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Chapter 13

Editorial Interdependence

Y ou can’t miss what you don’t let yourself want.

Julianna should have heeded her own advice.

If she’d never gone to Brighton, never seen the Pavilion and its wonders, never floated in a blue sea under a blue sky, she wouldn’t have known what she was missing.

If she’d never met Effie, she wouldn’t have known what she was missing.

She ordered herself to stop ruminating. What was done was done. She had seen the Pavilion and she had swum and she had met Effie.

And she had been changed by it all.

But some things didn’t change. She tried another precept, one that had held up better to the storms inside her: The magazine above all.

That was still true. It was still a bulwark.

October was done. Mr. Cabot had had a copy ready for her inspection when she arrived, as agreed. She’d made a few corrections, and now it was a week later and she was in the office with her newest creation in hand.

Traditionally, this was the part where she paged through and marveled that everything had come together so well. The chaos—usually but not always of the organized variety—that characterized the production process had been tamed and yielded this: a magazine. The perfect way to pass an evening.

Usually, she felt a pleasant brand of proud exhaustion at this stage.

Now, though? She felt exhaustion, yes. But there was nothing pleasant about it. She merely felt . . . blank. Empty. She wasn’t even particularly proud of October, though she recognized objectively that it was a fine issue. It contained many wonderful stories, and she had even “forgotten” to implement a correction Mr. Glanvil had wanted to make to the moral essay, and though she would pay for it later, she should be feeling that small triumph right now.

She felt nothing.

She tried again, paging through from back to front. “Advice for Married Ladies” ran on the last page, and Effie’s letters, were, as per usual, exquisite. Witty and compassionate and heartfelt.

She thought back to the letter he’d been working on their second-to-last night together. It seemed a lifetime ago. That letter, about whether the writer should spend Christmas at home with her mother, would run in December, along with the castor oil letter, and two or three others. They had gotten to the point where Julianna forwarded Effie a stack of letters and he chose which to respond to, sending them back along with his replies. She printed all that she had room for, and while in the beginning he’d overshot, answering too many letters, over time he had honed his ability to know how many letters to address, and how long to make his collective replies. To wit, October’s four letters fit perfectly onto the column’s page.

It was a bit startling to realize that she had begun willingly handing over even a small part of the magazine to someone else. Not that she didn’t always do that, in a sense. Other people wrote the content of the magazine. But when had she decided she trusted Effie not only to write Mrs. Landers’s responses but to choose the letters to which he would respond? When, in other words, had she handed off editorial authority? The only other person who had that was Mr. Glanvil, and she had not parted with it willingly in his case.

She shook her head. It mattered not. She performed her usual tasks with the few dozen copies she’d had delivered to the office. She kept some for the archives, and she prepared a few copies to mail to distant correspondents. She wrote Mr. Glanvil a note—designed to manage his expectations—to attach to his copy. She set aside a copy for Amy and a copy for herself to take home.

Then she moved on to a review of November. Most of the stories were done, and the rest were in hand. She made a few notes—ideas for layouts, preliminary thoughts about which stories to feature on the cover, that sort of thing.

So . . . November was as done as it could be at this point. She knew what came next. She was tempted to go home and start worrying about December tomorrow, but the Christmas issue was always a great deal of work.

Just because you wanted to avoid something didn’t mean you could.

She took a fortifying sip of tea that had long since gone cold and began by going over what she already had on hand.

She had her latest installment of the serialized novel she had commissioned—the whole “novel” was done, so she merely needed to decide where to cut off December’s installment. She used the word novel loosely because the tale of the runaway heiress turned lady adventurer captured by benevolent pirates was not entirely coherent. Readers didn’t seem to mind though, or perhaps the serialized nature of the story made it easier to overlook inconsistencies, for the story was quite popular.

She had a piece on innovations in table ornamentation with a particular eye toward Christmas entertaining.

She had a recounting of a tea tasting, in which two ladies described and vociferously debated the merits of Darjeeling versus Earl Grey. She’d been planning to hold that one for January, but a story she was waiting on from America for December—an account of alligators in the Mississippi—was looking as though it might not arrive in time. If that was the case, she would run the Great Tea Debate in December. She did realize that tea was tremendously less exciting than alligators, but one did what one needed to do.

There was her quarterly column by “The Actress,” which was meant to be a glamorous and slightly scandalous account of a life treading the boards. Julianna had fought Mr. Glanvil to keep the column, and in fact its retention had been assured by agreeing to the addition of the monthly moral essay. She was thinking of sacking “The Actress,” though. While the lady was indeed an actress, she had never accepted a carte blanche and tended to write more about the text of the plays she was in than the social scene surrounding their performance. And she always turned her columns in early, which struck Julianna as beside the point if she was meant to be reporting on the latest on-dits. Perhaps it was time to switch authorship to “The Opera Dancer.” She made a note to ask around to see if she could find someone suitable.

Finally, she had Mrs. Landers’s letters.

She pulled them out of the desk. When Effie had handed them to her unexpectedly as she was leaving Brighton, she’d shoved them into her reticule—and, later, into her desk—without reading a word. She had told herself that October and November required her attention more urgently.

That had been an excuse. It would have taken her mere minutes to skim the letters.

In truth, she was afraid of them.

She missed him. She missed him so very much. There was a great big chasm in her chest, and it had grown wider every day she was away from him.

And now that the mad dash to get October out the door was done, now that she was in a state of equilibrium with November, there was nothing with which to fill that chasm. But what could she do about it? She would have to trust that time would mend things. It was time to read the Mrs. Landers letters for December. The magazine above all.

She was afraid, though, that reading Effie’s letters would widen the chasm inside her even more, indeed, that it might tear her apart entirely. And if there was no Julianna left, there would be no magazine to prize above all, would there?

With shaking hands, she smoothed the pages written in the familiar loopy hand that was so dear to her.

She had seen “Home for Christmas” and “Sartorially Sullied.” Both letters had received concise rejoinders.

Then there were two letters she had not seen, one from a woman who was at her wit’s end with child-rearing. Effie’s response was typically kind, thoughtful, and practical. It made Julianna’s throat tighten.

And then. Oh, and then. A missive from a lady who had been left at the altar. Effie’s response was not typical here. It provided no solace, no actionable advice.

It did commiserate, if not explicitly.

And he had signed it “Edward Astley.” His real name. Not his title. Not the nickname she and his friends knew him by.

Julianna never cried.

And yet, Julianna cried.

* * *

The next day, a letter arrived for Julianna at home, posted from Brighton.

She would have wagered the balance of her printing press fund that she wouldn’t hear from Effie, despite their agreement to resume their correspondence. She had clearly broken his heart, and what person in possession of a broken heart voluntarily wrote to its breaker?

She went to open the seal, but it gave her some trouble. It was larger and thicker than usual. After successfully prising it open, she discovered a shilling beneath it.

Dear Julianna,

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 was Julianna , instead of Jules , he was Edward , instead of Effie —at least he had not addressed her as Miss 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 was that Effie?

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’s actions had 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. She was very 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 her fear . 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 he could , 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?

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 lead herself on—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?