The English Wife

by Lauren Willig

  No one else found this funny.

  Mr. Lacey tugged at his cravat with his fingers. “She’d always said, Annabelle, that if George were alive, he’d have, er, done great things. Traveled and all that. So she was going to do it for him.”

  “A woman?” said Mrs. Van Duyvil, looking at Mr. Lacey as though he’d sprouted a second head.

  “Women have been known to travel, Auntie,” pointed out Anne. “Sometimes even all the way to Saratoga Springs.”

  “Well, that was Annabelle.” Mr. Lacey let out his breath in a rush. “Never did know what was good for her.”

  His words seeped into the air like smoke, grating and unpleasant.

  Mrs. Van Duyvil’s nostrils flared as though she had smelled something unpleasant. “Apparently not.”

  Janie felt a rush of affection for her mother. Her mother might not have loved Annabelle in life, but she would be her defender in this, at least. And she did know how to crush fools.

  Mr. Lacey’s face reddened. “I didn’t mean … I had the, er, greatest esteem for Annabelle. She was a cracking girl.”

  As an epitaph, it left something to be desired.

  Janie’s mother rose from her chair, regal in black silk and jet. “Thank you for your words of condolence, Mr. Lacey. You are so kind to share with us your memories of your cousin.”

  Mr. Lacey had no choice but to rise to his feet as well. “Gladly. Er, I mean—that is, with a very heavy heart. I’d heard—unless I was mistaken—I’d heard that there were children?”

  “The children”—Janie noticed how her mother carefully avoided saying their names—“are in the country. The air is clearer there.”

  “Yes, of course. Wouldn’t want to take a child to town.” Mr. Lacey hovered at the drawing room door, shifting from one foot to the other. “I feel a fool, but … if I might ask a small indulgence—”

  “Yes?” Janie’s mother uttered the syllable in clipped tones. Mr. Lacey might possess an estate in England, but he had been judged and found wanting.

  Mr. Lacey was discomfited, but not deterred. “My cousin—Annabelle—she was very, er, dear to me once. I would like—” Mr. Lacey’s Adam’s apple moved up and down beneath his collar. “I would like to see her face again.”

  Janie had never seen her mother look so stern, so much like a statue of Justice. All she wanted were the scales in her hand. “You are aware, Mr. Lacey,” Mrs. Van Duyvil said, in words that cut like ice, “that your cousin’s body has not been recovered.”

  Mr. Lacey took an involuntary step back. “I didn’t mean … that is—” He was sweating, sweating in the chill of the room, the sweat beading on his forehead, and Janie wondered what it was that made him pale so. “All I wanted was a picture. A remembrance. It has been so very long since I saw my cousin’s face…”

  Janie’s mother moved, her petticoat making a sound like ice cracking. “Then why didn’t you say so, Mr. Lacey? Here.”

  She took a silver-framed photograph from the table in the corner of the room. It had been taken at Newport, several summers before. A costume ball, to celebrate Bay’s marriage.

  Mr. Lacey took the picture from Janie’s mother, his brows drawing together as he lifted it closer. Janie couldn’t blame him for squinting. Annabelle’s features were blurred, her face partly obscured by the garlands and garlands of flowers that had been woven into her elaborately curled hair. It was a much better picture of Janie’s mother, dressed as Ceres, the Mother of All, golden sheaves of wheat in her hands, specially designed diamond brooches in the shape of corn adorning the bodice of her dress. She stood behind the couple, elevated on a slight platform, lending countenance to the match of Proserpina and Hades.

  Janie had always thought it was rather poor form to cast one’s own son as Hades, but there was no denying that the black hose and silver-embroidered doublet had suited Bay very well. Annabelle’s features were blurred, but Bay’s weren’t. He was looking down at his bride with an expression of affection and wonder that made Janie feel as though she were spying on something she shouldn’t.

  Mr. Lacey did not appear to be experiencing similar sentiments. “There’s been a mistake,” he said, thrusting the picture away from him. “That’s not Annabelle.”

  Mrs. Van Duyvil’s fingers closed around the frame. “Annabelle,” she said, in the sort of tones one might use with the very slow, “is the one in front. With her husband. My son.”

  The last two words echoed in Janie’s ears, resonant with unexpressed grief.

  Quickly, Janie interposed, “Do look again, Mr. Lacey. It’s a poor likeness, I know…”

  “Mrs. Van Duyvil, Miss Van Duyvil, Mrs. Newland—I cannot tell you how much it pains me to say this.” Mr. Lacey didn’t sound particularly pained. He sounded impatient, as though this were a trying but necessary appointment, like a visit with one’s banker. “It’s a poor likeness because it’s not Annabelle. Don’t you think I know my own cousin?”

  “Grief can play tricks with memory,” began Janie, at the same time her mother said, with withering majesty, “It has, by your own admission, been many years since you last saw your cousin, Mr. Lacey.”

  Only Anne said nothing.

  “There’s been a trick played, but it’s not with my memory.”

  “May I suggest, Mr. Lacey,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil in acid tones, “that you return to your memories and leave us with ours?”

  A lesser or a wiser man would have snatched up his hat and stick and fled. Mr. Lacey stood planted where he was, feet slightly apart, hat beating a tattoo against one knee. Almost, thought Janie, as though he were nervous.

  “If I could—but I should never forgive myself if I left you in ignorance.”

  “Don’t they say ignorance is bliss?” Anne prowled over to the tea tray, inspecting the comestibles. “Or perhaps it’s infamy that’s bliss? One gets so confused.”

  “I feel it is my duty to tell you,” said Mr. Lacey, raising his voice to forestall any further interruptions, “that my cousin Colonel Lacey had a ward, a girl he brought up from a baby. She was raised as a sister to Annabelle.”

  “How lovely for them,” said Anne brightly. “Aunt Alva, was that the supper gong?”

  “You are very kind to have called, Mr. Lacey,” said Janie’s mother, in a tone that implied quite the contrary. “But we really mustn’t keep you any longer.”

  “But you must hear me!” The frustration on Mr. Lacey’s face as he attempted to forestall them was, Janie thought, the first genuine emotion he had shown. “The woman in this picture—this isn’t Annabelle. This is Georgiana. Georgiana Smith.”

  “Janie,” said her mother, “will you tell Katie to bring Mr. Lacey’s coat? He is just leaving.”

  “I can see how the confusion occurred.” Mr. Lacey took a step back, speaking rapidly. “They were very like, both in feature and temperament. There were differences, of course. Annabelle was a little the taller. And George—”

  “George?” Janie croaked. She could feel Anne’s swift look.

  “Georgiana,” Mr. Lacey corrected himself. Ignoring Janie, he addressed himself to her mother. “Their likeness—it was more than chance. The bar sinister and all that, don’t you know. Everyone knew. No one spoke of it, but … well, these things do go on.” He took advantage of the ladies’ offended silence to press on. “I don’t know how to make you understand how it was in that house, Mrs. Van Duyvil. George—Georgiana—there was something not right about her. From the moment I met her, I knew. And I feared for Annabelle.”

  “So what you are trying to tell me,” said Janie’s mother, in a tone drier than the arrangement of dead grass under a glass globe on the mantel, “is that my son’s wife was both an imposter and a madwoman.”

  “No! Er, yes. That is, an imposter, but not mad. Ambitious. Cunning.” Mr. Lacey warmed to his theme. “She resented Annabelle, resented her position, wanted anything Annabelle had. She was mad about the abbey.”

  The Annabelle Janie had known had shunned attention. Th
ere was no frenzied search for social status, no grasping for position. Quite the contrary, in fact. The only thing about Mr. Lacey’s allegations that rang true was her love for her home.

  Mr. Lacey lowered his voice. “It pains me to say this—”

  “But I imagine you will anyway,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil acidly. Janie might have enjoyed the spectacle of her mother outmaneuvered in her own drawing room, rendered powerless in the face of sheer gall, but she felt as though they had all been swept out to sea by the same strong wind and were now bobbing, rudderless, in the surf, with no hint of land in sight.

  “—but I always suspected Georgiana of having a hand in my cousin’s untimely demise. Georgiana wanted to marry me, you see.” Catching Anne’s raised brows, Mr. Lacey added hastily, “So that she might be mistress of the abbey. With Annabelle gone … she thought she was in with a chance.”

  “An imposter, a madwoman, and a murderess,” said Anne, sinking into a chair. “How very enterprising. It makes me quite exhausted just thinking of it, don’t you agree, Janie?”

  Janie murmured something noncommittal, her mind churning, bobbing. She felt like Mr. Carroll’s Red Queen, contemplating three impossible things before breakfast.

  Janie’s mother remained standing, Lot’s wife, turned to a block of salt.

  “I thought it best to tell you,” said Mr. Lacey apologetically, but there was a hint of satisfaction behind it; the messenger enjoying being the bearer of bad news.

  “But if this … this Miss Smith murdered Annabelle,” Janie blurted out, “how could you have thought to find Annabelle here?”

  Her words seemed to break the general paralysis.

  “For that matter,” chimed in Anne, fluttering her unnaturally dark lashes, “how do we know that you are who you claim? You might be anyone.” As Mr. Lacey sputtered, she said serenely, “You see? It is much easier to make absurd claims than to disprove them.”

  “It might be easy,” said Janie’s mother in a rusty voice, “but there are legal proceedings to prevent such claims.”

  “Libel?” said Anne. “That is the term, isn’t it? You must forgive my ignorance. It was my cousin who was the lawyer, not I.”

  There it was again, that knell of grief beneath the bright words. Mr. Lacey didn’t seem to hear it, though. He clapped his hat on his head with unnecessary force, like a child balked of a treat.

  “It’s not my fault that your son married an adventuress. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it is what it is.” Now that he wasn’t trying to be charming, there was an ugly cast to Mr. Lacey’s handsome face. He jabbed a finger at the silver-framed picture on the table. “That’s not Annabelle. Annabelle died seven years ago.”

  Seven years before Mr. Lacey could claim Annabelle’s inheritance.

  “My solicitors will have to be informed,” Mr. Lacey was saying as he retreated into the hall.

  Janie’s mother replied with tight-lipped dignity, “I trust that your solicitors are the only people with whom you will discuss these absurd allegations.”

  “Do you mean…? I would never go to the press.” But his eyes shifted as he said it. “My goal isn’t to cause you further pain, Mrs. Van Duyvil, only to, er, set the record right.”

  And to claim Annabelle’s inheritance?

  It was mad even to think it, but there it was. As they all filed into the chill of the hall, Janie looked at Mr. Lacey afresh. He might remind her of Teddy Newland, of Jock Rheinlander, of the men who raced their yachts in Newport in the summer and whose raucous laughter disturbed her mother’s musical evenings, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t capable of violence, or of strong action in furtherance of his own interests.

  Just look at Teddy. Whatever one might think of Anne—and there were times Janie had thought some very uncharitable things indeed—Teddy’s threat of suit for divorce seemed an extreme remedy, like Henry VIII, lopping off the heads of his wives as the fancy took him. He had been a bluff sportsman, too, by all accounts, prone to taking what he wanted when he wanted it and coming up with justifications later.

  They had only Mr. Lacey’s word for it that Lacey Abbey had been entailed, that it had come to him rather than Annabelle.

  And if it hadn’t been … what might he do to claim it?

  Katie came trotting in with Mr. Lacey’s coat and stick.

  As Mr. Lacey shrugged into his coat, Janie’s mother said with dignity, “You must do what you feel fit, Mr. Lacey. But I would bid you recall that we are a house of mourning. And that you, sir, claim to be a gentleman.”

  The fragility of those words struck Janie like a blow. All her life, her mother had been a force to be feared and reckoned with. And why? Because the power of her disapproval could close the doors of ballrooms, empty boxes at the Opera, turn good opinion into bad. Her directives carried the force of law.

  But not now.

  Not here.

  Janie felt as the ancients must when they realized that their gods were mere idols, which, when smashed, turned to dust. Her mother stood in her own home, the seat of her power, surrounded by all the majesty of wealth and ancestry. And, for the first time, it wasn’t enough. Like an ancient god, her mother’s power was only as strong as the faith of her believers—and Mr. Lacey didn’t care about Van Duyvils or Bayards or whether Mrs. Astor refused to squeeze him into her famous ballroom.

  Like Annabelle. Or the woman they had known as Annabelle.

  Balked of a hand over which to bow, Mr. Lacey contented himself with a brief bow from the neck. “Mrs. Van Duyvil, Mrs. Newland, Miss Van Duyvil. My condolences for your loss.”

  And he was gone in a blast of arctic air, his heels clicking against the stairs.

  “He’s lying,” said Anne flatly as Katie wrestled the door closed.

  Janie’s mother cast Anne a quelling look. “Remember yourself.”

  It was the mantra of Janie’s childhood. Pas devant les domestiques, one of the few French phrases for which her mother had any use.

  It felt strange to feel sorry for her mother; there was almost a hint of lèse-majesté about it. One wasn’t supposed to pity an absolute monarch. But her mother’s kingdom was crumbling about her, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put it back together again.

  First Anne’s divorce, then Bay, and now this, this allegation about Annabelle.

  Following her mother and cousin back into the drawing room, Janie felt as though she were returning to a stage after the scene had been played. That was what it had felt like, she realized. A scene from a play, staged and rehearsed. Only not all the actors had uttered the correct lines.

  As she seated herself in her usual chair in the corner, her conviction grew. Mr. Lacey had insisted upon seeing that picture, had his speech about Georgiana Smith—was there even a Miss Smith?—down pat. Except when interrupted. He hadn’t expected the interruptions.

  Anne drifted to the window, peering through the crack between the curtains. “He’s gone.”

  Janie’s mother stared at the picture of Annabelle and Bay, her expression inscrutable. “For now.”

  Anne looked back sharply. “He can’t think anyone would believe that rot.”

  “People will believe anything.” Mrs. Van Duyvil’s eyes were narrowed on the picture of her daughter-in-law, Proserpina turned from spring to fall in shades of sepia. “Particularly if it’s true.”

  “Mother?” Janie rose from her chair.

  “I never liked her. Impertinent, insolent, self-willed. So proud of the Laceys and their abbey. Ha!” Her mother set down the picture with a force that made the other frames on the table rattle. “What do we know of that woman? Only that she trapped your brother and insinuated herself into our family. I shouldn’t be surprised if she were everything our visitor claimed.”

  Her words fell on Janie like an ice storm, each a stinging shard. “But you told Mr. Lacey—”

  “That it was nonsense? Of course I did. We can’t have people casting aspersions on Sebastian’s paren
tage.” Mrs. Van Duyvil’s voice broke on the last word. She looked fiercely from Janie to Anne. “Not a word of this, either of you. Let me deal with Mr. Lacey in my own way.”

  “And what way is that?” demanded Anne.

  But Mrs. Van Duyvil didn’t answer. She simply turned and stalked away, the long train of her skirt catching the leg of the table as she went, making the picture of Bay and Annabelle fall forward, the glass shattering into a thousand shards.

  SEVEN

  London, 1894

  May

  “I need to go,” Georgie said to Mr. Van Duyvil. Bay.

  It seemed a year ago that he had held her hand. The sunshine that had gilded the leaves had turned flat and hard; the voices of the people around them as piercing as a murder of crows.

  “Let me help you to a hack.” He didn’t ask for further explanations and for that Georgie was grateful, so grateful that she didn’t even protest when he put a hand beneath her elbow.

  She should tell him, she knew, that she didn’t need his support, but her head was aching, the sun making rainbows at the corners of her eyes. And it was nice, just this last time, to feel cared for, protected, to cloak herself in Bay’s shadow, his broad frame standing between her and the world.

  She shouldn’t get used to it. Despair and rage coursed through her. What had she done to be doomed to this, to live her life like a hunted thing?

  The worst of her crime was to be seventeen and foolish.

  Tell anyone you like, Giles had said. They won’t believe you.

  Bay was leading her away from the path, past nannies with prams and young children who chased after each other, darting in front of and around them. Georgie closed her eyes against a wave of dizziness. Food, that was all. A sausage roll or some bread and cheese. Once she got something into her stomach, she would be right as rain. She would not, could not, let Giles defeat her.

  Not again.

  “It’s all right.” Her voice came out in a croak. “I can manage.”

  “I’m sure you can,” said Bay, but he didn’t remove his hand from her elbow. “Do me the privilege of letting me feel useful.”