The English Wife: A Novel

by Lauren Willig

  Annoyed with herself and her traitorous body, Georgie pulled herself up and set off back down the path, the sunshine making rainbows at the corners of her eyes. Only a few hours more. Only a few hours more and Anne would go off with her new husband in a haze of rice and gossip, and she could retreat to a dark room and nibble very, very slowly on a soda cracker.

  Charlie and Bay were still standing by the belvedere. Below her, the men were arguing, their voices low and intense, their heads close together. Georgie could see her reticule in Bay’s hand, held in that awkward way men had with feminine things.

  “—best forgot,” he was saying, his voice low.

  “Maybe you can forget.” Charlie’s trained, advocate’s voice carried over the sound of the leaves. “I can’t.”

  “Charlie, I told you—”

  “You mean you ran away. That’s not an argument. That’s an admission.”

  “This isn’t one of your cases, Charlie!” Bay pulled away, visibly agitated, and Georgie started forward, ready to come to his aid, to extricate him from the conversation. “You can’t talk me into submission.”

  “Fine,” said Charlie. “Here’s another argument.”

  The afternoon sun glittered in Georgie’s eyes, bright on the river. She put up a hand against the dazzle. Charlie grabbed the lapels of Bay’s jacket. Bay held up a hand in protest, the hand holding Georgie’s reticule. It swung in the air, the beads scintillating, setting up a gentle chime.

  Georgie opened her mouth to call out, but the words froze on her lips as Charlie Ogden pulled her husband’s head to his and sealed Bay’s lips with his.

  In Bay’s hand, her reticule swung back and forth and back and forth as Georgie’s world narrowed to the glitter of the beads and then to nothing at all.

  FOURTEEN

  Cold Spring, 1899

  January

  Lips on lips, palms on flesh. In the dark, there was nothing but sensation. Janie could taste the whisky on Mr. Burke’s tongue, or perhaps it was her own. She could feel the coiled strength of him through the fabric of his jacket, his hair soft underneath her fingers.

  Fragments of poetry danced through her mind like crystal baubles. Long-dead rogues and roués, urging women on to indiscretions, but the words rang like chimes in Janie’s head. Nothing, nothing was here right now except this, except them. Mr. Burke had vowed her no vows, pledged her no pledges, made her no promises, and there was something in that which gave Janie the strength to wrap her arms around his neck, to meet him kiss for kiss, not because he’d asked, but because he hadn’t, because this was what she wanted, here, now.

  His hands moved from her shoulders, down her sides, and she felt herself arching to meet his touch as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She felt desirable, powerful, not a spinster to be pitied, but Cleopatra, seduced and seducer.

  Their lips parted with an audible sound. In the dark, Janie could hear the raw grate of Mr. Burke’s breath as he dropped his hands from her hips, taking an unsteady step back, away from her. “Miss Van Duyvil.”

  It didn’t feel cold in the hall anymore. Janie could feel the heat between their bodies. Her lips felt swollen, well used. Her hair was half-loose around her face. The humor of it all bubbled up in her, the absurdity of such formality when a moment ago, they had been kissing as though the world might end.

  “Mr. Burke, I presume.”

  She could hear him choke on a laugh. Strange to know someone so little and yet know them enough to be able to read volumes into the slightest sound. “My friends call me James.”

  Janie remembered the catcalls in the newsroom. “Not Jimmy?”

  “Not unless they want a black eye.” She could feel the cold return as Mr. Burke moved away from her, stepping back with an air of renunciation. “Miss Van Duyvil—”

  “Genevieve.” It had been so long since she had spoken her real name that it sounded strange on her lips. “Or Janie, if you must.”

  She could feel Mr. Burke’s attention. “Not Jane?”

  Everyone always assumed it must be. It was a good name for a spinster, Jane. “No. I was named after the patron saint of Paris. My father insisted.”

  “Genevieve.” She could hear Mr. Burke trying the name, testing it. He breathed out a long breath, his voice ragged. “I think it would be safer if I stuck with Miss Van Duyvil.”

  Janie gathered her tumbled hair together in both hands. “Safer for whom?”

  “Both of us?” Mr. Burke’s eyes followed the movement of her arms, her body. “This … I … damn.”

  Janie stared after him, her hands frozen in her hair, every inch of her body alive, seized with a heady sense of—what? Excitement, exhilaration, power. Power to know that she had made Mr. Burke’s breath come short, his hands tremble, that here, in the dark, in this quiet place, someone wanted her.

  “Are you quite all right?” She was proud of how steady her voice sounded.

  “No.” Mr. Burke ran a hand through his hair. Janie knew now, knew how it would feel against her fingers, the shape of his cheek, his jaw. “I’m an idiot is what I am. I let myself forget—”

  An image rose in Janie’s head of a woman dressed in a brightly colored, form-fitting frock, a telegraph operator or a stenographer. A New Woman. “Forget what?”

  “What you are. And what I am.” When Janie looked at him in puzzlement, Burke gave a snort. “You don’t hear it, do you? Even your voice is gold-plated.”

  “My voice isn’t gold-plated.” Her voice was just a voice. Either Mr. Burke was more inebriated than she had realized, or he was, Janie thought with a twinge, regretting that impulsive kiss.

  “No, not gold-plated. Gold straight through. Twenty-four carat to the core. You’re so used to it, you don’t even hear it. You don’t need to pretend it.” Mr. Burke sketched an impatient gesture. “You’d best go back to the big house.”

  “And leave you here alone?”

  “I’m not going to steal the silver.”

  Janie blinked several times. “I don’t even know if there is any silver. Anything worth having is probably in the new house.”

  Mr. Burke shoved his hands in his pockets in a deliberately rude gesture. “Well, that’s all right, then. You can leave me here with a clean conscience.”

  “I don’t intend to leave you here at all.” How had they gone from Let Rome in Tiber melt to this? Or perhaps it had been in her imagination all along, a fantasy born of whisky and wishful thinking. Janie shook her head to clear it, trying to remember why they were there. Giles Lacey. Annabelle. “You don’t know where the nurse’s room is.”

  “I can find it.”

  “In an unfamiliar house? In the dark?”

  “I didn’t come entirely unprepared.” There was the hissing sound of a lucifer being struck, sparking slightly before the hall flickered into light ever so briefly before Mr. Burke swore and shook the match out again.

  “Here.” Janie lifted an old-fashioned candle in a stand from the side table, handing it to him. Her grandmother had always kept them there, wary of such newfangled notions as gas lamps. “Before you burn your fingers.”

  “I think I already have,” Mr. Burke muttered. He struck another match, holding it to the top of the candle. “Satisfied?”

  “No.” He reached for the candle, but Janie held it back, squinting a bit as the light made her eyes sting. “I’m coming with you.”

  Now that she could see him properly, Mr. Burke looked as disheveled as she felt. Janie looked hastily away from his lips as he said, “Suit yourself. It’s your house.”

  Janie led the way towards the narrow stair. “I don’t know whose it is.” The will wouldn’t be read until Bay was issued an official certificate of death. It was a sobering thought, a reminder of why they were here. Not a dalliance in the dark, but justice still to be served. “Sebastian’s, most likely.”

  She heard a step creak as Mr. Burke paused for a moment behind her. “What about Viola?”

  Resolutely, Janie kept moving fo
rward, looping up her long skirts with one hand. “How do you think the Van Duyvils have amassed so much? We keep it in the male line.”

  He caught up with her on the landing, resting one elbow against the newel post. “You’ll never catch a duke if you’re not an heiress.”

  “I never wanted a duke.” They stared at each other fiercely, green eyes against blue, before Janie turned on her heel, saying dismissively, “Only the new people chase after titles.”

  “Oh, the new people, is it? The ones who have only just made their first million? Forgive a poor, ignorant peasant. I thought every girl wanted a coronet.”

  Janie’s head was starting to ache. “That’s as absurd as saying every boy pulls the wings off flies.”

  “Don’t they?”

  “Did you?”

  They faced off across the door to the nursery, the candlelight casting orange shadows across Mr. Burke’s face, emphasizing the strong bones of his cheeks, sensual bow of his lips.

  “No,” he said at last. “Although I’ll admit to swatting a few.”

  “Well, then,” said Janie. “Don’t presume to guess what I do or don’t want. You haven’t the slightest notion.”

  “No. I haven’t.” Mr. Burke stood very still, his eyes dark and serious on her face, as though he were trying to puzzle her out, make sense of her. “Genevieve.”

  She couldn’t very well accuse him of taking liberties when she was the one who had made him free of her name.

  “This is the nursery.” Confused and annoyed, Janie swept up her skirt and blundered into the doorframe.

  “All right, then?”

  Janie wasn’t sure which smarted more, her elbow or her pride.

  “Quite,” she said and took a step aside, gesturing Mr. Burke to precede her. She must, she decided, be a very bad person, because she took a perverse delight in adding, just a moment too late, “Mind the toy soldier.”

  When he had finished hopping and swearing under his breath, Mr. Burke said, somewhat raggedly, “Your nephew forgot his grenadiers.”

  “They were my brother’s.” Janie’s amusement faded. She could picture her brother lining them up in rows, enacting mock battles. No, not battles. Parlays. Bay had always been more a negotiator than a fighter, relying on charm rather than force. “I imagine my nephew has soldiers enough of his own.”

  Mr. Burke glanced at her sideways. “Were you a child here?”

  “Briefly.” Janie held up the candle, turning old toys into strange shadows. “The nurse’s room is on the far side.”

  Instead of crossing the room, Mr. Burke wandered over to the wall, squinting at the tiny figures. “What’s that on the wall?”

  Janie obligingly held her candle closer. “Fairy stories. Rapunzel, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk…” She squinted at a sun-faded figure. “The goose with the golden eggs?”

  She could feel Mr. Burke come to stand beside her. “They killed it, didn’t they?”

  It was a little absurd to be standing shoulder to shoulder, avoiding looking at one another. She could smell woodsmoke and old leaves and aged whisky. And, beneath it, soap and skin. “In the story? Yes.”

  Mr. Burke made a noise deep in his throat. “How many jewels was your sister-in-law wearing when she disappeared?”

  Too many to count. Although many had. Pearls, sapphires, diamonds, strung about her neck, embroidered into her dress, affixed to the heels of her shoes.

  Janie had an uncomfortable idea she knew what he was getting at. On the wallpaper, the farmwife’s hands were around the neck of the goose, ready to squeeze. She turned away, taking her candle with her. “I don’t know.”

  Mr. Burke followed, navigating around the fallen toys. “A king’s ransom, the papers said.”

  “You are the papers.” Janie reached for the door of the nurse’s room, only to find Mr. Burke’s hand on the handle before her. “You should know better than to believe what they say.”

  “Is that what you think of me?” He was blocking the way, looking across at her with a long furrow across the bridge of his nose. “I don’t deliberately set out to perpetrate falsehoods, Miss Van Duyvil. Even if they will sell papers.”

  It would have been easier to blame all their ills on interfering reporters, inventing scandal. But the whisky still had hold of her, and if wine brought truth, how much more so whisky?

  Janie let out her breath with a whoosh. “No, I don’t believe you do … Jimmy.”

  Mr. Burke quirked a brow, but moved aside to let her pass. “That’s not Queensbury rules.”

  Janie decided there was something to said for being under the influence. She made a dismissive gesture. “I never claimed to be a gentleman.”

  Mr. Burke’s eyes swept her from her tousled hair to her dusty hem. “No, you didn’t.” He reached at random for the wardrobe door. “This is the room?”

  “Yes.” She wasn’t here to spar with Mr. Burke. “I believe this was once the nurse’s room, but it looks as though someone stayed here more recently.”

  Mr. Burke’s fingers skated over the wrinkles in the coverlet. “It does, indeed.”

  There was no reason for her cheeks to go red. A bed was a bed. “That was Viola, this afternoon. But the bedclothes were already wrinkled.”

  “Do the locals know the house is empty?” When Janie looked at him quizzically, Burke added, “If someone were looking for a place for an illicit tryst, this would do nicely.”

  The wall against her back, Burke’s hands on her waist, her hips.

  Janie set the candle down on the bureau and busied herself looking into drawers she already knew to be empty. “Why this room?” Nothing but a scattering of hairpins, a dusting of powder, a stray handkerchief. “Why not a room closer to the landing?”

  “For that very reason. Less obvious if someone came looking.” Burke plucked the handkerchief from the drawer and examined the scrap of fabric, turning it one way, then another. The linen was whisper thin, edged with lace. “A bit fine for a nursery maid, isn’t this?”

  “Is there a rule that nursery maids must have cambric handkerchiefs?”

  “Fancy nursery maids you have here.” He lifted the handkerchief to reveal three intertwined letters, barely visible, white on white, an A and a V flanking a D. Annabelle Van Duyvil.

  “Annabelle was always in the nursery.” Janie could picture her sister-in-law, in the big rocking chair, Bast on her lap, Viola on the floor, her head against her mother’s knee. “She might have dropped it.”

  “Perhaps.” Mr. Burke tucked the handkerchief in his pocket and dropped to his knees before the hearth, squinting at the ashes. “Shine that light over here, would you?”

  Janie knelt beside him, the candle in her hand. “I saw Annabelle in the water.”

  “You thought you saw Annabelle in the water.” Mr. Burke eschewed the poker, gently feeling among the ashes with his finger. “Ex pede Herculem.”

  He was testing her. Or, perhaps, she thought with dawning awareness, proving something to her. “I saw no feet, particularly not those belonging to Hercules.”

  Mr. Burke held up a scrap, blew gently on it, and put it aside. “It’s an axiom attributed to Pythagoras. From the part, one can assume the whole. You saw something belonging to Annabelle in the water and assumed it must be Annabelle.”

  “I saw Annabelle,” said Janie, but she wasn’t quite as sure as she had been. What had she seen, really? A shoe? A shadow? “You think Annabelle took her jewels and fled.”

  “Stopping here to burn her papers and any photographs that might be used to identify her.”

  No. Janie wasn’t quite sure why her reaction was so immediate and so negative, but she knew that Mr. Burke was wrong. She cast about for logic and came up only with, “You said it yourself: Why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? The jewels Annabelle was wearing were only a small fraction of what she might have had.”

  “And you said it yourself,” Mr. Burke countered. “In the fairy tale, they kill the goose.”

 
; Janie shifted on her knees. One was beginning to cramp. “You said that.”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a story.” In the story, the farmer and his wife had killed the goose in the hopes of a windfall. “Even if Annabelle inherited under Bay’s will, she isn’t around to receive it, is she?”

  “Who’s to say what the plan might have been?” Mr. Burke was still busy with the ashes, a male Cinderella, industriously sorting lentils. “Perhaps it was meant to look like a robbery gone wrong. The bereaved widow could collect her fortune—and marry her lover.”

  Janie was beginning to be sorry she had asked. “Mr. Pruyn.”

  Mr. Burke didn’t leave off his work. “Or someone else.”

  No. It made a convincing story, but he hadn’t known Annabelle and Bay. “That sounds like the plot of a play.”

  “Speaking of plays…” Mr. Burke sat back on his knees, holding a charred piece of paper. “What’s this?”

  Janie scooted closer, her skirts tangling around her knees. It looked like a theater program, or what was left of one. The legend ALI BABA THEATRE ran across the top of the page.

  Below, in smaller letters, was the name of the manager, half-illegible with soot, and below that, larger again, EVERY EVENING, AT 8:25, THE NEW BURLESQUE, IN TWO ACTS, ENTITLED ELEVEN AND ONE NIGHTS.

  Scrolling script read, THE ALI BABA THEATRE PRESENTS and then in bold TWELFTH NIGHT UP TO DATE.

  Only the ragged ends of the dramatis personae remained below, starting with “Viola … Miss Geor—”

  Janie reached for the scrap. “May I?”

  Mr. Burke relinquished the paper. A bit more crumbled away from the bottom. “Why save a theater program? And why burn it?”

  Janie gently turned the scrap over. Nothing remained on the back but a bit of a colored illustration, a pair of shapely legs in breeches.

  “People save all sorts of absurd things.” A half-forgotten scrap of memory from that first summer at Newport, Bay being ribbed about his sudden marriage by Teddy, answering with his usual mix of humor and reserve. “Bay … Bay did say once that Twelfth Night had brought them together. I had thought he meant a drawing room discussion of the play. Perhaps they met at a performance?”