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Chapter 7

Nightswimming

E ffie tried to sneak out of bed early the next morning, but Archie awakened.

“There’s no need for you to use the window,” Archie said drily, even as Effie perched on the sill, one leg already swung outside.

Drat.

In a repeat of the previous two nights, Archie had come to Effie’s bedchamber and wordlessly gotten into bed with him, rolled over, and fallen asleep. Effie had, as on previous nights, been moved by the gesture.

Unlike previous nights, Archie’s presence had not helped Effie sleep. But in this case, his inability to drift off was due to excitement, not melancholy. He hadn’t wanted to oversleep his meeting with Jules, and he could hardly have asked a servant to wake him up. So he had remained wakeful, but contentedly so.

He summoned a carefree tone. “I am going for a walk.” It was not, strictly speaking, untrue. He was going to walk to the beach.

And then he was going swimming with Julianna.

She would be wet.

Her clothing would probably adhere to her body.

If she wore any.

She would wear clothing, would she not? A shift or some such? He wasn’t familiar, except theoretically, with what ladies wore beneath their gowns. Stockings. There would be stockings, he thought. Or perhaps—

“God’s teeth, don’t fall!” Archie called, and Effie saved himself from toppling off the sill. When he didn’t say anything, Archie asked, “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No, no. You stay. I merely . . . need some air.”

Also not a lie. Thinking of Julianna in various states of undress had made his head hot. He had a sudden memory of sitting by the fire in the kitchen after swimming at Highworth, angling his head close to the flames so his hair would dry. Father hadn’t approved of swimming, so Effie would sneak down to the kitchen after an illicit outing, and Cook would set him by the fire and give him biscuits.

He hadn’t thought about swimming at Highworth for years, not since he’d mentioned it to Julianna.

“Again,” Archie said, “might I suggest the door, in your case?”

“Eh, I’m already here. You go back to sleep. And take the sheet off Leander’s cage when you get up for the day, will you?”

He didn’t wait for further interrogation, just hopped to the ground . . . whereupon he realized that although he’d gotten dressed, he had neglected to don any shoes.

Drat again.

“Archie?” he whispered, and when there was no answer, he dared to raise his voice a tad. “Archie?”

Nothing.

Archie always slept like the dead, dropping off the moment his head hit the pillow, almost as if he could will himself to slumber. As if to punctuate that thought, Archie let loose a single snore that Effie could hear all the way outside.

And then he heard another snore, one that sounded not altogether human. He smiled. If Leander had developed the ability to imitate snoring, perhaps there was hope for him after all.

Effie pondered his feet. Ah, well. Who needed shoes? He set off. He was unlikely to encounter anyone on the walk down to the water, and he certainly wouldn’t wear shoes to swim.

What would he wear to swim, though? He’d been so consumed, moments ago, with imagining Julianna’s bathing costume or lack thereof, that he hadn’t spared a thought for his own attire. He was wearing a shirt over which he had thrown a waistcoat he hadn’t yet buttoned. He wore no cravat and no stockings, the latter omission perhaps explaining why he had forgotten shoes.

Even though he was missing half of what passed for respectable attire, he could hardly go into the water wearing all this clothing, could he?

The sky was just beginning to lighten as he approached the shore.

She was already there. He’d thought to arrive first, and indeed, he was early, but she was earlier.

She hadn’t seen him yet. She was standing with her back to him, staring out at the dark water. The way she was standing was familiar. He had the sudden realization that he’d seen her a day before they’d met at the Pavilion. A figure on the beach had drawn his attention that first afternoon. His initial fanciful notion that it might have been Julianna had been quashed by his—seemingly—better judgment. Unlike when they met at the Pavilion, her back had been turned, and she’d been quite far away. It made sense that he hadn’t recognized her, but it had been her.

He huffed a quiet, delighted laugh. It couldn’t have been her, he’d thought that day, extinguishing what he thought was a silly conceit with a silly answer, because the sky had been the wrong color. It had been a brilliant blue afternoon. And now it was morning, and the sky was pinky orange. Still the wrong color.

Yet there she was, once again silhouetted against the wrong color sky.

“Ha!” He’d been louder that time, and she turned. He regretted the outburst. He would have liked to study her undetected for a while.

He thought she would ask what he was laughing about, or greet him, but she merely let her gaze rake him and said, “I see you have left your ridiculous shoes at home.”

He wanted to kiss her again—he had thought of little else during his self-inflicted bout of insomnia last night. Instead, he kicked one leg out in front of him, toes pointed, and examined his bare foot. “One doesn’t need shoes for swimming.”

“I am imagining you as a child, barefoot, happily running wild on your family’s estate.”

“That . . .” He lowered his leg. “Would be an incorrect image.”

He walked so he was even with her. They stood side by side and stared out at the water, and a good minute passed before she said, “The barefoot part or the happy part?”

He waded into the shallows, so he didn’t have to look at her as he answered. “Both.”

She made a small noise that was part acknowledgment, part dismay. He did not turn, but after a beat she joined him. She held her skirts aloft, and she, too, was barefoot. She’d had on half boots before, and, he assumed, stockings. She hissed as she made contact with the cold water.

He regretted having missed her removing her stockings. There would have been garters involved, he imagined. She would have had to reach under her dress and unfasten them. He untucked his shirt and let it fall over his hardening prick. He had the notion he was meant to be embarrassed, but he wasn’t. The arranging of the shirt was merely to spare her any embarrassment or discomfort.

He observed the physical phenomenon underway in his breeches with, on the one hand, a detached sort of curiosity. This had never happened spontaneously, out in the world.

On the other hand, he wasn’t detached. He wasn’t detached at all. He was inside the phenomenon. It was an urgent, not entirely pleasant feeling, a heaviness that, if he were to pay it too much mind, might make him mad with . . . something.

“I don’t know you,” she said suddenly, startling him.

“You do ,” he protested.

“You sound indignant.”

“I am indignant. You know me.”

“I don’t. How can I know you if I was unaware that you had an unhappy childhood?”

“It was a long time ago. It is not relevant to who I am today.”

“Hmm.” It was a rather grumbly hmm .

“What do you want to know? I am an open book.”

She was going to ask him why he’d been unhappy. He didn’t want to discuss such matters, but for her, he would. He took another step seaward, the waves coming high enough to dampen the bottoms of his breaches.

She walked so she was even with him, damn her.

“Tell me about swimming when you were a child. Did you swim with your sister?”

“No. I swam alone.”

“Who taught you?”

The question gave him pause. “I . . . don’t know.” Someone must have, though. “I can’t remember.”

“Hmm.” This hmm was more contemplative than grumbly.

“It has recently come to my attention that I do not remember quite a lot of my childhood,” he said.

“But you remember that you swam. You remember that you loved swimming. You told me that, earlier.”

“Yes. I remember the feeling of swimming more than I remember the specific logistical circumstances surrounding it.”

“What did swimming feel like?”

“This is what I mean when I say that you know me. I’ve given you the opportunity to ask me questions, and instead of asking about fact, you are asking about feeling. We are alike in this way. We have spoken intensely and frequently of feeling . That is what matters. Who taught me to swim, who my family are, where I grew up—all of that is unimportant.”

“All right, then, but you still haven’t answered my question, which was entirely about feeling and therefore ought to be something you are well prepared to address: What did swimming feel like?”

“Why don’t you find out for yourself?”

She grinned, instantly lightening the mood. They hadn’t been arguing, exactly, but they hadn’t been entirely accordant, either. “What do I do? Do I go in in my dress?”

“That is a good question. I’ve never swum with a lady before.”

“How do you know you’ve never swum with a lady, given your lapses of memory? Perhaps a lady taught you to swim.”

He smiled. “Perhaps I was taught by a water nymph who enchanted me when we were done with our lesson, making me forget her.”

She rolled her eyes in a fashion Effie dared to think was fond. “What do you wear when you swim?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Usually? Nothing.”

It was shaping up to be a clear morning, but the look she shot him felt like a lightning strike. He rearranged his shirt and cleared his throat. “What did you wear sea-bathing the other day?”

“They had bathing costumes on hand. A sort of sturdier version of a shift.” She paused. “I have to admit it was unpleasantly heavy once wet. I propose I remove my dress and wear my shift.”

When she didn’t say anything further, he said, “Are you asking me?”

“No, no.”

“I could wear my dress,” she went on, “but I only own two, and I shouldn’t like one of them to get caught on a rock or . . . eaten by a fish. Do fish eat dresses? Probably not, but you take my point. I am keen to protect my dress.”

Effie was taken aback by the idea of a lady owning only two dresses, but then he was ashamed that he was taken aback. He told himself to consider the situation at hand. The way Julianna was talking—rambling, really—with her head dipped almost gave the impression that she was shy.

How curious. He would never have thought to call Julianna shy. She seemed almost pinned in place, so he said, “I think when one is meeting in secret for a clandestine swim, one can wear whatever one wants.”

She smiled and began hiking her dress up over her head.

He was fairly certain that he died for a moment. In any case, he blacked out for long enough that even though he’d only been standing there, he tripped over his own feet. He covered it by acting as if he’d been taking off his breaches, unbuttoning the fall, but then he remembered that he was wearing no smallclothes beneath them. He rarely did. He found them distractingly unpleasant. Something about the way they rubbed his skin.

He would leave his breeches on. He fixed them, removed his waistcoat, and began unbuttoning his shirt. By the time he was rid of it, Julianna had her dress fully off and was clutching it to her chest. Effie gathered his own extraneous garments to his chest in a similar fashion, turned back toward the beach, and hurled the bundle, smiling when it landed clear of the waves.

“I don’t think I have the arm for that.” Julianna walked back to the beach carrying her dress. He caught sight of her previously discarded stockings, for she set her dress beside them.

This should have been scandalous. She was wearing a shift, and he was wearing only breeches. When she returned to his side, he voiced the thought.

“This ought to be scandalous.”

“Yet it isn’t.”

“It isn’t, is it?”

It was a lot of things, including the single most erotic experience of his life, but it wasn’t scandalous.

“It’s because of the feelings,” she said. “You said we have spoken frequently and intensely of feeling. That is why this doesn’t feel scandalous.”

“Because we already know each other so well, you mean.”

“You were right about that, but you were also wrong.”

He didn’t know what she meant by that, but he’d had rather enough of this conversation—the metaphorical lightning strike from before had left the air charged, crackly—so he said, “Let’s walk out a way, and I shall endeavor to instruct you.”

They pushed out against the waves, Julianna inhaling sharply at various points. “It wasn’t this cold two days ago.”

“I think there must be something about the daytime, the sunshine, that changes the experience. Even if the water isn’t actually any warmer during the day, the air is.” Effie was a little ahead of her, and the water was up to his waist. “It’s better to just get in all at once.” He dived, letting the shock cool his head, and surfaced two dozen feet away. “But you oughtn’t to try that,” he called. “I’ll come back and help you.” He reversed course.

“You are a fine swimmer,” she said when he surfaced by her side. “Perhaps no one taught you. Perhaps you are a changeling, a lost son of Poseidon who was born knowing how to swim.”

Wouldn’t that be lovely, to be someone else’s son?

He stood, and while he hadn’t been scandalized earlier, there was something about the way she was looking at his chest instead of his eyes as she spoke, that returned him to that heavy, vaguely unpleasant feeling. Or perhaps unfulfilled was the better word. It was a feeling that something was meant to happen, something that, frustratingly, wasn’t happening. It was a sensation of being stuck.

“I think I may have been all talk,” he said, just for something to say, and also because it was the truth. “I may be a capable swimmer, but I am realizing I don’t know how to teach anyone else.”

She told him about her experience with the dipper from the other day. “She held me as I floated, and while I appreciate that it wasn’t swimming per se, it was glorious.”

“That is where we shall start, then, with an assisted float.”

Effie held out his arms and guided Julianna into them. “I’m going to walk out a way, beyond where the waves are cresting. It seems counterintuitive, but the waves will be gentler out there. I won’t let you go.”

“All right,” she said, and he set off with Julianna, his Jules, in his arms. How extraordinary.

He found a good spot and held her lightly, letting her feel the rocking of the waves. “If you tip your head back, fill your lungs with air, and hold your breath, you may be able to float on your own.”

“Let me try,” she said. “But don’t go anywhere.”

“I shan’t.” If only he never had to. “You’re doing it!”

She was floating perfectly, so cleverly and thoroughly had she taken his instructions.

A big wave hit, and she gasped. He could see her beginning to panic. He grabbed her, encouraging her to relax back into his arms. “You’re all right.”

They stayed like that for a while, Effie endeavoring to hold Jules tightly enough to buffer the worst of the waves but lightly enough that she might feel their motion. He wanted to ask her what she was thinking about, but he held his tongue.

“The dipper held me like this in Brighton,” she said, startling him by answering the question he hadn’t asked. “It reminded me then, as it does now, of a time when I was young, and ill, and my father rocked me.”

“Is it a happy memory? I suppose not, if you were ill.”

“I . . . don’t know. I was so shocked by it—it came into my mind seemingly out of nowhere—that I didn’t classify it.” She had kept her eyes closed while she spoke, and the furrow in her brow deepened. “I miss him.”

“Oh, Jules, he sounds wonderful.” His heart clenched. “How lovely—and lucky—to have a memory of someone holding you up like that.”

She opened her eyes and regarded him silently for a long while. “It is. It is also wonderful to have someone hold you up under a sunrise.” She smiled. He wanted to flatter himself that she was smiling at him, but more likely it was merely the lightening sky that she found pleasing. It was streaked with pink and yellow, a formless watercolor.

“I have a painting of you at home,” he said, though he had no idea why. “Or rather, I have a painting of the idea of you.”

He expected a big reaction—an exclamation or an expression of disbelief—but she merely said, “What am I doing in it?”

“Nothing. You’re standing against a sky the color of chartreuse, looking at me.” He paused, wondering if he ought to explain what he meant by “looking at me,” but decided she would understand. “I thought of it because now you are here, looking at me, and there is a pink and orange sky. I almost feel as if I have painted this scene into being, painted you into being.”

“And yet, I am the one who came to Brighton looking for you .”

“Perhaps we painted each other into being.”

“I am not an artist.”

“Perhaps we dreamt each other into being.”

She smiled again. “Chartreuse like the liqueur? The sky may be many unusual colors”—she hitched a chin at the paintbox sunrise above them—“but I have never seen a green one.”

“I don’t know, except that it just came out that way.”

“Mm.”

“I blame you.”

“Me!” she said with mock indignation.

“Yes, I think you made it happen somehow. You bewitched my paintbrush from afar.”

“Drat. You’ve caught me.”

She shivered. They should get out of the water.

“Swimming—or floating—feels like . . .” She trailed off, her forehead wrinkling while she searched for words. “It feels like freedom.”

“Precisely,” he said. “The weightlessness of one’s body conferred by immersion seems to lead to an analogous mental state.”

“Liberation,” she said.

“Yes. If only the effect were more than temporary.” He paused. “When you said, earlier, that I was right but also wrong, about us knowing each other—what did you mean?” He felt ready to know.

“You were right that we do know each other, intimately. But at the same time, we don’t know each other completely . We cannot. What you said about your childhood having no bearing on who you are today—that isn’t true, is it? It cannot be. For any of us.”

“No,” he said quietly, a sadness colder than the sea seeping into his bones, “It cannot be.” Why else would all these nightmare memories be surfacing if childhood had no bearing on the present?

To his shock, she reached up and rested a palm on his cheek. “I am sorry.”

“Whatever for?” He’d meant his tone to be light, but there was a catch in his throat.

“For whatever has hurt you.” She paused. “Or whoever.”

Tears sprang to the corners of his eyes. He supposed he ought to be grateful that they were disguised by the fact that his face was already wet.

“My father hurt me,” he said carefully. “And my mother, too, but by inaction rather than by malice.”

“Ah.”

“I will tell you about it,” he said, surprising himself by wanting to. “But I think we ought to get out of the water. It’s becoming properly morning.” The land that abutted the water was owned by Lord Haffert, and this section of beach had been deserted every time the boys had visited, but Effie and Jules, in their wet, half-dressed state, were pushing their luck post-dawn.

He carried her in a way, until he judged the water level would be below her waist, and set her on her feet.

She threw her arms around him. He’d have been less shocked if she’d planted a facer on him, though he wasn’t sure why. They had kissed yesterday.

He returned her embrace, glad the cold water had led to some . . . shrinkage. Her body was long and lean, but her bosom was soft. She hugged him tighter, and he had to revise that thought. Her bosom was soft, but he could feel her nipples against his skin, through the wet muslin of her shift.

And drat , the shrinkage was . . . reversing.

She didn’t seem to notice, just kept hanging on as she said, solemnly, “Thank you for teaching me to swim.”

“I didn’t teach you, in the end. I think proper swimming lessons are better conducted in more private waters, when one may immerse oneself for a long time, and under the high sun of the afternoon.” If only he could invite her to stay at Highworth.

“Thank you for holding me up, then.”

He took a step back, gently disentangling them. It was difficult. “Oh, you are most welcome for that, Jules. I would do that all day if I could.”

“I should have brought some toweling,” she said when they were back on the beach. She picked up her dress and shook it. “’T’will be unpleasant to put a dry dress over a wet shift.”

Effie had been trying not to look at the wet shift too closely. “Come back to the house.” He spoke with his back turned, nominally because he was buttoning up his shirt. “You can dry off there.”

She started to demur, but her speech was interrupted by an almost comically large yawn. She smiled when it concluded. “I can’t imagine why I feel so exhausted.”

“You walked here.”

“It isn’t a great distance, and I walk quite a lot, generally speaking. I suppose it’s that I stayed up most of the night, not wanting to oversleep our meeting.”

“I did the same.” As if on cue, he yawned. “It seems your fatigue is infectious.”

“Your friends”—another yawn—“won’t mind if I pay a visit? Or the household staff?”

“They won’t know,” he said, though he had no idea how he was going to sneak her in.

The same way he had sneaked out, he decided. His bedchamber window was going to be harder to enter from the outside—jumping down had been one thing—but he could give Julianna a leg up. He’d helped his sister onto enough horses.

To his surprise, there was an actual mounting block sitting at the base of the window.

Oh, Archie.

They were able to scramble in, and there was no sign of Archie himself. Julianna had spent the short walk shivering, and he looked around for something with which to warm her. The bed was unmade, the servants no doubt believing he was still abed. He gathered up the counterpane and wrapped it around her shoulders, guiding her to sit on the edge of the bed. “Excuse me for a few moments.”

He made his way into a small attached dressing room and quickly changed into fresh garments.

He had intended to make haste so he could get back to Julianna, but once he was changed, something kept him pinned in place, like a deer facing a hunter but unable to rouse itself to flee. Exhaustion, he supposed. But it wasn’t just that. It was something else, too.

Wonder: Julianna was in the attached room, steps away. Julianna was here !

He wanted to kiss her again, if she wanted it, too.

He stepped back through to the room, buttoning his new, dry shirt.

She was asleep. Goodness, she slipped into slumber as easily as Archie.

A terrible fondness rose through him. She was slumped back against the headboard, and the counterpane had fallen off her shoulders. Gently, he attempted to rearrange her so she would be more comfortable, but she awakened.

“Mmph.” She blinked, befuddled. He could see her preparing to rise.

“Shh,” he soothed. “Stay. Rest a while. Get warm. You will not be discovered.”

He thought she would object, but she only said, “I will rest if you will rest with me.”

“Yes.” He would do anything with her, anything she asked, and resting was easy.

She allowed him to fuss with the bedding, to tuck her in, then she shocked him utterly by holding up the covers, seeming to indicate that she wanted him to get in—that when she’d said “rest with me,” she’d meant in the same bed.

When he didn’t immediately move, she said, “Do I have to hit you with a pillow to get you to get in?”

He got in.

* * *

When he awoke who knew how much later—the sun was blazing through the crack in the curtain and his stomach was rumbling—Julianna was wide awake, lying on her side looking at him.

“I have awakened to find myself on Saturn,” she said.

Effie had been writing to Julianna about Saturn’s rings. He gathered the comment meant that as she’d come to consciousness and remembered where she was, she’d felt she may as well have been floating among those celestial wonders.

“You say the most marvelous things,” Effie said.

“What do you mean?”

“You say things you mean metaphorically, but you say them with such lack of irony, such absolute unwavering steadfastness, that sometimes you give me pause, make me wonder momentarily if you aren’t being literal. You say that you’re on another planet. Or that your head burst into flame, or that your heart beat so fiercely it broke a rib. You describe the most extreme visceral experiences even as you maintain a facade of equanimity.” He paused. “I am fairly certain you have never been to another planet. You have not experienced a broken rib, or the immolation of your head, have you?”

“I have not.” The smile she’d been wearing faded. “Perhaps such similes are ill-done of me. I’m sure there are people who have experienced such grievous bodily wounds in a literal sense. Soldiers, for example.”

“You are a kind of soldier.”

She made a dismissive noise.

“You are always battling Mr. Glanvil for resources, and printers for time on their presses.” He thought of Hamlet, tucked away in Archie’s house. London felt so far away, in terms of both distance and experience.

“Come now, Effie, let us not get carried away. Such hyperbole is insulting to soldiers and to me. And to you. You’re better than that.”

Well, that stung. But that was why he adored Julianna, was it not? She never hesitated to voice her true feelings. Lots of people looked at Effie and saw the life of the party—the fashionable gentleman in the silly shoes always good for a witty remark. Effie had cultivated such interpretations. That was not what Julianna saw, though, or not all she saw. She held him to high standards, wanting him to live up to a potential she seemed to see more clearly than he did. This scrutiny of hers was both unsettling and thrilling.

“You know what I mean,” he said. “You can’t have imagined having to advocate so fiercely and continuously for the magazine your father started.”

She nodded thoughtfully as she stared at the ceiling.

“Of course, you miss him as a person, too,” Effie added, not wanting to reduce her relationship with her father to the magazine.

“You are correct on both counts,” she said wistfully. “I do miss him, as I said. I miss him terribly, and sometimes it feels as though I miss him more as the years elapse rather than less. But the perpetual struggle over the magazine does throw into relief how different my life is compared to what I thought it would be. I think that—that gap—is the worst part.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Father and I always planned for me to take over when he was gone. Neither of us foresaw Mother remarrying. I ought to be angry at her, I suppose, but I find I cannot be.”

“You rarely speak of her in your letters.” He knew about her sister, and her sister’s family, and she often invoked her father.

“We aren’t close. She is a woman who loves love, who hates to be alone. Glanvil Senior swept her off her feet.” She shrugged. “To turn him down wouldn’t have occurred to her. It would have been against her nature, and you can hardly fault someone for being who they are.”

“So about this gap you referenced,” he prodded. He was sucking up this information about her family like a thirsty robin in a birdbath, but what he really wanted to know about was this business of her life not turning out the way she’d imagined.

“Yes. I always saw myself running the magazine. I just didn’t think it would be this hard. I didn’t think I would be so . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m on about.”

He didn’t know precisely what she’d been going to say, but he had the distinct impression that the word she’d swallowed was one that would have broken his heart. I didn’t think I would be so unhappy , say. I didn’t think I would be so lonely .

Before he met her in person, he wouldn’t have thought Jules was anything like that. She seemed so in control of all aspects of her life. How could such a person be unhappy, or lonely?

He knew she didn’t want to talk about it. And perhaps he was incorrect. It was the height of self-regard, in a way, to presume to know how she felt, to speculate about which words she had inside her.

“Can we stay here forever?” he asked, both by way of distraction and because he would have loved for the answer to be yes . If only they could remain tucked into bed indefinitely. He could sneak out and procure food as required. Books. Whatever she wanted.

Her countenance turned wistful “I wish. I have wanted to meet you in person for ever so long, and how buoying it is to find, after a bit of initial confusion, that you’re exactly as I imagined.”

“Am I?”

“Well, apart from the minor detail that you are a gentleman, yes. Also, I hadn’t expected you to smell like cloves.”

Only Jules would consider the fact that he was a gentleman and not a lady a “minor detail.” “What had you imagined I’d be like? What had you imagined I would smell like?” He smiled. “I hadn’t expected you to smell like roses.”

“So what you are saying is that neither of us smells right.”

“I suppose I’m merely saying that the corporeal world has its advantages over the epistolary one, and that is not something I thought I’d ever say.”

“We got most of it right,” she said thoughtfully. “Or I did, anyway. I thought you would be intelligent.”

Effie was certain no one had ever called him intelligent before.

“You would be thoughtful, and kind.” She paused, considering him. She was so close, he could see that there were several different shades of green in her eyes, ranging from a deep forest to a bright moss. Next time he painted her against a chartreuse sky, he would be able to represent her eyes properly.

“You would have an eye for beauty, but also for pain,” she went on. “That is what I thought you would be like, and it all came true. You came true.”

Warmth flooded him as he considered her words. “My father would not agree with any of your assessment.”

“Well, then, he does not know you.”

“He does not care to know me.”

“That is his loss.”

It was time to tell her. “I cannot remember who taught me to swim, because I cannot remember a great many things from my childhood.”

“How do you know you can’t remember them if you can’t remember them?”

Delighted, he huffed a laugh. She had such a keen mind.

“I have been remembering them lately, in bits and pieces. I’ve been having nightmares.”

“So you have said.”

“Yes, but I have led you to believe they are nightmares of the regular sort—phantasmagoric. Fanciful. Frightening but transitory. But they aren’t. They’re true . They happened .”

“Your memories are coming to you as dreams.”

“Yes.” He went on to tell her what he’d told the boys, about the wardrobe and the broken arm and the drowned kitten. He told her more than he’d told the boys. There were so many examples. He hadn’t thought it necessary to include them all the other night, in order to make his point, but something about Julianna’s careful, unstinting attention made him want to tell her everything. To recite the whole brutal, mortifying list.

“That is why I never told you the whole truth about who I am,” he explained when he’d finished his list of woes. “Because I don’t want to be who I am.”

Because of who I am, I can’t have you.

He almost said that last bit aloud, but he reminded himself that it was only one reason among many he did not want to be the heir to the Earl of Stonely. And it was only one reason among many keeping him and Julianna apart. It was, given her fierce resistance to the very idea of marriage, a minor reason at that.

They lay side by side in silence for a long while until a scrabbling sound drew their attention. Julianna glanced in the direction of Leander’s sheet-draped cage.

“Have you brought your bird on your holiday?”

“I have indeed. Leander is at a critical point in his education, and I didn’t want him to backslide.”

She chuckled. “Is he saying more words?”

“Alas, no. He has added ‘Go’ to the roster, but still no sentences, or even phrases.”

That was a lie, and Effie had never lied to Julianna. But what choice did he have?

A terrible thought dawned: What if Leander said his one sentence in front of Julianna? I am in love with a woman named Julianna Evans.

He could only hope the creature would settle back down to sleep.

And/or that the sentence, which had never been heard since its singular utterance, had been an aberration.

“So he says, ‘No,’ ‘Try,’ and, now, ‘Go,’” Julianna said, and Effie was tickled that she remembered from his correspondence such inconsequential details as Leander’s previous syllables.

“That is correct.”

“Why did you name him Leander? I never asked. Presumably he is named after the Greek hero? Leander who swims to his love Hero every night, guided by the light in her tower.”

“I was inspired by the Keats poem that recounts Leander’s drowning, but yes.”

“Was she imprisoned in the tower? I can’t remember.”

“I don’t know, but she must have been, else why would she let him drown trying to get to her?”

She slid off the bed. “May I meet your Leander?”

“Of course.”

He led her to the other side of the room and slid the sheet off Leander’s cage, praying the creature would stick to his single syllable du jour.

Julianna leaned over and out her face quite close to the bars. “He’s lovely.”

“Isn’t he?” Effie cleared his throat. “Miss Evans, please meet Leander. Leander, this is Miss Evans.”

“Hello, Leander,” Julianna said warmly.

“Hello, Miss Evans!” Leander, that absolute bounder, said.