She paused. What had happened to “My dearest Jules?”
She supposed you did not say “My dearest Jules” to the person who had broken your heart.
I write to you on the final evening of Earls Trip 1822. We have been having a fine time since you left.
Effie had been having a “fine” time?
Why did that sting? Did she want him to be having a poor time?
Perhaps she had been mistaken about how deeply she had wounded him. Perhaps it had only been a glancing blow and he had already shaken it off. It was hard to imagine, given how painful their parting had been. Both of their partings: the nighttime one, in which Leander had blurted what Effie, thankfully, had not, and the daytime one, in which Effie had done everything he could to avoid talking to her, or even looking at her.
We learned about the existence of a Druidic stone called the Goldstone and went to see it. It was indeed gold, if you looked closely enough at it. Well, it was sandstone, I think, shot through with flecks of gold. But it wasn’t very large, and it wasn’t shaped or honed in any particular way. It was just a big lump of rock. Still, one tries to see Druidic stones when one is in the vicinity of them.
I did manage to get the boys to come sea-bathing with me.
It was very refreshing.
I trust you have taken delivery of October and that all is well.
Sincerely,
Edward.
Edward. She supposed if she wasJulianna, instead ofJules, he wasEdward, instead ofEffie—at least he had not addressed her asMiss Evans—but she didn’t care for it one bit.
She also didn’t care for his report. He had seen an underwhelming rock. The Effie she knew would have made up a fanciful story about the rock’s origins, or invested it with imaginary powers.
And sea-bathing had been “refreshing”? That was the best her favorite poet could do?
Sea-bathing was not refreshing! It was life-changing. Profound. She still remembered what he’d said when he’d been trying to convince her to go the first time.Water cures you. Not in the way the doctors yap on about. In a deeper way. You float on it—in it—and are reminded of how the world should be.
Where wasthatEffie?
The answer to that question sat like the Goldstone in her gut. That Effie was gone because she had banished him. Now she had Edward, who called her Julianna and reported on superficialities.
And not a word about the shilling, which she assumed was meant to cover the cost of her next letter to him. She could send several for that sum.
She wanted to rail at the unfairness of it all. That he was being like this, so formal and distant, was maddening. But she couldn’t by rights be angry with him. It wasn’t his fault he’d . . . fallen in love.
She assumed. Effie had never spoken any words of love; his bird had.
Effie’sactionshad spoken of love, though. His tenderness and the obvious delight he had taken in her company. The way he’d cut his magnificent hair as if it were nothing, simply because it bought them some time alone.
She understood why he was holding himself back in this letter, why his words felt so superficial.
She had told him she was too busy for an affair. Shewasvery busy. But all the same, that had been a lie. She hadn’t seen a way to explain her reticence to him. She had only just discovered for herself the source of her unease.
No, the source of herfear. Here, alone, she should call it what it was. If she took up with Effie, he would eventually leave her. He would have to. On the evening of their final coming together, she had remarked outright that he would need an heir. He hadn’t contradicted her, had replied with an “I suppose” that had been almost Edith-esque in its offhandedness.
An earl in need of an heir didn’t marry a woman like Julianna. Even if he did, if hecould, she wouldn’t want that. All the practical reasons she had recited to him regarding her opposition to marriage—her inability to take on debt in her own name, for example—remained true.
But what was also true, and what explained why she couldn’t entertain even a time-limited dalliance with him as she had with Charles, was that she was afraid of the pain that would necessarily accompany the end of such a dalliance. As with Edith, Effie would leave her to marry someone else. It was one thing to have one’s heart broken, but to watch the breaker hie off and get married to someone else was not something Julianna could do a second time.
Bloody marriage. It ruined everything.
It was better that they go back to being friends. Effie was her dearest friend in all the world, and the intensity of their bond had confused her such that things had spilled over. It was time to tidy up that spill. She needed her friend back.
She set the shilling on its edge and spun it. How could she make that happen?
