The English Wife

by Lauren Willig

  Bay’s face closed in on itself. “I had thought—forgive me if I presume too much—I had thought that you had come to care for me a little.”

  The hurt behind his words made her shrivel up inside. This was the moment, she knew, when she should draw herself up and tell him coolly that he was quite mistaken and that while she valued his friendship she would never care for him in that way.

  She had told him so many lies already, by omission if nothing else. What was one more?

  But she couldn’t.

  “I care for you too much to let you throw yourself away on me.” There were so many things she could say, flippant and foolish, but she owed him this, owed him honesty, even if it tore her to pieces. Georgie forced herself to look at Bay, to meet his eyes and tell him the truth, even if it was only a partial truth. “A broken vessel, that’s what they’d call me. There are homes for women like me. Fallen women. Giles—”

  How strange to go missish after all this time, to find the words sticking on her tongue as though she were the young lady she once had been.

  “Deserves to be shot.” Bay’s lips turned white around the edges. “Georgie, that’s his crime, not yours. If he forced you—”

  “Stop, please.” She couldn’t bear it, not this. Forced her? She’d fancied herself in love with Giles. Until that horrible moment when he’d yanked her arms from around his neck, pushing her back against the wall, muttering words of poison into her ears as his body punished hers. She could remember the mingled pain and disbelief as her dream had turned nightmare. “It doesn’t matter, Bay. Even if I weren’t, I don’t know if I could be a true wife to you.”

  There. It was out. The words she wasn’t sure she could voice.

  She could see the confusion in Bay’s face. “I don’t understand.”

  “I … when I think of anyone … touching me…” Georgie’s throat closed on the words.

  “My poor Georgie.” Bay crossed the space between them in one long step. He reached for her and then thought better of it.

  Georgie’s voice seemed to come from far away, crackly and brittle. “So, you see, it’s quite impossible.”

  Bay held out a hand to her, very slowly and very carefully. Georgie rested her hand in his, let him draw her to her feet. “Do you fear my touch?”

  The words came with difficulty. “Sometimes. There are times—” Times when she couldn’t distinguish between what was real and what wasn’t; times when the past pressed in on her. Seeing the expression of pain on Bay’s face, she said quickly, “But not because of you! I know that you would never hurt me.”

  Not physically, at any rate. It was her heart that was aching, the heart she had told herself that she had hardened beyond all feeling years ago.

  “May I?” Carefully, so carefully, Bay cupped her cheek in one hand. Knowing that she was flirting with danger, Georgie let her eyes drift closed, let herself lean into the warmth and tenderness of that hand, pain and pleasure mixed in one.

  Her senses were heightened, aware of every breath, every motion, of the soft susurration of cloth as he moved; the changes in the light behind her closed lids as his face came closer to hers; the whisper of his breath against her cheek, her lips. Bay, she reminded herself. Bay.

  His lips brushed hers with infinite gentleness, a fleeting touch, there and then gone.

  Slowly, Georgie opened her eyes, her breathing shallow, her muscles aching as though she had just traveled a long way.

  In a courtly gesture, Bay lifted her hand to his lips. “You do know I would never force you?”

  “I know.” In her head and in her heart. But she couldn’t vouch for the rest of her.

  He didn’t make any move to kiss her again. Georgie wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. Instead, his fingers toyed with hers, as lightly as his kiss. “It will be an experiment … for both of us. You see, I’ve never … I’ve never lain with a woman.”

  The backs of Georgie’s knees bumped into the frame of the chair as she started back in surprise. She tipped her head back to see him. “Truly?”

  “We’ll find our way together.” Bay twined his fingers through hers, and the feeling of his bare hands against hers was somehow more intimate, more binding, than any hurried coupling. “You will make an honest man of me, won’t you?”

  He was turning the tables on her, Georgie realized, putting himself into her power. It was, she thought, so very like Bay. She might be nothing more than a chorus girl, but with a few words he could make her feel like a queen.

  “You should marry a Livingston or a Van Whatnot,” she said, her voice scratchy.

  Bay’s brows quirked. “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

  “That’s an ill-fated example.”

  “True enough. But trust me when I say that I am old enough to know my own mind.” Softly, he quoted, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments.”

  Georgie bowed her head over their joined hands. In a muffled voice, she said, “I’ve felt that way for weeks. But I knew … I knew there was nothing in it, that there couldn’t be anything in it.”

  “You’re my fixed mark, my compass, my lode star.” Freeing one hand, Bay put a finger under her chin, tipping her face up to his. “We don’t need to go back to New York straightaway. We’ll go to Paris and Venice; we’ll travel the outer corners of the earth. Marry me—under whatever name you choose, so long as you live with me and be my love.”

  She wasn’t the lode star; those were his eyes, drawing her forward when she ought to retreat, like sailors following the song of the siren even unto the ends of the seas.

  “More borrowed words?” she said.

  “If I had words fine enough of my own to give you,” he said, “I would. Will you take these? I love you. It sounds so plain, doesn’t it? But it’s as simple and true as that. I love you, and I don’t want to lose you now that I’ve found you. And I will try, I will try as best I can, to be a proper husband to you.”

  She was caught, like a fly in a web; she couldn’t accept him, but she couldn’t bring herself to refuse him.

  Cravenly, Georgie said, “I’m sorry, Bay. I’ve been … I’ve been hiding for so long.”

  He put an arm around her shoulders, nestling her into the curve of his body, where her head fit comfortably just beneath his chin. “It’s a bit like being an expatriate, isn’t it?” he said, his voice muffled by her hair. “You don’t know which language to dream in anymore. Which part of you is real.”

  “Yes.” Georgie buried her cheek in his waistcoat, feeling her resolve ebbing away. How could she give him up when she knew him better than she knew herself? She loved his perception, his thoughtfulness, his way of looking at the world first this way and then that, always weighing before he spoke, always seeing all sides of a debate. She loved him for it. She loved him.

  It was a terrifying thing to love someone. Better to tell herself that it was a business proposition or self-preservation, that she was marrying him to escape from Giles or secure her future. Self-interest, cold and simple.

  But it wasn’t, was it?

  Georgie made one last attempt to set him free. “I don’t know if I could be Annabelle. That life is gone.”

  “You don’t have to be anything you don’t want.” She felt his chin move against her hair as he tilted his head down. Thoughtfully, he added, “I’ve always thought that Orsino must have gone on calling Viola Cesario, even after she abandoned her breeches.”

  Georgie felt herself torn between tears and laughter. Only Bay. Only Bay would say such a thing.

  Georgie turned in his arms, lifting up a hand to cup his cheek, his skin warm and rumpled beneath her fingers, her America, her newfound land.

  “I love you,” she said brokenly. “I love you so much.”

  Bay smoothed a lock of hair back from her face. “George,” he said tenderly. “My George.”

  EIGHT

  New York, 1899

  George. Georgiana. Gil
es.

  George. Georgiana. Giles.

  The northbound train shook and grunted as it pulled away from the city, past tenements and factories, farmland and dairies. In its rhythmic panting, Janie could hear the three names cycling endlessly one after the other. George. Georgiana. Giles. Nonsense sounds, like something out of a children’s rhyme, repetition leaching them of all meaning, all significance.

  Janie turned to frown through the window, but it was grimed with frost and coal smoke, giving the retreating buildings the air of a French painting, the sort that was all blur and daubs until one looked at it just the right way. The book Janie had chosen for the journey lay unopened in her lap, the pages uncut. It was a tale of adventure, a sequel to The Prisoner of Zenda, which she had devoured with guilty delight in the arid privacy of her own room. She had been looking forward to the publication of Rupert of Hentzau for some time, but her mind refused to take ship, remaining instead in the buzzing hive of the World Building, where Mr. Burke might, at this very moment, be dictating staccato messages to the telegraph operator.

  A man’s hand, descending on the back of her seat, broke her from her reverie. Hastily, Janie scooped up her book and began to cut the pages; there was a certain type of man, she knew, who made a practice of taking the seat next to an unaccompanied lady. The best defense was feigned absorption.

  She began, vigorously, to cut the pages of her book, imagining Rupert von Hentzau unleashed on the inhabitants of the Poughkeepsie train. The hand departed, but was succeeded by a brisk conversation behind her and a flurry of activity, which resulted, two minutes later, in a small table being plunked down in front of her.

  Janie frowned up at the porter. “I’m afraid I didn’t … Mr. Burke?”

  There was no mistaking those eyebrows. Or the rest of him, for that matter.

  “Yes, set it here.” Mr. Burke waved the porter forward. A chipped teapot, well-used cups, and a bowl of grimy sugar cubes plunked down on the table with more force than grace as Mr. Burke slid himself into the seat opposite. “I’ve brought tea.”

  “I see.” Janie closed her book over her finger. Ruritania would have to wait.

  The porter placed a small milk jug on the table and a plate of dry biscuits.

  “The cups that cheer but do not inebriate,” said Mr. Burke solemnly, putting a few coins in the porter’s hand. “You seemed in need of cheering.”

  “But not inebriation?” Janie waited until the porter had rolled the tea tray down to the next car before asking, “How did you get here?”

  “I walked to Grand Central and then purchased a ticket.” At Janie’s look, he relented, saying, “When I read your note … it didn’t seem right to let you wander about on your own with a mad Englishman on the prowl.”

  Janie set her book down on the seat beside her. “And you wanted an invitation to Illyria.”

  “Every man wants an invitation to Illyria.” Mr. Burke’s voice was gently mocking.

  Janie narrowed her eyes at him. “I meant the house.”

  “That, too. Shall I pour?”

  Janie clutched the side of her seat as the train swayed. “If you think you can without emptying the pot over both of us.”

  “So little faith.” Mr. Burke dealt expertly with the disposition of tea. “Milk? Or lemon?”

  “Milk, please.” Janie hadn’t thought serving tea was among a journalist’s qualifications. She had imagined them quaffing beer in tin-roofed taverns. “You do that very well.”

  Mr. Burke expertly tipped just the right amount of milk into her cup. “And aren’t I my mam’s blue-eyed boy?”

  “Your eyes aren’t blue, they’re green,” Janie retorted—and wished she hadn’t—as Mr. Burke raised his black brows over the tea things. In an attempt to salvage her dignity, she said, “Are you Irish, Mr. Burke? I wouldn’t have guessed. That is, your voice…”

  “Doesn’t sound like I’m fresh off the boat from the old country?”

  “Well, yes.” Bother the man. Whatever she said, she found she was in the wrong. “You sound like anyone.”

  “Anyone you know, you mean? Not every Irishman sounds like a music hall parody of himself. Some of us can even pass on the fringes of civilized society.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” But she had, a little, hadn’t she? Janie found herself nibbling on the tip of one gloved finger and made herself stop.

  Mr. Burke handed her cup across the table to her, taking care that their gloved fingers shouldn’t brush. “I was raised here. In Hell’s Kitchen.” He leaned back lazily in his chair, but his eyes were keen and watchful. “It is rather a long way from Illyria.”

  Hell’s Kitchen was no more than a dozen blocks from the brownstone in which Janie had been raised, but it might have been a different continent. She knew of it only what she had glimpsed in the papers, with their lurid headlines about warring gangs, men knifed in taverns, women who disposed of unwanted children for a fee. It was a lawless place, commonly deemed to be the most dangerous in the country, with all of the risks but none of the charm of the frontier.

  “And yet,” said Janie, “you seem to have gotten away?”

  “Does anyone truly escape from Hades?” He made no attempt to hide his mockery this time; it dripped from his tongue as sweet and deadly as jam made from poisoned berries. “The underworld tends to keep its own.”

  “Only when you look back,” said Janie, thinking of Orpheus and Eurydice.

  Mr. Burke dropped a lump of sugar neatly into his cup. “And what would you advise, Miss Van Duyvil? Would you paper over the past?”

  Janie found herself growing annoyed. It was a strangely empowering feeling. “If that were my intention, Mr. Burke,” she said tartly, “neither of us would be here.”

  He lifted his tea cup in salute. “A hit, a hit, a palpable hit. Fair enough.”

  “Is it?” said Janie, deciding she wasn’t quite done being irritated. “You were supposing rather a lot, weren’t you? Following me today. If I choose not to admit you, you’ll have wasted a day.”

  “Can any day be wasted that includes tea with a charming lady? Don’t worry. I don’t intend to build a willow cabin at your gate. I’ve an appointment in Carmel.”

  “You’re on the wrong train,” Janie pointed out, before the full meaning of his statement bore upon her. “An appointment with whom?”

  “The coroner.” Mr. Burke occupied himself in shooting his cuffs, making sure the seams sat straight. “It’s not a long drive from Carmel to Cold Spring. I’ve been told it’s rather scenic.”

  “In the spring, perhaps.” Mr. Burke was, Janie suspected, deliberately avoiding the point, drawing out the suspense. “Has there been any news?”

  “Other than that the coroner appears to be as pickled as the corpses?” As Janie’s face paled, Mr. Burke abandoned his levity. He sat up straighter in his seat. “I’m sorry. That was ill done.”

  Janie breathed in through her nose, forcing herself to think of corpses and pickling. Ignoring unpleasantness was only what had gotten them into this mess in the first place. If she had realized that something was wrong …

  Sounding like every governess she had ever had, she said, in her starchiest voice, “You don’t need to spare my feelings. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t. If I’d wanted my feelings spared, I would never have come to you.”

  “There’s an insult in that somewhere,” said Mr. Burke wryly and bit into a biscuit.

  “Or a compliment,” countered Janie, making herself look away from his lips. “I’m doing you the credit of believing you can speak plainly to me. No one else has.”

  “Plain speaking isn’t an art much valued in society.”

  “That depends on who you ask. Mrs. Fish prides herself on it, although her plain speaking is less about the pursuit of truth and more an exercise of personality.” Janie bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to say that, even though she had thought it for some time. To cover her confusion, she said, “I’ve found that when people say they mean to be blu
nt, it’s generally because they’re about to say something unpleasant. Why go to Carmel if there isn’t any news?”

  “I won’t know if I don’t go,” said Mr. Burke smoothly. “And it was a chance to kill two birds with one stone. This is a more comfortable place to talk than City Hall Park.”

  “Only just.” Janie wrapped her gloved hands around her tea, which had already gone from hot to tepid. “If you received my note, then you know my concerns about Mr. Lacey?”

  Mr. Burke raised a black brow. “Concerns? I thought they were orders.” He took the sting out of it by adding, “You would have made an excellent superintendent of police.”

  “If I weren’t a woman, you mean?”

  “If you weren’t one of the four hundred. Your kind isn’t exactly known for mucking about in the dirt.”

  Janie frowned at him. “That’s not fair. What about Mr. Roosevelt?”

  Mr. Burke gave a one-sided shrug. “There are exceptions to every rule.”

  Janie cast a sideways glance at Mr. Burke, but decided to leave it be. “What did you learn about Mr. Lacey?”

  “Pursuant to your, er, suggestions, I’ve made inquiries. It may take a few days to get answers.”

  “It may be nothing.” Janie felt her shoulders sag as some of the combative spirit that had been sustaining her drained away. Fighting with Mr. Burke had an oddly invigorating effect. “It probably is nothing. But his appearance seemed too coincidental for comfort.”

  “It was,” said Mr. Burke bluntly. “I spoke to the port officer. Mr. Lacey entered the port of New York on the tenth of January.”

  “Three days after the Twelfth Night ball.” Janie’s spirits dropped. It would have been comforting to have been able to claim Mr. Lacey as the villain. She clung to what reassurance she could. “Then it was a lie, what he said about coming to cry over his cousin’s grave. He couldn’t have known before he set sail.”

  Mr. Burke lowered his chin in acknowledgment. “Unless Mr. Lacey has a particularly good crystal ball. The St. Paul left Southampton on the thirty-first of December. If, of course, that is the ship he came on. Port masters have been known to be amenable to bribery.”