Tonight for some reason he found himself fussing over his cravat. Which was ridiculous. It was going to come right back off. It was only that he wanted their last night together to be memorable. He wanted to present himself in the best possible light.
Or perhaps, he thought, as he took a third go at the perfect waterfall knot, it was more that he needed some armor.
He had come to understand that the more time he spent with Julianna, the deeper he fell in love with her. And the deeper he fell in love with her, the worse the pain was going to be when she was gone.
He already felt it, this pain. It had been creeping up on him all day. Since last night, really. After she’d fallen asleep yesternight, he’d been seized with a terrible melancholy. He’d stared at his reflection in the mirror and hadn’t recognized himself. He’d told himself that it was the short hair, but it wasn’t. Something inside him had awakened, some tender, vulnerable core he hadn’t realized ran as deep as it did had been exposed to the light, and ithurt.
There is only now.
Effie could not slice life up into such clean segments, as if he were surgically removing a wedge of cake from the whole, making a clean cut with no icing smeared on the knife. For him, there was overlap: love and pain coexisting. Tomorrow, when she left, the pain would increase in magnitude, and the next day, the first day without her, it would grow even more. Would a day arrive when pain was all there was? When it displaced everything that had previously stood in its path: love, yes, but also friendship, imagination, and beauty? In other words, all the things he held dear?
No, no. He was being hyperbolic. She was going home, tomorrow, yes, and he would miss her. But he’d be back in London shortly. Of course, he wouldn’t see her every day when they were back in Town. Perhaps he ought to ask how long her liaisons with Edith and Charles had lasted. Then he would have something against which to benchmark his expectations.
No. He needed to stop thinking about such details. Effie had clearly failed to properly embrace Julianna’s philosophy of living solely in the present, but he did have only one night left with her here, on holiday, and he would be a fool to waste it brooding.
He blew out his candles, hurried to the door, and yanked it open—and found Julianna on the other side of it, her knuckles raised to knock. She froze. He froze. The clock struck two.
“Effie?” she whispered, looking strange, almost otherworldly, as the flame of her single taper threw shadows across what had been familiar features.
Oh, his heart. He loved her so.
“Come in,” he whispered, and after what looked like a moment of uncertainty, she did.
She came to stand by the bed. “Did you fall asleep?” she asked, smoothing her hand over the tidy counterpane. The bed was in pristine condition, so she knew the answer to her question.
Heknew that her question had been a proxy for another, unarticulated one:Why didn’t you come to me?
“No,” he said gently. “I wasn’t asleep.”
He saw the hurt in her eyes, even in the dim light, or perhaps he only sensed it. They had been so concordant since they had met here in Brighton, reading each other’s moods without the need for speech or worldly senses. Perhaps that was what was so painful, being that attuned to one another. Having almost all of her, but at the same time, not having her at all.
Perhaps this madness would recede when she was no longer physically present in his life every day. Perhaps that was one consolation to be taken in the days and weeks to come.
“Come,” he said, opening his arms.
Another moment of uncertainty: she hadn’t set down the candle, and she wasn’t meeting his eyes.
He held his breath.
Slowly, so slowly, she set her candle on the night table next to the branch he’d just extinguished. She paused there, and just when he thought he would have to say something—though he had no idea what that something should be, and not knowing what to say toJuliannawas a very unsettling feeling—she turned and threw herself at him. As his arms tightened around her, he thought for a moment he heard a hitch in her breath, but when, after a few moments, he broke the embrace to hold her at arm’s length, nothing about her expression or the way she carried herself seemed out of sorts. He must have imagined that hitch.
Still, everything felt very serious. The air was charged with a kind of solemnity.
That wasn’t going to work—he would never survive the night that way. He rallied. It was a great effort, but he let his gaze roam her body, looked down at his own, and when he once again returned his attention to her, he winked and said, “Each of us is wearing entirely too much clothing.”
The flippant remark cracked the ice of the pond they were stuck under—it wasn’t time for drowning yet. There was still a light in the tower.
They began fumbling off their clothing. Effie, shucking coat and waistcoat, cursed himself for having dressed so thoroughly earlier. The dratted cravat seemed determined to make him spend as much time removing it as he had tying it, so he switched to tugging off his boots, and when he returned to shirt and cravat, Julianna was naked.
He paused, a mixture of frustration and lust swirling inside him as he gazed on her. He would not see her like this for some time. And when they did manage a liaison, it would have to be in secret. Where? The magazine’s office? He could sneak her into his house, he supposed. Certain gentlemen probably did that sort of thing all the time. But the prospect seemed so . . . tawdry.
He also worried about what she would think of his house. It was rather grand, and for the first time, its casual opulence embarrassed him. He had told her the truth about his family, his title, but that didn’t mean he wanted to highlight the strait between them.
Stolen time, hidden spaces: this was what was ahead for them.
Well, he would simply have to embrace the necessary sacrifice. The subterfuge. Hadn’t he, mere days ago, been encouraging everyone in exactly that? If he could cut off his hair to sneak into the Royal Pavilion, he could do a great deal more in order to see Julianna.
More to the point: he was brooding again. He would have plenty of time to brood later. For now he needed to—“Oof.”
