The English Wife: A Novel

by Lauren Willig

  Georgie checked the writing desk, making sure there was enough ink in the inkwell: blue, to go with the wallpaper and bed hangings. “I rather doubt she saw it that way.”

  “She ought.” Anne struck a match, holding it to the tip of the narrow cylinder. She inhaled deeply. “Divorce isn’t for the faint of heart. Of course, it’s not what it was. You can get away with it now without having to don sackcloth and go around doing good works to atone. After all, if Mrs. Vanderbilt can rid herself of her philandering boor of a husband, surely there’s hope for the rest of us.”

  Georgie made a note to herself to see that flowers were put in the rooms. Pansies and sweet peas for Janie, orchids for Mrs. Van Duyvil. She had no idea whether Mrs. Van Duyvil liked orchids, but they were expensive, and as such, her mother-in-law would see them as her due. “The sticklers don’t receive Mrs. Vanderbilt since her divorce, do they?”

  Anne smiled crookedly. “That’s the best part. No more dull debutante dances, no more Patriarch’s Ball. I can be as fast as I like and still be invited to the more entertaining sorts of parties.”

  Despite herself, Georgie lowered her list and looked at her cousin by marriage. “What will you do once it’s done?”

  “Marry someone else, of course. What else?” Anne looked at her sideways. “I’d have Bay, but he’s already taken.”

  So much for sympathy. Georgie took up her notebook again. “You might travel.”

  “And have people say I’m running away? Let Teddy eat food soaked in oil.” Anne arranged herself in a proprietary way on the divan. “Here I stay.”

  Please, no, thought Georgie. Two weeks of Anne had been more than enough to last her a lifetime. The only consolation was that Mrs. Van Duyvil had grudgingly condescended to take Anne back to town once the ball was done. Only one day more.

  One day more. Georgie realized she had been looking at the ball as one might the distant towers of a town in the desert, assuming, without quite thinking it through, that once the ball was done, everything would be different.

  Once the ball was done, the house would be officially finished. Once the ball was done, they would have no more need for an architect. Once the ball was done, Mrs. Van Duyvil would stop pestering them about neglecting their duty to society. Once the ball was done, they could settle into their life as a family again. Once the ball was done …

  But as the ball drew closer, Georgie was beginning to suspect that the towers might be a mirage, that the weary journey wasn’t ended at all, that beyond the sands were only more sands, trekking endlessly on.

  She wished the house had never been begun, that Bay had never had the idea of making a doll’s house of Lacey Abbey for Viola, that Anne had never introduced David, that they were still living in the comfortable old house Bay’s great-great-grandparents had built. This new house, this Lacey Abbey in exile, felt more like a stage set than a home. Everything was too new, too shiny, too rich. It didn’t feel like coming home. It felt like a judgment, like a judgment for all the times she had envied Annabelle, the times she had imagined herself mistress of Lacey Abbey, queen of all she surveyed.

  This wasn’t a house but a penance.

  Georgie fantasized, for a moment, about the whole thing burning down, going up in a blaze of flame. Flame purified, they said. She could exorcise it all, send the past and present winging into the sky in one great bonfire, all purified and made new.

  But then David would only have to stay on to build another one, wouldn’t he?

  Have the abbey, Annabelle had said. I don’t want it.

  And she had half hated Annabelle for that. No, not half hated, had truly hated Annabelle for that, for her casual rejection of all Georgie’s desirings. It had seemed so unfair that Annabelle should have everything she, Georgie, wanted, and not even take joy in it.

  Love and hate, mingled all together …

  “My dear,” said Anne, “are you quite all right? You look as though someone’s been dancing on your grave.”

  And wouldn’t you like that, Georgie almost said, but controlled herself. “If you’re at loose ends,” she suggested, “you might find Mrs. Gerritt for me. I want to make sure she puts the right flowers in the right room.”

  “I live to serve.” But Anne made no move to take herself off to the housekeeper’s quarters, a spacious apartment utterly unlike the inconvenient dark rooms Georgie remembered from the Lacey Abbey of her childhood. Anne propped herself on one elbow and looked at Georgie through a plume of cigarette smoke. “What would you do if you weren’t married to Bay?”

  “Go on the stage,” said Georgie, only half paying attention. In the old house, she could hear the children from rooms away. But here, the walls were too solid. The silence bothered her.

  “Wouldn’t that be an upset for Aunt Alva! But really. There must be something—or someone—you dream about.”

  If there were, she wouldn’t tell Anne. “I’m quite happy here.”

  “I forgot. You have your house.” Anne made it sound like something sordid, blood money. “Is it worth it?”

  “Was yours?” retorted Georgie, and then regretted it. It would be one thing if sinking to Anne’s level silenced her. But it only encouraged her to go on. And on.

  Anne took it as an excuse to follow Georgie from the Blue Room, saying confidingly, “We really are in the same boat, aren’t we? Both of us, rich in possessions, abandoned by our husbands.”

  “I wouldn’t say abandoned. The last time I saw Bay, he was dealing with the vintner.” Who had delivered the wrong cases of champagne. Georgie paused on the landing, where David had, from somewhere, unearthed genuine Jacobean oak, blackened with age. It was an odd feeling, being both in the present and the past. “Bay does periodically like to wander off with a book of poetry, but he generally comes back in time for tea.”

  That stymied Anne for a few moments. She followed Georgie in silence down the stairs before saying conversationally, “I’m surprised you haven’t divorced Bay.”

  Georgie had had enough of cat and mouse. Looking at Anne, she said distinctly, “Why would I?”

  “My dear.” Anne’s voice was thick with pity. But that was as far as she dared go.

  “Mrs. Van Duyvil?” It was one of the gardener’s boys. Mrs. Gerritt would have his head if she found him in the house, trekking mud onto her floors. “Gentleman wants you down by the river.”

  Georgie could have hugged him. “Pardon me, Anne. David had some questions about the decorations for the folly.”

  Ha! Let Anne see what a happy family they were. Even if they weren’t.

  “If you want to be useful,” she added, handing Anne her notebook, “you can take this to Mrs. Gerritt. We need orchids in the Red Room, sweet peas in the Blue Room, and Gerritt needs to have someone do something about the chimney in the small parlor. It’s smoking again.”

  It was almost worth it to be able to leave Anne behind, marooned in the grandeur of the hall. Georgie cut through the door beneath the Minstrel’s Gallery, through the passage that cut between the billiard room and the music room. Just as she used to do when she was a child, when she and Annabelle and George had known the back passages of Lacey Abbey as a pianist knew his notes or a blacksmith his tools.

  She could remember, even now, the feel of George’s hand in hers. And the emptiness, later on.

  George and Georgiana, Georgiana and George. Had it suited her father to name his bastard children after himself? Or had it been her mother who had done so, in a bid to win her lover’s allegiance? A compliment to his virility, if not his morals. Georgie suspected the latter, but she would never know for certain. Her mother had died of childbed fever, a common enough occurrence, and particularly in India. Georgie had no memories of her, no pictures, only the name her mother had given her: Georgiana.

  Nor had her father ever spoken to her of her mother. The polite fiction had been maintained, at all times, in private as well as in public, that Colonel Lacey was merely her benefactor, not her father, that George was Anna
belle’s brother, not Georgie’s.

  And then George had died, and it had all been for nothing, all her father’s subterfuge, the lies, the pretense.

  She could remember still, those long nights, Annabelle creeping into her bed in the nursery, lying with their arms around each other, needing the solidity of each other, holding on to each other as though trying to ward off fate. It felt, at times, as though Georgie had exchanged one twin for another, as though with George gone, Annabelle had fallen into his place, the other half of her, neither complete without the other.

  Annabelle might put on airs at times, they might squabble, as sisters did, but in the end, there was always that, the feel of their arms around each other at the dead of night, keeping each other safe.

  She and Annabelle, all in all to each other, two halves of the same coin.

  Georgie slipped out a side door, blinking in the January glare, so much brighter and harsher than the light at home. The past and the present danced around each other in an intricate pas de deux, spinning in and out. The house, so familiar and so strange, sprawled across the rise, the land sloping gently down behind to the river and the ruins of the old abbey that stood like a bulwark against time on the verge of the banks. She could see, through the bare branches of the trees, the spiky emptiness of rosebushes without their bloom, the shadow of a man, not the form, just a shadow.

  They used to meet there, Annabelle and her lover.

  But it wasn’t Annabelle’s lover, and these weren’t the ruins. Georgie recalled herself with a shake of her head. That was the folly; their own folly, not the folly of monks centuries past. And that wasn’t Annabelle’s lover lurking beneath the bare ruined choirs where nothing yet sang; it was David, with yet another trifling question in which she had to pretend an interest when she had no interest at all.

  Poor David. He made a point of deferring to her in all his decisions, ostensibly because she was the Lacey of Lacey Abbey and the woman for whom this edifice had been constructed, but really, Georgie knew, because he felt guilty. She was tired of assuaging his guilt.

  Really, she was just tired.

  Let their nurse sit up with them, Bay would tell her. That’s what we pay her for. And perhaps she should. But she wouldn’t. They were hers, Vi and Bast, hers as no one else was or ever would be, and she loved them with a love that sometimes terrified her.

  She had finally fallen asleep somewhere past dawn in the rocking chair in the nursery, with Vi slumped bonelessly on top of her and Sebastian curled on the rug at her feet. She had woken a scant hour later to find that the fire had all but burned out, her toes were numb, and she’d lost all feeling in her arm and thigh. She had carried Viola and Sebastian to their beds, one by one, tucking them under their covers, and leaving instructions with their nurse not to wake them for breakfast. Let them sleep in the warmth of their blankets while they could.

  Maybe she should ignore David, ignore the preparations, and just crawl into bed. It would be a decadent thing, going to bed in the middle of the day.

  When I’m grown-up, I’m going to sleep as long as I like. A voice from the past. Annabelle, with that glint in her eye. Annabelle, who had been so sure the world would be hers.

  Annabelle Lacey of Lacey Abbey.

  For a moment, Georgie thought she could see her, see her by the river, her long hair pulled back at the sides and left to fall free, putting out a leg to jump onto that dilapidated old raft they used to pole up and down the river.

  One last go? They won’t miss us for hours yet …

  And then the sun winked behind the clouds and Annabelle was gone and Georgie was alone, wishing she had had the sense to wear a fur-lined cloak rather than relying on a wool dress and woolly shawl.

  “Hello?” David was probably somewhere in the depths of the folly, calculating something or other. That he was very good at what he did, Georgie knew. She just didn’t feel particularly constrained to pay any attention to it. “David?”

  It was dark inside the folly, dark and cold. David had reproduced it perfectly, the fallen arches of the cloisters, the roofless rectangle of the refectory.

  “David?” Georgie called again, impatiently now, because it was cold and she was tired and enough was enough. She’d never liked the ruins. They had been Annabelle’s place, not hers.

  “Were you expecting your lover?” A man stepped through the hollow door of the refectory, down a hollowed step.

  He had abandoned his caped greatcoat for a fitted model that was more in the mode, with black velvet insets in the collar. His tall hat cast a shadow over his face. But there was no mistaking him.

  “Hello, Annabelle,” said Giles.

  Georgie took a deep breath of the cold January air. “Hello, Giles. It’s been a long time.”

  “Seven years,” said Giles, and waited.

  Once, the sight of Giles would have had her cold with fear. But right now, Georgie just felt numb. Numb and tired. “What do you want, Giles?”

  His eyes traveled over her with deliberate insolence. “Is that any way to greet your long-lost cousin … Annabelle?”

  “Can we dispense with the theatrics?” Four hundred people would be arriving in just over twenty-four hours, including half a dozen houseguests. “I won’t ask how you found me. David told me he’d written you about the house.”

  “You knew?” The surprise on his face was almost comical.

  “Of course,” Georgie lied. “Really, Giles, you said it yourself. It’s been seven years. Time enough to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  Balked, Giles scowled at her. “You always did land on your feet, didn’t you?”

  Not always. That horrible first month in London; a breath away from jumping into the river. She’d thought of it, more than once. But it had been stubbornness that had helped her survive—stubbornness and a determination not to let Giles win.

  Was it her imagination, or did he seem smaller? It might just be that she was accustomed now to tall men. Or it could be that this was her house and her land. And her ruins, for that matter.

  “Is this a social call? Come to the house and I’ll make you known to my husband.”

  She turned to go, gathering the folds of her shawl around her, but Giles closed the gap with two quick strides, grabbing her arm and yanking her around to face him, so hard that she stumbled and almost fell.

  “And risk my telling him the truth?” Giles’s face was so close that she could smell the spirits on his breath as he snarled, “Where is she, Georgie? What did you do with Annabelle?”

  “Where you won’t find her,” Georgie retorted and stepped hard on his foot.

  “Damn you, George.” It was hard to look threatening while hopping on one foot.

  Georgie watched him, hopping and swearing, and wondered how she had ever found him handsome, had ever fancied herself in love with him.

  “Keep your hands to yourself,” she said coolly, “or I’ll call the constables and have you locked up for assault and trespass.”

  “That’s rich—from a murderess.” Giles looked up from his half crouch, his face ugly with hatred and fear. “Was it the river? Did you throw her in the river? Or was it someplace else?”

  After all this time. Georgie put her hands to her temples. She could feel the seams in the leather against her skin. “I never hurt Annabelle. I tried to tell you, Giles.”

  That afternoon, running to Giles, telling him that Annabelle was missing, gone. The horrifying rage on Giles’s face, rage and, most crushing, fear. Where is she? What did you do to her?

  And then the press of the splintered wood wall against her back, Giles’s face over hers, dark with anger, his knee pressing between her skirts.

  Did you really think I would marry you?

  Giles rose from his crouch. He limped forward, favoring his left foot, but stopped at a glare from Georgie. “Then where is she?”

  “New South Wales,” said Georgie wearily.

  “New South—what?” Giles’s mouth gaped. It made him look a few pence
short of a pound.

  “New South Wales,” repeated Georgie. It couldn’t hurt to tell him now, could it? She had kept her part of the bargain. For a moment, Georgie found herself missing Annabelle fiercely. Missing her and also wanting to slap her. “It’s in Australia. They farm sheep there.”

  “But…” Giles cleared his throat a few times. “Her shoe.”

  “And her scarf,” Georgie reminded him. “That was Annabelle’s doing.”

  Giles just stared at her, uncomprehending.

  Georgie sighed. “She ran from you, Giles,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly in words he could understand. “She ran away because she didn’t want to marry you.”

  It felt good saying it. It was as though she could breathe, really breathe for the first time in seven years.

  Giles shook his head in mute denial. “She was going to marry me.”

  Georgie pressed her eyes shut. “No. You were going to marry her. There’s a difference.”

  “No.” Giles’s brows drew together. “No.”

  Georgie tucked her hands beneath the edges of her shawl, feeling the January chill seeping into her bones. “Annabelle knew that if she eloped you would come after her. So she found another way.”

  With all the blithe insouciance of seventeen. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. It had never occurred to either of them that their plans might go awry. Annabelle would have Adam, and Georgie would have Giles and the abbey. All fair and square.

  Except it never quite worked that way, did it? thought Georgie wearily. Only for the Annabelles of the world, the gold-touched children on whom the sun always shone.

  Giles bristled. “Eloped? What are you on about? Who would it have been? There was no one…” He sputtered to a stop, apprehension written across his face as Georgie stood there looking at him, waiting for him to finish.

  “Wasn’t there?” she said.

  Giles cast about feverishly for rivals. “No. Who else was there? Old Enderby up at the manor … but he was fifty if he was a day. Hawkswood, in the militia, was toothsome enough, but he was on the lookout for an heiress, everyone knew that. No.” Giles looked at Georgie with ugly satisfaction on his face. “There was no one who could offer her what I could. Name, position … me.”