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Julianna’s heart shattered when she saw the Pavilion.

She had not thought the Pavilion would be all that it had been trumped up to be.

She had been wrong.

She had never seen anything like it. The eye was drawn first to the large spherical dome at the center, flanked by two smaller versions of the same. They, along with the structure’s many minarets, rose into the sky, spires liberated from churchly confines. The largest dome appeared to have windows in it, as if someone had thought to carve out portals to the sky.

She spent ages walking a slow circumference around the building, taking in the balconies and colonnade of the north face, the building’s broad eaves. There was also a stable rising from the gardens that looked like a palace on its own. She ought to disapprove of such a lavish building being used to house horses, but she could not. It was too beautiful.

It wasn’t just the buildings enchanting her. Though Julianna knew the Pavilion had been under construction for some time, had been remade more than once, it somehow looked as if it belonged in the tranquil gardens surrounding it, as if it had grown up from the ground along with the flowers—an absurd sentiment, she realized, given the building’s Asian inspirations. No building in England looked like this.

Yet the whole was harmonious, nature and man-made structure looking as if they had always been there together.

She hadn’t believed it possible to be so delighted by architecture. Spellbound, even.

Yesterday she would have thought Brighton’s ability to transport her would be limited to the sea it perched on. And that would have been enough. She’d had an almost religious experience, standing at the edge of so much blue.

But here she was, again, transported.

She wasn’t sure how much more her heart could take.

Tracking down Effie was beginning to feel beside the point.

She had set out to see the Pavilion this morning because she’d known the architectural marvel was the main draw for her friend, but as with the sea yesterday, she’d forgotten Euphemia as she gazed at such a vision. She’d forgotten herself , and it turned out that sometimes, forgetting oneself was wonderful . It achieved almost the same sensation as trying to visualize the flame. One became not an individualized person so much as a part of a larger whole.

“Julianna?”

And just like that, she was an individualized person again.

She glanced around to try to discover who had spoken her name. The gardens were full of people strolling, but no one here would know her.

Unless . . .

No, the voice had been distinctly masculine.

She shook her head. She must be imagining things. Perhaps she was having a religious experience. She had read about people being transported by the Holy Spirit. She didn’t care for the notion.

Time to go back to the hotel. She was hungry. Lunch would exorcise the phantasmagoric voice in her head.

She hitched her reticule higher on her wrist and set off.

There was a gentleman ten or so yards off the path she was walking. Well, there were three gentlemen ten or so yards off, but two of them were looking at the Pavilion. One of them, the one in the middle, was looking at her.

A flock of seagulls went screeching through her head, flapping against the back of her eyeballs with sinewy wings.

Effie?

No. Of course not. She shook the gulls loose, sending them back into the sky where they belonged. She had, for a moment, gone mad.

But then she heard the gentleman say, “Yes.” Or perhaps she didn’t hear him, perhaps she only saw him, saw his orchid lips form the word.

With what was he agreeing, though? She had not uttered his name aloud—she’d thought—so there was no reason for him to be saying, “Yes.”

Yet she saw the word on his lips again: yes.

Julianna thought of herself as level-headed. Unflappable, even. Right then, though, nothing felt level. Not her head, not the ground beneath her feet. And there was much flapping, the head-gulls making another cacophonous fly-by. She closed her eyes for a long moment, took a breath, and tried to see the flame. Tried to stabilize herself, to quiet the birds.

When she opened her eyes, she was able to consider the gentleman with a degree of detachment. The first relevant fact was that he was a gentleman . So whatever she thought had been happening before, she’d been confused. The fact of his gentleman-ness, of his sex, would allow her to study him impartially. Perhaps she knew him. Perhaps he had written for her, years ago, or for Father. She had quite the roster of correspondents, contemporaneous and historic.

The gentleman had long, lustrous dark hair. It was not pulled back into a queue but loose around his shoulders, making him look utterly striking, if a bit old-fashioned.

She dropped her gaze to his feet. He was wearing Hessians. They were made of fine brown leather but were otherwise unremarkable. His breeches were a similarly unexceptional buff, the color of tea with too much milk in it.

But as her assessment moved upward, she noticed, peeking out from beneath his coat, a waistcoat of brilliant blue silk shot through with black thread, as if he were harboring a peacock against his chest.

I confess a weakness for fine fabrics. I used to favor black, but lately I have been finding myself drawn to vibrant colors. The other day in a shop window, I admired a bolt of brilliant blue silk shot through with black thread. It looked as if someone had taken peacock feathers and transmuted them into silk. My first thought was, Julianna would think this a silly fabric indeed. But I questioned myself. For wasn’t it you who told me, when you ever so kindly rejected my last poem, that “silly” and “beautiful” need not be mutually exclusive?

They were suspended, Julianna and this peacock man, both of them frozen in place as surely as butterflies pinned in mounting cases. Well, this man, in his finery, was a butterfly. He was an Adonis blue, its azure wings edged in black. Julianna was a moth. A gray dagger, drably mottled with a tendency to blend into its surroundings.

She shook her head. It was impossible.

Wasn’t it?

With great effort, she unpinned herself from her mounting case. She took a step toward him, then another. He took a step back, then another, as if he’d been instructed by some higher being—the spirit who had visited her previously, perhaps—to keep a consistent distance between them.

She advanced on him until she was close enough to see his eyes.

One was blue, the other brown.

And though his whispered, “Yes,” earlier had sounded placid, his eyes didn’t match that tranquil tone. They were wide with astonishment.

The shrieking gulls that had been streaming through her head circled back and came to a stop. Hovered. She could hear their breakneck bird hearts, tuning like instruments in a symphony, until they became one single note.

As she watched, waiting to see what the birds would do, what she would do, the man’s countenance changed, astonishment giving way to dismay. His brow knit, and his eyes filled with tears.

She took another step. He tried to compensate, but he ran into one of his companions.

She took another step, gaining on him as his colleagues took note of his situation. They became confused as they registered his upset and began looking around for its cause.

They were speaking to him, but once again, she knew that only because she saw them doing so. Her head was filled with the gulls, their heartbeat note pressing against her eardrums.

She wondered if he heard them, too, if she could make herself audible over this avian plainsong.

Did she even need to speak, though? This man had, somehow, someway, seemed to hear her thoughts earlier.

“Effie?” she said, or thought—she wasn’t sure which.

He gazed at her for a long time. She could feel the other gentlemen’s attention, but she could not break eye contact with her Adonis blue, else he would fly away.

“Effie,” she said again, or thought again. Either way, she had answered her own question. “ Effie .”

Finally, he spoke aloud. “Yes.” The tears that had been threatening spilled over as he added, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She had found Effie. Well, Effie had found her. She had come to Brighton hoping to find Effie, but Effie had found her first. Or perhaps they had found each other.

Everything made sense now. She smiled. How could she not? Here was Effie.

“It’s all right, my dear,” she said, and she covered the last yard between them, held open her arms, and he stepped into them. Effie. Her Effie.

* * *

Effie smelled like cloves. Julianna hadn’t expected that. If anything, she would have expected citrus, or lavender—something light but not cloying—to accompany the personality of her longtime correspondent.

Cloves, though. Cloves were so much deeper, more complex. So much darker.

He held her tightly. She held him tightly. She never wanted to let go. She never wanted to leave this spot, with her feet on the earth and Effie in her arms and the sea in the distance.

Until her feet did leave the spot, as Effie, to her utter astonishment, lifted her off the ground and twirled her around.

She laughed, startling herself with the sound. When was the last time she had laughed? Laughed not sardonically or resignedly but genuinely, guilelessly. The world spun, rotating around them, and she wished it would never stop.

It did, though, and too quickly. Effie set her on her feet, grabbed her hands, peeled off her gloves, and turned her fingers over. They were stained with ink. “Aha!” he exclaimed in triumph. “Ink! I got that right, at least.”

I got that right, at least.

She wondered if he was adjusting to the gap between the idea of her and the reality of her. Perhaps she didn’t smell the way he’d thought she would.

“Ahem.”

It was one of Effie’s companions, the tall, graceful one, staring censorious daggers at them. The stare lasted only a beat before the man darted his eyes back and forth, seeming to want to draw their attention to their surroundings.

Their public surroundings, surroundings in which Effie had degloved Julianna with a degree of familiarity polite people would find scandalous.

Scandalous because Effie was a man .

“Yes. Right.” Effie dropped her hand suddenly, as if it were a hot pan he’d mistakenly grabbed without protecting his hand. As if Effie, this fine gentlemanly version of Effie, had ever touched a pan. Still, something had shocked him, and unpleasantly so. His countenance changed, clouded. He looked as if he were going to be ill.

She put her gloves back on.

He took a step back.

“Miss Julianna Evans,” Effie said, his voice taking on an air of formality that didn’t sound like him—though she did realize what an odd notion that was given that she’d heard his voice for the first time mere seconds ago—“may I present . . .” He trailed off, looking pained, though she did not understand why. Were his friends criminals?

He stood taller, as if steeling himself to a task and began again. “May I present Archibald Fielding-Burton, the Earl of Harcourt, and Simon Courtenay, the Earl of Marsden.”

Earls! Effie’s friends were earls! She would almost rather have had criminals.

Julianna did not care for being shocked. It wasn’t the way she wanted to present herself to the world. So she said, archly, even as she dipped a curtsy in response to the pretty bows made by Effie’s companions, “Perhaps you ought to introduce yourself, too.”

“I am Effie,” he said seriously, even as his companions snickered over her retort.

“Not short for ‘Euphemia,’ though, I presume.” The joy and wonder she’d initially felt on seeing Effie was receding in favor of pique.

After a pause that stretched out long enough to confer discomfort, he said, “Not short for Euphemia.” He spoke quietly, almost sadly. “My Christian name is Edward. ‘Effie’ is short for my title, which is Featherfinch.”

“You are an earl, too?” The pique was growing, though she wasn’t sure why. She’d had her suspicions Effie might be the daughter of an aristocrat. And since it turned out Effie was not and had never been a daughter, why shouldn’t he be titled?

“A viscount. It is a courtesy title. My father is the earl.”

Effie continued to stare at her with such intensity, it seemed as if he were trying to convey a silent message. She had no idea what it might be. Perhaps they—Effie and Jules—only worked on paper. Perhaps Miss Julianna Evans and Edward Astley, Viscount Featherfinch, could not survive the confining realities of the corporeal world.

She wanted to ask him questions. A great number of them. Was he sometimes in Cornwall because his family had a house there? Was he the eldest son and therefore heir to his father’s earldom?

Had he written those poems?

She tried and only half succeeded in swallowing a gasp at that last thought. She could cope with his being a man, a peer, even, but what if he had deceived her regarding matters of authorship?

She could easily imagine an aristocrat—one prone to misrepresenting himself, as it turned out—amusing himself by playacting at being a poet. She could hardly bear to think it. If Effie had not written “E. Turner’s” poems, she would be devastated. If all the stirring words he had sent her, all the words she had printed, were not his , she didn’t know how to come back from that.

“Perhaps,” Lord Harcourt said, making Julianna realize she was once again comporting herself less than ideally given the public nature of their encounter—she and Effie had continued to gape at each other while she underwent her bout of mental turmoil—“we ought to find somewhere to . . .” He trailed off as if at a loss. She knew how he felt.

“Have tea,” Lord Marsden said firmly.

“Yes,” Julianna said, breaking with Effie’s gaze, a rending that required some effort. Tea. A perfectly regular thing to do in the afternoon, and she was hungry. “I’m staying at the Old Ship. It’s not far.”

“I suggest,” Lord Marsden said, “that we find an establishment a trifle less . . . prominent.”

“We are endeavoring to not make our presence in town known,” Lord Harcourt said conspiratorially. “In case the king is here. I don’t suppose you know if he is? I understand you’re somewhat of a newspaperwoman.”

Effie and his friends—his earl friends—were trying to avoid the king. It boggled the mind. “No. I believe His Majesty is in Greenwich, having recently arrived from Scotland. At least that’s what I read in the papers yesterday.” Yesterday when she was in London, rifling through letters from her friend Effie, short for Euphemia.

What a difference a day made.

* * *

Tea, taken in a small shop a few blocks from the Pavilion, was excruciating. The sandwiches were stale and the conversation stilted. The four of them had apparently entered into an unspoken agreement to pretend it was perfectly normal that they’d met in Brighton, that the origin of Effie and Julianna’s acquaintance was unremarkable.

They talked mostly about the Pavilion itself. Lord Marsden, she gathered, had a particular interest in architecture. Under other circumstances, Julianna’s mind would be abuzz with ideas she might press him to write about, for he struck her as intelligent and thoughtful. “The Earl of Marsden on the Royal Pavilion.” That would be the rare piece she and Mr. Glanvil would delight in equally. He might even allow her a colored plate.

The problem was that she couldn’t sit and make idle conversation with Effie’s friends while Effie himself sat silently on a chair to her left.

She had to amend an earlier thought. Three of them were endeavoring to pretend that everything was usual. Effie had not spoken a word in the hour-plus they had been together. He hadn’t eaten anything, either. He had simply stared at Julianna over the rim of his cup as he drank methodically from it. She’d refilled it several times, and he hadn’t even murmured a thank-you . Effie had sent her hundreds of poems over the years. To think of all those words flowing from this silent creature.

He was close enough to touch, yet he was also, somehow, farther away than he had ever been, even when he’d been writing her from Cornwall.

It was beginning to break her heart.

She should not have come.

To tea, to Brighton—any of it.

“It is stunning, truly,” Lord Marsden said, summarizing his thoughts on the Pavilion. “However, though I am appreciative of His Majesty’s support in several matters in Lords, I cannot help but feel a niggle of philosophical unease when I behold such a structure. What is it for ?”

“It is a royal residence,” Lord Harcourt said.

“Yes, I know. I meant the question in a more elemental sense. A moral sense. It’s taken numerous years and an ungodly sum to build it. It’s been expanded, and to hear it told, made over on the inside more than once to accommodate His Majesty’s whim. The man already has any number of perfectly acceptable houses.”

“One could argue, and many do, that the monarch’s attention has raised Brighton’s profile in the eyes of Englishmen and foreigners alike,” Lord Harcourt said.

“Yes, yes, but . . .”

There was so much to unpack in every statement either of the gentlemen—the speaking gentlemen—made. However, though I am appreciative of His Majesty’s support in several matters in Lords . . . This would seem to indicate that Lord Marsden was a Whig.

Normally, Julianna would be quite interested in this conversation, but she kept having to force herself to attend to it. Now the two earls were arguing good-naturedly about how many houses they each had and if criticizing the Pavilion was therefore hypocritical.

She sneaked a glance at Effie, and there he was, the same as ever, staring but silent. She wanted to rail at him. Say something! She understood that he could not treat her with the same familiarity that characterized their letters, but neither did he have to act as if she were a stranger—a stranger he didn’t quite approve of, no less, judging by those assessing looks from behind the rim of his teacup.

The flash of ire that had her wanting to shout at him was suddenly quashed by the most ridiculous urge to cry. This wasn’t the person she’d corresponded with all those years. The person who sent her poems, all of them good, even the ones she declined to publish. And what of his identity as Mrs. Landers? He gave such measured, encouraging advice, and he somehow managed to be amusing while doing so.

Where was that person?

Perhaps it had never been him. Perhaps, as she’d feared earlier, he was engaged in some kind of ruse.

The tears marshalling felt heavy, capable of displacing everything else—that ire from before. Her own sense of pride.

No. The last time Julianna cried was at her father’s funeral. She’d awakened the next day, swollen and miserable, and decided that crying wasn’t worth it. It achieved nothing. It hadn’t made her feel better. It hadn’t brought Father back. All it had done was make her look like a wet turnip. So she had turned herself into the kind of woman who never cried. And if Julianna were going to make an exception to the no-crying rule—which she absolutely was not—she never would have done it in front of them. Of him .

She merely had to get through tea. They’d drunk three pots and eaten all the mediocre sandwiches, so presumably it would be over soon.

Then she could go home. She would go home. Tomorrow.