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“Shall we drive through Brighton before we turn for Hove?” Archie asked as they made a quick stop a few miles out of town to stretch their legs.

“Oh, yes, let’s,” Effie said. “We can take the measure of the place. Although perhaps we ought to have brought disguises. What if the king is there? What if someone recognizes us?”

“No one is going to recognize us,” Archie said.

“Of course you are right,” Effie said archly. He tapped the side of Archie’s coach as he climbed back inside. “This grand vehicle emblazoned with the livery of the Earl of Harcourt won’t give us away in the slightest.”

“We merely need get to the house,” Simon said with an air of tried patience, as if he were a harried mother and Archie and Effie quarreling children. “Hove has the advantage of being home to a mere three hundred souls, and the house itself is on the outskirts. We shall be quite anonymous once tucked up there. Then we may come and go between Brighton and Hove on horseback.”

“It is almost akin to being a character in a novel of intrigue,” Effie said. If one had inexplicably ceased to enjoy balls and parties, intrigue might be the next best thing.

“The last thing I want to do on my holiday is feel like I’m a character in a novel of intrigue,” Archie said.

“To each his own.” Effie sniffed jestingly.

After some discussion, the gentlemen agreed to make a brief stop at the foot of Brighton, where it met the sea, to take in the prospect.

“With the caveat,” Simon said, “that we take a circuitous route down to the sea so as to avoid glimpsing the Pavilion.”

“Is the Pavilion not the point of this trip?” Archie asked.

“It is, which means I want to take it in properly, all at once and not in passing en route somewhere else. I prefer to be overwhelmed all at once by its symmetry and majesty rather than assailed by bits and bobs of it as we drive by.”

“How poetic of you,” Effie teased. “But I understand perfectly.”

“How lovely,” Archie said a few minutes later as they climbed out of the carriage in front of a hotel called the Old Ship, which to Effie’s dismay did not look like a ship whatsoever. It seemed a lost opportunity. “Shall we walk down to the beach?”

“What a beautiful day,” Simon said. “One forgets, in London, how very much sky there is in the sky.”

“How very much sky there is in the sky?” Effie echoed. “I take it back, Simon: You are not poetic whatsoever.”

It was so lovely to be bantering with his friends. Effie could feel something inside himself, some taut inner part of him, opening.

“I never claimed to be a poet,” Simon retorted. “There’s only so much room for poetry in this group, and you have already contributed more than is indicated.”

Effie snorted and hurried to catch up with Archie, noting the delightful crunching beneath his feet as he stepped onto the pebbled beach. The birds were so loud here; their caws unfurling over the sound of the wind were simultaneously jarring and satisfying. Perhaps he should not have left Leander in the coach. Then again, it would be rather cruel, would it not, to show a caged bird what life might have been like had he been born a common gull rather than an exotic, expensive macaw?

“We ought to try sea-bathing while we’re here,” Archie said.

“Have you never been in the sea?” Simon asked.

“Not since I was a child. We used to travel to Lydd-on-Sea with . . .”

Their conversation faded as Effie stared at the horizon. He wasn’t looking at the sea anymore, though. There was a woman alone at the edge of the water with her back to them. She stood a hundred yards out, and she was wearing a pale-gray coat and a straw bonnet adorned with a ribbon of the same faded gray. She was right in the middle of his prospect, almost as if she were centered in a painting. He could put a frame around the whole thing and hang it on the wall and it would make for a very compelling image.

He watched as she took off her bonnet. Her hair was very dark and pinned up. There was something about her posture, the way she carried herself, that seemed . . . familiar. He shook his head, certain he did not know a lady who would wear such a lackluster dress, much less on the beach in Brighton.

If he had thought for a moment that he knew her, it had only been wishful thinking.

He tilted his head up as she had done hers. Besides, the sky was the wrong color.

* * *

“I have something to tell you both!” Effie shouted as soon as they were back in the carriage. “I must do it immediately upon our arrival in Hove!”

“Tell!” Leander screeched.

“Not now,” Effie said to the bird. “Honestly, did you hear what I just said? I can’t tell anything now; it must wait until we’re in Hove.” He said to the boys, “Forget speaking in complete sentences. I would be happy if the creature would only listen .”

Neither Simon nor Archie spoke. He had shocked them with his earlier outburst. And/or his one-sided conversation with a bird.

Effie had resolved to tell the boys about Julianna on this trip, but he’d intended to wait a few days, to let the rhythms of the holiday settle first. But after their brief seaside stop, that curious feeling of opening had continued to the point where he felt a terrible urgency to confess, as if the secret were alive inside him and had begun clawing its way out. Perhaps that’s what that feeling of hardness, of calcification, he had experienced at home in the foyer with Father had been: the bars of a cage. Bars that were now dissolving thanks to the salt air and the gentle barbs of his friends.

How had he kept this from them for so long? And more to the point, why ? These two were his closest friends, his “found family,” to use a perfectly lovely phrase Simon had coined.

Effie was going near out of his head thanks to this business with Julianna. His longing for her, of course—always, his longing for her—but also the tragic impossibility of the situation. His lies—to the boys, and to her. How miserable he was.

How happy he was.

How completely befuddled he was.

The boys would help.

After recovering from their startlement at his outburst, Archie’s countenance became open, inviting; Simon appeared serious, bordering on skeptical, but that was his way.

“By all means,” Archie said. “If you have something to tell, we are keen to hear it.”

“You must give me a drink upon our arrival. Several drinks. Then I shall tell you everything.”

Archie did as instructed, as well as he could, anyway. The Hove house, unlike Quintrell Castle of last year’s holiday, was well staffed. A housekeeper, a footman, a groom, a cook, a kitchen maid, and a housemaid awaited them, and it took some time to fend them off. They wanted to know what the lords wished to eat for their evening meal. They wanted to know when the lords might next require horses. They wanted to know if the lords would like to inspect the bedchambers that had been made up for them and deem them suitable or no. They wanted to know if the lords would enjoy a tour of the garden, or perhaps a guide to show them the way to the beach. They wanted to know if Leander required any special care, or diet.

“Thank you kindly,” Archie said after they’d endured a tour. “I am sure whatever arrangements you have made for dining and sleeping will be more than suitable. You will not find us demanding guests. And while we look forward to exploring, we are fatigued from our journey and for now would prefer to repose in a private room. Perhaps with some”—he looked at Effie—“Scotch?”

Effie made a choking noise. He would drink Scotch if nothing else was on offer, and indeed he had done just that on last year’s Earls Trip, but in truth he hated the stuff. One might as well drink a bog.

“Ratafia?” Archie tried, and Effie nodded vigorously.

If the housekeeper found the request odd, she said nothing, and after a few minutes, she arrived with several bottles of the sweet wine. “Shall I take your bird, my lord?” she asked.

“Thank you, no,” Effie said. “I could do with some old linens for my room, though. He will need to spend time outside his cage, but I shall confine him to my bedchamber, and protect its furnishings with anything you might see fit to lend me. Does anyone in the household paint? At home, I use inexpensive muslin for this purpose.”

“I have to say,” Archie said, “Mrs. Mitchell took that in stride. I don’t know many a housekeeper who would be so sanguine about a houseguest announcing that their giant pet bird is going to shit all over the house.”

“I think,” Simon said, “that you underestimate the eccentricities of the average nobleman.”

“Do I?” Archie asked. “Ought I to take up an idiosyncratic yet destructive pastime?”

“And,” Simon said, ignoring the question, “I believe the purpose of the linens was so the bird will not shit all over the house.”

“Point taken, but perhaps if one travels with a creature that is going to shit erratically, one ought to bring one’s own linens.”

As he listened to the boys banter, Effie poured himself a glass of ratafia and downed it before delivering glasses for the others and returning to the sideboard to refill his own.

Simon made a face as he took his first sip. “We ought to have asked for Scotch as well, so—”

“I am in love with a woman named Julianna Evans!” Effie shouted, unable to keep the secret-creature inside anymore—the bars of his chest-cage were dissolving, after all—and equally unable to keep his voice down, though he wasn’t sure if it was glee or dismay that had him yelling. He said it again, at a more suitable pitch. “I am in love with a woman named Julianna Evans.” Then, for reasons he couldn’t explain, he lowered his voice yet again, making the last entry in his spoken trilogy a whisper. “I am in love with a woman named Julianna Evans.”

The boys were silent, which was fair. It was a lot to take in, even for him. He had never said those words aloud before. Perhaps that is why he’d needed to repeat them twice over.

“I am in love with a woman named Julianna Evans!” Leander shrieked, and after a beat of collective shock, the three of them fell into laughter.

“Yes, I said that,” Effie said. “Several times.”

“There’s your complete sentence, though,” Simon said.

Effie laughed again. “I can only surmise that Leander was waiting for his first sentence to be one of great import.”

“Are you going to tell us more?” Archie asked.

“Yes, such as: Who is Julianna Evans?” Simon asked.

“She is my editor at Le Monde Joli ,” Effie said, his words extinguishing the amusement provided by Leander’s interruption. “I have never met her, but we write to each other quite a lot, and I am not sure how I am to survive a fortnight without word from her!”

He had shocked them. Well, he had shocked Simon, whose mouth was hanging open like a haddock. Upon further reflection, Archie didn’t look shocked so much as quizzical. Assessing. As if he were piecing together a puzzle.

“Say something!” Effie cried. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

“We are surprised,” Simon said after a beat of silence.

Had Effie made a mistake, confessing the contents of his heart? He hardly thought the boys would care that Julianna worked for a living. Had he misjudged them?

No. This was Archie and Simon.

“Ef,” Archie said gently, “please, won’t you come and sit?”

Oh. Yes. Effie had made his pronouncements from where he was standing by the sideboard. His skin prickled as he crossed the room. Was that . . . shame?

No . He refused to be ashamed of any of this: of whom he loved, of confiding in his friends. It was more of this mixed-up-ness, this sense that he was changing into someone new, someone he did not know. The only conclusion he could come to was that he was mightily befuddled.

His friends gazed at him for a moment after he’d settled, making him feel unpleasantly like a boy under his grandmother’s quizzing glass.

Archie leaned toward Effie with his forearms on his thighs. “You will forgive me if I overstep, but if I am surprised, it is only because I always rather thought your . . . inclinations did not tend toward ladies.”

Oh. Oh. Effie looked at Simon, who raised his eyebrows in a way that seemed to signal concurrence.

“You are not wrong. Yet you are not exactly right, either.” Effie paused, trying to think how to explain. “We have all heard of gentlemen who prefer the company of their own kind.” Would they understand what he meant? He didn’t get the impression that Simon and Archie attracted the Mr. Lansings of the world the way Effie himself did. “Do we all know what I mean by ‘prefer the company’?”

“We do,” Archie said with an amused glimmer in his eye, and Simon nodded his agreement.

All right, then, onward. “To the extent that I have yearned for the company of anyone, I have never made a distinction between ladies and gentlemen.”

“I see,” Archie said.

“But at the same time, it is rare for me to . . . prefer company in that way. Increasingly rare, the older I get. I suffered the odd childhood infatuation, but it has been years.”

In fact, when they were young, Effie had, for the briefest of moments, thought he fancied Archie. Archie had been so good at archery, and so dedicated to antagonizing Nigel Nettlefell, a boy whose principal hobby was being unkind to Effie.

But the sentiment had come and gone like a cloud over a picnic on a windy day; there was no point in dredging it up now. Archie was his brother in all but blood, and Effie cared little for blood. Where had blood ever got him?

“I always thought it was because I am an artist, a poet,” he went on. “There is so much beauty in the world, and so much ugliness. There are big sentiments everywhere, just waiting to overwhelm one. The sunrise and the fall of an army. Revolutions and new planets being discovered. Did you know that there are great rings around the planet Saturn? There are who knows how many planets in the sky all around us, and some of them are ringed ! Just the other day I tried to paint those rings.”

“And?” Simon asked.

“I remain a better poet than painter. But I persevere.” He paused to refocus his thoughts. Saturn was not the point. “What I am trying to say is that while I understand that for many people, love—and desire—are seemingly animating forces, to me they have historically seemed so . . . small. Inconsequential, even.” He understood now, though, what all the fuss was about. “Was I that out of step?” He turned to Archie. “I must have been, for I watched you absolutely lose your mind over Clementine Morgan last year.”

“I did not lose my mind.”

“You did, and I am not sure you’ve found it yet.”

Archie sent an appealing look at Simon, who merely lifted his glass and said, “May you never find it.”

Effie said, “Miss Austen says, ‘To love is to burn. To be on fire.’ I had never felt that before. Mind you, she also says, ‘We are all fools in love,’ and I rather think I am already accomplished enough on that front without adding love to the pot.”

“You are speaking in the past perfect tense,” Simon said. “You said, ‘I had never felt that before.’ But you do now?”

“I do now,” Effie affirmed.

“For this Miss Evans,” Simon said, his tone gentler than was typical for him.

“Yes. But it was not like in novels. I wasn’t in love with her from the start. It was only once I got to know her rather intimately that I was . . . struck. But struck I was.” Effie put his head in his hands. He had so much love in his heart. If this was what love felt like, love was exhausting. “I have come to understand that for me, a bond of friendship is a precondition for love.”

“What is the difficulty here?” Archie asked. “This would seem to be a happy revelation, no?”

“The ‘difficulty’ is not singular,” Effie said through his hands. “My situation is beset with numerous difficulties. One, she does not feel the same.” He lifted his head. “Two, I could never marry her. I could never be with her.”

“Because of your father? Your title?” Archie asked.

“Yes. Miss Evans works for a living. She lives with her sister but aspires to become a woman of independent means. I would argue she already is, except her stepbrother is proprietor of her magazine and pays her a wage not at all commensurate with the value of her work.”

“So how will she ever become a woman of independent means?” Archie asked.

“She wants to buy a printing press.”

“Ah,” Simon said. “Certain things have suddenly become clear.”

“The notion was born because she sometimes has trouble getting her magazine printed to her specifications,” Effie said. “For example, a year or so ago, she had a regular slot with a chap on Grub Street, but he started printing pamphlets for the abolitionists and told Miss Evans he could no longer accommodate her. While she sympathized with the pamphleteers’ cause, she struggled to find a new arrangement.” He paused to wonder how October, which should be off the press, was looking. “And even when she can find reliable printing services, her stepbrother—the proprietor who profits off her toils—often will not allow things like a color plate when one is clearly called for, and—”

He was getting carried away. He needn’t mire the boys in the details. “If she owned a press, she could print the magazine exactly as she liked.”

“It sounds as if she has a head for business,” Simon said.

“Oh, she does. She is artistic and cunning.” Effie put his head back in his hands. “Artistic and cunning and employed.” He thought of another “difficulty.” “And eight-and-thirty years old.”

If the boys were scandalized by the ten-year age gap, they said nothing. But perhaps the silence that settled was indicative of their shock.

“You could walk away from your family,” Simon said after a few moments. “Some do.”

“Yes, but I’d still be earl when Father dies. I can’t walk away from the title, even if I could bring myself to abandon the responsibilities associated with it—which I can’t. As much as I loathe the idea of inheriting, and even if I don’t care about Father, I do care about Sarah. I care about the estate. There are twenty-seven cottages at Highworth, and thirty-four servants. That’s not even counting the staff at the London house. We have a great many people depending on us.”

No one said anything, because there was nothing to say. Effie was well and truly stuck. He sighed. “It’s academic anyway, as she proclaims she will never marry.”