The English Wife

by Lauren Willig

  “No. But you will at the wedding.” There was no need to say which wedding. Anne’s wedding was the wedding, the only wedding any of them spoke of, the wedding that had all of society gossiping and Janie hiding like a turtle in a shell. “Charlie is Teddy’s—Mr. Newland’s—first cousin.”

  Everyone in New York appeared to be related to everyone else, with varying degrees of social distinction. In England, at least, these rules were laid out properly; one knew where one stood. Here, it was an unwritten code, but no less stringent for existing only in the minds of the cognoscenti.

  Georgie rose from her chair, rolling her stiff shoulders. “You need a Debrett’s. It’s impossible to remember who’s who.”

  “We have one,” said Janie sheepishly. “It’s called the Social Register. Mother doesn’t have a copy—she finds it vulgar—but I imagine you can find one at the Athenaeum.”

  So much for disappearing into the wilds of America. Georgie frowned at her sister-in-law over the shocking display of silver plate. From the ceiling, overripe nymphs simpered down at her. “Will I be in it now?”

  “I imagine so.” Janie placed a stiff, cream-colored card against a Wedgwood vase. “They print a new edition every year.”

  It didn’t matter, Georgie told herself roughly. Even if by chance Giles heard of an Annabelle Lacey married to Bayard Van Duyvil, what could he do to her now? She looked out over the sea of silver and gold, the jewels glowing sullenly in the afternoon light, and breathed in deeply through her nose. Barbaric, she had thought it, when Mrs. Van Duyvil had told her of the custom of displaying the gifts. But now she found it comforting, like a warrior surveying the contents of an armory. What could Giles muster against this?

  Georgie Evans, actress, might be easy prey, but Mrs. Bayard Van Duyvil was another beast entirely.

  Mrs. Bayard Van Duyvil, née Annabelle Lacey.

  “That’s the last of them, I think.” Janie stepped back to survey her handiwork, the tables draped in damask, laden with a king’s ransom in jewels and plate.

  “Thank you.” Georgie stood on tiptoes to press her cheek, fleetingly, against her sister-in-law’s. “I’d best find Bay and make sure he remembers we’re to meet for portraits before supper.”

  Her mother-in-law had hired a photographer to record the occasion for posterity, a carefully orchestrated vision of the past preserved for the future.

  Bay wasn’t in their room or in his dressing room. His valet directed her to the library, where a maid, arranging flowers for the evening, bobbed a curtsy and said Mr. Van Duyvil might be in the gardens.

  Liveried footmen held the French doors for her as she exited through the garden front; gardeners paused in their work to bow their heads. Pulling a veil down over her hat brim to shade her face, Georgie felt dazzled, and not just by the sun. It was mind-boggling to think that she was mistress of all this—or would be, someday.

  Giles hadn’t thought her good enough for Lacey Abbey, but she had fooled him. She had everything he had thought to deny her, and he, in an odd way, had been the very instrument of her triumph, driving her to London, to the Ali Baba, to Bay.

  She felt, as always, that surge of warmth at the thought of her husband, of Bay, humbled and half-frightened that he was hers, that after everything she had come to this, this fairy-tale place, with her handsome prince of a husband.

  And if she had to put up with a few Carrie Rheinlanders and a dragon of a mother-in-law, well, that seemed a just price to pay for the prince and the palace.

  Butterflies skimmed through the summer air, discomposed by the musicians already setting up their instruments, the servants carrying tables and lanterns. By the evening, the gardens rolling down towards the sea would be a fairyland. Now, they were just busy.

  Light-footed, Georgie tripped along the lawn, past the formal parterres with their carefully shaped topiary, past the fountain where, tonight, Poseidon would shoot water from his spear, to the wilderness garden. She knew where Bay would be, away from the bustle, beneath the pergola that seemed to be peculiarly his own, screened with roses on three sides, with a view of the sea.

  TWELVE

  Newport, 1894

  August

  Georgie heard the voices before she saw them, first Bay’s, low and urgent. “You can still cry off.”

  There was the sweep of a long skirt against the gravel as the wearer paced, turning with a flourish. Georgie drew closer, lifting her skirts so they wouldn’t betray her.

  “The seamstresses are already embroidering the linens, Bay. Think what a waste it would be to have to unpick all of those monograms.”

  “You don’t marry for linens, Anne.”

  “Not just for linens, no … there’s also the silver and the china and those amusing little ornaments that fit in the corner cupboard. And the yacht and the house near Rhinebeck.”

  Through the gaps between the vines, Georgie could just make out Anne’s face, her chin lifted to display all the fine lines of her face and neck, the pride of her carriage. She looked like a Burne-Jones princess, wrapped about with briars. They were beautiful, both of them, Anne and Bay, tall and golden.

  Anne’s voice was husky and sweet as the scent of the flowers. “Is it so wrong to want something of my own, Bay?”

  “But they’re not yours. They’re Teddy’s.”

  “And Teddy will be mine. I find him rather handsome. Don’t you? It won’t be such hardship.” Anne’s voice softened, losing its arch edge. “Don’t fuss, dearest. I know what I’m doing. I can manage Teddy.”

  “And if you can’t?” The pain in Bay’s voice woke an answering pain in Georgie. She bit her lip so hard she could taste the blood on her tongue. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to marry for appearances.”

  “No?” Anne lifted a hand to Bay’s cheek in a casual gesture of possession. “You did.”

  Georgie felt as though she were drowning, the water rising up around her mouth and nose. She couldn’t seem to breathe; her limbs felt heavy, too heavy to move. She blundered back a step, and then another, rose petals catching beneath her slippers, perfuming the air with their too-heady scent.

  But he married me, Georgie wanted to cry out. Why would he marry an actress but for love?

  Her skirt must have given her away, the hem heavy against the ground, because Anne looked up. Coolly, without hurrying, she took her hand from Bay’s cheek. “Oh, hello, Annabelle. Did you want us?”

  Bay turned, too quickly. If he had been a moment slower, Georgie would have been spared the expression on his face. Emotion. Raw emotion of a sort that Georgie didn’t associate with her husband.

  Georgie wanted to shake him, to demand to know what had just happened. But what had she seen, really? Just two cousins, talking. Talk, only talk.

  She drew in a deep breath, grappling for composure. “I … Janie wanted me to remind you that we’re to meet for portraits before supper.”

  “Oh, yes, the ball,” said Anne, and managed to make it sound like something impossibly gauche, a child’s plaything. She placed a hand on Bay’s arm, fleeting, caressing, a badge of ownership. “Proserpina, isn’t it? And Hades. How fortunate we are to have you bring the spring to us, cousin dear.”

  Bay stepped too quickly forward, like a puppet handled by an inexpert master. “Is it time to dress? I didn’t hear the gong.”

  “It hasn’t gone yet. I was just…” Eager to see you? It made her feel childish to say it.

  “Indulging in an excess of caution?” Something about the way Anne said it, with a sideways smile at Bay, made Georgie want to take her corset tapes and pull them tighter and tighter until that satisfied smile faded from her face. “Very wise, cousin. Aunt Alva gets so cross when her plans are balked.”

  Bay crossed in front of Anne, blocking her from Georgie’s view. Taking Georgie’s arm, he said, “Shall we go inside? You look rather flushed.”

  “Have you had too much sun, Annabelle?” Anne’s parasol mushroomed open, elaborately bedecked. “You must tak
e care, my dear. Bay would hate for you to overexert yourself.”

  Anne managed to make everything she said sound like not a double, but a triple entendre. It was just Anne’s way, Georgie told herself. She couldn’t help it. It didn’t mean anything.

  But she couldn’t help seeing Anne’s pale hand on Bay’s cheek, the intimacy of it, the familiarity.

  “I was born in India. This is nothing to summer in Madras.” Georgie looked across her husband at his cousin, tilting her chin in Annabelle’s way, giving Anne the full effect of Annabelle’s scorn. “The Laceys are hardy stock.”

  Anne twirled her parasol between her fingers, making the flounces bounce. “But you’re a Van Duyvil now, Cousin Annabelle.”

  “To my infinite joy,” said Bay, covering Georgie’s fingers with his, but the words felt flat, joyless.

  They proceeded in silence up the steps. Anne furled her parasol and looked from one to the other with raised brows. “Until supper, then.”

  Georgie waited until she had gone into the house before turning to Bay and saying in a low voice, “A marriage of appearances?”

  Bay grimaced. “You mustn’t mind Anne.”

  A liveried footman was holding open the door, waiting, his face impassive beneath his white wig.

  “It would be easier not to mind her if you minded her less,” said Georgie in a low voice, before preceding Bay through the door.

  Bay caught up with her by a bust of one of Louis XIV’s ministers that looked as though it had been looted from someone’s château. It probably had. “Anne was my childhood playmate and my closest friend. My mother … well, you’ve seen what she’s like. We were left largely to our own devices.”

  Georgie tilted her head back to look Bay full in the eye. “What sort of devices, exactly?”

  Bay blinked at her. “What do you mean?”

  The mirrors lining the walls reflected them back, a hundred times over, distorted by palm fronds. “What do you think? You must have heard the whispers, Bay. You … and Anne.”

  “You can’t think … nothing like that!” He seemed genuinely shocked by the idea. “I love Anne like a sister.”

  Georgie started walking again, heels clicking against marble. She hated how small the house made her feel; she wasn’t statuesque like her husband or her relations. A cuckoo in the nest, that was what Annabelle had called her.

  She was sick of being the one on the outside, always a step behind. “Do brothers try to break off their sisters’ engagements?”

  “Yes!” There was no mistaking the exasperation in Bay’s voice. He moved to cut her off, grabbing her hands in his. “Yes, they do, if they think the man’s a rotter.”

  Georgie’s voice was low, scraped from the bottom of her throat. “But you would have let your own sister marry him.”

  “With reservations. You know I’ve never liked Teddy.” Bay squeezed her hands, leaning down to try to see her face under the brim of her hat. “And Anne’s not Janie. Anne feels everything so deeply.”

  Georgie twitched her hands away. “What makes you think Janie doesn’t?”

  Bay held up his hands in surrender. “Perhaps she does. I don’t know. Janie’s the Rosetta stone to me; she’s written in a language I can’t make out. But Anne—”

  The way his voice softened when he said Anne’s name made Georgie want to spit. “What makes you think you know Anne so well? Or that you know what would suit her best? Have you ever stopped to think how it must be for her, living in your mother’s house, dependent on your mother’s largesse for every cent she spends? It’s horrid living on someone else’s charity.”

  So kind of them to take her in, that was what everyone always said. How fortunate Miss Georgiana was, how grateful she should be. Grateful that she had to exist on crumbs while her half sister had the cake?

  “It’s not charity.” Bay caught himself. “Not really. We’re family.”

  “There’s family and there’s family. Didn’t you tell me this was once Anne’s father’s house? Can you imagine what it must be to be a pensioner in your own home? No, of course you haven’t. You’re Bayard Van Duyvil, and nothing you’ve wanted has failed to be yours.”

  Bay’s face was very still. Only his throat worked, the Adam’s apple moving up and down. “That’s not true.”

  Georgie looked defiantly at him. “All right, then. Name one thing. One thing you’ve wanted and couldn’t have.”

  Bay’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. “A simpler life,” he said at last.

  “That’s rubbish.” Georgie turned on her heel, feeling her shoulder blades tight beneath her dress. “This is a brilliant match for Anne. If you care for her at all, you’ll leave her be.”

  “Georgie.” Bay’s hands were on her shoulders. Usually, he called her that only in private, in their own bedchamber. “Georgie. Let’s not fight.”

  Georgie only shook her head without looking at him. In one breath, she said, “Carrie Rheinlander thinks that you only married me to get your own back over Anne’s engagement.”

  Georgie could feel Bay’s breath against her hair. “Carrie Rheinlander is a nasty busybody who wouldn’t know an honest emotion if it bit her.”

  Georgie turned in his arms, looking up at him. “Then what did Anne mean about your marrying for appearances?”

  Bay’s eyes shifted away from hers. “When Anne’s unhappy, she lashes out however she can. She doesn’t bother with Queensbury rules.”

  “A hit is only a hit if there’s something to hit.”

  Bay’s hands tightened on her shoulders. “If I had wanted to marry someone for appearances, don’t you think I would have chosen from my own set?” His voice softened. “You know why I married you, Georgie. I married you because I couldn’t bear to let you go.”

  It usually made her feel warm through and through when he said that, but today it left her cold. “And to save me from Giles,” she reminded him. Her hands flattened against the lapels of his coat. “I feel I know you less here than I did in London.”

  “I hate Newport.” Bay ducked his head, abashed at his own vehemence. “There’s no space between spectacle and reality. I always feel … not myself … in Newport.”

  “London, then,” said Georgie softly. “What were you in London?”

  “More myself for being with you.” Bay’s blue eyes met hers, rueful, genuine, the man she had met in London, the man who had sat across from her at the Feathers night after night, who had endured a dozen performances of Eleven and One Nights. This was the man she had married, the man she loved. “Was it selfishness to bring you back with me?”

  “No. Unless it was my selfishness as well, to want to come with you.” Georgie ought to have felt reassured, she supposed, but instead she felt obscurely troubled by worries she couldn’t quite name.

  Maybe Bay was right. Maybe it was Newport, that hothouse environment of spectacle and show, where everyone whispered about everyone else. Maybe it was feeling herself under public scrutiny, knowing her very name to be a lie. Easier, perhaps, to look for weaknesses in others than admit them in herself.

  Bay touched her cheek with one finger. “Shall we dress? If you can bear the costume my mother chose for you.”

  “I’ve worn worse.” It was the first time either of them had touched on her past, and it felt strangely intimate, something that was theirs and theirs alone. “At least this is a skirt, not trousers.”

  The corners of Bay’s eyes crinkled. “I rather miss those trousers.”

  Georgie twined her arms around his neck, heedless of servants, of potential watchers. Let Newport gossip about how shamefully in love the Van Duyvils were. “I might be persuaded to put on a private performance.”

  Gently, Bay unwrapped her arms, lifting first one hand, then the other, to his lips. “Tonight’s performance first.” He cocked a brow. “Should I be alarmed that my mother has cast me as Hades?”

  “Why should you be alarmed?” said Georgie, trying not to mind. He was right, of course. The gong woul
d go at any moment, and Mrs. Van Duyvil didn’t brook lateness. “I’m the one who’s about to be dragged down to the underworld.”

  “For love,” Bay reminded her. “For love.”

  Cold Spring, 1899

  January

  “How did you come to write for the papers?’

  With Mrs. Gerritt serving, lunch was a necessarily stilted affair. One couldn’t discuss delicate matters with Mrs. Gerritt slapping dishes on the sideboard with a brisk efficiency that intimated that her time would be better spent elsewhere. She had already demonstrated her displeasure by showing Janie and her guest into the breakfast room rather than the dining room, as “no company had been expected.”

  Janie and Mr. Burke had already discussed the unusually cold winter; whether the winter was really that unusually cold or it only seemed that way; and supplemented it with a précis of winters that had been either unusually cold or unusually mild. Having exhausted the weather as a topic, Janie cast about for something else suitably anodyne.

  “You make journalism sound like a social disease,” said Mr. Burke, leaning back in his chair with exaggerated ease. Janie had noticed the way his eyes took in the richly paneled room, the stained glass, the Italian marbles and Flemish tapestries. In response, he had adopted a smilingly pugilistic manner that made conversation almost as difficult as Mrs. Gerritt’s silent disapproval.

  “Do I? I didn’t mean to. I have a cousin who writes for the papers,” said Janie, by way of apology. “Or thinks he does. It’s mostly doggerel verse, all in rhymed couplets. When he gets away from his nurse, he sends large parcels to the papers.”

  She decided not to add that said cousin claimed to be the reincarnated soul of Lord Byron, John Donne, and, on alternate Tuesdays, Shakespeare. The Byron days were particularly trying for his poor nurse, who had to suffer being pinched on top of being recited at.

  “There are no rhymes in mine,” said Mr. Burke. Reluctantly, he said, “I came to the paper by way of the theater. I got my start performing in Mr. Herne’s plays.”

  “You were an actor?” Perhaps that explained the odd sense of familiarity, the sensation that she had seen Mr. Burke’s face—or at least his name—somewhere before.