The English Wife: A Novel

by Lauren Willig

  “Perhaps not,” Georgie said. “Nevertheless, Annabelle was in love with Adam Ferrars.”

  “The farmer?” The disbelief on Giles’s face was almost funny.

  Georgie drew in a deep breath through her nose, remembering the shadows in the ruins, Annabelle and Adam trysting in the twilight. She had tasked Annabelle with it, warning her that she was risking her reputation, but Annabelle only laughed and said she didn’t care for her reputation; she only cared for Adam. And someday Georgie might understand.

  “She’d been meeting him in secret for months,” said Georgie flatly. “It wasn’t anything to do with you, Giles. It was never anything to do with you.”

  “You’re lying,” he said hoarsely. “She wouldn’t have done that. She was going to come around. Just a little time…”

  Enough was enough. She had children to care for and five jugglers and six jongleurs who needed to be fed and given their instructions. Georgie turned to go. “She didn’t want to marry you, Giles.”

  Giles followed after her, out into the pitiless January sunlight. “You’re just saying that. You did it because you wanted me, didn’t you? You wanted me—and the abbey.” He stopped stubbornly on an artistically cracked flagstone. “She wouldn’t just leave her inheritance like that. She wouldn’t leave the abbey.”

  Wouldn’t she? Georgie looked back at him. “You never did know Annabelle at all, did you? Annabelle never cared for money or position.”

  And it was true. Having always had it, Annabelle had never considered the lack of it. Of course, that was only so long as she wasn’t challenged. When challenged, Annabelle could lord it with the best of them. Particularly over Georgie.

  It was time to end this once and for all. “She thought you were a nuisance, Giles. She said your endless stories about the Horse Guards were enough to send anyone howling into the wilderness.” Georgie couldn’t resist adding, “When it came down to it, she preferred the company of sheep.”

  Giles squinted at her in the sunlight. “You vicious slut.”

  Georgie felt her back stiffen. She gathered her skirts and walked determinedly up the path to the house. “If you don’t like the truth, don’t come looking for it.”

  She could hear Giles’s voice, low with anger. “Do you want to talk about the truth … Annabelle?”

  “Good-bye, Giles.” Georgie didn’t turn. One foot after the other. Don’t look back. He was like a monster under the bed. He couldn’t hurt her unless she let him.

  “Does your husband know about you? Does he know who you are?”

  Just keep walking, that was what she needed to do. Never let him know he had struck a nerve. Georgie turned, saying patiently, “Go home, Giles. There’s nothing for you here.”

  Giles remained rooted where he was, staring after her. “You made a fool of me.” Not love, then, but pride. “You and Annabelle.”

  And you took your revenge. Georgie stopped herself before saying it. She wouldn’t give him that power over her. Not again. Not ever.

  “Go find Annabelle and take it up with her,” said Georgie. “I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time in New South Wales. So many friendly sheep.”

  “What if I were to attend your ball? Would you dance with me?”

  Giles made to follow her, but stopped with a wince as he landed on the foot she had stomped on. But that didn’t stop him from one last, valedictory shot.

  The words carried on the wind behind her. “This isn’t over … Annabelle.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Cold Spring, 1899

  February 10

  ANNABELLE FOUND! exclaimed the headline on The New York Journal. But only halfway down the page.

  The weather had pushed missing murderesses down the page, beneath reports of cattle freezing in the fields, chunks of ice in the port of New Orleans, and snow in parts of the South that were entirely unused to the phenomenon and not best pleased. In New York, the temperatures had ducked well below zero and seemed set to stay that way, a fact that appeared to have had some effect on the crowd around the courtroom, which seemed smaller than yesterday’s by a large margin.

  Or perhaps after yesterday’s dramatic testimony, they thought they had learned all they needed to know?

  Once one got past the frozen cattle, the papers had vied to supply sightings of Annabelle Van Duyvil, a.k.a. Georgiana Smith, a.k.a. Goodness Only Knew. She’d been seen boarding the Staten Island Ferry, on a train to Des Moines, and in a bathhouse in Yorkville. The World had offered a $500 reward for reliable information as to her whereabouts; The Journal had upped it to $750 and a large ham haunch.

  All of the papers were agreed on one point: Annabelle Van Duyvil was an imposter and a murderess who had killed her husband to escape discovery. It was only on the details that they varied.

  Not one, Janie had noticed, made any mention of Georgina Evans, actress.

  By now, the courtroom had a strange feeling of familiarity to it, as if she had spent her life sitting on this same bench in this same courtroom, day after day. Janie remembered the long train trips to Saratoga Springs having the same quality in her youth, feeling as though they had been traveling and would go on traveling forever, eating in the same dining car, among the same passengers.

  That, of course, was before her mother had discovered the joys of private railcars.

  As they passed the press bench, Janie heard one of the reporters say to another, “Sure to be a verdict today.”

  And the other replied, “Better hope. I’d like to be home before hell freezes over.”

  “It already has,” said the first one, scooting a little closer to the potbellied stove, which was doing an entirely inadequate job of heating the room.

  Everyone left their coats on, the high collars and hats and mufflers giving the assemblage a slightly sinister air. Next to Janie, Anne’s head emerged out of a pile of stone martens, each biting the other’s tail, the eyes replaced with jet beads. She looked, thought Janie, like a goddess of the hunt—the sort who changed men into deer and then shot them.

  She didn’t see Mr. Burke in the room.

  As the coroner took his place and consulted his notes, Janie tried to clear her head. She had discovered Bay—at least in Anne’s version of the story. Her reprieve could last only so long.

  The coroner lifted his head, but it wasn’t Janie’s name that he called.

  “Mr. Giles Lacey?”

  The crowd stirred, heads emerging from mufflers, people sitting straighter on their benches.

  Mr. Lacey strutted up to the podium like a society beauty honoring the masses, looking neither to left nor right, acknowledging no one, but preening at the attention all the same. He was news, and he knew it.

  He flipped his tails as he took his seat, waiting with an air of exaggerated patience for the coroner to ask the first question.

  The coroner took his time, adjusting his spectacles, reviewing his notes, smoothing his mustache.

  Giles shifted impatiently, propping one ankle against the opposite thigh.

  “Yesterday,” said the coroner, “you alleged that the woman known as Annabelle Van Duyvil was, in truth, one Georgiana Smith. Is that correct?”

  “My good man,” drawled Mr. Lacey, “I wouldn’t have said it if it weren’t.”

  A titter ran through certain portions of the courtroom.

  The coroner didn’t look at them. Instead, he focused his spectacles on Mr. Lacey, saying mildly, “Do you have any proof of this, Mr. Lacey?”

  “I knew them both,” said Mr. Lacey impatiently. “Isn’t that proof enough?”

  “A record of birth, perhaps,” suggested the coroner.

  Mr. Lacey made a dismissive gesture. “The lot of them—my cousin and her brother and Georgie—were all born in India. Would you like me to try to find their old ayah?”

  “What about in England?” the coroner asked, and Janie had to admire his doggedness.

  “There was an old nurse … but she must be ninety if she’s a day. If she’s still wi
th us. But there’s no need, I tell you. Georgiana Smith was Annabelle’s half sister. They looked alike if you didn’t see them next to each other. Anyone would tell you the same.”

  “Do you have any affidavits from these ‘anyones’?”

  “Affidavits?” Mr. Lacey sputtered. “Why would I have such a thing?”

  The coroner persevered. “Could you provide such affidavits if given the time to do so?”

  Mr. Lacey frowned at him, no longer amused. “Most of my cousin’s staff left after his death. The girls weren’t out yet. They might have played with some of the tenant farmers’ children in their youth.”

  “In other words, no.” The coroner looked up from his notes, saying, with awful clarity, “Mr. Lacey, can you bring any evidence that the woman known as Annabelle Van Duyvil was, in fact, Georgiana Smith?”

  “Don’t you think I would know my own cousin?” Mr. Lacey’s voice echoed through the courtroom, rich with frustration. “I tell you, I saw her. It wasn’t Annabelle; it was Georgie.”

  “You saw her?” A current of interest went through the room. The journalists picked up their discarded notebooks.

  Mr. Lacey blinked for a moment, looking utterly unnerved. “I mean … I saw a picture of her. Mrs. Van Duyvil showed me a picture.” Gaining confidence, he added, “It wasn’t Annabelle.”

  “You determined that from a picture,” said the coroner. He didn’t sound convinced. And neither was Janie.

  Mr. Lacey half rose in his seat. “Don’t you understand? She’s a murderess. She killed Annabelle, and she killed her husband. And she’ll probably kill someone else if she isn’t brought to justice.”

  His words didn’t have nearly the effect they had had the day before.

  “That,” said the coroner placidly, “is a very serious allegation. Do you have any proof, Mr. Lacey?”

  Mr. Lacey subsided sulkily into his seat. “Annabelle’s body was never found. Just her shoe. It’s probably what gave Georgie the idea. She knew how to set the scene because she knew what it looked like when someone gets pushed into a river.”

  “What were the results of the inquest into Miss Lacey’s disappearance, Mr. Lacey?”

  Mr. Lacey mumbled something.

  “A bit louder, Mr. Lacey.”

  “They wouldn’t declare her dead,” muttered Mr. Lacey.

  “Let me make sure I have this correct,” said the coroner. “You have no proof that there was such a person as Georgiana Smith—”

  “Other than my word!”

  “—and no proof that Annabelle Lacey either died or was murdered.”

  “Does a confession count as proof?” demanded Mr. Lacey hotly. “Georgie told me herself, just last month.”

  The coroner waited until the noise in the courtroom had subsided before pushing his spectacles up on his nose and saying very carefully, “Told you yourself, you say?”

  Mr. Lacey looked him in the eye with a lordly sneer. It was both a little too direct and a little too lordly, thought Janie. No one looked at you like that unless they were lying. “That’s what I said.”

  “And by last month, you mean January of this year?” Janie watched as Mr. Lacey’s mouth opened and shut. “By your own testimony, Mr. Lacey, you had not seen your cousin since the year … 1891. Is that correct?”

  “I never said I saw her.” Mr. Lacey tugged at his cravat. “I meant that she told me by killing her husband and running. If that’s not an admission of guilt, I don’t know what is.”

  The people on the benches were twisting and murmuring to each other, doubt spreading through the courtroom like a disease.

  The coroner had to raise his voice to be heard over the hum of voices. “When did you arrive in New York, Mr. Lacey?”

  Mr. Lacey hesitated just a moment before saying reluctantly, “The seventh of January.”

  “The day after Mr. Van Duyvil’s death.” The coroner made a note to himself. Janie could see Mr. Lacey craning his neck to try to read it. Mr. Lacey abruptly pulled his chin back in again as the coroner looked up. “Did you see Mrs. Van Duyvil—Mrs. Bayard Van Duyvil—here in New York?”

  Mr. Lacey cracked his gloves against his knee. “I couldn’t have, could I? She was already dead.”

  The coroner frowned at his callousness. “What brought you to New York, Mr. Lacey?”

  “I wanted to see my cousin,” said Mr. Lacey impatiently. “The architect fellow wrote me telling me that Van Duyvil wanted to rebuild his wife’s childhood home. So I came to see Annabelle. What else was I to think? I didn’t know that Georgie was holding herself out as Annabelle.”

  The coroner looked at Mr. Lacey over his spectacles. “But how could Annabelle Lacey be alive if she had already been killed by Georgiana Smith?”

  Mr. Lacey looked as though he were trying very hard not to punch something. “I don’t know!”

  The coroner bared his teeth in a smile. “You may step down, Mr. Lacey.”

  Mr. Lacey blinked at him. “But … I’m not finished.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Lacey. If we need you again, we will call you. Bailiff, will you escort Mr. Lacey back to his seat?”

  The bailiff wasn’t large, but he had the majesty of the law about him. Mr. Lacey gave him a dirty look, but went. Janie could see the reporters scribbling frantically in their notebooks, some already slipping out the back.

  Janie’s eyes followed Mr. Lacey as he retreated to his seat, folding his arms across his chest in a way that signified both boredom and irritation. The irritation seemed genuine. The boredom didn’t. His right leg was jiggling up and down in a way that spoke of anxiety. Anxiety about what?

  Janie jumped as an elbow connected with her ribs.

  “Janie!” hissed Anne, and nodded towards the stand, where the coroner was calling. “Miss Van Duyvil?”

  The walk to the witness stand felt far longer than Janie would have imagined.

  She gathered up her skirts and ascended the steps into the witness stand, grateful for the hat brim that helped hide her face. In front of her, the faces of the people crammed onto the benches seemed distorted into caricatures of themselves, mouths too wide, eyes too large, all of them staring at her, marking her every movement, the press artists scribbling pictures of her into their notebooks.

  Despite herself, her eyes sought out Burke, sitting to the side of the press bench. He lowered his chin just a fraction, and Janie, who shouldn’t have felt strengthened by the gesture, did. These past few weeks had changed her, toughened her.

  Settling herself in the hard, wood chair, Janie looked to the coroner to let him know she was ready.

  “You are Miss Jane Van Duyvil?” said the coroner.

  “Genevieve,” Janie corrected the coroner, deliberately not looking at Burke. “Miss Genevieve Van Duyvil.”

  The coroner made a note. Janie wondered if he were noting her name, or if it was just a tactic designed to lend an appropriate air of gravity to the proceedings and force witnesses to think very, very carefully before they said anything at all. There was, to be fair, a clerk recording the proceedings, but that didn’t have the same weight as a note in the hand of the grand inquisitor.

  Or patent medicine salesman, as the case might be. Janie was beginning to have a great respect for the patent medicine salesman. Perhaps Putnam County’s coroner selection process had more sense in it than her mother claimed.

  “Miss Van Duyvil,” said the coroner, in a very different voice than the one he had used for Mr. Lacey, “you were at the entertainment at Duyvil’s Kill on the sixth of January?”

  Janie nodded. “Illyria,” she said helpfully. “My brother and his wife called the house Illyria. After the island in the Shakespeare play.”

  She caught her mother’s eye on her and subsided.

  “Yes, thank you.” The coroner looked like he was going to say something and then changed his mind. When he spoke, he chose his words carefully. “When were you made aware that something was … not as it should be?”

  Janie arranged her
hands in her lap, and then arranged them again. She felt as though she suddenly had too many fingers. “My cousin Mrs. Newland came to find me. My mother had asked that she find my brother and his wife.”

  “Your mother … that would be Mrs. Peter Van Duyvil?”

  Janie looked at her mother, who was doing a very good job of pretending the vulgar throng behind her simply didn’t exist. Or, for that matter, the coroner, the stenographer, or her daughter on the witness stand. Mrs. Van Duyvil sat like Patience on a Monument, stony in her stoicism. “Yes.”

  “What happened then?” There was something hypnotic about the coroner’s even voice.

  “We went outside.” She could feel the cold, a shock after the crush in the house, the way her skin prickled at it, the patterns of light from the house turning the frost to something beautiful and sinister. Janie drew in a deep breath. “There were to be illuminations in the garden at midnight, just before the German. We thought, perhaps, Bay—Mr. Van Duyvil—had gone to make sure everything was in place.”

  “Had he?”

  “I don’t know.” That was the truth. She didn’t know why Bay had gone outside. The illuminations had been designed to appear over the folly. She could remember the lights crackling and bursting over her head as she knelt by Bay’s body, the incongruity of the triumphal flare in the sky and the devastation below. But there had been nothing in the folly itself, no reason for Bay to be there. The fireworks had been blasted into the sky from elsewhere on the grounds.

  Unless he had wanted to look at them from below?

  But why? The full effect had been made to be seen from the balcony. She knew, because she had read about it in the papers. The Van Duyvil acorns and rising sun, the Lacey birds and arrows, and, at the culmination, an intertwined A and B.

  Annabelle and Bayard.

  Her brother’s guests had eaten and danced and oohed at the fireworks, never knowing that their host lay dead in the folly by the river.