it wasn’t just that. It was something else, too.
Wonder: Julianna was in the attached room, steps away. Julianna washere!
He wanted to kiss her again, if she wanted it, too.
He stepped back through to the room, buttoning his new, dry shirt.
She was asleep. Goodness, she slipped into slumber as easily as Archie.
A terrible fondness rose through him. She was slumped back against the headboard, and the counterpane had fallen off her shoulders. Gently, he attempted to rearrange her so she would be more comfortable, but she awakened.
“Mmph.” She blinked, befuddled. He could see her preparing to rise.
“Shh,” he soothed. “Stay. Rest a while. Get warm. You will not be discovered.”
He thought she would object, but she only said, “I will rest if you will rest with me.”
“Yes.” He would do anything with her, anything she asked, and resting was easy.
She allowed him to fuss with the bedding, to tuck her in, then she shocked him utterly by holding up the covers, seeming to indicate that she wanted him to get in—that when she’d said “rest with me,” she’d meant in the same bed.
When he didn’t immediately move, she said, “Do I have to hit you with a pillow to get you to get in?”
He got in.
* * *
When he awoke who knew how much later—the sun was blazing through the crack in the curtain and his stomach was rumbling—Julianna was wide awake, lying on her side looking at him.
“I have awakened to find myself on Saturn,” she said.
Effie had been writing to Julianna about Saturn’s rings. He gathered the comment meant that as she’d come to consciousness and remembered where she was, she’d felt she may as well have been floating among those celestial wonders.
“You say the most marvelous things,” Effie said.
“What do you mean?”
“You say things you mean metaphorically, but you say them with such lack of irony, such absolute unwavering steadfastness, that sometimes you give me pause, make me wonder momentarily if you aren’t being literal. You say that you’re on another planet. Or that your head burst into flame, or that your heart beat so fiercely it broke a rib. You describe the most extreme visceral experiences even as you maintain a facade of equanimity.” He paused. “I am fairly certain you have never been to another planet. You have not experienced a broken rib, or the immolation of your head, have you?”
“I have not.” The smile she’d been wearing faded. “Perhaps such similes are ill-done of me. I’m sure there are people who have experienced such grievous bodily wounds in a literal sense. Soldiers, for example.”
“You are a kind of soldier.”
She made a dismissive noise.
“You are always battling Mr. Glanvil for resources, and printers for time on their presses.” He thought of Hamlet, tucked away in Archie’s house. London felt so far away, in terms of both distance and experience.
“Come now, Effie, let us not get carried away. Such hyperbole is insulting to soldiers and to me. And to you. You’re better than that.”
Well, that stung. But that was why he adored Julianna, was it not? She never hesitated to voice her true feelings. Lots of people looked at Effie and saw the life of the party—the fashionable gentleman in the silly shoes always good for a witty remark. Effie had cultivated such interpretations. That was not what Julianna saw, though, or not all she saw. She held him to high standards, wanting him to live up to a potential she seemed to see more clearly than he did. This scrutiny of hers was both unsettling and thrilling.
“You know what I mean,” he said. “You can’t have imagined having to advocate so fiercely and continuously for the magazine your father started.”
She nodded thoughtfully as she stared at the ceiling.
