The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 3

The third installment in Beth Brower's series is written as the personal journal of Emma M. Lion, a young woman living in the London neighbourhood of St. Crispian's in the summer of 1883. Emma resides at Lapis Lazuli House, a family property she inherited but struggles to maintain after her elderly Cousin Archibald Flat squandered her financial living. Her parents are both dead, and her life is shaped by grief, limited funds, and a stubborn refusal to be defeated by either.

The journal opens on July 1st, when Archibald wakes Emma before dawn to announce that St. Crispian's annual tradition has begun: a 15-day scavenger hunt in which residents follow clues hidden across the neighbourhood to secure limited tickets to a community production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Despite her deep resentment of Archibald, Emma agrees to partner with him after he admits, near tears, that he can no longer manage the hunt alone and that Emma's late father used to help him. Emma explains the tradition to Niall Pierce, the tenant renting the adjacent property of Lapis Lazuli Minor, via notes passed through their shared garret wall, an established mode of communication between them. Pierce is skeptical but wishes her luck.

The hunt drives much of July's action. Emma and Archibald follow a chain of clues beginning with a modified Shakespeare quote in a punishing three-hour sermon by Young Hawkes, St. Crispian's vicar. The clue leads to the neighbourhood cobbler, where Emma obtains a green marble, which she trades for a silver coin stamped with Caesar's profile. The coin points them to the fountain at Baron's Square, where the line of Perseus's sword on a replica statue directs them to General Braithwaite's house. The general gives them the number 71, leading to a house on Traitors Road where Emma receives a slip of paper reading "Theā Philopátōra," a Greek phrase meaning "goddess who loves her father." Archibald cannot decipher it, but Emma's cousin Arabella Spencer, the clever daughter of her formidable Aunt Eugenia, identifies it as one of Cleopatra's epithets and connects it to The Cleopatra, St. Crispian's pub. Because Archibald has been permanently banned, Emma must enter the male-dominated establishment alone, enduring hostility until Young Hawkes intervenes. Her clue path requires her to drink a "Cleopatra," a notoriously vile concoction meant to fell grown men. With the entire pub watching, Emma chokes it down. Hawkes walks her home and leaves the final clue, a drawing that Pierce later identifies as the mark of The Hound, a gentleman's shop. Emma secures two red tickets.

When she presents Archibald with his ticket, he is overwhelmed with joy and begins to dance, the first time Emma has ever seen him happy. But he trips over Tybalt, Pierce's cat, and tumbles down the staircase, breaking both the tibia and fibula of his left leg. Pierce resets the bones with battlefield efficiency. Dr. Fairchild, the attending physician, recognizes Pierce from their shared service in Africa and confirms the expert reset. Bedridden and in agony, Archibald rages at Emma, blaming her for the fall. In a final act of spite, he chews and swallows his crumpled ticket so she cannot give it to anyone else. During his tirade, he reveals to Pierce that he squandered Emma's fortune. Pierce, privately furious, asks why Emma allows the man to stay. Emma explains that losing her childhood home after her parents' deaths left her unable to inflict displacement on another person, however undeserving. Pierce, visibly moved, volunteers to manage the household so Emma can attend the performance alone.

At Julius Caesar, Emma sits beside the Duke of Islington, a coolly sophisticated acquaintance. They share witty banter, and Emma inadvertently references private knowledge about his sense of duty gleaned from having read his diary in a previous encounter. Islington responds with unexpected vulnerability rather than anger.

Meanwhile, Pierce converts Emma's former salon into a portrait studio. He pays six months' rent for both the studio and Lapis Lazuli Minor, providing Emma with critically needed income.

July 27th marks the third anniversary of the Battle of Maiwand, the engagement in Afghanistan where Emma's beloved Maxwell Stuart was killed. Pierce, aware of the date's significance, invites Emma into his studio and asks her to tell him about Maxwell. Over hours, Emma speaks haltingly of her childhood love: meeting him, their secret notes, choosing each other before understanding what it meant, his departure for war, and his death. Pierce listens while working, his attention visible only in quiet smiles at her funnier memories. Before she leaves, he observes that she carries her ghost and looks for Maxwell over her shoulder, expressing hope she will not have to carry the dead for long. He admits he carries more ghosts than she could imagine.

In August, Pierce gives Emma a personally inscribed copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance," telling her to argue with it and write in the margins. Emma fills every page with notes and invites Pierce to dinner to debate the essay. They spend hours trading Emerson's arguments about individualism and self-trust across the table, reading each other's marginalia. Emma reflects that this kind of intellectual exchange is what she wants from life.

Their bond deepens further when Emma accidentally scatters Pierce's war photographs from a box labeled "AFGHANISTAN 1880." Despite his warnings, she insists on looking and confronts images of mass graves and dead soldiers. Pierce tells her to channel fury rather than sorrow and insists they walk for hours through London at a punishing pace. Outside his door afterward, he asks if Emma despises him for what he is, a man who follows "the pale horse," a reference to the Book of Revelation's figure of Death. Emma assures him she does not. They agree to use first names, and when they shake hands, both feel a startling jolt and pull away.

After the Duchess of Bedford's ball, where Emma manages Aunt Eugenia's social machinations while wearing a gown remade from one of Arabella's, she returns home and steps into the warm night. Pierce appears walking home, stops, and slowly takes in the sight of her as monks at Jacob's Well, a nearby monastery, begin singing Gregorian chants. He drapes his jacket over her shoulders. They stand in silence before he says only "It's late" and disappears inside. Emma realizes she almost wanted to kiss him. The next morning, Pierce receives her return of his jacket with cool professionalism. She chastises herself, invoking Maxwell's memory, and resolves to refocus on her studies.

Subplots weave through these central events. Jack Hollingstell, a scoundrel and acquaintance of Emma's, asks Emma about her friend Mary Bairrage's professor, for whom Mary types notes on the East India Company. The Duke of Islington visits Lapis Lazuli House to confront Emma after Jack slipped into his opera box, revealing that Emma's arrangement to shield Jack from consequences has inadvertently extended to the duke without his consent. Dr. Fairchild obliquely warns Emma about Pierce, calling him a fine man but noting flaws in every nature. Emma writes to Evelyn Stuart, Maxwell's older brother, asking whether the family will bring Maxwell's remains home for burial; she receives no reply.

The volume's final set piece is Lady Trewartha's end-of-August soirée. Emma is seated with nine boisterous Cambridge men who call themselves The Reprobates Ten, whose 10th member is Young Hawkes; they christen her "Eleanor of Aquitaine" and their "Lucky Penny." Pierce and Islington bond over a mutual friend, and Islington reveals that the friend's wife is his youngest sister, who secretly eloped to America. Afterward, Emma, Pierce, and Islington linger at the Baron's Square fountain past two in the morning, talking easily. Walking home, Pierce asks Emma if she has found where she belongs. She answers firmly that she belongs at Lapis Lazuli House, calling it her birthright. Pierce replies that she is lucky to have found it so soon, leaving unspoken whether he has found such a place himself.

The volume closes on August 31st. Archibald remains bedridden. Emma's letter to Evelyn is unanswered. Her artist friend Saffronia March writes from Italy that she will return before September ends. Emma's personal library has grown from four books to eight. In her garret after three in the morning, with Tybalt hunting mice nearby, Emma wishes for sweet dreams.