Page 17

Chapter 11

Mythology

“D oes anyone remember the myth of Leander and Hero?” Effie asked after dinner the next night—the last night. Well, not the last night of Earls Trip, but the last night with Julianna in attendance.

Once again, Julianna had retired after dinner, leaving Effie to pass some time with the boys. She no longer pled a headache. They all seemed to have accepted a certain rhythm to their days—and nights. Today, as yesterday, they had all ventured out together, spending most of their time on the beach, and had taken their evening meal together.

After spending some time with the boys and a glass of port, Effie was meant to go to Julianna. For the last time.

“You’re the poet among us,” Archie said.

“And the one who owns a bird named Leander,” Simon said.

“I’ve got the basics of it from the Keats poem,” Effie said. “Or the ending, anyway. He drowns trying to get to his love, Hero. But I can’t remember what led to that.”

“You can’t imagine I know,” Archie said. It was true; Archie had never been a scholar.

“You’re in luck, because I do,” Simon said, and when both Effie and Simon looked at him in surprise, he held up his hands and added, “I’ve been expanding my reading of late and have recently dipped into Greek mythology.”

Was it Effie’s imagination, or was Simon being somewhat defensive? Greek mythology certainly was out of character for him. Effie had only ever seen Simon read newspapers. Though come to think of it, he had been reading Sense and Sensibility in the coach. Effie made a mental note to think more on this exceptional turn later, but for now said, “Do go on.”

“Leander and Hero fall in love, despite the fact that she is a priestess of Aphrodite and has taken a vow of chastity,” Simon said.

“Why would a priestess of Aphrodite take a vow of chastity?” Archie asked.

“Why did the Greeks do anything?”

“I take the point.”

“Regardless, she is forbidden to marry. And she and Leander live on opposite sides of the Hellespont, she in a very high tower overlooking the sea.”

“I would expect no less for a priestess of Aphrodite,” Archie said wryly.

Simon shot Archie a quelling look. “Leander convinces Hero that he should swim across the channel every night to pay her a visit. She agrees, though she is fearful.”

“Of Aphrodite’s wrath?” Effie asked.

“I suppose so. Or perhaps she is concerned about the treacherous swim. There are various versions of the story. I’m sure we all read Ovid at school.”

Effie had only a vague memory of that, and the characters of the various myths blurred in his mind. Someone was always drowning or burning or being pecked to death by birds.

“Hero is meant to hang a light in her window every night to guide Leander on his swim,” Simon continued. “Which she does, and he makes his nightly crossing, though there is a detour in Marlowe’s accounting where he gets mistaken for someone else by Neptune—this is the Roman version—and if I recall correctly, there’s a magical bracelet involved.”

“Isn’t there always?” Archie said.

“Will you hold your tongue?” Simon said. Archie smirked as Simon continued. “Marlowe ends his poem there. He died before he finished it, apparently.”

“You’ve been reading poetry?” Effie asked.

“I wouldn’t say I’ve ‘been reading’ poetry. I read a poem.”

“But why?” Not that a person needed a reason to read poetry, but it was out of character for Simon.

Simon ignored the question. “In other versions of the myth, the lovers agree to part ways at the end of summer. The waters will be too treacherous to swim come wintertime.”

The lovers agree to part ways at the end of summer.

“How? How did they agree to part ways? Did they simply say, ‘Well, that was diverting. Have a lovely summer,’ and go on their merry ways?”

Simon and Archie were both looking at Effie strangely. Effie gestured for Simon to continue.

“But then one winter night, Leander sees the light in Hero’s tower and takes it as a summons.”

“That seems rather a leap,” Archie said. “Perhaps Hero is engrossed in a novel she can’t put down. Perhaps she has forgotten all about Leander and taken another lover. Perhaps she merely fell asleep with the light burning.”

Simon turned to Effie. “You’re the one who asked for this tale. Can you make him stop?”

Archie held up his hands and made a show of closing his mouth.

With a short sigh, Simon resumed his tale. “Leander starts across the strait, but it’s a terribly stormy night and the light is extinguished. He loses his way and is drowned. Hero, seeing that, drowns herself too.”

“If she could see him drowning, could she not see that her light had gone out?” Archie, apparently unable to help himself, said.

“I repeat: Who knows why the Greeks did anything?”

“And then,” Effie said, “Keats says of Leander’s death, ‘Nigh swooning he doth purse his weary lips for Hero’s cheek and smiles against her smile.’”

Smiles against her smile.

How lovely. How devastating.

“What is the point, do you think?” Effie asked, after taking a moment to collect himself. “Love across a chasm such as the Hellespont is doomed?”

As doomed as between the heir to an earl and the editor of a magazine? As doomed as between the heir to an earl who can’t marry the editor of a magazine and the editor of a magazine who won’t marry anyone?

“Don’t take vows of chastity you don’t intend to keep,” Archie offered.

“I should think it’s more ‘Do not anger the gods,’” Simon said.

Perhaps it wasn’t that high-minded. Perhaps it was simply, Only fools willingly swim to their deaths .

* * *

Effie dallied in going to Julianna that night. The past two nights, he had appeared in her bedchamber sans coat—the first night sans waistcoat, too. He had merely gone to her in whatever he had been—or hadn’t been—wearing by the end of his evening session with the boys.

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 it hurt .

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.

He knew 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 to Julianna was 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.”

Julianna must have grown impatient during his reverie, for suddenly she was pressing on his chest, walking him back toward the bed. When they arrived, she pushed him unceremoniously onto his back and climbed on top of him. She worked his shirt loose from his breeches, but she, too, was defeated by his cravat.

“I was attempting a waterfall knot,” he said, “and now it’s tightened beyond removing. I fear I shall have to cut—”

She stopped his mouth with a kiss, laying herself over him.

All right, then; that worked, too.

They kissed for ages. Effie told himself to savor it. For although subterfuge was fine if needs must, it was less than ideal. A comfortable, warmly lit bedchamber in a house full of people who understood: this was their last taste of that life.

She pulled away before he was ready. He wanted to kiss her forever. He didn’t want to spend; he didn’t want her to find her release. That would mean the night was over.

His prick had other ideas as she straddled his thighs and stroked it. “Uhn,” he groaned.

When she did that, he became temporarily paralyzed. He became the mindless starfish.

He had been rendered slow-witted enough that he didn’t catch on to what she was doing next until it was almost too late. “Wait!” he cried, finding his voice just as she was about to sink down onto him.

She stopped, and he felt a fool.

He hadn’t thought they were doing that, was the thing. He had taken to heart Archie’s advice about the dangers of an unintended pregnancy, and there had been no discussion of their coming together in this way, nor any sense that it was even on offer.

He had thought she would be more comfortable with mouths and fingers and such.

Hell, he might be more comfortable with mouths and fingers and such.

“What is it?” she asked as she sat back onto the tops of his thighs.

“It is too dangerous. You cannot have a child. I cannot have a child.”

“Why can you not have a child?” she asked, a question he thought was rather beside the point at the moment.

He answered anyway. “Because if I had a child, presumably I would love it. And if I loved a child, how could I put him in line for the earldom?”

“You do realize it’s rather unusual to hear a person such as yourself declaim that he does not want to inherit land, power, and riches. That he does not want to consign a child to such.”

“I suppose I am an original,” Effie teased, fluttering his eyelashes for comic effect.

“You do not really have a choice, though, do you? I appreciate the many ways in which you are unconventional. You are an original. But you shall have to produce an heir, shan’t you?”

“I suppose so.” Honestly, he preferred not to think about it, and so far that strategy had proven sufficient. Someday, his parents would probably begin haranguing him over the succession, but that day had not yet arrived. “But I would like to think you of all people would understand why the prospect feels rather like a yoke to me. A cage.”

“I do, but I feel I ought to point out that you can be whatever sort of earl you like. You can be a poetry-writing, court-pump–wearing earl. Regardless, there is very little risk of getting me with child.”

His first impulse was to ask how she knew that, but he swallowed the question. He had to assume she did—it was her body, her future, on the line here. He settled for saying, “Very little risk is not no risk.”

“Can you pull out? When you’re close, I mean?”

Yes . He hadn’t realized that was an option, but of course it was. And now that it was, he wanted it. He yearned for it with every word of every poem he’d ever written.

“But of course if you don’t want to, we won’t,” she said, leveling him with a look so tender it brought tears to his eyes. She started to pull away.

He clamped a palm down on her forearm. “I can do that.”

The smile she graced him with was equal parts wicked and guileless, which should have been impossible, but many things about Julianna, about Julianna and him together, should have been impossible.

“We should switch places,” she said, glancing down at his hand keeping her anchored to him.

“I beg your pardon?” He didn’t understand, but he removed his hand all the same. It wasn’t polite to hold a lady against her will.

Once freed, she flopped onto her back.

“You are starfishing,” he said fondly.

“I appear to be starfishing, but I am in my right mind. Starfishing requires the temporary departure of one’s senses. To reduce the risk of this encounter resulting in a child neither of us wants, you must pull out before you spend. That is more likely to be successful if you are on top. You shall be able to move away from me unimpeded.”

You shall be able to move away from me unimpeded.

Effie didn’t care for that sentence.

He shook his head. He was overthinking this. He wasn’t writing a poem here.

He was making a painting.

He closed his eyes and pictured it. Him moving over Julianna, her eyes closed in ecstasy. He could angle himself the way he had the first night, when she said the pressure was just right. Except this time, he would be inside her.

He opened his eyes. He might not survive the encounter, but he was ready.

He kissed her again. And again and again, pausing only long enough to inform her, “We are going to kiss for ages.” She smiled, and he smiled against her smile—like Leander from the Keats poem? No, of course not. No one was drowning here.

And so they kissed for ages. It would be the last time they had ages to spare.

She kept attempting to move things along, but Effie was coming to understand the pleasure to be had in delayed gratification. It was difficult, but the best things often were. Eventually, he moved down her body, kissing her neck, stroking her breasts, flicking her nipples the way he’d learned she liked. He allowed her to stroke his body all over, too, but when her hands found his prick, he swatted them away.

“I said ‘ages,’” he teased.

“It’s been ages.” She tried to pout, but she was laughing, and then he was laughing.

“Edward,” she said after their laughter died, and his formal Christian name on her lips shocked him to his core. “ Please .”

A bolt of lust shot down his spine, and suddenly he didn’t have ages.

There is only now.

“You will have to guide me,” he said. He had meant it in a general sense, but she grabbed his prick, lined herself up with it, wrapped her legs around his waist, and, using his body for leverage, thrust upward.

And there they were. Together. Ages would not be long enough.

“You might like to move,” she whispered, and he realized he had been frozen.

Part of him wanted to stay frozen. Stay like this forever, closer to Julianna than he had ever been or would ever be to anyone else. But once she planted the seed of the idea, this notion of moving inside her, his body began undulating. He remembered the rocking she had enjoyed before, and he tried to replicate that, but some relentless need inside him was overriding his conscious will and he could not help but begin thrusting.

She didn’t seem to mind. She hung on to him with both arms and both legs and met his every thrust.

“Effie,” she said, and if he didn’t know better, he’d have thought she was distressed.

“Jules,” he answered.

They stared at each other. One of her hands had slid around to the front of her body and was rubbing the magical nub of flesh. He moved his own hand to join hers, adding his first two fingers next to the two she was using.

She moaned again, and for a moment, her eyes slipped closed. But they opened just as quickly, opened wide, as if in disbelief, and she went perfectly still.

Nothing had ever flattered him more, or made him feel more powerful. He could have a thousand poems published, or he could have this, and he would choose this every time.

He pressed down a little harder with his fingers and, knowing he was close to his own precipice, gave a great thrust. The quaking began. It started with her. He felt her shivering where their bodies touched, and soon her shivering became his became theirs.

There was only now, and there was only them.

* * *

Julianna fell asleep, as she had been doing during their nights together.

In their correspondence, she had always sympathized with Effie about his insomnia, telling him that she had so often lain abed and resisted sleeping for thinking about the magazine that she feared she had trained herself not to sleep, even when she wanted to.

But she certainly fell asleep readily here. Tonight, they hadn’t been lying panting for five minutes before he realized that she wasn’t panting so much anymore as she was lightly snoring.

Effie would have enjoyed flattering himself that it was his presence, but it was more likely the generalized effect of a holiday. Distance—both physical and sentimental—from one’s cares, even if one did not perceive one’s cares as burdens, as was certainly the case with Jules and her magazine, had a restorative effect.

But . . . Was she distant from her cares here? He certainly was not. He had been, moments ago, but There is only now had become What happens next?

He had been distant from his cares when their holiday began, the relief of confiding in his friends and the giddiness of his early encounters with Jules conspiring to create a profound contentment deep inside him. That state hadn’t lasted, though. Cares, they had a way of seeping in.

Regardless, he was glad Julianna was sleeping well. Perhaps she could bank some of it for when she had to go back and do battle with Mr. Glanvil and the other men of her world, the ones who didn’t respect her talents or consider her feelings.

He levered himself off the bed gingerly, so as not to wake her. Pulling on a dressing gown, he peered into Leander’s cage, willing the bird, who was awake, to remain silent.

“Do you want to come out?” he whispered, opening the door and presenting his wrist.

Leander stepped out with a burble that was not loud enough to wake Julianna, and Effie took him to a bureau in the corner on which sat a wash basin and ewer. Leander liked to perch on the edge of the basin and drink the water—that it was from the same source and therefore identical to the water furnished him in his cage was a fact to which Leander was indifferent.

Effie lit a candle and studied his reflection. For some unfathomable reason, he expected he would look different than he had an hour ago, when he’d been tying his cravat.

He was unchanged. He had even grown accustomed to the short hair.

What had he expected?

Frankly, as illogical as it was, he had expected the upheaval he’d experienced these past few days to be visible somehow. He had expected to look like a man whose heart was at once soaring and half broken, like a man who had everything and was about to return to a life wherein he had to settle for a sliver of everything. For shadows.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, staring at his reflection while Leander preened, only that he was startled when Julianna’s reflection joined his.

She was fully dressed and holding her own candle. She was ready to go back to her room, and in the morning, she would leave. They had cooked up a fiction by which they would hand off “Sarah” in Brighton to a fictional aunt and uncle who would then escort her back to London.

This was the second time Effie and Julianna had met like this, in the mirror. Perhaps he ought to take it as a sign. Perhaps their relationship worked better when it was mediated by something like a mirror. Letters. Perhaps they needed a degree of remove.

For the first time, Effie wondered if this had all been a mistake. Previously, he would have said no, even considering the pain that was coming—the pain that was already here. Meeting Julianna was the single most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. That first day, when they embraced in front of the Pavilion, he would have said meeting her had been worth any price, any pain. But that was back when he felt pain with his heart. His soul.

Julianna had introduced him to his body. Not his body alone but his body as conjoined to his heart and soul. She had made him one, made him whole. He was subject now to an entirely new sort of pain.

This pain was everywhere, and was suddenly more than he thought he could bear.

“What will happen now?” he asked Julianna’s reflection carefully. He had been following her directive, as well as he could, to live in the present, but it was time to discuss the terms of their ongoing relationship.

“I expect I ought to go back to my room,” she said glibly. “I believe I heard the clock chime four.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

She cocked a head. “What do you mean, then?”

“You know,” he said, not bothering to tamp down the pique in his tone. He was hurt that she would pretend to misunderstand his question, and he didn’t care if she knew it. “And please do me the respect of refraining from saying, ‘There is only now.’”

Her countenance shifted. “What can happen? We can hardly carry on as we have here. Your absence from my bedchamber earlier meant you knew that, did it not? That is why you were dallying, not because of that cravat.” She nodded at the silk he was still wearing around his neck. It was starting to feel like a noose.

“We cannot carry on as we have here, seeing each other intensely and frequently, all right,” Effie said, “but that doesn’t mean we shan’t be able to see each other at all.”

When she didn’t answer, he began to panic. He tried not to show it, but Leander must have been able to sense it, for he hopped around the edge of the basin until he was facing Effie, and squawked.

The bird seemed to spur Julianna to speech, though she didn’t spare Leander a glance. “When would that happen? Under what circumstances?”

Under less-than-ideal circumstances , he wanted to say. In shadows. In haste.

It was better than nothing.

Wasn’t it?

“It’s not as if we run in the same circles,” she said, when he didn’t answer. There was enough light in the room to see something in her eyes dim.

No. We do not run in the same circles. How can we? There is a strait between us.

He needed to start speaking out loud. Apparently they could no longer read each other’s thoughts.

He hated to push her, but what choice did he have? “What if I were to bring my next poem, or my next column, to your office? Hand you my pages rather than mail them to you.”

“But you write those pseudonymously.”

Was she worried someone would see him at her office and identify him as the author of “Advice for Married Ladies” and/or the odd poem?

“What if I were to require help with a poem? We could have an ‘editorial meeting.’” He hoped she caught his meaning. She looked . . . not vexed, but discomfited. She was tapping the fingers of one hand mindlessly against the fingers of another.

“What is wrong?”

Did she not want to see him?

“What are you thinking?” he pressed.

“What happens after the editorial meeting?” she asked.

“I’m not sure I follow.”

She stopped fidgeting and looked right at him in the mirror. “I haven’t time for an affair.”

He had to reach out for the edge of the bureau to steady himself. That she could turn away from all that had transpired between them because she was busy had him reeling. The statement lanced him, another instance of the power she had to hurt him, to hurt every part of him, body, soul, and heart together.

He wanted to ask how she had found time for the other two affairs she’d had, but the question would be laced with affront, even malice, and to meet hurt with hurt was beneath him.

He took a step back from the bureau. He did not turn to face her but kept his gaze on hers in the mirror. He was stepping back because he wanted to get farther from the light. He didn’t want her to see the wild thudding of his pulse, which had been easily visible in his neck. For the first time, he regretted having shorn his hair. His long hair would have been a curtain right now, one he could hide behind.

There was a stab in his stomach, a rush of sourness. The idea of hiding from Julianna—hiding his true feelings, hiding himself —was anathema.

“I am sorry,” she said, breaking the connection between their gazes and looking at the floor.

What was she saying? He could not lose her entirely. “Let us resume our correspondence,” he said carefully. “We shall see how things feel.”

Julianna wouldn’t have him, not even in the shadows, apparently, but would she have his letters? She had to. He could not give up their correspondence.

“So we write to each other as we did before.”

“No. We shall write to each other with no pretense between us. You know who I am now, who I really am. And . . .” An idea was forming. “Will you allow me to furnish you with funds to pay for your letters to me?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because it would make me happy.” Or at least it would make him less bereft than if he neither saw nor had word from her ever again.

“I ought to say no.”

“You ought to say yes.”

“Why?”

“So you may write me every day. If you want to.” He started again. “So you may write me as often as you would like. So I may have the pleasure of reading as many letters as you would like to send me.” He paused, wondering if he should say the rest. Well, hell, why not? He was on the verge of losing her entirely. “And because my father has been very cruel to me and though it is petty of me, I take pleasure in the idea of using his money for such.”

She met his gaze again, and her eyes were a little lighter. “Then I say yes.”

All right. There was something. A lifeline. He took a shaky inhalation. He still did not want her to see the true nature of his distress, though he still hated this impulse—this need—to hide anything from her.

He smiled sadly, feeling as if he were being shut back inside a cage. No, he was voluntarily retreating to it, which was something he was willing to do because he was—

“I am in love with a woman named Julianna Evans!”

Leander. Speaking a full sentence. His only sentence. The only sentence.

Effie and Julianna were still looking at each other in the mirror. Initially, he thought her eyes lightened even more. He almost fancied he saw a spark there. But no. Whatever he’d thought he’d seen was gone, replaced by an expression he could not read, and an unreadable expression on Julianna’s face was worse, to his mind, than one of sadness, or anger.

He had no earthly idea what to say. Should he deflect? Pretend innocence? The silly bird, how he lies!

He had the terrible feeling that Leander’s outburst had sealed his fate: He would not see her again, and she would not write to him, either.

“I see,” she said, before he could think how to try to salvage the situation. “I shall go, then. I never wanted to hurt you.”

But she had.

Did intention matter? If someone didn’t want to hurt you but they did anyway, did that make the hurt somehow less?

If you got into a cage willingly, did that make your incarceration any less painful?

A terrible sadness had come over him. He was a hollow man. Everything light and joyous and careful had been scooped out of him, leaving him a shell.

“I had hoped to go sea-bathing again,” she said quietly. She took a step back, toward the door, but she kept her gaze on his.

It took him a moment to adjust to the mundane statement. “Yes, we’d planned to, hadn’t we?”

“I got . . . caught up in our nights together indoors.”

He supposed he could suggest that they go now. He could give her one more swim at dawn before she left him.

He thought of Leander—the mythical hero, not the bird—drowning, and he said nothing.

Unlike Leander, Effie had some sense of self-preservation. It was somewhat shocking to realize it, but it was true.

He could not swim across the stormy strait if Julianna wouldn’t hang a light for him. He could not make such a journey when he knew the outcome would be a watery death. Even for her, he could not do it. His hollow body was riddled with holes, with injuries he’d accumulated over a lifetime and in recent days. If he attempted such a swim, he would sink to the seafloor like a stone.

“I am in love with a woman named Julianna Evans!” Leander said.

“Yes,” Effie said to the bird. “We heard you the first time.”

After holding his gaze in the mirror for another long moment, Julianna left.