What a fine answer. What good men. Though they needled one another, they also respected and esteemed one another.
After lunch, Lords Marsden and Harcourt proposed an outing to Brighton. “If I’m truly to be writing for your magazine, Miss Evans, I want to have another look at the Pavilion—the exterior, I mean,” Lord Marsden said.
Effie begged off, so Julianna did, too, and soon she found herself alone with Effie at the sea. It was beginning to feel usual to find herself alone with Effie at the sea.
Until Effie took off his boots and proclaimed that he was going to wade in the water.
Julianna nearly swooned when she saw Effie’s bare feet. She’d had the same reaction this morning on the beach, when he’d strolled up shoeless. She comforted herself, though, that this swoon was a trifle less . . . emphatic than the first had been.
Of course, all Julianna’s swoons were interior. She was fairly confident that in general, she betrayed nothing of her true feelings. It was one of her particular talents.
There was something almost painfully intimate about seeing Effie’s bare feet. On paper, it made no sense. She’d seen much more of him yesterday. He’d been bare-chested during their swim, and though she hadn’t seen his manhood, she’dfeltit when they embraced.
And she had been intimate with others. She had, to use a phrase she abhorred, given away her maidenhood—as if it were a flower that could be given only once before it wilted. She’d done it happily, knowing it was not a currency she needed, given that she had no plans to marry.
She was not a sheltered schoolgirl, was the point.
So what was it about a pair of feet—as nicely shaped as they were, they were just feet—that was making her wish she were the sort of woman who carried smelling salts?
She considered the concept of intimacy.
She had been intimate with others before, in the traditional carnal sense, but she had never, before Effie, been barefoot outside. She had never stepped into the sea, much less lain back in it and talked about liberation and the color of the sky.
And Effie was so attached to his fashionable footwear. For that reason, there was something about seeing him sans shoes that felt almost transgressive.
She smiled to herself, satisfied over having puzzled through the mystery of the bare feet. But then she sighed. Like a lovestruck young miss. How lowering. Effie was just so . . . everything. All the things she had said before: kind and intelligent and thoughtful. But also dashing and brave and capable of observing the world and reporting back on it in verse with a savage truthfulness that took her breath away.
They had embraced this morning, and kissed yesterday. They had slept in each other’s arms. And not once had he dropped to one knee to exhort her to marry him. They’d merely kissed, or embraced, when they felt moved to, as if these things were part of life, part of their relationship, but not something to fixate on.
Effie was utterly unlike most men of her acquaintance.
Julianna had had two affairs in her life, the more recent one with Charles, one of the engravers she used with some regularity. Charles had, after their initial, spontaneous encounter, proposed.
“You don’t want to marry me, and I don’t want to marry you,” she’d said—he had been a widower with no interest in a second wife.
When he’d apologized profusely and assured her that nothing untoward would ever happen between them again, she’d taken a leap and said, “I shan’t be marrying, ever. But need it follow that I shall never know the joys of the marital bed?”
“I don’t think they call it amaritalbed for nothing,” he’d replied, his quick wit reminding her why she liked him so much. She’d had to spend a great deal of time convincing him that she was in earnest. Once she succeeded, they’d gone on to enjoy themselves for a few months. Their affair had run its course, and Charles continued to provide excellent engravings for the magazine. She remained fond of him, and she suspected he felt the same about her.
And then there had been Edith. Her one true lady friend.
Her onetime love.
She had been a sister of one of Amy’s friends, visiting for the summer. They’d talked endlessly about books, Edith eventually confessing to harboring secret aspirations of writing a novel. From there they’d progressed to reading aloud their favorite literary passages to each other. From there, they’d . . . progressed.
It had been wonderful, for a while, until the topic of marriage had come up.
“This doesn’t count,” Edith had said.
“What do you mean?” Julianna had braced herself, ready for the dagger.
She hadn’t thought to put her armor on—she’d been young enough then that armor hadn’t yet been her default wardrobe—so when Edith said, “This isn’t the same as lying with a man; I can still say I’m coming to my future husband with my maidenhood intact,” the dagger slid in, silent and lethal. Lady Macbeth herself could have been no more effective.
Julianna still had trouble understanding why she had been so hurt. It wasn’t as if Edith could marryher. Still, some foolish inner part had wondered—hoped—that Edith’s devotion to Julianna might have kept her from the marriage mart generally. Edith came from money; she didn’tneedto marry. Perhaps girlish Julianna had thought the two of them could be spinsters together.
She had been out of her mind.
After some time passed, Julianna’s hurt had crystallized into something harder, darker. Anger, mostly, initially at Edith, but then at . . . everyone. Society. The rules they all labored under, which sometimes felt so arbitrary. So cruel.
