The English Wife: A Novel

by Lauren Willig

  “It hasn’t all been a performance.” That all cut like a knife. Realizing his mistake, Mr. Burke winced. “Janie, believe me—”

  “Believe you?” Janie couldn’t keep the incredulity out of her voice. The wind was making her cheeks burn and her chest hollow. “How you must have laughed when I came to you. Revenge offered up on a silver plate.”

  “Not silver,” said Mr. Burke, so softly his words were barely audible above the wind. “Gold.”

  It wasn’t fair of him to look at her like that, as though she were a lady in a portrait and he her swain. When, in fact, it had all been a lie, a lie from start to finish.

  Janie’s hands felt like ice, but her chest burned. “I want you to leave, Mr. Burke,” she said, her voice cold and hard and steady. “Leave now.”

  “Please. Let me try to explain.” Mr. Burke put out a hand to her. He wasn’t wearing his gloves, Janie noticed, and his fingers were blue from the cold. “Miss Van Duyvil. Genevieve.”

  It was his use of her name that stiffened Janie’s spine and her resolve. Sharply, she said, “There are women waiting for me inside. You may have all the time in the world, but they don’t.”

  Mr. Burke made a deprecating face. “Surely, ten minutes—”

  Did he think that ten minutes was all it would take to wheedle her around? Janie grasped the handle of the door, tugging against the wind. “You may not value their time, but I do. These are women who took time out of earning their livings because they want to better themselves.”

  Mr. Burke grasped the door above her hand, holding it for her. “By learning which fork to use?”

  “Don’t you dare mock them.” Janie swirled through the door in a tangle of worsted and indignation. “Knowing how to set a table could make the difference between getting a position in a big house and no work at all.”

  “So you’re training your own servants,” retorted Burke. “How noble.”

  “I never claimed to be noble,” snapped Janie. “I learn far more from them than they do from me. But what little I can share, I do. Can you say you do the same?”

  Burke took a step back, holding up a hand defensively. “I inform the public.”

  “And charge them for it, too,” riposted Janie. “Three pennies a paper.”

  “We can’t all live on Fifth Avenue,” Burke shot back. “Some of us have to earn a wage.”

  Janie felt a magnificent rage swell through her. “I won’t deny that my family wronged you, Mr. Burke, but I refuse to be part of your revenge. And I refuse to be made to feel guilty for what I am. I couldn’t help it any more than you. You, at least, have the power to go out into the world and earn your own wage. While I—”

  “Yes?” said Burke.

  The memory of all the empty years came flooding back. The hours of hiding in her room, hiding from her mother, hiding from herself. But she’d had enough. She wasn’t hiding anymore. “I teach table manners. And I won’t keep my students waiting. There’s a gate in the garden. I suggest you use it.”

  And she left Mr. Burke standing alone in the winter-bare garden, feeling, at the same time, both very powerful and very bereft.

  Cold Spring, 1896

  May

  “Duck, Mama! Duck!”

  Georgie raised a hand in response to her daughter, who was already toddling past, Polly the duck bobbing up and down on her string, Bast stumbling along behind, making grabs for the duck’s wooden tail. The weather had finally turned, and the day was just warm enough to play outdoors, the children reveling in the bright new grass, in the freedom of the wide lawn that stretched away along the back of the house, as their nurse darted behind them, ready to catch them if they should tumble.

  It felt like heaven to be outdoors again, to feel the sun through the brim of her hat, to watch her children—her children!—play. The old white house seemed to smile behind them, brighter for a new coat of paint, but otherwise unchanged from the day Bay had brought her there over a year before.

  Georgie had fallen in love with the place at once, although whether it had been the house itself, with its quaint simplicity, or the simple fact that it was an hour from Bay’s mother, she couldn’t say.

  It had been expected that they would return to town eventually, but the birth hadn’t been an easy one. Society had agreed that it was admirable, if a bit baffling, that Bay would stay with his wife as she recovered. It had become less admirable and a great deal more baffling as they had stayed and stayed and stayed, even as Georgie regained her health. Illyria, Bay had jokingly called the house when they had first arrived, but that was what it felt like to Georgie, an enchanted kingdom where they might do as they pleased.

  And if she felt a bit restless from time to time as her health and spirits returned to her, well, that was surely a product of the dark, cold, winter months, when the house felt less welcoming and more confining. But the sun was out again and the children were beginning to cease being mere ciphers and become people, a transformation that Bay, in particular, watched with no little fascination.

  “Duck, Mama!” Viola called again.

  Viola was just over a year old, and already saying words, or at least a handful of them. Bay thought her quite brilliant. Sebastian was quieter, but easier on his feet, building up the blocks Viola knocked down, picking up the toys she dropped.

  Was that what it had been like with her and George? Georgie couldn’t remember, and there was no one now to tell her. But she could remember the feel of her brother’s hand in hers, even now.

  There were times when she couldn’t believe her luck, that through all the ups and downs, the uneasy times, she had come to this, this peaceful place where she was undisputed mistress, where she could watch her children play and know that they would never have to wonder who their mother was, or face the scorn of society. There were other times when a cloud would pass over the sun, and she would shiver, sure that a reckoning would come.

  The air above her darkened, and a pair of hands settled on her shoulders, making her jump. “Hello,” said her husband, leaning around her hat to press a kiss to her cheek.

  “You startled me.” Georgie tilted her head back, feeling the sun on her face. “You’re back early.”

  Bay took the train to town twice a week to maintain his presence at the office. Georgie still found it strange that a man who could afford a private train car would deem it necessary to report to an office like a clerk, to do work that he didn’t need to do, but she accepted that this was part of Bay’s world, a world in which the arbiters of society lived far more opulently than dukes and yet still played at the professions.

  “I didn’t go to the office,” Bay confessed, folding himself comfortably onto the ground at her feet. “I have a surprise for you.”

  “Dada, Dada, Dada!” Polly the duck clanked behind Viola as she toddled towards her father with surprising speed. She tripped over her own fat little feet, and her father swooped her up, kissing her round cheeks.

  Viola went to her father, but Bast came to Georgie, wrapping his arms around her leg just below the knee. Georgie nuzzled his head, smelling the perfect baby smell of him. “What sort of surprise? Not another patent carpet cleaner. Mrs. Gerritt nearly resigned.”

  Bay smiled sheepishly. “Nothing that explodes this time, I promise.” He rolled onto his back, lifting a delighted Viola squealing in the air. “I won’t tell you. You’ll have to come to town to see.”

  Georgie looked at him darkly. “This isn’t another of your mother’s plots—”

  “To make us understand the importance of our position?” Bay finished for her. He lowered Viola gently to the ground, casting a quick look at Georgie. “No. It’s at Anne’s house.”

  Georgie hauled Sebastian onto her lap, where he promptly wriggled to be free again. “Haven’t she and Teddy gone to Nice?”

  “I believe their trip has been postponed.” Bay looked uncomfortable. “There was some disagreement. I don’t really know.”

  That he did know, Georgie had no doubt.
There had been times over the past two years when she had badgered Bay to betray his cousin’s confidences. He generally did, in the end, but since Georgie had very little interest in Anne’s domestic dramas, other than to ascertain that they would have no repercussions for Bay, and since Bay had long been aware that Georgie’s sympathy for Anne was limited, they avoided the topic as much as possible.

  No matter. If Georgie truly wanted to know, she had only to read Town Topics, which covered Teddy’s indiscretions and Anne’s retaliatory affairs in loving detail.

  “Teddy invited Ellen Morris to accompany them, didn’t he?” said Georgie shrewdly. Teddy was known to be carrying on an intrigue with one of his wife’s former closest friends. “And Anne is sticking at it.”

  “Something like that.” Bay let out his breath in a grunt as his daughter crawled over his chest. Rolling onto his side, he said, “I wish she’d listened to me.”

  Georgie scooped Viola up, wincing as a small fist closed around her pearl earring. “And still be in your mother’s house? I didn’t think you would condemn her to that.”

  Bay grimaced. “A fair point.”

  They had, at Mrs. Van Duyvil’s command, spent the Christmas season at the house on Thirty-Sixth Street, an experiment that had not gone well. Bay, accustomed now to being master of his own domain, had chafed at his mother’s restrictions. Quietly, yes, but his irritation had been obvious to Georgie, if not to his mother, who viewed him, as far as Georgie could tell, as more pawn than person.

  Georgie had fretted over being away from the children; Bast had a cough, and she hated to leave him. Mrs. Van Duyvil had found this incomprehensible. The child had a nurse, after all. Georgie’s pointing out that that policy hadn’t precisely served Mrs. Van Duyvil’s offspring well had done little to improve relations.

  Georgie and Bay had returned to the country earlier than planned, canceling several engagements, stimulating speculation, and winning Mrs. Van Duyvil’s condemnation.

  None of which bothered Georgie in the slightest. She didn’t care what New York society thought, and she wasn’t afraid of Mrs. Van Duyvil. The woman might rule supreme over a certain swathe of New York society, but she couldn’t touch Georgie in Illyria.

  Bay disentangled Vi’s fingers from Georgie’s earring, setting his daughter on his shoulders, out of harm’s way. “Well? Will you come to town with me tomorrow? I can promise you an excellent luncheon.”

  It was hard to refuse Bay anything when he looked like that, smiling in the sunshine, one child on his back, the other tugging at his leg.

  “All right,” Georgie relented. “So long as there’s no lobster mousse.”

  It felt strange to be donning her town clothes again, to attempt to cinch her waist into Paris dresses not worn since before the twins were born. It didn’t matter that they were two years old, Bay had assured her; some women deliberately ordered Paris frocks and set them aside for two years so that they might not appear too showy.

  “Showy or not,” Georgie grumbled, “it won’t matter if I can’t lace them.” But her maid made herculean efforts and crammed her into a day dress of green with purple dots that opened over an underdress of rich cream brocade. The leg o’ mutton sleeves, if somewhat outdated, made her waist seem narrower, and the pale green and cream suited her dark hair and eyes.

  They emerged in the bustle of Grand Central Depot to find not a carriage, but a car waiting for them, driven by a uniformed chauffeur: Anne’s latest extravagance. The car made several loud and alarming noises, but eventually started, threading its way through the usual traffic of delivery wagons and stately barouches as they made their way uptown.

  Bay’s gloved fingers found Georgie’s, and she let her hand rest in his. “Will you tell me what my surprise is?” she shouted over the noise of the engine.

  Bay only squeezed her fingers and grinned.

  The Newlands occupied a French Renaissance château on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Sixty-First Street, dripping with Gothic tracery. It was built for a speculator who had gone bankrupt, possibly due to the grand scale of his house, which contained marble from Italy, Tudor paneling from England, rooms lifted straight from French châteaux, and whatever else might be purchased at the greatest possible cost for the greatest possible show. Mrs. Van Duyvil, champion of the old-fashioned brownstone, had been appalled. Which was, Georgie suspected, the main reason Anne had teased Teddy to buy it for her.

  A liveried footman escorted them inside, into a drawing room decorated in the Moorish style, with excessive arches, mosaics, and enough richly tasseled cushions to smother a large pasha. Anne lolled on a divan, in a Liberty gown that clearly illustrated a lack of stays.

  But Georgie barely noticed her. Because there, on a table in the middle of the room, sat Lacey Abbey.

  Slowly, Georgie approached the model. It was strange, disorienting, seeing it again all this time, even stranger seeing it in miniature, as though her childhood memories had turned upside down on themselves, everything large suddenly small, and she, a giant, looming over it all.

  The grounds were all wrong. The tiny trees were in the wrong place, and the river sat at the bottom of a steeply wooded hill. But the house itself was exactly as she remembered it, down to the cracks in the leaded windows. Georgie touched a finger delicately to the door half-hidden in a curve of the masonry. At any moment, a tiny Annabelle might come running out the door, dark hair barely contained with a ribbon.

  The house sparkled, as though seen from underwater.

  “Happy birthday,” said Bay softly.

  Georgie blinked her eyes and said, unevenly, “Did you have this made for the children?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Bay looked thrilled with himself, delighted at having surprised her. “It’s for all of us.”

  “A dollhouse?” Georgie pressed a tiny door, and it swung open, but she couldn’t find the catch that might let her see the inside of the house.

  “It’s your house,” Bay said proudly. “Our house. I commissioned an architect to make a model. I’d thought we could tear the old house down, but it seems it’s easier to build farther along the bluff.”

  “Tear down … you mean to build it? Really build it?” Georgie couldn’t seem to quite get her head around the idea. She looked sharply at her husband. “The men doing the survey—that wasn’t for the water company.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Bay beamed at her. “I’ve been thinking of this for a long time, but I wasn’t sure it could be done. I looked into buying the house itself and shipping it here, piece by piece—”

  “Bay!”

  “Through an intermediary,” he said soothingly, putting a hand on her shoulder. “But the owner isn’t selling.”

  “No,” murmured Georgie. She let out a long breath, disgusted with herself that after all this time, Giles still had the power to frighten her. “He wouldn’t.”

  “So I had my agents find what plans and pictures they could and hired someone to build it!” Bay gestured grandly towards the model. “Your family’s house and my family’s land, united for our children.”

  “How very symbolic,” said Georgie drily, not sure whether to be touched or horrified. “But won’t it be ridiculously expensive?”

  “No more so than building a house in town. And since we’re not…” Bay let that sink in, adding as an afterthought, “Anne found the architect for us.”

  “Mr. Morris?” said Georgie doubtfully. Mr. Morris had designed Anne’s house, but she rather doubted he would bend his highly expensive talents to something so unexciting as a reproduction, even for so rich a client as a Van Duyvil.

  “No, a younger member of the firm,” said Anne, rousing herself from her divan. Her richly patterned skirts flowed sinuously around her legs. “Just starting out, but really quite talented. You must come and meet him.”

  Bay glanced quickly at his cousin. “He’s here?”

  “But of course. How could I let him miss the grand presentation? David, darling, you’re wanted.�
� Sliding her arm through Georgie’s, Anne led her to a door half-concealed beneath a fall of fabric. “I’d wanted to conceal him behind a tapestry, but David demurred. He said it was too frightfully medieval, and he was afraid someone might stab him with a dagger just to go with the Shakespearean theme. Ah, David, darling, there you are.”

  The fabric rippled, and there he was.

  He was tall, as tall as Bay, but slender where Bay was broad, like a figure carved out of ivory, intricately worked, all sharp angles and hollows, artistry in flesh and bone, patterned all in black and white, his lean frame clad in a dark suit, his eyes as dark as his hair, the fairness of his skin contrasting with the shadows beneath his cheekbones. To call him beautiful would be a misnomer. Beauty implied a symmetry of feature, and Mr. Pruyn’s figure and face were angular in the extreme. But their very angularity had their own raw beauty, like a crag in the Highlands, at which one gazed and gazed and gazed again.

  Georgie, looking at him, found she had nothing at all to say. The ordinary sorts of words, the polite social nothings, felt entirely inadequate to the occasion.

  “And this is Mr. Pruyn,” said Anne.

  EIGHTEEN

  New York, 1899

  February

  ANNABELLE AN IMPOSTER! announced the headline on The World.

  The Journal had been caught napping. The evening edition had had none of it, while The World triumphantly blazed the story.

  The World, Burke’s paper.

  Janie followed her mother through Grand Central, feeling like Polly the duck being pulled on her string, bobbing as she went. Her mother led the pack, a reluctant Mr. Tilden bearing her company. Mr. Tilden was coming to provide legal advice, much against his wishes, but really because her mother believed it unfitting not to be supported by a man, however nominal, in times of trouble.

  Janie could see Mr. Tilden darting nervous glances at the newspapers as they passed. Annabelle’s name screamed out at them from every paper, in every newsboy’s hoarse cry.

  WHO IS ANNABELLE VAN DUYVIL? FULL STORY ON PAGE SEVEN screamed the morning edition of The Journal, making up for lost time. Janie had no doubt that the international wires were crackling, colleagues in London being rousted out of their beds. She had an image of the murder squad on their ubiquitous bicycles cycling right off the pier, determined to plow their way across the Atlantic.