The English Wife: A Novel

by Lauren Willig

  “This is very irregular,” the rector protested.

  “Precisely why I need to speak to you,” said Anne firmly. “It doesn’t do to ignore one’s soul. Look at the dreadful things that might happen as a consequence.” She smiled her cat’s smile at Janie. “We’ll just leave you to look in your own heart, shall we, darling? Now, Father Chillingworth, if you would be so good…”

  “That was a very neat kidnapping,” said Burke, stepping out from behind the weeping angel.

  “Well, Anne has had some practice at elopements,” said Janie, speaking at random.

  Burke winced. “I had hoped I had lived that down.”

  “You did. You have.” Memories surged between them. The orange-lit drawing room, Burke’s arms around her. I love you. A product of circumstance and momentary madness? Or something more. “I didn’t see you at the funeral.”

  “There were enough gawkers at the gates.” Burke stayed where he was, a good yard away. “How are you?”

  The frost seeped through her thin shoes, better suited to the church than the graveyard. Janie managed an uneven smile. “Cold. This winter—it feels as though it will never be warm again.”

  Burke looked at her carefully. “Are we really talking about the weather?”

  Janie bit her lip. “Possibly.”

  “It’s starting to thaw, they say.” Burke started to step forward and then stopped, jamming his hands in his pockets. “Should I have kept quiet? Ever since the story came out … I’ve wished it hadn’t. I feel like I’ve thrown you in it.”

  “I was already in it. And I asked you to write that story. To tell the truth.”

  “If I hadn’t—” Burke gestured awkwardly at the empty spaces around them. “You might at least have had others with you today.”

  “Do you mean toadeaters and distant cousins who had to be bullied into dancing with me? I would as soon do without their consolation. Do you think you’ve wronged me?” Burke’s involuntary wince gave her all the answer she needed. Janie could feel her spine straightening, the fog falling away around her. “You didn’t. You did just what I asked you to do.”

  “At a horrible and confusing time,” Burke prevaricated.

  “Are you saying I don’t know my own mind?”

  “Er—” Burke looked around for aid. The marble angel provided none. “You tell me.”

  “I think I already have,” said Janie tartly, and found herself, despite herself, grinning back at Burke as they both stared at each other like utter idiots. Feeling suddenly awkward, Janie cleared her throat. “I appreciated your headline yesterday. ANNABELLE EXONERATED. It made the point very nicely.”

  “It was that or send flowers.” In a more serious tone, Burke said, “I thought it might be something to show the children someday. If people talk.”

  “People always talk,” said Janie frankly. And then, “Anne is taking the children to France until the scandal blows over. She says she’ll suffer Paris for their sake, even if it takes a decade or so. It might be a rather long trip. Viola is already negotiating for a new Paris doll with a complete wardrobe. And a donkey. Someone told her there were donkeys in the Tuileries Garden, and she wants one for her own.”

  Burke went very still. “Will you be going with them?”

  Janie looked down at the frost-blasted grass. “I would like to see Paris. But not now.”

  “Why?” Burke’s breath whistled in the wind. “Why not now?”

  Janie stared at him, at a loss for words.

  I love you.

  Having declared so firmly that she knew her own mind, it was rather lowering to find that she didn’t. Or, rather, that knowing it, she didn’t have the strength to say it.

  “This is my home. If I leave, I want to leave on my own terms, not as an exile.” Burke quirked a brow. Janie rushed on, “In Paris, I would be only another American abroad. Here—here I have the chance to do something, something that matters. I know you think my work at the Girls’ Club is silly—”

  “I never said that!” Burke grimaced. “Or if I did, it was … well, let’s just say my motives weren’t pure. And I was wrong.”

  “Thank you,” said Janie with dignity. She fidgeted with the strap of her reticule. “There are other reasons, of course.”

  “Yes?” Burke tried to lean casually back against the angel and missed.

  “Oh, legal matters,” babbled Janie, stalling for time. “There’s the house to be closed up, and my mother’s estate dealt with, and Sebastian’s and Viola’s affairs … someone has to stay here to put the furniture in Holland covers and sign the papers.”

  The wind whistled between the monuments as the silence stretched between them. “So there’s nothing else that might keep you here?”

  “Is there?” Janie looked him full in the face, exhausted with pretending. And there it was, out in the open between them. “I won’t hold you to what you said the other night. If I was overwrought, so were you.”

  “When you kissed me—” Burke’s voice came out as a croak. He cleared his throat and tried again. “When you kissed me, was that because you wanted to or just because you were trying to stop me embarrassing myself?”

  There were a dozen easy options. Extraordinary circumstances. Overwrought emotions. Momentary madness. Except that it wasn’t momentary and it wasn’t madness. This had been building since the moment she had met him in her mother’s kitchen.

  Janie took a deep breath, twining her fingers together. “Do you really want the disgraced daughter of a cursed line?”

  “I want you.” Burke crossed the space between them in a single step, taking her hands in his. “I want you because you’re you. I don’t give a tinker’s damn about your line or curses. I know … I know that in the ordinary course of things, you’d never have looked at me.”

  Janie looked at him, at the interesting hollows beneath his cheekbones, the green glint of his eyes. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

  “You know what I mean.” Burke’s hands squeezed convulsively around hers. “I can only guess at what my family was. I’ve slept on the streets. I’ve stolen to feed myself. The other day, when I went to turn in that article, I almost turned back. Because I was afraid that the only reason I was doing it was so that I’d ruin your chances enough that you might look at me. Now how is that for impure motives?”

  He was looking at her, as though waiting for her to condemn him. “Didn’t you tell me yourself that nobody’s motives are pure?” Janie felt like a prism: fragile, but with the chance of rainbows. “There were times when I wondered if I were pursuing the truth for my brother’s sake or because I liked sharing tea on trains with you.”

  “Just the tea?” said Burke huskily, looking at her in a way that made the temperature feel several degrees warmer.

  “You might also have been a factor,” said Janie primly. She looked helplessly at Burke, trying to find the words to describe what she felt, not the easy romance of poetry, but something raw and real, something as tangible as the warmth of Burke’s gloved hand in hers. “We have known each other so little and yet—even from that first day—it was as if, all my life, I had been dwelling among strangers and finally I had met the one person who spoke in my own tongue.”

  “I know this is not the time,” said Burke. “I know that you’re in mourning. I’ve been cad enough without pressing my suit over your mother’s grave—but will you give me leave to court you?”

  “We’ve never done anything in the appropriate way. I expect we never shall.” Instead of it being alarming, Janie found that thought rather encouraging. She had tried appropriate, and it had given her headaches. Maybe it was time to be gloriously, fearlessly inappropriate. Within reason. “I expect you to court me properly. Ice skating, walks in the park…”

  “Will you require a chaperone?” inquired Burke with a hint of a grin, falling into step beside her as they began to walk towards the waiting carriage.

  “No,” said Janie decidedly. “As soon as my period of mourning is ov
er, I intend to find myself a room in a boardinghouse near the club and be the very model of the New Woman.”

  “You won’t miss the marble halls?”

  Janie grimaced. “I never liked the marble halls. It felt like living in a mausoleum. My only worry is—”

  “What?” asked Burke, and Janie could hear the concern in his voice. It was wonderful and strange to have someone care for her because he cared for her. “Are you worried about living in a boardinghouse? I can help you find a respectable one.”

  “No, it’s not that.” Long ago, they had promised each other honesty. Janie made a face at herself. “It sounds mad, but I keep half expecting Annabelle to walk through the door. I know I saw her in the water, but … they never did find her. What if she survived?” At the look on Burke’s face, she said quickly, “Don’t worry. I don’t intend to devote my life to a doomed quest to find her. It’s just that, if she does ever appear, it might be rather nice to have someone to tell her where her children are. I know it’s unlikely. But it’s not impossible.”

  “They say nothing is impossible.” There was something very endearing about the effort Burke was making to see it her way. “A century ago, we would never have dreamed of buildings twenty stories tall or horseless carriages. She might have survived.”

  “Clinging to a spar like Twelfth Night,” Janie offered. “Admittedly, that was a shipwreck and this was not, so it’s not quite the same.”

  “No, not quite.” Burke held out a hand to help her into the carriage. “But stranger things have been known to happen.”

  Janie looked down at him, standing beside the carriage, his hand still in hers. “I love you,” she said.

  Burke choked on a laugh. “Is that so strange?”

  Janie found that she was laughing as well, scandalizing the marble monuments and quiet tombs.

  “No,” she said. “Or if it is, it’s as strange as the fact that you love me. Now come back to the house with me and have some tea.”

  Across the river, the golden globe of the World shone above the other buildings like a beacon, guiding them home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Some books happen on purpose, after careful reflection and much thoughtful plotting. Others hit you over the head and hold you hostage until you give up and write them. This book was one of the latter. I wasn’t meant to be writing a book set in Gilded Age New York. I was meant to be working on a multi-generational saga set in France. I had a pile of Belle Époque research books sitting next to my desk, reams of notes, and far more Proust than I like to admit to reading—but I couldn’t get the image of a woman tumbling into the Hudson River out of my head. At least, not until I figured out that woman’s story.

  So many thanks go to my agent, Alexandra Machinist, for saying, “Then write it!” and not “Um, what are you thinking?” Thank you to my editor, Brenda Copeland, for wholeheartedly taking on this new story and making it the best version of itself it could be, and to Sara Goodman and the rest of the team at St. Martin’s for adopting the manuscript and shepherding it through production. A special shout-out goes to the art department for an amazing and amazingly pertinent cover.

  As always, I owe a debt of gratitude to my little sister, Brooke Willig, and college roommate, Claudia Brittenham, who put in overtime solving all my plot problems. Because they are that brilliant. Hugs to my writing sisters, Karen White and Beatriz Williams, for prosecco, more prosecco, and intensive character analysis. After a few drinks with my Ws, any book feels possible, even the impossible ones.

  So many thanks to my fellow writers, readers, and lovers of books, for hand-holding, cheerleading, reading recommendations, and industry gossip. M. J. Rose, Andrea DaRif, Andrea Peskind Katz, Robin Kall Homonoff, Jennifer Tropea O’Regan, Sharlene Martin Moore, Vicki Parsons, and everyone on Great Thoughts’ Great Readers, I’m looking at you! Thank you for making the book community such a warm and friendly place, both in person and online. A big hug goes to the readers on my website and Facebook. I love the community we’ve built together. Whenever I’m stuck, you remind me why I keep going. And provide me with book recs to help me get unstuck.

  ALSO BY LAUREN WILLIG

  The Other Daughter

  That Summer

  The Ashford Affair

  THE PINK CARNATION SERIES

  The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

  The Masque of the Black Tulip

  The Deception of the Emerald Ring

  The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

  The Temptation of the Night Jasmine

  The Betrayal of the Blood Lily

  The Mischief of the Mistletoe

  The Orchid Affair

  The Garden Intrigue

  The Passion of the Purple Plumeria

  The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla

  The Lure of the Moonflower

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lauren Willig is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Pink Carnation series and several standalone works of historical fiction, including The Ashford Affair and the collaborative novel The Forgotten Room (cowritten with Karen White and Beatriz Williams). A graduate of Yale University, she has a graduate degree in history from Harvard and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She lives in New York City, where she now writes full-time. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Lauren Willig

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE ENGLISH WIFE. Copyright © 2017 by Lauren Willig. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Cover design by Ervin Serrano

  Cover art: photograph of woman © Malgorzata Maj/Arcangel; panel © Woodhouse/Shutterstock.com

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-05627-6 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4668-6021-6 (ebook)

  eISBN 9781466860216

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: January 2018

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