“All right, then. Let us trot.”
Trotting was less contemplative than walking, and more jostling. “I am not sure I care for this. I feel as if my insides are sloshing around in a way that is less than pleasing.”
“The next gait is a canter, and although it is faster than a trot, it is smoother. Shall we try?”
She was feeling adventurous. “Yes, but hold on to me.”
“Always, Jules, always.”
The fervency with which that declaration had come out brought to mind her discussion with Lord Harcourt.
Was she . . . doing wrong by Effie?
“Ahh!” She could think no further on the matter for suddenly, they wereflying. The wind was whistling in her ears, Genevieve was snorting and breathing, and Effie was, as instructed, holding her tight.
Julianna’s senses filled with cloves and liberation.
She laughed. She wasn’t sure why, exactly. Out of joy, yes, but it was a visceral sort of joy. She felt it in her chest, where her heart thumped at twice the usual pace, as if it were manned by a drummer anxious to get to the end of a song. She felt it in her arms and legs, too, in her fingers and toes—all her extremities vibrated like emphatically rung bells. There was an entire percussion section inside her.
Cantering wasnotlike fishing. Gone was the orderly beat of focused attention, it having given way to a linear, insistent trajectory. It did have in common with fishing that same sense of unraveling, unlatching.
Brighton was making her shed her armor, or Effie was. Or perhaps it was some alchemical result of being with Effie in Brighton.
Riding was ultimately more akin to sea-bathing, she decided. She could go anywhere. Ride away. Float away.
Escape was an illusion, though. Soon, far too soon, Effie did something with his legs and with the reins that prompted Genevieve to ratchet down through the dreaded trot and into a walk.
“We are nearly back at the house. I suppose we ought to get off and walk, in order to keep up the ruse.”
“Thank you,” she said, retying her bonnet as they set out on foot. “That was very exciting. I can’t think when my heart has raced so.”
Effie grabbed her hand and kept it, swinging their arms back and forth as they walked. “Challenge accepted.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Instead of answering, he shot her a wicked look.
“Oh.” She grinned.
“Indeed. I shall endeavor to apply myself this evening to the task of making your heart race.”
She thought again of Lord Harcourt, and her sense that there had been a warning implicit in their discussion about Effie. “Why did Lord Harcourt throw his fish back in the pond?”
“Why did you?”
“Because he did!”
Effie laughed. “Not out of some high-minded sense of morality?”
“No! I was looking forward to eating my fish. I’ve never caught my own dinner.”
“I believe he is persuaded by his wife’s arguments regarding the eating of animals.”
“He must be.” Julianna found this kind of devotion extraordinary.
It must have been the man’s devotion to Effie that had prompted him to issue that coded warning.
“I did not want to distress Lord Harcourt,” she said, “so I followed his example.”
