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A fter 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 they began, 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, so herself . 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.

He laughed. They were attuned as ever.

But consider what I am about to say as a thought experiment. You say the wardrobe nightmare is back, but that it is less intense than before.

Years ago, my father ran a series of essays on the ancient Greeks. I can’t say they were overwhelmingly popular, and he only ran three installments in a planned six-part series. I had a niggling sense that there was something in one of them about dreaming. I went into the archives and sure enough, there was this quote from Aristotle:

“Often when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.”

And that book I told you about, the one from which I learned my flame-visualizing exercise, makes mention of the ancient practice of Yoga nidra, which, as far as I understand it—which admittedly isn’t very far—is the cultivation of a state of consciousness between waking and sleeping.

Here we have two suggestions, from disparate places and cultures, that it might be possible for a dreamer to be aware that he is dreaming.

I wonder, could control follow awareness?

In other words, is there a way for you to realize that you’re dreaming while you’re dreaming, and if so, can you then change the outcome of said dream? Could you, say, open the wardrobe from the inside and simply walk out? Remove yourself to somewhere calming. Perhaps go for a swim (for this incident took place at your family’s country estate, yes?).

Again, I realize I probably sound daft. But one of the lovely things about you is that I can say anything to you.

He set the letter down again, astounded by its contents.

Could he do as she suggested?

Well, he could certainly try. How, though? He returned to reading.

The question is, how would one attempt to enter into a dream with awareness that one was dreaming?

Another laugh, at how alike they remained in their thinking.

I haven’t the faintest idea. I tried for myself, thinking that perhaps if I made an attempt, I might be better positioned to advise you. I have been dreaming of my father since Brighton. I haven’t told you this, and I’m not sure why, apart from the fact that I am inexplicably sheepish about it. Then in turn annoyed, for what, I ask myself, is there to be sheepish about? It would seem a perfectly ordinary thing for a person to dream of one’s beloved departed father.

I have been having the same dream almost nightly, and it manages to be both extraordinary and mundane at the same time. In it, I arrive at the office in the morning to find my father there, just as he used to be, although in those days we would have traveled together from our shared home. We used to have desks pushed up against each other so that when we sat in them, we faced each other. I still have those two desks, but after Father passed, I moved his to a corner of the room. It hurt too much to have it in my direct line of vision, to have to perpetually be reminded of his absence.

In the dream, he is at his desk in the old spot carrying out routine tasks related to the magazine. In one dream, he will be marking up a story. In another, he is bent over the accounts. So in that sense, the dream differs night to night.

What does not differ is that I am overwhelmed with sentiment to see him. I call his name. He looks up, and I realize he is the same age as when he died a decade ago. I have aged, but he has not. We are still father and daughter, but not in the same way as before. I have gained on him, which is a rather uncanny sensation.

He smiles at me. We are happy to see each other. I go to him, exclaiming, but I can’t quite reach his side. Something invisible stops me. He seems to know what it is and opens his mouth, presumably to explain, but no sound comes out. He seems surprised by his muteness and tries again, to the same (lack of) effect.

The dream takes a sinister turn then as he keeps attempting and failing to speak. I, however, can speak, and I begin to question him. How are you here? What are you trying to say? I bombard him, even though I know my queries, and his inability to answer, are distressing him.

Last night, after I blew out my candle, I closed my eyes and tried to see an awake version of the dream. I pretended I was mounting a stage play and Dream Julianna was an actress I could direct. In my dream play, Dream Julianna sat down across from her father and greeted him calmly. Then he told Dream Julianna whatever it was he’d been trying to say.

I fell asleep, and I had the dream again, but it didn’t follow the script I’d “written” while awake. Perhaps you shall have better luck than I.

Effie put down the letter, overcome—by the recounted dream, by the fact that she had shared it so readily, by her attempt to influence it so she could help him with his dreams.

He would try her method, he decided.

* * *

The second curious thing that happened was that Effie went to a ball.

It was an annual late-October soiree of some renown held by the Duchess of Edenshire. Sarah had written him from Italy—an unusual occurrence, as the siblings didn’t generally correspond—and begged him to attend. She had planned to go herself, but Mother and Father had decided they were staying on in Italy for at least an extra fortnight. Since Sarah could not go, she entreated Effie, would he please do so and report back? Would he pay particular attention to the following gentlemen? What did they wear, with whom did they dance, that sort of thing.

Effie had no desire to attend the ball, but how could he say no? Sarah, quite a bit younger than he, was heading into her second Season, and he could appreciate that she was, to use her words, “stuck in Italy with our parents, and one can eat only so many olives and see so many ruins before one goes slightly mad.”

“This is only the second ball I’ve attended in months,” Effie remarked when they were en route in Archie’s coach. Clementine, having learned Effie was bound for the same ball she, Archie, and Olive were attending, insisted he ride with them. He resolved not to repeat the mistakes he had made last time. No dancing with any lady more than once. No playing cards with Mr. Lansing. In fact, he would avoid the game rooms altogether.

“I know, and I am told that’s very out of character for you,” Clementine said. “By all accounts, you used to be a lover of parties and spectacles and what have you.”

It was true. Effie used to like nothing more than a party, a ball, a musicale. Somewhere to see and be seen. Flowers, music, wine. He used to consider it all food for the senses.

“And he used to be off to Vauxhall at least weekly,” Archie said.

“What happened?” Clementine asked.

What happened was that he started staying home to write letters. Or reread letters. Or wait for letters to arrive. His focus had shifted from outward to inward. He had substituted ink for champagne.

“Nothing happened,” Effie said blithely, “except that I suppose my tastes have changed.”

“Well, you are going to be the star of this ball,” Clementine said.

“Am I? Why?”

“I think what my sister is trying to say,” Olive said, “is that you’re an unmarried heir to an earl.”

“And a handsome one at that,” Clementine said.

“I wouldn’t have said ‘handsome,’” Olive said with a wink. “Especially with that ghastly haircut.”

Olive was teasing, but she was right, about his popularity at least—Effie had no opinion on his own beauty or lack thereof—for he was mobbed from the moment he stepped in. Meddling mamas, mostly, and before he knew it, his name had been scrawled on more dance cards than he could count. He was struggling to put eyes on the gentlemen Sarah wanted him to observe.

“I think I have made a strategic error,” he said to Archie a few hours in, when he had a blessed break in his dancing duties and stood by a punch bowl panting. “Perhaps more than one.”

“Have you?” Archie said. Olive merely smirked.

“Yes, the first was in coming at all. The second was in not working in to conversation the lie that I won’t be home the rest of the week. I fear I may be as mobbed by callers as I have been by the mothers of prospective dance partners.” At least the Lansing siblings had not been in attendance.

In some ways, though, he was glad he’d come and had a miserable time. It had taken this ball to show him, once and for all, that he wasn’t the man he used to be. Brighton had changed him.

“I say,” Archie said, “have you decided what you want to do with the broken printing press that is still in my library?”

“Oh, dear.” Effie had forgotten about poor Hamlet. “You may dispose of it.”

“Are you certain?” Archie searched Effie’s eyes in a way Effie struggled not to find annoying.

“I am certain. I have no further use for it.”

Brighton had changed him, but it hadn’t changed Julianna.

* * *

Mrs. Moyer knocked on Effie’s bedchamber door a week later.

“I told you, I am not at home to callers,” he called through the closed door. “I am not at home to callers unless it’s Miss Olive Morgan,” he clarified when Mrs. Moyer popped her head in. He had been trying—unfruitfully—Julianna’s method of stage-directing his dreams, and he wanted to see what Olive made of it all, so he had invited her to call.

“It is Mr. Nancarrow, my lord,” Mrs. Moyer said.

Effie’s skin tightened. “Is my father with him?”

“He is not.”

Hmm. Effie couldn’t begin to think what Mr. Nancarrow wanted with him.

“Mr. Nancarrow,” Effie said, joining him in the drawing room he’d been stashed in. “I am surprised to see you in Town when my parents aren’t.” He paused. “They are not, are they?”

“Your parents are still in Campagna.”

Effie relaxed somewhat.

“My lord, you will forgive my abrupt appearance, but I must speak with you on a matter of some urgency.”

“All right.” Effie sat, feeling a twinge of nerves.

“I haven’t known how—or whether—to broach this subject, but I think it is something you ought to know. It’s a delicate matter. But you know you can trust me, because . . .”

“Because you made a printing press vanish at my behest.”

“Yes.” Mr. Nancarrow smiled, and there was something strangely reassuring about that smile, the way one corner turned up a little farther than the other.

“Your father is ill,” Mr. Nancarrow said.

Oh. That wasn’t what Effie had expected. “Has anyone called a doctor?”

“That is why he returned early from Italy after having made that initial trip. He had an episode of some sort there and came back here to consult with his doctors.”

“He ought not to be traveling, then. He ought to choose Highworth or here and stay put so he can recover.”

“He . . . is not going to recover. Which is why he went back to join your mother and sister.”

“I beg your pardon?” Effie couldn’t have heard that correctly. The Earl of Stonely was just fifty-three.

“He is dying, my lord,” Mr. Nancarrow said gently. “That is why they haven’t come back. He is too ill to travel now.”

Effie got to his feet, propelled upward by a silent tug as if he were a bird being carried on an air current. He grasped the back of the settee, momentarily concerned that he might actually take flight.

“I can see you’re upset,” Mr. Nancarrow said.

The truth was, Effie wasn’t upset that his father was dying. Which was probably ill-done of him. The boy in the wardrobe would have been upset, but Effie was not. He was no longer that boy, he supposed. Which was itself a kind of triumph.

But if he was no longer that boy, and he was no longer the kind of man who enjoyed being the center of attention at balls, who was he?

“There’s something else,” Mr. Nancarrow said, his voice sounding uncharacteristically ragged.

“All right.” Effie sat again, noticing that Mr. Nancarrow’s hands, which were folded in his lap, were gripping each other so tightly his knuckles had gone white.

“I was born in Calecastle,” Mr. Nancarrow said, naming the village closest to Highworth. Mr. Nancarrow jutted his chin out slightly. “My mother has no husband.”

Had that chin jut been defensive? Did he think Effie was judging him? “Well, your mother’s marital status is hardly your fault.” Effie had to admit that his views on the matter had been shaped by his conversations with Julianna, and by his work as Mrs. Landers, and he was glad they had been.

“Some would say it matters not whose fault it is, that I bear the consequences of my mother’s sin: I was born on the wrong side of the blanket, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Well, you’ve managed to make something of yourself. You went to university, did you not?”

“I did.”

“What did you study?”

“Botany.”

“See? Very impressive. I’m not sure how you managed that; it’s really rather remarkable.”

“I managed it because your father paid for it.”

“He did?” Effie was, frankly, shocked. He had heard his father make unkind remarks about natural-born children before, and about the women who gave birth to them.

“He did. He always made sure I—and my mother—had what we needed.”

“Well, that’s rather surprising. I can’t think why he would do that.”

Mr. Nancarrow smiled, a little sadly, Effie thought. “Can’t you?”

“I can think why anyone else would do it. Charity. Fellow-feeling.” The possession of a functioning heart in one’s chest. “But my father? No.” There was no reason Effie could conjure to explain why his father would take such an interest in a by-blow, to the extent that he would send him to univ—

Oh, dear God. He looked closely at Mr. Nancarrow, and with a gasp, he understood. The lopsided smile that had soothed him: It was as if he were looking at a close relation of Sarah’s. No. It wasn’t as if he were looking at a close relation of Sarah’s, he was looking at a close relation of Sarah’s. Father had that sort of smile, too, where one side curled up farther than the other, though Father rarely smiled.

Effie, by contrast, took after his mother, had her dark hair and aquiline nose. Sarah—and Mr. Nancarrow—had ashy-blond hair. As had Father before his had gone white.

Effie examined his heart. His first response to this astonishing news was happiness. Mr. Nancarrow was a fine fellow. What would it be like to have a brother? A true brother?

Though of course he would not be a true brother in the legal sense of the word, but Effie didn’t give a fig about that.

“I am sorry,” Mr. Nancarrow said solemnly. He must have realized that Effie had got his meaning.

“Why are you sorry? None of it’s your fault.”

“I want to assure you that I have no designs on anything that isn’t my right.”

That was curiously phrased. Did Mr. Nancarrow have designs on something he believed was his right?

The idea pierced Effie like a bullet. If he’d been a bird borne up by a current before, now he’d been shot out of the sky by a hunter with deadly mark.

“Mr. Nancarrow,” he said, speaking slowly despite the fact that his mind was reeling, “might I ask how old you are?”

“I am eight-and-twenty, my lord.” He paused. “Like you.”

“When were you born?”

“The eighth of January.”

Mr. Nancarrow was six months older than Effie.

“Was my father married to your mother?”

If Mr. Nancarrow was legitimate, he was the next earl. Hope flared in Effie’s chest, though he quickly extinguished it.

“They never married.” He paused. “As far as I know.”

Effie didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

“Your father came round rather a lot when I was a child,” Mr. Nancarrow continued, “and it wasn’t to see me, if you get my meaning.”

“I do indeed.”

“I am sorry.”

“I do wish you would stop apologizing!”

“I am sor—” Mr. Nancarrow clamped his mouth shut.

“My good man, were you about to apologize for apologizing?”

Mr. Nancarrow’s sheepish smile became genuine, and they shared a chuckle, which went a significant way toward breaking the tension.

“I was happy when your father asked me to become steward of Highworth,” Mr. Nancarrow, now clearly more at ease, said. “The work suits me, it pays well, and it confers a respectability that should allow me to marry someday, to have children, to . . . have a normal life.”

To have a normal life. How lovely that sounded.

“He told me you were disinterested and disinclined to take the reins,” Mr. Nancarrow said.

“He probably told you a great deal more than that,” Effie said tersely.

“He did, and having had several occasions now to make your acquaintance, I question whether any of it was true.”

Tears pricked the corners of Effie’s eyes. Knowing that Mr. Nancarrow had taken the measure of him thusly was surprisingly moving.

Knowing that Mr. Nancarrow was his brother was surprisingly moving.