The English Wife: A Novel

by Lauren Willig

  Georgie reclaimed her gloves from the dressing table, directing her attention to drawing them on, finger by finger. “Whatever persuaded you to go with him?”

  Mr. Van Duyvil turned his hat around in his hands, his expression rueful. “Hugo can be very charming—when he likes. I’d never met anyone quite like him. When he invited me to return with him to London…”

  Despite herself, Georgie felt herself softening towards him. “Will you join your friends in Switzerland?”

  Mr. Van Duyvil grimaced. “Not now. It’s always rather galling to have to admit one’s own foolishness. I suppose … I suppose I ought to have stayed with them. But I’d thought there must be something more to Europe than trotting around with a Baedeker and making a fuss over the locals not speaking a civilized language.”

  Georgie grinned at his depiction of his party. “It seems you got your wish. I imagine that Sir Hugo knows more than Baedeker about certain corners of the world and that he was willing to share it … for a fee?”

  “Something like that.” Mr. Van Duyvil didn’t share her amusement. “I’d never imagined myself worldly, but I hadn’t thought myself quite so … gullible.”

  The words hit Georgie harder than she liked to show. She could remember that first month in London, pawning first one, then another piece of jewelry, not sure who to trust, not trusting her own instincts. The one thing she’d learned those first few weeks was how little she knew, how ill prepared she was to face the world beyond Lincolnshire.

  But there’d been no choice in it for her.

  “What will you do now?” Georgie asked. “Go back to New York?”

  “I ought, I suppose,” Mr. Van Duyvil said without enthusiasm. “Hugo was the only person I knew in London.”

  He’d got off lightly, Georgie knew. Sir Hugo might have fleeced him in a million ways. Gaming houses had arrangements with the likes of Sir Hugo to bring in likely flats, drawing them deeper and deeper into debt. There were also houses promising all sorts of pleasures. While the pleasure might endure for an evening, the resulting blackmail could go on for years after. Some hardy souls declared “publish and be damned,” but far more stumped up the blunt demanded for silence.

  But she couldn’t help feeling just a little sorry for Mr. Van Duyvil, all the same.

  It might be a gull, but if it was, Mr. Van Duyvil was a far better actor than anyone she had ever known, either on the stage or off.

  Slowly, wondering if she was making a mistake, Georgie said, “We never did have that supper last night…”

  They could go to the Feathers, where the landlord knew her. She’d be safe there, so long as they stayed in plain view. And it wasn’t as though Kitty were likely to join her tonight. They’d both lost a friend from this.

  Making up her mind, Georgie jammed her hat on her head and gestured imperiously to Mr. Van Duyvil. “What you need is a warm meal in you. A good meat pie does wonders for melancholy.”

  FOUR

  London, 1894

  February

  “I don’t think I’ve been warm since I left Italy.”

  Mr. Van Duyvil hunched down into the collar of his coat, rubbing his hands together for warmth. The coveted table by the fire had already been taken when they arrived at the Feathers, leaving only this spot, by the crack in the window that never quite seemed to be mended.

  “Here,” said Georgie, pushing a cup across the table. “This will chase the chill away.”

  Mr. Van Duyvil accepted it cautiously. “What it is?”

  “Not Blue Ruin,” said Georgie drily, and Mr. Van Duyvil had the grace to look abashed. “Warm port and lemon. Works a treat on wet days. It would take a fair bit of it to put you under the table.”

  She’d been scandalized once at the idea of drinking in a public house, but her standards had changed along with her speech over the past three years. There wasn’t any more harm to port and lemon than a genteel glass of sherry, and it did more than coal to keep the cold at bay.

  Mr. Van Duyvil took a tentative sip. “It’s … not bad.”

  Georgie snorted with laughter. “You get used to it.” One got used to a lot of things. She curled her fingers around her own glass, feeling the warmth seep into her skin. “What were you doing in Italy? Sketching statues?”

  Mr. Van Duyvil choked on his port. “Hardly. I can’t draw a straight line, much less a landscape.”

  “Ta, Bert.” Georgie nodded her thanks as the landlord slapped two pieces of steak-and-kidney pie down between them. “Why Italy, then?”

  “A Grand Tour, I suppose you would call it. My last year of law school … I’d been buried in my books for so long. I wanted something … something different before going into practice.”

  She’d forgot that he worked for a living. Georgie took another swig of her port and lemon. “Are you certain you’re a solicitor? You’re not at all my image of one.”

  Mr. Van Duyvil’s eyes met hers quizzically. “You aren’t my image of an actress.”

  “Several stage managers felt the same way,” said Georgie drily. She declaimed prettily enough for drawing room entertainment, but not for Drury Lane. She had found work, initially, as a dresser at the Alhambra and moved from there to a chorus role at the Olympic.

  Whether or not that was moving up, she couldn’t say. The pay was better, but the clothing was scantier.

  Mr. Van Duyvil wasn’t deterred. “It’s your voice. It doesn’t sound like your friend’s.”

  “I’m a good mimic.” But apparently not mimic enough. She’d thought she’d mastered the dialect of her new world. When Mr. Van Duyvil continued to look at her, Georgie elaborated, “I grew up as a companion to a young lady.”

  The detail seemed to whet his interest rather than discourage it. “Were you relations?”

  Georgie bit her lip. “You might say that.”

  “Might?” Mr. Van Duyvil looked at her searchingly, as though she were a riddle he could solve. “Usually one is a relation or one isn’t.”

  Georgie stared down into her port and lemon. Best to give him the sanitized answer, the tidy one she trotted out for company. “My father … my father was a soldier in the colonel’s regiment. They’d served together in India.” She could picture the colonel, sun-browned and bluff. “I was raised with the colonel’s daughter, Annabelle. Annabelle Lacey.”

  It had been so long since she had said the name that it felt heavy and strange on her tongue. Was it strange that this far away, that name still had the power to hurt her?

  Gently, Mr. Van Duyvil said, “What happened to her?”

  “Why should you think anything happened to her? Your pie will get cold if you don’t eat it.”

  “I didn’t mean to pry.” Mr. Van Duyvil set his fork down next to his uneaten pie. His eyes lingered on her face. “It was just something in the way you spoke of her—of Annabelle Lacey.”

  Hearing that name made Georgie’s throat burn; her dress felt too tight across the shoulders. Everything felt wrong and strange. The sympathy in Mr. Van Duyvil’s voice cut deeper than any insult.

  “She’s gone,” Georgie blurted out.

  To say it made it feel like it was happening all over. The pain of it. There were times when Georgie missed Annabelle so, and others when she wanted to close her eyes and imagine Annabelle out of existence, to pretend she never was, had never been, because if she hadn’t been, then none of it would ever have happened.

  “Annabelle’s gone, and I ran off to tread the boards. As you see.” Georgie picked up her port and lemon, raising it in a mock toast.

  Mr. Van Duyvil lifted his glass, but didn’t drink. “Were you close?”

  “At times.” Memories, like the flash of a kingfisher’s wing. Annabelle’s reflection in the water of the river, laughing. And then later. Later. A slipper by the river’s edge; a hair ribbon caught on a floating branch. “At times. You know how it is, when you grow up with someone.”

  To her surprise, Mr. Van Duyvil nodded. “My cousin Anne. She’s more of a s
ister to me than my own sister. For better and worse. There are times—” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “There are times when we feel like two parts of the same person. If that isn’t too fanciful.”

  “No.” Georgie’s voice was hoarse. From the port, of course. It took her that way, sometimes. “No, not fanciful at all.”

  It was surprisingly seductive to be allowed to speak of Annabelle. How had their conversation become so intimate? She had shared more with Mr. Van Duyvil in an hour than she had told Kitty in a year. It must be because he was a stranger, an American. She could use him as a Catholic would a confessor, murmuring one’s sins into the ear of a stranger.

  Georgie cleared her throat, trying to get the huskiness out of her voice. With forced lightness, she said, “What’s the problem with your sister?”

  Mr. Van Duyvil took her cue, saying, with an expression of mock distress, “There isn’t any. That’s the problem. She’s very correct.”

  Georgie couldn’t help laughing. “And your cousin?”

  Mr. Van Duyvil’s lips creased in a smile so indulgent it made Georgie feel almost jealous. “Is anything but correct. She tried to elope with an actor when she was seventeen. The family caught her and brought her back. She wasn’t repentant. She was furious.”

  Seventeen. The same age Georgie had been when she had staged her own elopement of sorts. But she hadn’t run away with a man; she had run from one. “You sound like you admire her.”

  Mr. Van Duyvil glanced through the thick panes of the window, a faraway expression in his eyes. “I’ve always wanted to be as strong as Anne.” His eyes came back to Georgie’s, rueful, resigned. “I wouldn’t know how to begin, though.”

  “You could always elope with an actress.” She’d spoken without thinking. Hastily, Georgie said, “I didn’t mean … never mind.”

  Mr. Van Duyvil politely ignored her confusion, pretending to consider the notion. “It’s not a terrible idea. At least it would stop my mother trying to marry me off to the daughters of her friends. Do you have an actress to recommend?”

  Was he flirting? Georgie hoped not. Despite herself, she’d been enjoying their conversation. It would be disappointing to find Mr. Van Duyvil like the others, just angling for one thing.

  Georgie shrugged. “I’d suggest Kitty, but she’s holding out for a title.”

  “And what about you, Miss Evans?”

  “Georgie.” In her topsy-turvy world, to be on first-name terms felt somehow safer than being a miss. It reminded her, as the bard would say, feelingly what she was. A survivor, outside the social pale. “I’m not looking for a prince—or a baronet.”

  “What about a mere mister?”

  Georgie stabbed her fork into her pie. “Not until man is made of some other matter than earth.”

  Mr. Van Duyvil raised a brow. “Much Ado? It is Much Ado.”

  “About something,” said Georgie. There were times when it was best to be blunt. “I’m not looking for a protector.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  A bit of peace. A place she could call her own.

  Unbidden, the image came to her of Lacey Abbey; the broken cloisters laced about with thick summer growth, the heady scent of primroses and honeysuckle, the whisper of Queen Anne’s lace against the folds of her dress. In memory, those summers seemed to last forever, all the boredom and dissent leached away by longing. She wanted that back: the sunlight on the water, the lazy song of the birds, the blackberries ripe on the branch. She wanted Lacey Abbey as it had been and could never be to her again.

  “Another drink,” said Georgie and twisted to catch Bert the barman’s eye. “Now. Tell me more about your cousin Anne and her actor…”

  New York, 1899

  January

  “Extra!”

  “Mind how you go, lady!”

  “Boy! Hey, you! Get out of the street!” The streetcar driver rang his bell, scattering a ragged band of newsboys as it clanged by on its tracks.

  Janie’s nose tingled with the smell of burned pretzel, roasting chestnuts, and the inevitable presence of horse manure, faint now in the stinging cold. It was a familiar backdrop to the less familiar scents of ink and paper, the shouts of the newsboys, the clamor of traffic, the rumble of wheels and printing presses buried in basements beneath the headquarters of The Tribune, The Sun, The Journal, The Times, The World, each racing the other to produce the biggest headline, the most sensational story.

  Right now, Bay’s and Annabelle’s deaths were that story. Janie could see it shouting out from the sandwich boards, above the fold on the papers being parceled out to the newsies.

  WHERE IS ANNABELLE VAN DUYVIL?

  MURDERED SOCIALITE’S BODY STILL MISSING

  Keeping her veil close about her face, Janie yanked her skirts out of the way of an inquisitive horse, skirting a small, ragged band of boys. She shouldn’t be out and about at all; the rules governing mourning were strict. In three weeks, she might accept condolence calls. In six months, she might call informally on friends, lightening her mourning from black to violet. But what rules applied to this situation? What was the rule when there was no body to bury, when, instead of the muffled knocker enforcing silence, the bereaved household was riven with the cries of the press? In a world gone mad, the proprieties lost their importance.

  The World Building was easy enough to find, even in the midst of such bustle: the rusticated façade dominated the street, but it was the dome that set it apart, flaming even in the weak winter sun, stretching higher than the spire of Trinity Church. It was something well out of the human scale, this monument to the news of the world.

  Or, at least, thought Janie tartly, the gossip of the world. The building, with its echoes of the Renaissance, made promises that the institution itself failed to keep.

  It was grander inside than she had imagined, the elaborate ironwork of the staircase more suited to a palace than a printing house. The air was thick with smoke—cigar smoke, pipe smoke, smoke from the equipment below—and the floor rumbled and rattled beneath her feet. Everyone seemed to know where they were going in this entirely masculine world, clustered in small chattering groups, striding importantly to and fro.

  “Can I help you, miss?” A man broke off from his group and slouched over, trailing cigar ash.

  Janie spoke without thinking. “Is the building quite safe?”

  The man gave a bark of a laugh. “That’s just the presses, miss. There’s enough steel in these walls to hold up half of Manhattan.” He removed the cigar from between his lips, held it out, and eyed her lazily. “You looking for someone?”

  “Yes,” said Janie, and then, more definitely, “yes. I’m looking for a reporter. A Mr. Burke.”

  “Come for the reward?” He jerked a finger towards a gilded cage that was spewing forth men in battered hats and warm mufflers. “Newsroom. Twelfth floor.”

  Janie would have thanked him, but he was already turning away, absorbed back into his conversation, a conversation in which she could hear her own name, Van Duyvil.

  Might he have…? No. No one knew her here. There were benefits to being nondescript. She’d never had her engraved portrait in the papers. Her clothes were good, but not showy. There was no one to guess at her for what she was.

  And even if there were? What did it matter now? She had spent her life in terror of saying the wrong thing, wearing the wrong gloves, showing a fraction too much ankle, the relentless abjuration to be a lady, behave like a Van Duyvil, whatever that was supposed to mean. But all that paled to insignificance now, seemed small and petty against the drama playing out in the papers, the memory of Bay, golden and fallen.

  The gilded cage of the elevator jerked and swayed as it rose in the air. The dial on top jerked ever upwards. Six. Higher than the top of her mother’s house. Eight. Higher than Grant’s tomb. Up, up, up in the sky, away from the known world, the brownstones that clung close to the pavement, the long skirts that trailed on the ground.

  Janie heard
the sound of the newsroom before the elevator doors opened, a sound like a locomotive, the rattle of hundreds of typewriters, the shrill of a telephone, male voices raised to carry over the din. The elevator man had to ask her whether she meant to take another trip before Janie, with a murmured apology, gathered up her skirts and hurried belatedly into the Tower of Babel.

  The room was large, larger than Mrs. Astor’s ballroom, but it seemed small, crammed as it was with rolltop desks jammed together any which way, creating a crazy labyrinth of winding paths. Around the walls, placards shouted their messages in large letters: ACCURACY ACCURACY ACCURACY! read one, and THE COLOR—THE FACTS—THE COLOR another.

  Rather more color than facts, Janie would have said. But there was an undeniable energy to the room, the clacking typewriters, the shouting voices, that put energy into her step and color in her cheek.

  The room was heaving with men, the air ripe with the smell of tobacco, sweat, and yesterday’s dinner. Janie had never seen a man in his shirt and suspenders before, not even her father or brother. But here, jackets had been dropped over the backs of chairs, sleeves rolled up over forearms. Hats lay discarded on desks and dangled from hooks.

  She ought, she supposed, to be intimidated by such a palpably masculine environment, but something about it reminded her of her Girls’ Club, the charity for working-class girls at which she volunteered two mornings a week, or sometimes more when she was feeling particularly low. Nothing here was for show or display; they all were what they were, pounding away at typewriter keys, holding the phone receiver to a crumpled shirt front as they looked up and shouted something across the room. It felt, thought Janie, like being at the edge of a beehive; there was something very impressive about all that concentrated activity.

  It did rather put a damper on her grand plan, though. Janie had imagined the newsroom as a series of offices with glass doors, doors which could be closed. She had envisioned herself sweeping mysteriously into Mr. Burke’s office, a woman of the world in her black veil. A few murmured words and she would be in the reporter’s own private sanctum.