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Mr. Glanvil was running late.

Mr. Glanvil was always running late, though, so Julianna wasn’t sure why she was so aroused over this particular occurrence of tardiness. But as she sat outside his office attempting to edit a recipe for teeth cleaning and whitening, she grew increasingly agitated.

He was the one who insisted on these weekly meetings. Meetings that, even when they commenced at the appointed hour, were a waste of her time. When he made her wait to see him, the affront compounded but not usually to this degree.

She sighed and set down her papers.

It was because Effie was bound for Brighton.

It made her happy to think of her dear friend turning her face to the sun, letting the sea water and air do its good work.

She and Effie had corresponded, in recent months, about the concept of holidays. Effie took quite a lot of them. Which was unsurprising, for Julianna suspected that Euphemia Turner was the daughter of a gentleman. Perhaps even a member of the aristocracy.

Julianna, by contrast, did not take holidays. She could not afford to, in more ways than one. While her modest savings might have permitted a short jaunt to a place like Brighton, she pinched every penny. Ambition required sacrifice.

That’s what she told herself, anyway.

More to the point, she couldn’t afford the time away from the magazine.

The magazine above all.

Julianna had a few adages she lived by, a collection of directives that shaped her thinking and therefore her behavior. The magazine above all was paramount among them, a kind of secular First Commandment.

She had considered taking a holiday. In the summer, when the July and August issues were combined and the editorial and production schedules therefore less harried than usual, she might have, for example, hopped on a London-to-Brighton coach and enjoyed a brief respite. She had long wanted to try sea-bathing. Something about the sea called to her—theoretically, for she had never seen it.

But she didn’t have anyone with whom to travel. If she wanted to make such a journey, it would have to be alone.

Could she even get away with it? She was unmarried. She didn’t have a maid.

Pish. She ordered herself to abandon such fancy. She wasn’t going anywhere. She didn’t want to go anywhere. The magazine above all.

She just . . . got distracted sometimes by the crashing of imaginary waves on an imaginary shore.

The door to Mr. Glanvil’s office opened, and the man himself appeared.

“Julianna! My apologies for keeping you waiting. Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Ryan. He’s a whaler out of Massachusetts, and we’ve struck a deal to ship whale oil here.”

Mr. Glanvil had inherited his late father’s shipping business.

Unfortunately, he had also inherited Julianna’s late father’s magazine.

“Mr. Ryan, my sister, Miss Julianna Evans, edits a little magazine I own.”

A little magazine.

Julianna’s head burst into flame as she dipped into a curtsy. “Mr. Glanvil and I are not related by blood,” she said calmly as her head burned. “My mother married his late father seven years ago.”

“Mr. Ryan runs whaling ships out of a place in America called New Bedford,” Mr. Glanvil said, appearing not to have heard her disavowal of him. “Whaling ships! Can you imagine?”

That was interesting. The head flames began to die down.

She turned to Mr. Ryan with newfound interest. “I wonder if you or one of your associates could be persuaded to write an account of a whaling mission for the magazine? We often publish travel accounts, tales of adventure.”

“Come now, ladies have no desire to hear about a whale hunt.” Mr. Glanvil turned to Mr. Ryan. “’Tis a ladies’ magazine we are speaking of, you see. I imagine a whale hunt is rather bloody.”

“It is indeed.”

“All the better,” Julianna said. Blood sold magazines.

Mr. Ryan’s eyebrows rose as Mr. Glanvil chuckled. It was false laughter, meant to signal that Julianna was in jest. Mr. Glanvil did this quite a lot. Apparently, having a “sister” who said absurdly amusing things was preferable to having a bloodthirsty one who commissioned reports on whale hunts.

After seeing Mr. Ryan off, Mr. Glanvil ushered Julianna into his office, which was dominated by an overlarge desk. This tableau always brought to mind a boy sitting at his father’s desk, playing at being a man—which wasn’t that far off the mark given that Glanvil Shipping had been started by Henry Glanvil Sr., who had sat behind this very desk.

Julianna missed Glanvil Senior. Which was remarkable. She had spent years resenting the man her mother married after the unexpected death of Julianna’s father, founder of Le Monde Joli . After Father’s death, the magazine had gone to Mother, and things had carried on quite well for two years, Julianna stepping up to edit. She had learned more than enough from her father to continue without him, though she had missed him dearly. She still did. His perpetually ink-stained fingers, his brow knitting as he peered through thick spectacles at copy he found puzzling, his expansive sense of what was possible—for both the magazine and for his daughter. They had always planned that she would succeed him. When it happened, she’d been bereft but prepared.

But when her mother had remarried, her property, including the magazine, had gone to her new husband—Glanvil Senior. Whom Julianna had disliked from the start.

But not as much as she disliked his son.

Senior had allowed Julianna to carry on editing mostly unimpeded, though he had embraced the proprietor role. He had always been looking for “efficiencies” and never let her reinvest the magazine’s profits into improving it. She recalled more than one battle over the annual fashion spreads she wanted to have colored. How was one supposed to report accurately on the latest dresses being shown in Paris if one had to do it in black and white?

She hadn’t known how good she’d had it.

“I can scarcely believe it’s time for another editorial meeting,” Glanvil Junior said. “How the days fly by.” He went around his man-desk and made a show of getting out a nameplate he kept in a drawer and setting it out.

Henry Glanvil, proprietor, Le Monde Joli

He always did this at the start of their meetings, chortling as if he intended the gesture to be amusing, even self-deprecating.

It boiled Julianna’s blood. It wasn’t enough for him to play shipping magnate? As much as his “little magazine” phrase had irritated her just now, it wasn’t inaccurate in a fiscal sense. The magazine’s annual budget was nothing against that of the shipping company.

Why, then, did he care so greatly? Glanvil Senior had only required Julianna to meet him once a month, to acquaint him in broad terms with her plans for the upcoming issue, and to inform her that her proposed budget was too high.

Glanvil Junior insisted on weekly meetings. He wanted to be updated. He wanted to opine on the editorial outline. He wanted to hear himself talk.

Of course, he also spent a fair amount of time informing her that her proposed budget was too high.

“Is everything in hand for the production of October?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m off to the printer after this to check the proofs.” She would be late, in fact, on account of having had to wait so long for Mr. Glanvil.

“And November? How is the report from the Lake District?”

“It came in, and it is well written.” She handed him the story. Well written was about all she could say on the matter.

Julianna liked to publish travel reports, but she preferred they be from exotic destinations, places her readers were almost certainly never going to get to see. Mr. Glanvil, by contrast, favored accounts of “respectable holiday locales.”

Not that there was anything wrong with the Lake District story. It had been written by a lady married to a minor aristocrat who had an estate near Penrith. She was content—nay, eager—to see her name in print, and that name would sell magazines. Julianna had titled the story: “A Peeress’s Guide to the Lake District: Baroness Cartworth Opines on the Sights and Delights That Await You.”

“Oh!” Mr. Glanvil exclaimed. “Look at that, a listing of recommended inns.”

“Yes, I thought that since everyone is familiar with the Lake District in a broad sense, we might as well make some specific recommendations.”

“That was a good idea.”

“Yes.” She waited for it . . .

“I had a hunch that would work. Better to extract the most practical information and set it apart visually.”

“Yes,” Julianna said, aiming for mildness of tone despite the fact that the head embers were stirring, fanned back to life by Mr. Glanvil’s hot air.

He did this: took credit for her ideas. She told herself it didn’t matter. The result was the same—the story would run, and no one would know or care about the intellectual power struggle behindit.

“And this issue’s moral essay?” Mr. Glanvil asked.

Le Monde Joli had not published a monthly moral essay before Glanvil Junior’s tenure as proprietor. It had occasionally printed pieces that grappled with specific ethical considerations—the notion of a sugar boycott, for example—but that was as far as it had gone. Julianna was of the opinion that between church and life under the thumbs of fathers and husbands, most ladies did not require additional moral instruction.

“‘Notes on Gluttony,’ I think I shall call it,” she said. Julianna’s little rebellion against the monthly moral essay was to give it a dull, too-literal title that, with any luck, inspired readers to skip it. It was an odd, unpleasant feeling, wanting people not to read part of her magazine. “It has been commissioned but isn’t in yet.”

“Who is the author?”

“Mrs. Ann Smith, the wife of a rector in Penrith.” The rector of her Lake District correspondent’s parish, in fact. Julianna often found writers this way, by asking existing writers for ideas and introductions. Everyone thought editors sat at desks with ink-stained hands and stared at words all day, but much of her job was about managing people, making connections.

“Why can’t the rector write it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why the rector’s wife and not the rector himself? Musings on one of the cardinal sins would seem to mean more coming from him. He is closer to God, is he not?”

“I take the point, but I believe Mrs. Smith will be in a position to provide commentary from a uniquely womanly point of view.”

“Well, she may write it, but put her husband’s name on it.”

And that right there was why Julianna was content—nay, happy—being a spinster.

“As I have explained,” she said, as mildly as she could, “I prefer to have as many lady correspondents as possible. Female bylines resonate more with my readers.”

“You mean my readers.”

This was a problem. A real one. Had Mr. Glanvil merely been a self-regarding blunderbuss, a man who fancied he’d earned the status and wealth he had inherited, that would have been one thing. But when he put that “proprietor” nameplate out, he meant it. The jovial manner in which he did so was an affectation. He owned the magazine. That was a regrettable truth. But beyond that, he seemed to think that meant he owned its readers. That he owned Julianna .

Julianna had gone into Glanvil Junior’s tenure as proprietor thinking she could manage him, and for the most part, she had. But he had a streak of cruelty in him. She had learned that he had to win a certain amount in order for that cruelty to remain dormant. Hence the monthly moral essay, among other concessions.

“I shall do as you suggest.” She had to swallow a lump in her throat to get the sentence out. The embers in her head had been doused with water, leaving only a sodden pile of ash.

That was the worst part of all this. She detested the fact that he could make her feel this way: melancholy, and a little bit scared. She preferred the immolating effects of the ire he usually inspired. She tried, in her dealings with Mr. Glanvil, to stay angry. But sometimes, as today, she left his office feeling . . . small.

But she would not cry. Julianna did not cry.

As she emerged into the sunshine and bustle of the Strand, she clutched her reticule to her chest to ward off pickpockets and ordered herself to be cheered. Nothing lifted her spirits like a trip to the printing house. Even after all these years, seeing the pages of her magazine— her magazine—printed and drying never failed to give her a thrill. A magazine was a little miracle. That Mr. Gutenberg’s innovation, the words and art of so many talented people, and her own editorial acumen if she did say so herself, could come together and produce a tome that was at once uplifting and informative, and do it every month, was a wonder. Nothing had ever or would ever make her prouder.

Nothing was more important to her. If she had to make sacrifices, “Notes on Gluttony” among them, to keep the magazine alive, that was what she would do.

She turned her face toward the uncharacteristically warm September sun. Effie had once said that feeling the sun on one’s skin was like being agreeably prickled by the tiny fingernails of benevolent fairies, and Julianna thought of that every time she had occasion to be outside in the sunshine, which wasn’t often. She worked long hours in the office, and at home she tried to make herself unobtrusive. The former helped with the latter. Julianna lived with her younger sister. Amy and her husband, Arthur, had four children and very busy lives. They were kind to Julianna, but she was exquisitely aware that she was a charity case—which was ironic because she worked days as long in duration and as many in number as did Arthur.

The point was, Julianna didn’t spend a great deal of time out of doors. She rarely felt the agreeable prickling of tiny fingernails on her cheeks.

By the time she reached Grub Street, her disposition had improved. She was done with Mr. Glanvil for a week, and she was about to have her first look at October.

The bell on the door heralded her arrival, an arrangement that had always struck her as futile, for if the presses were going, they drowned out the bell—and the presses were always going.

She made her way to the back of the shop. As much as she’d enjoyed the sun on her skin, she liked this better. The dim light, the smell of ink, the thudding of ink balls being mashed over plates: there was nothing better.

She looked around for her pages. They ought to be hanging by now. All she saw was what appeared to be the middle pages of a newspaper. She squinted at them. It was the Weekly Star , a middling publication.

“Ah, Miss Evans.”

“Mr. Cabot.” She dipped an abbreviated curtsy as the proprietor approached. “How is October?”

He wiped his hands on his apron. “Well, that’s the thing . . .”

“What’s the thing?”

“There’s been a delay.”

She pressed her lips together and got hold of herself before asking, with what she hoped was merely a tone of mild interest, “May I ask why?”

He reached up and ruffled one of the drying pages. “The Star ’s expanded by four pages.”

“Goodness, how fortunate for them.” What she would do with four more pages. She told herself not to be envious. Perhaps she could write December’s moral essay on the topic. Under a male pseudonym, of course. “Professional Envy When One Isn’t Supposed to Have a Profession to Begin With.”

“As a result,” Mr. Cabot said, “I wasn’t able to print your pages today as planned.”

Julianna schooled her expression so as not to display the irritation she felt at this development. She hated when this happened. Her “little magazine” was deemed less important than the papers, even the mediocre weeklies. “All right. When can you do it?”

“Not until the middle of next week, I’m afraid.”

“No!” she cried and immediately regretted the outburst. She constantly strove to disabuse people—and by “people” she meant “men”—of the notion of the hysterical female. She understood that her job was small, relatively speaking. She grasped the economic incentive of a printer to keep his presses optimally occupied. She understood that the combination of both those facts sometimes meant shifts in the schedule, the displacement of her jobs. But the middle of next week was too far. It would mean delaying the publication of October—she had some slack built into the production schedule, but not that much.

Her printing job was small, but her magazine was not “little.”

Having composed herself, she said, “The middle of next week is too late.”

“I can refund your deposit if you’d like to go elsewhere.”

She would like to go elsewhere. The problem was, where? Mr. Cabot was her third printer in as many years. At every shop, she encountered the same difficulties. Unforeseen delays, shuffled schedules. At least Mr. Cabot was polite.

She sighed, mentally rearranging her calendar. “Middle of next week, you say? What day? Wednesday?”

“Better say Thursday,” he said. “You may inspect the proofs in the morning and give me your corrections, and I’ll have your job done by the end of the day Friday.”

“Very well,” she said tightly. “I shall return next Thursday morning. Shall we say nine o’clock?”

Mr. Cabot agreed, but Julianna did not take her leave immediately. She gazed at him, waiting for him to apologize. I am sorry I failed to fulfill my end of our contract, Miss Evans. My apologies for disrupting the publication schedule of your little magazine. She wouldn’t even bristle—much—over the “little” qualifier if it came in the context of an apology.

The qualifier did not come, because the apology did not come. Why had she ever thought it would? When had a man with a printing press ever apologized to a woman with a little magazine?

* * *

Julianna’s spirits were very low by the time she reached her sister’s house in Barton Street.

“Is that you, Julie?” Amy popped her head into the foyer as Julianna let herself in. “What are you doing here this time of day?”

Julianna recounted the news about the printer. “I find myself at loose ends as a result.” She had nothing to do the rest of this week. Or next, until nine o’clock on Thursday morning. It was currently Wednesday, which meant she had seven days to fill.

Julianna had never been particularly talented at idleness. She didn’t have hobbies. She didn’t do needlework or play the pianoforte. Those were the pastimes of gentlemen’s daughters, and she was not one. Neither was Amy, despite appearances to the contrary. Amy had married above her station.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” Julianna asked. Amy was wearing her spectacles, something she did only when Arthur was out of the house. She was probably going over the household books. Arthur was the youngest of seven, and though his family was genteel, they were not landed, and he had been making his own way since he was a young man. He made a good living as a barrister, but with four children, three of them girls Amy was determined to debut in society, economizing was necessary. Economizing that Arthur wouldn’t have to see.

Mr. Glanvil paid Julianna a pittance of a salary. He pretended his masculine mind was uniquely suited to managing the magazine’s books, but Julianna knew what it cost to produce Le Monde Joli . She knew how much revenue it generated.

She knew how much blunt Mr. Glanvil was pocketing as a result of her labors.

She tried to give the aforementioned pittance of a salary to her sister every month, but Amy wouldn’t hear of it. It wasn’t out of solidarity with Julianna, necessarily, despite the fact that Amy shared Julianna’s dislike of Mr. Glanvil—though she called him Henry, which Julianna had never been able to bring herself to do.

No, Amy’s refusal came from a place of pride. Amy, ever aware that she had married up, often seemed to Julianna to be playing a part. A bit like Mother had with Glanvil Senior—both the marrying-up bit and the playing-a-part bit.

Though of course “marrying up” could mean different things. Father had been an infinitely better man than Glanvil Senior, so in that sense Mother had married down the second time around. Julianna’s father had been kind and hardworking, and they had been happy and hadn’t wanted for anything.

Unless what you wanted were gowns and a second housemaid and dancing lessons for your daughters.

“Are you going over the books?” Julianna asked Amy. “I could help. You know I’ve a head for numbers.”

Amy pocketed her glasses. “I was merely going over menus with Cook.”

“Perhaps I could take the older children out for an ice since I find myself unexpectedly unencumbered this afternoon? My treat.”