Dear Effie,
She refused to call him Edward.
If you should care to write a poem about your underwhelming Druidic stone, consider it commissioned. You may think I am in jest, but December is looking a little slim. I am not sure the American alligators we spoke about will make it in time.
Your shilling was a surprise. While I did agree that you might use your father’s money to fund our correspondence, you have overestimated my epistolary endurance. It would take me days to write a letter long enough to cost that much! But I thank you for your generosity. It is very like you.
Do you know that the first night I was back at home, as I lay in my familiar bed and closed my eyes, I could have sworn I was still rocking in the waves? In some ways, I am right back at it with the magazine, but in other ways, it has been wrenching to be here, rather than in Brighton. Rather than in the sea.
She almost added “Rather than with you,” but she stopped herself. Her aim was to get their friendship back on solid footing, not to lead him on. Not to leadherselfon—not to want what she couldn’t have.
I was so pleased to receive your letter. I hope you will write me again and tell me about any other mediocre rocks you might have encountered in my absence.
Yours,
JE
P.S. What about a geology column? Is that a good idea, or would engravings of rocks be orders of magnitude more disappointing than the real thing?
Chapter 14
Dream On
After Effie returned from his holiday, two curious things happened.
First, he and Julianna began writing to each other.
Well, it wasn’t so much that theybegan,he supposed, for they’d been corresponding for years. But they . . . began anew. A few days after he arrived home, he received a slightly more formal than usual but perfectly warm letter from Jules. She’d done a better job than he in striking the right tone. She’d started out with some small talk about the magazine, but by the end she was confessing to being discombobulated by her re-entry into society. He felt the same.
And then there had been:
Yours,
JE
As with the first time she had signed off with her initials, a shiver ran through him. The sight of those two letters implied a familiarity he would never cease to find thrilling.
He got out his supplies and sat down to write her back.
He did consider that perhaps he should not be so easily won over. That last night in Brighton, he had all but begged, even in the face of her rejection, that they should remain friends, and resume their correspondence. He had said he would write to her, and so he had. But a bit of time and distance had him questioning whether he could in fact be her letter-writing friend. Whether it was wise to remain entangled with her in any form. He had his pride to consider. And his poor heart.
But here was her letter. She was so intelligent, so charming, soherself. Case in point: a geology column. What an absurd, wonderful idea. If anyone could make rocks interesting, it would be Julianna.
And so it began again, back and forth, and rather furiously, too, letters being exchanged almost every day. She often wrote him two pages, which she had never done before. He sent her another shilling. She protested that she hadn’t spent through the first yet, but he wanted her to have the means to write him a novel if she so chose.
One day, about a fortnight after he’d returned to Town, a letter arrived in which she asked about his nightmares. Had they come back?
They had.
Not as intensely as before. He had not unearthed any new memories, though—no more nightmares-that-actually-happened. He was redreaming some of the old ones, the wardrobe imprisonment in particular. Curiously, the more he had the dream, the less distressed he felt upon awakening. It was almost as if the dream were working its way out of his system, as if, as Julianna had suggested might happen, the riverbed was running dry.
Since her query about the nightmares had seemed genuinely meant, he told her a little bit about the new-old nightmare. She queried some more. He told some more. She wrote some more.
What if you could change the dream?
He put the letter down. She had taken leave of her senses. He shook his head and returned to it.
I know you are going to think I’ve taken leave of my senses.
