The English Wife: A Novel

by Lauren Willig

  Actually, Georgie was quite sure he hadn’t, but Mrs. Van Duyvil didn’t know that.

  Mrs. Van Duyvil smiled pityingly. “That’s all very well, but it isn’t exactly the Declaration of Independence, is it?”

  There were no words adequate to the occasion. “No,” said Georgie in a choked voice. “It only preceded your declaration by more than five hundred years.”

  Mrs. Van Duyvil brushed that aside. “My dear Annabelle, you must see that you simply cannot go on in this manner. There is still time to return to town before the season begins in earnest. If you and Bayard were to take your place in our box at the Opera—”

  “Return to the fold and all will be forgiven?” Georgie smiled narrowly. “But you see, we couldn’t possibly return to town just now. Not with Anne coming to stay. Oh, hadn’t you heard? She’s left Teddy.”

  “Anne,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil through clenched teeth, “has not left Teddy, as you so crassly put it. She is merely resting from the rigors of foreign travel. It is very considerate of her husband to spare her.”

  Georgie abandoned subtlety. “She wrote that Teddy wants a divorce.”

  Mrs. Van Duyvil’s lips thinned. “She might have managed him better. But what can one expect from Anne? She has always been determined to make a scandal of herself.”

  Georgie might not love Anne, but that was a bit rich. “She had some help in it, don’t you think? If Teddy hadn’t taken mistresses—”

  Mrs. Van Duyvil set her cup down on the pie-crust table beside her with an audible clink. “Some men take mistresses. Others bury themselves in books. One doesn’t marry for the man. One marries to please one’s parents. I did. Peter Van Duyvil was twenty years my senior, but did I complain? Certainly not. I did my duty. And if I found him tedious—” Mrs. Van Duyvil broke off, her lips clamping shut. “There will be no divorce.”

  Georgie sipped her own tea, taking her time with it. “Have you considered that Anne might not wish to remain married to Teddy? By all accounts, the man is a sot and a lecher.”

  The very sot and lecher Mrs. Van Duyvil had wanted for her own daughter. Would Mrs. Van Duyvil be so stern if it were her own child? The answer, Georgie realized, was undoubtedly yes. It wasn’t Janie’s happiness that mattered, it was the appearance of propriety. Perhaps, for Mrs. Van Duyvil, that was happiness. It was a distinctly disquieting thought.

  There was no mercy in Mrs. Van Duyvil’s face. “Then she should have thought of that before she took vows. Members of our family do not divorce. No matter the provocation.”

  There was a bitter note in Mrs. Van Duyvil’s voice that made Georgie look at her a little more closely.

  “She’s made her bed and she must lie on it?” Georgie took a large bite of her biscuit. “Mrs. Vanderbilt doesn’t seem to think so.”

  “The Vanderbilts? They would have been shown the tradesmen’s entrance when I was a girl.” Mrs. Van Duyvil recalled herself with an effort, saying, with the air of one forced into a great concession, “There is no reason one may not engage in a discreet flirtation so long as the proprieties are observed.”

  “In other words, I can cuckold Bay with whomever I like so long as there’s no talk?”

  Mrs. Van Duyvil bristled, her grosgrain skirts rustling. “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Georgie’s anger died to ash, leaving her feeling as gray as the sky outside the window. Lifting her teacup, she said grimly, “I can assure you, Mother Van Duyvil, I have done nothing to make you or anyone else blush.”

  What would Mrs. Van Duyvil say if she told her that it was her precious son who was having the affair, that it was Bay who crept down the corridors to David’s room at night?

  Georgie could have wept. Familiarity hadn’t bred contempt; taste hadn’t spoiled appetite. It was insult upon injury to be accused of the very infraction she was forced, night after night, to condone.

  Mrs. Van Duyvil regarded her suspiciously. “That’s all very well,” she said grudgingly, “but it must be seen that you are above reproach.”

  Mrs. Van Duyvil didn’t believe her. Of course she didn’t believe her. Who would? Only Anne. The irony of that struck Georgie forcibly.

  “Oh, they shall see,” she said, rising from her chair to indicate that the interview was over. “Once Bay and I open the house, there will be no doubt as to how Mr. Pruyn has occupied himself these many months.”

  She didn’t mean to say it, hadn’t planned to say it, but it just came out.

  “You will be coming to our ball, I presume?”

  Cold Spring, 1898

  November

  “We’re holding a ball?” Watery sunlight filtered through the bedroom window. Bay hadn’t been there when Georgie went to bed last night, but he had been there when she woke up in the morning, rolled in more than his share of the coverlet.

  “In January.” Georgie wiggled up to a sitting position against the headboard. “My temper got the better of me.”

  Bay propped himself up on one arm. “No, my mother got the better of you. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was what she wanted all along.”

  “She came to rake me over the coals about David.” Georgie twisted her long braid to the front of her nightdress. There had been a time when she had slept with her hair down, because Bay had thought it was beautiful. Now, she kept it chastely braided. Doing her best to keep her tone light, she said, “Apparently, society is convinced that we’re living in sin beneath your very nose. A suspiciously dark-haired child is expected at any moment.”

  “You have dark hair,” said Bay. Georgie just looked at him. Bay’s eyes dropped. He poked at a blue flower embroidered on the counterpane before looking up again. “I’m sorry, Georgie. I should have known what people would think.”

  It was Bay’s earnestness that was always so disarming, that made her want to protect him, to shield him from the world.

  “People will think whatever they want to think. Why should we let it bother us?” Georgie poked Bay in the arm. “Stop worrying at that. You’ll make the whole section unravel.”

  Bay stopped worrying at the French knots, but his face was still clouded. Slowly, with an effort, he said, “The house is nearly finished. It wouldn’t be so strange if David were to go back to town.”

  Georgie wanted nothing better, but not like this. “Do you really think that would stop it? People would only say you’d discovered the affair and sent him away.”

  Bay looked up at her hopelessly. “What do we do, then, to stop the talk?”

  Georgie took a deep breath. “We don’t.” She had been thinking about this since Mrs. Van Duyvil had sailed out of her drawing room in high dudgeon, had thought about it while cuddling Sebastian and kissing Viola’s bruised knees and singing the song about a ship a-sailing on the seas until her throat was raw with it. “Quite the contrary. If there are such rumors, we ought to encourage them.”

  Bay’s face was bleak. “Because the truth is much less palatable?”

  Georgie shrugged. “Society winks at a bit of adultery.” In mock-serious tones, she added, “Provided, that is, that it is conducted with propriety.”

  Bay groaned. “My mother.”

  Georgie nodded, her lip pulling up into a lopsided grin. “I’m sure David and I between us can provide them a proper show. Don’t you agree?”

  Bay didn’t smile back. “You would do that for me?”

  “It’s not just for you, you dunce,” said Georgie with mock severity, even though her chest felt tight and she wanted nothing so much as to weep. “It’s for all of us. But, yes, also for you.”

  Bay didn’t say anything for a moment, just put his head into her lap. His voice muffled, he said, “What did I do to deserve you?”

  Georgie threaded her fingers through his short hair, feeling the familiar texture of it. Thick but fine, like Vi’s and Bast’s, not heavy like hers. “Wander into the wrong theater on the wrong day?”

  Bay looked up at her, his eyes very wide and very blue. “That was,
without doubt, the luckiest day of my life.”

  “Even if it didn’t feel so at the time,” said Georgie drily. She could remember that night, Bay a stranger in his caped coat and tall hat. She’d had no idea then, no idea at all. The reality of Bay, of their life together, was so very different, so much more complicated, than she would ever have imagined. That she loved him, she knew; that he loved her, she also knew. But it was never that simple, was it?

  Or could it be?

  Bay was still wandering down memory lane. “We never did get any supper that night, did we?”

  Kitty and Sir Hugo and gas lamps and a stranger hurrying down the stairs behind her. “No. You put me into a hackney.”

  Bay’s hand reached up; his fingers laced through hers. “You were so determined and so … small. I couldn’t leave you to make your way home alone.”

  Georgie blinked against an itch in her eye. “And then you came back to the theater, and that awful play.”

  “Eleven and One Nights.” Releasing her hand, Bay pushed himself up to a sitting position, making the bed bob and shake. He grinned at her, slightly sheepish, and she had an image of him in Paris, in the sunlight of the Tuileries Garden, before the shadows had begun to gather. “I still have the program. I kept it. Like a talisman.”

  Georgie wrinkled her nose at him. “Desdemona’s handkerchief?” She was more touched than she wanted to say. “Am I Othello or Desdemona?”

  Bay tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. “Neither, I hope. I prefer comedies to tragedies. Much Ado About Nothing, All’s Well That Ends Well…”

  Georgie’s eyes met Bay’s, her lips curving into a rueful smile. “Twelfth Night.”

  “That’s it.” Bay sat up straighter. “That should be the theme of our ball. Twelfth Night. We could hold it on the sixth of January. A Twelfth Night ball in Illyria.”

  Georgie regarded him skeptically. “Your mother will hate it.”

  Bay’s smile broadened into a grin. “So much the better. This is ours, not hers.” He tweaked the tail of her braid. “We can have jesters.”

  “And jongleurs?” Georgie felt herself warming to the idea. Ours. It felt nice to have an ours again.

  “And roving minstrels with lutes.” Bay swung his long legs over the side of the bed. “Let me get my trousers on. We can work out the details over breakfast. I imagine David will have ideas.”

  But I thought this was our ball. Georgie just managed not to say it. “I’m sure he shall.”

  She liked David, she did. But she would like him better if he were Bay’s brother or cousin. Or simply their architect.

  Bay fastened his cuffs with opal cuff links, links David had given him for his birthday. He shrugged into his jacket and leaned over to brush a perfunctory kiss against Georgie’s cheek. “You needn’t rush. We’ll be in the dining room.”

  Georgie forced a smile. “I’ll be down presently.”

  But Bay was already out the door. Because David would be at breakfast, and David would have ideas.

  Perhaps she ought to have taken Bay up on the offer to send David back to town.

  And what then? Was she to become one of those wives who monitored her husband’s comings and goings, who read his letters, who followed him to town? She had hoped that having the affair under her roof would rob it of its sting by taking the mystery out of it, but it hadn’t really. Instead, it had forged an odd domestic arrangement in which she found herself more confidante than spouse.

  Queen Caroline’s example wasn’t working as well as she had hoped.

  David and Bay were both at the breakfast table by the time she came down, deep in discussion of rivets and trivets or whatever else it was that brought their heads so close together over the kippers and eggs. Nothing an outside observer could fault. But she wasn’t an outside observer.

  She had thought that, surfeiting, the appetite would sicken and die. That after a month or two or three at most, David would go back to town. But he hadn’t. It had been eighteen months now. The children called him “Uncle David” and bullied him into building them elaborate block castles. Georgie had apologized for providing him a busman’s holiday, but David only unfolded his long limbs from the floor and said, no, really, he liked it; it was good practice for him.

  Why did he have to be so annoyingly likable?

  “Good morning,” said Georgie, and the dark head and the fair lifted, echoing back the greeting with unfeigned warmth, and she could have wept, because it would have been easier if she hated David or David hated her. Then she could plot and scheme with impunity. But she was weaponless here. She might say that she was hoist by her own petard if she had any idea what a petard was. Something unpleasant, no doubt.

  There was color in Bay’s cheeks; outside the last few brown leaves rustled on the trees, making a picturesque backdrop to the view across to the new house. “I’ve been telling David of our scheme.”

  He did it so well, Bay, making her feel included, loved. Our scheme, with that smile just for her. Georgie took a piece of toast and took her place, not at the other end of the table, but beside David, who poured her coffee without being asked, preparing it just as she liked with a generous dollop of cream and no sugar.

  Georgie took it from David with a nod of thanks. “Will the house be ready in time?”

  David held his own coffee cup between his hands. “Enough of it,” he said, taking the question very seriously. “We won’t have all the furniture in, but the main rooms should be finished, and there won’t be any falling masonry.”

  “That would certainly provide excitement,” said Georgie. She looked at Bay. “We could drop a gargoyle on Carrie Rheinlander.”

  Bay swallowed an enormous mouthful of eggs. “It’s not nice to speak of Jock that way,” he said with mock seriousness, and for a moment Georgie felt as though it was just them again. But just for a moment. “David tells me they’ve made remarkable progress.”

  “Oh?” Georgie could feel her smile cooling a bit. She couldn’t help it. She knew the house was meant to be hers, her gift, but she couldn’t quite muster the requisite enthusiasm. She liked the old house; she liked this dining room with its arched cabinets built into the walls, filled with porcelain brought back from the east by some enterprising Van Duyvil ancestor.

  It wasn’t Bay’s fault; he had tried to involve her. But when it came to poring over the drawings of cabinetmakers and visiting warehouses, Georgie found she had very little interest. She had grown up in a home that hadn’t been planned; it just was. It wasn’t that the furniture or the decoration had been particularly precious or rare. Quite the contrary. It was there because it had always been there, the more valuable mixed with the mundane, and far more of the latter than the former.

  But it was hard to make Bay understand that. It must, thought Georgie, crumbling a muffin into smaller bits, come of always having only the best. One didn’t understand the comfort of the mediocre.

  David was saying something about the amazing strides that had been made, how much faster the work had gone than expected. “—have done it without the help of Mr. Lacey.”

  “What?” Georgie’s head came up.

  David took another gulp of his coffee. “The current owner of Lacey Abbey. He was remarkably helpful about sending pictures and plans. Of course, there are no original plans, but he sent me a copy of some eighteenth-century renderings.”

  “You wrote to Giles?” Georgie hadn’t realized she had pushed back her chair, was standing, until she saw Bay and David staring up at her. Her hands were clenched clawlike, around the edge of the table; she could feel her whole body shaking.

  Bay rose from his chair, putting an arm around her, easing her gently back into her chair. “Annabelle and her cousin are estranged,” he said to David, over her head.

  “That’s one way of putting it.” Georgie’s voice was hoarse, but she found that speaking braced her. She wasn’t living in an attic room in Ealing anymore. Giles had no power here. “He’s a vicious brute.”
<
br />   It felt good to say it out loud. She had never done so before, had always felt that she had deserved what he meted out.

  David looked from one to the other, his thin face a picture of distress. “I didn’t know.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” said Bay quickly. “How could you?”

  Georgie felt a flare of annoyance that in this it was David that Bay thought to comfort. But it wasn’t like that. Of course it wasn’t. She lifted her hands to her temples, pressing hard with her fingers. “It was a long time ago.”

  David’s face was white. “If I had known … I didn’t mean … I knew you never spoke of him, but…”

  Bay was more attuned to David’s nuances than she. “But what?”

  David looked unhappily at Georgie. He ducked his head over his coffee cup. “He said to send you his most sincere devotion. And that you would be hearing from him.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Cold Spring, 1899

  February 9

  “Mr. Giles Lacey.”

  The courtroom woke again. People twisted in their seats, whispered to one another, craned their necks for a sight of the latest sensation, the man who had provided The World with the titillating information that Annabelle Van Duyvil, née Lacey, was really Georgiana Smith, of uncertain parentage and dubious morals, the dubious morals being implied by the uncertain parentage.

  Mr. Lacey, in tailoring that proclaimed its own origin as Not From Here, took his time sauntering to the stand, allowing the crowd to look their fill. Even Janie’s mother looked upon him with an auspicious eye, having determined that the enemy of one’s enemy, if not one’s friend, was one’s ally.

  Janie wasn’t quite so sure. There was something about him, about his obvious enjoyment of the attention, that put her on her guard.

  Turning with the rest to watch Giles Lacey, she caught Mr. Burke’s eye in the back of the room and felt some of the tension in her stomach lighten. Which was ridiculous, she knew. If she had any sense, she would be as wary of Mr. Burke as she was of Mr. Lacey. But, however absurd it was, she trusted that, whatever his other motives, he would be dogged in his pursuit of the truth. There had been something in his face when he spoke of his work, something like the way her father had looked when he had been among his books.