The English Wife

by Lauren Willig

  “Why? Because…” Confronted outright, Anne’s invention failed her. “Well, you know Bay.”

  “Yes. I do.”

  The two women stared each other down, and Georgie could feel the anger rising red behind her eyes. She wouldn’t play Anne’s game, not anymore.

  “Anne,” she said patiently, and it took her more effort than Anne would ever know to maintain that tolerant tone. “There’s no need for all this nonsense. I know about Bay.”

  “You know.” The words had the desired effect. The smile was gone from Anne’s face, but Georgie didn’t feel triumphant. She felt hollow.

  Georgie tried for a smile and failed. “I’ve always known.”

  And maybe it was true. Maybe she had known. Maybe she had known without realizing it. It was only in stories that princes married beggar maids for love.

  It hurt, though. Just thinking it hurt drove the knife a little deeper.

  “Bay told me long ago,” Georgie lied, fighting to keep her voice level, her expression pleasant.

  “About Charlie Ogden?” Anne’s voice was rich with disbelief.

  Georgie nodded. Just once. It was all she could manage. “And all the rest of it.”

  “Did he?” Anne’s lips were a narrow line, too bright against her fair skin. “I am surprised. Bay generally tends to avoid unpleasantness.”

  Yes. Yes, he did. He had told Anne more than he had ever told her. Or had Anne merely guessed? Maybe they were both wrong, maybe it was all imagination on both their parts.

  “For better or worse, isn’t it? Every man has his flaws.” Georgie leaned forward a little in her chair. “And how is Ellen Morris?”

  Anne didn’t have time to answer. The men had returned from their port. And if Georgie had had any doubts, they were extinguished in the instant. It wasn’t that they were standing too close; quite the contrary. They had the self-conscious stiffness of people trying to put distance between themselves.

  Georgie’s stomach turned over. The last time she had felt like this, she had been expecting the twins. But she wasn’t expecting now, not unless an angel showed up at the window shouting hosannas and jamming a halo onto her head. They shared a bed, it was true, but nothing more. The twins’ birth hadn’t been easy. Bay had been all consideration.

  So very considerate.

  “Mr. Pruyn,” Georgie said, forcing herself to smile, to speak warmly. What use was a career on the stage if one couldn’t make use of it? “Do come sit beside me.”

  Nervously, Mr. Pruyn took the seat next to hers, folding his long legs awkwardly beneath him. He moved like a colt, in fits and starts, still learning the use of his limbs.

  “Tea, Mr. Pruyn?” said Anne in a voice like a bell. “I don’t need to ask how you like it.”

  Bay looked as though he were trying to disappear into the fronds of an aspidistra. Georgie might have been amused if she hadn’t felt quite so ill.

  Turning her back pointedly on Anne, she said, with the sort of rapt attention usually reserved for singers of popular ballads, “It is so kind of you to restore my home to me, Mr. Pruyn.”

  Mr. Pruyn laced his fingers around one knee. The chair was too low for him, making his knees protrude like a schoolboy’s. “I would like to if I may. If there is anything in the design that isn’t true to the original…”

  Nothing. Nothing about this conversation was true.

  “Won’t you take your tea?” With a casual gesture, Georgie reduced Anne to the role of maid. Anne relinquished the cup and retreated. Georgie waited until Mr. Pruyn took a sip of his tea before saying with honeyed cruelty, “You have done a remarkable job under the circumstances.”

  Mr. Pruyn looked at her over the rim of his teacup. His eyes were very large, a pale shade of gray, rimmed with dark lashes. “That sounds like damning with faint praise.” Before Georgie could comment, he added ruefully, “I had known there would be mistakes. I was working from pictures and … and your husband’s account of your descriptions.”

  He cast a brief, betraying glance over his shoulder. Georgie found herself seized with a savage desire to kick him, to take him by the shoulders and turn him away from Bay. He had no right to look at her husband like that. Like Bay was a candle in the darkness.

  Georgie forced herself to smile and say, “It is very hard to reproduce something one has never seen. I imagine you would rather be doing original work.”

  In fact, she would be delighted to see him doing original work, somewhere far, far away. Surely, someone needed a cottage in Newport?

  “Oh, no! Not at all.” Mr. Pruyn started to gesture with his teacup and caught himself just in time to save Georgie’s gown. “One learns through imitation. I’ve always admired the way some buildings seem to have grown out of themselves. They aren’t built to a grand master plan, they just grow. But it all looks right together. I’m not explaining it very well, am I?”

  “On the contrary,” said Georgie grimly, “I see exactly what you mean.”

  When he spoke of his work, Mr. Pruyn’s face held an almost seraphic glow. It was maddening to feel herself warmed by it, to catch herself wanting to like him.

  Attracted by a quality of mind, Anne had said. Oh, yes, Georgie saw it. Saw it and wanted to kick and claw and scream.

  Mr. Pruyn looked at her eagerly. “There’s something so dull about a sameness, don’t you think?”

  Georgie took a sip of her own tea, forcing herself to keep from looking at Bay, sitting beside Anne on the other side of conservatory. “You don’t want to build a Palladian palace on a hill?”

  Now that he was on his own topic, Mr. Pruyn sat taller; even his voice was deeper. “Like Mrs. Mills’s house at Staatsburg? I can’t think of anything I would like less. I want to build a house that looks as though it’s been lived in for centuries—for happy centuries.”

  The scent of exotic flowers was beginning to make Georgie’s head ache. “You would like my husband’s house in Cold Spring, I think,” she said slowly. “It isn’t grand or romantic, but it was added onto by the generations, piece by piece.”

  “Not a showpiece,” said Mr. Pruyn. “A home.”

  “Yes.” One he was planning to replace. Go back, she wanted to say. Go back to wherever you came from. Stop cutting up my peace. “Can you construct a home, Mr. Pruyn? Is it something that can be created by design?”

  “Er, I don’t know.” Mr. Pruyn looked taken aback by the force of her attack. “I should like to try.”

  Georgie felt ashamed of herself. It wasn’t Mr. Pruyn’s fault, was it? He couldn’t help having a certain quality of mind. The tea was acid on Georgie’s tongue.

  “Yes?” she said, trying to make herself look less like a Gorgon in a rage.

  “I would like—” Mr. Pruyn stumbled over the words, and Georgie wasn’t sure whether it was because she was trying to turn him to stone with a look, or because this was a man who was trying to bare his heart over tea. Under other circumstances, she might have found it endearing. “I would like to build houses people want to live in.”

  “How very daring,” said Georgie acidly. She had a house she wanted to live in. With her husband.

  “Goodness, aren’t you getting on,” said Anne, rustling up to them in a slither of heavy silk. “Would you like a cake, David darling?”

  Obediently, Mr. Pruyn reached for a tea cake. Bay sat with his plate balanced on his knee, watching his wife, his cousin, and Mr. Pruyn with a wary look in his eye.

  Georgie waved away a tea cake. The back of her throat burned with bile. All those times Bay had come into the city, he must have come here. It didn’t matter if nothing untoward had occurred between Mr. Pruyn and Bay; they had been meeting here in secret, under Anne’s eye. Anne, who had lost her own husband and had gone back to the one man she had always regarded as truly hers, whatever she needed to do to keep him.

  Just because Anne’s marriage was falling to bits, did she have to destroy Georgie’s as well?

  Georgie could feel herself shaking, shaking with
rage as she sat there in her wicker chair, pretending to smile and nod, all her anger and rage bubbling over at Anne. But it wasn’t Anne, was it? It was Bay. All of Anne’s scheming, all of her designs, would have been nothing if the desire hadn’t been there.

  But what did she know, really? She was imagining things, creating monsters out of shadows. Maybe Anne’s innuendo was just innuendo. Maybe the house was just a house.

  “—long will it take to build?” Anne was asking.

  “A year, if all goes well,” said Mr. Pruyn. He looked at Georgie. “If Mrs. Van Duyvil likes the design.”

  “You needn’t have the house if you don’t want it,” said Bay quickly. Georgie saw his eyes flick towards Mr. Pruyn and away again. Just that. Just that small look. But it made Georgie’s whole body go stiff.

  She could say no. She could tell him she was happy with the house as it was. And then she would wonder, always, every time Bay took the train to town to go to the office whether he was taking tea in Anne’s Moorish sitting room, whether he was walking with Mr. Pruyn in the enclosed garden behind Anne’s house.

  She had taken Annabelle’s name, why not her house as well? She would finally, after all this time, be mistress of Lacey Abbey.

  The only issue was the cost.

  “Nonsense. It’s a lovely idea,” said Georgie, smiling and smiling and smiling until she thought her jaw would break. “How many husbands indulge their wives so?”

  NINETEEN

  Cold Spring, 1896

  May

  They traveled in silence back to Cold Spring.

  Georgie felt a qualm as the trap pulled up in the gravel circle in front of the house. She had come to love the old white-walled house, with its sash windows and crooked ceilings. Lacey Abbey might have been the home of which she dreamed as a child, but this house was real. This was where she had prowled the hallways with Vi in one arm and Bast in the other, rocking and rocking and rocking them. This was where Bay had laughed himself to tears when the new wallpaper for the nursery had arrived and a well-meaning great-nephew of Gerritt’s had pasted the first panel in upside down, making kings and jesters dance on their heads.

  There was no ballroom, no music room, no conservatory. No patterns in rosewood or Moorish arches. It was a family home, a home built for living, not entertaining, and Georgie found herself, suddenly, reluctant to remove from it.

  They didn’t stand on ceremony in the country. In town, a maid would help Georgie out of her gown. Here, Bay did the honors, in the bedchamber, where his brushes jostled with hers on the dresser.

  Georgie bent her head as Bay worked the buttons on her dress, systematically, one by one. Behind her, she heard him say, “If you don’t want the house…”

  “And put all of Mr. Pruyn’s work to waste?”

  Bay’s hands stilled briefly on her back. Such a small gesture, but so telling. Mechanically, he resumed his progress. Another button and another. “He’s been paid for his time.”

  In coin? Or in kind?

  “Far be it from me to disrupt your plans.” Her voice sounded mocking, ugly. Georgie winced, grateful that Bay couldn’t see her face. Reluctantly, she added, “It was a kind thought.”

  Or it would have been, if she hadn’t seen the way her husband looked at the architect.

  She hated herself for thinking that way. She hated herself for picturing them together, Bay so broad and fair, Mr. Pruyn lean and dark.

  Bay’s hands settled briefly on her shoulders. “It’s not much of a gift if you don’t want it.”

  It would be so easy to say no. Take the doll’s house and stay where they were. To tell herself that she imagined what she’d seen.

  No. No, she couldn’t pretend this away, not this time.

  Georgie shrugged, fighting a surge of grief at the life that wasn’t. “I might have known we couldn’t hide here forever. You’ll want a house where you can have parties.”

  “Do you want parties?” Bay stepped back, giving her room to turn. Why did he always have to sound so calm, so reasonable? As if this were about what she wanted.

  Georgie turned, clutching the front of her dress to keep it from falling. “What do you want, Bay? Don’t pretend this is about me.” His silence maddened her. “You never had any idea of building me a house until you met Mr. Pruyn.”

  Bay drew in a deep breath, measuring his words. “They’re only plans, Georgie. If you don’t want the house…”

  “It isn’t about the house!” Her voice cracked through the room. Lowering it, she said, “I’m not blind, Bay. And I’m not stupid. I saw how you looked at him.”

  She looked at Bay, willing him to say something, anything. But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. It was Bay, Bay who preferred to hide rather than fight, Bay who never lied with words, only with silence.

  Georgie’s hands trembled with the desire to throw something, to scream, to shout, to shock Bay into speech. But what was the use?

  Turning, Georgie struggled out of her dress, letting the rich fabric pool on the floor around her legs. She twisted to try to reach the slipknot at the back of her stays.

  “May I?” Bay asked meekly.

  When Georgie nodded, he pulled the loop. She sucked in blessed air as the sides of the long stays parted.

  Looking up, Georgie caught sight of her husband’s face in the mirror, and she felt some of her anger fall away with her stays.

  In a constricted voice, she said, “I hate feeling as though I’ve been ambushed.”

  Bay took a step forward. “I didn’t mean to ambush you. Only to show you the house. David—Mr. Pruyn—wasn’t meant to have been there.”

  “So I was to be kept in ignorance.” Georgie’s eyes met Bay’s in the mirror. “Do you think that makes it better?”

  “I wasn’t hiding anything.” He might have been more convincing if his eyes hadn’t shifted away as he said it.

  “Oh, no?” Georgie’s voice rose dangerously on the last word.

  Bay started to put his hands on her shoulders, but thought better of it as she shrugged him away. “Nothing of a … of a meretricious nature has taken place.” A hint of humor lightened his worried face in the mirror. “There has been nothing said between me and Mr. Pruyn that couldn’t be said in front of a judge and four ministers.”

  No, just the simmer of that tension made the more piquant by being denied.

  “I’m not opposing council,” snapped Georgie. “Don’t play the lawyer with me.”

  She could feel him draw in his breath behind her. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Of course you didn’t. You never do.” Georgie wanted to put her head down on her dressing table and weep.

  Nothing said, indeed. A hurried coupling in a hallway would have been less alarming in its way than those blameless conversations, in which nothing was said, but everything was felt. Oh, God. It was an impossible situation. That she should have to worry about her husband and a man—a man. It defied thinking.

  “If it were another woman,” said Georgie, holding her husband’s gaze in the mirror, “I would fight for you. I would fight in every way I know how. But this—” She bit her lip to hold back tears as the despair and the bewilderment threatened to overwhelm her. “This is something I can’t provide you.”

  It was a measure of his feelings for her that he made no move to deny it. Instead, he simply rested his hands on her shoulders, pillowing his cheek on the top of her head. “It was only meant to be a doll’s house.” He sounded as lost as Georgie felt.

  Georgie turned in Bay’s embrace, wrapping her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek against the buttons of his waistcoat. She felt as though the stage set of their life was collapsing around them, the walls revealed as pasteboard, their habitual clothes as costumes.

  “I wanted … I wanted to be a proper husband to you. An ordinary husband.” Georgie could hear the pain in Bay’s voice, pain and confusion that mirrored her own.

  “Taking mistresses and losing too much at cards?” retorted Georgie. Sh
e felt the puff of breath against her hair as Bay gave a choked laugh. “We’ve never done anything in the ordinary way, have we?” she said hoarsely. Bay shook his head in response.

  She wasn’t sure how long they stood like that, their arms wrapped around one another. Her hair felt suspiciously damp, but she wouldn’t for the world have said anything about it. She only held Bay tighter, wishing Anne to perdition, wishing the world to perdition, wishing she could dig a moat around the house and set them all adrift on the sea, away from all harm, floating like Noah above the waters.

  But even Noah had come to land eventually, hadn’t he?

  Georgie drew in an uneven breath. “A house wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, would it?” she said. “I always wanted to be mistress of Lacey Abbey.”

  The words tasted like ashes on her tongue.

  “We can find another architect.” Bay’s voice sounded rusty. His hands gripped her like Sebastian’s after a nightmare, holding tight to her dress in the middle of the night.

  “No.” Georgie drew back, looking at her husband’s red eyes, the crease in his cheek where her hair had made a line. She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Weren’t you the one who told me that running away never solves anything? I … I liked your Mr. Pruyn.”

  As much as one could like a rival for one’s husband’s affections.

  There was a queen of England, Georgie remembered vaguely, who had chosen her husband’s mistress for him, groomed her, presented her. Because if she hadn’t, someone else would. She had kept her husband and his mistress under her eye, made them her own. Just one happy family.

  “It’s better this way,” said Georgie, as much for herself as Bay.

  In the country, no one need know. In the country, there would be no rumors of intimate tête-à-têtes in Anne’s parlor. Other women’s husbands had vices, too. Some consorted with loose women; others lost fortunes over cards. Surely, this wasn’t such a dreadful form of vice. Just another weakness to be managed, like a taste for betting on horses.

  She was being sensible, that was it. Sensible. This was the sensible thing to do. But why did she feel like the word was about to choke her?