The English Wife: A Novel

by Lauren Willig

  London, 1894

  February

  “Fancy a free supper?” Kitty popped into Georgie’s dressing room without knocking, banging the door cheerfully behind her.

  Georgie eyed her friend in the streaked glass of her mirror. “What is it this time?”

  Kitty adjusted her hat, frowned at the results, and tweaked it again, examining herself this way and that. “Not what—who. A Sir Something and his rich American friend.”

  Kitty had removed the wig she wore as Maria in the Ali Baba’s musical evisceration of Twelfth Night, but her cheeks were still streaked with red, her face lavishly painted and powdered. Coupled with her feathered hat and new crimson brocade walking dress, it made her look, thought Georgie, like the more prosperous sort of streetwalker.

  Picking up a cloth, Georgie scrubbed vigorously and ineffectually at the grease paint on her cheek. It was a bad job, she knew. No matter how much cream she used, how much soap, it never entirely came off. She went into each performance with the shadow of the last beneath it. “How can you tell the American is rich?”

  Kitty winked at her in the mirror. “Aren’t they all?”

  The ones who showed up in London were, at any rate, and London was the entirety of Kitty’s world. There must, Georgie was quite sure, be poor Americans, struggling Americans, ordinary humdrum Americans, but they weren’t the ones who showed up at the stage door of the Ali Baba, eager for a little Old World decadence.

  “I don’t know. We have a matinee tomorrow.” Georgie didn’t fault Kitty for supplementing her income. Anyone who had lived as she had knew you did what you must to pay the rent. But it made her uncomfortable all the same.

  “Here. Let me.” Kitty obligingly yanked the tapes of Georgie’s corset closed and began hooking up the back of her dress. Georgie’s dresser was meant to do that, but she had sloughed off the previous week, complaining about the size of her pay packet. They’d been playing to half-empty houses for the past six months, and it was beginning to show. They were already dressing themselves; they’d be making their own sets next. “I just need you to entertain the friend.”

  “What kind of entertainment?”

  “Nothing like that, I promise. It’s just a meal, that’s all.” Kitty hooked the last hook and stepped back, her eyes meeting Georgie’s in the mirror. “A girl needs to fill her stomach somehow.”

  And the show wouldn’t run much longer. Kitty didn’t need to say it. It was there in the dusty dressing room, in the empty seats out front, in the desperation beneath Kitty’s crooked smile.

  “All right,” said Georgie slowly. Champagne was better than stout any day, particularly if someone else was paying. A lady would blush at dining with strange men, would balk at the implied cheat of taking something for nothing. But she wasn’t a lady, was she? She was an actress. She showed her legs for a living. “Where are they taking us?”

  “The Criterion,” said Kitty with satisfaction.

  Georgie narrowed her eyes at her as she slid off the stool. “Let’s hope your American is as rich as you claim.”

  “Your American,” Kitty retorted. “I have my eye on the toff.”

  Georgie grabbed her old coat. “Whatever you say, Lady Kitty.”

  “Go on!” said Kitty, but the way she preened at the words made Georgie wish she’d kept her mouth shut. Kitty held out a flask to her. “Just a nip?”

  Kitty had taken a nip already. Georgie could smell the gin on her breath, gin and the cloves to hide it. Add a bit of orange peel and she’d smell like Christmas punch.

  It wasn’t an escape to which Georgie had resorted, not yet, but there were times when she understood the appeal of it, particularly now, with the chill of winter permeating the drafty back areas of the theater and the slush seeping through the thin soles of her boots.

  But they didn’t know these men.

  “I’d rather keep my wits about me.” Such as they were. But they’d got her this far, hadn’t they? She’d survived. There was something to be said for surviving.

  “Suit yourself.” Kitty took her nip and then another.

  Reluctantly, Georgie asked, “Had you ought to, Kit?”

  Kitty shrugged. “The cold gets in your bones, doesn’t it?”

  She shoved the flask back in the hidden pocket of her coat before pushing open the side door and tumbling out into the cold.

  Two men waited in the alley, tall hats pulled low over their brows, the points of their cigars glowing red in the gloom. Their heads were bent close together, their voices low. They appeared to be engaged in some sort of whispered dispute, all the more vehement for being so quiet.

  Georgie could feel the door handle cold and hard against her palm, the cold burning through her gloves.

  After all this time …

  She hadn’t thought about him in days, weeks, but he’d said he’d find her, hadn’t he? She knew that silhouette, she could see it beneath her eyelids when she went to bed at night, looming over her in the half-light, pressing her against the wall. That smell … the smell of bay rum cologne. The tall hat. The caped coat. That coat, flapping around his legs as he thrust against her. He hadn’t even bothered to take off his coat that day. She could still hear the susurration of it, back and forth, back and forth.

  Run, run, run, Georgie’s senses screamed. If she moved quickly, she could be away into the warren of corridors in the back of the theater, up into the machinery that skirted the stage. But she couldn’t seem to make her legs move.

  She could smell the tang of Kitty’s gin, the acrid reek of the men’s cigars. She could feel the pinch of a blister on her heel, the bruise on her side where she’d been hit by a piece of falling scenery. She was awake. Awake and frozen.

  Breathlessly, Kitty called, “I’ve brought her!”

  The two men turned, and Georgie’s breath came out in a rush that created a cloud in front of her face.

  It wasn’t Giles.

  This man was taller, broader, the hair beneath his hat fairer. It was a stranger who stood there. The shorter man tossed away his cigar, ground it beneath his heel, and sauntered forward to take Kitty’s hand. The other man stayed behind, in the shadows. Georgie could feel the clammy sweat in the small of her back, under her arms. She struggled to control her breathing. It was the caped coat that had made her imagine more. The caped coat and the red glow of a cigar in the gloom.

  It wasn’t Giles.

  It wasn’t Giles.

  In a Mayfair drawl, the man with the dark mustache pressed a kiss to the back of Kitty’s hand. “Madama Katerina.”

  “That’s Miss Frumley to you, my lord,” said Kitty with mock severity.

  Kitty’s real name wasn’t Frumley at all. It was, she had confided to Georgie, Potter. But Frumley sounded better on the bills in the front of the theater, more aristocratic, like those earls of what’s-their-name, and Georgie hadn’t the heart to tell Kitty that the family whose name she had borrowed spelled it Tholmondelay.

  “And this is Miss Evans.” Kitty displayed Georgie like a prize, dragging her unwillingly forward. “Georgie, this is Sir um—”

  “Hugo. Hugo Medmenham. You may call me … Sir Hugo.” With a mocking bow, he gestured towards his companion. “Ladies, may I present to you Mr. Bayard Van Duyvil, of our former colonies.”

  “Ladies,” murmured the man who wasn’t Giles. Now that he had stepped into the uneven light of the lamp over the stage door, Georgie could see that they were nothing alike. Tall, yes, and broad in the shoulders, but there any resemblance ended. Giles had affected long chestnut sideburns that curled beneath his ears, and a cavalryman’s mustache. This man was clean shaven, the lamplight making the fair hair that curled beneath his collar glow the color of old gold.

  But Georgie hung back all the same. Foolish as she knew it to be, the old fear still gripped her, tightening her chest, constricting her throat.

  It wasn’t Giles, she told herself again. It wasn’t Giles.

  Kitty lowered her lashes, speaking in tones
of exaggerated refinement that made Georgie wince for her friend. “Charmed, I’m sure.”

  Tucking her cold hands beneath her armpits, Georgie nodded curtly in greeting.

  Sir Hugo possessed himself of Kitty’s gloved fingers, drawing her to his side. “What are you waiting for, Van Duyvil? Do they not teach you manners in America? Miss Evans wants an escort.”

  Miss Evans did not, in fact, want anything of the kind. What Miss Evans wanted was to pull her hat down about her ears and walk as rapidly as she could to her boardinghouse. A free supper was one thing; Sir Hugo another. She’d heard of him before, the sort who still believed in the droit du seigneur. Toss a few coins on the bed afterwards and think the girl honored by his attentions. There’d never been charges brought—but there wouldn’t be, would there? The juries of the world were made of men. A man could hold his honor dear in masculine matters such as gambling debts and never mind that he left a trail of ruined women behind him.

  Men diced with coin; women diced with their lives.

  Kitty was already walking off ahead, her arm twined cozily with Sir Hugo’s, leaving Georgie no choice but to follow. Mr. Van Duyvil reluctantly extended his arm.

  Georgie placed her fingers gingerly on his sleeve. “I am afraid I didn’t quite catch your name, Mr.… Vandeville?”

  “Van Duyvil.” His voice was warm and rich, the vowels strange to Georgie’s ears. Strange, but not unpleasant. “It’s Dutch.”

  “Devil’s spawn,” contributed Sir Hugo with a grin. He leaned closer to Kitty, saying with mock solicitousness, “Don’t be alarmed, my dear. He seldom swallows more than one soul a night.”

  TWO

  London, 1894

  February

  The street was too narrow to walk all abreast; Georgie and the man who wasn’t Giles fell behind, walking in silence for several moments before Mr. Van Duyvil said quietly, “All that about the devil … you must forgive my friend. He didn’t mean to be blasphemous. I’m afraid he’s … well, not used to mixed company.”

  Not used to mixed company? Either Mr. Van Duyvil was very green or he thought she was.

  Georgie shrugged. “We’ve heard worse, Kitty and I. Shakespeare’s full of ribald humor.”

  “Country matters?” said the American.

  Oh, the phrase sounded innocent enough, but it didn’t fool Georgie for a minute. She’d acted that scene last year, Hamlet propositioning Ophelia in the crudest possible of ways. Subtle in the original; less subtle as it had been acted at the Ali Baba. She could still hear the catcalls from the audience, drunken gentlemen half tumbling from their boxes as they offered to take Hamlet’s place onstage.

  Of course, that had been when they’d still had gentlemen in the boxes, before the new musical comedies had begun stealing their audience and their income.

  Best to nip any country matters in the bud. Georgie quickened her pace, forcing the American to lengthen his stride in response. “As long as you’re not offering to put your head in my lap.”

  Mr. Van Duyvil ducked his chin into his collar. “I, er … no, it was just … er, Hamlet.”

  “A man who came to a bad end,” said Georgie pointedly.

  Mr. Van Duyvil looked down at her with interest. His eyes were a curious pale blue, like shadows on snow. “Would you say that? You could say it was a good end, avenging his father’s death.”

  Georgie snorted. “At the cost of all of Denmark? Not to mention his mother and his bride. Seems a bit much, doesn’t it?”

  Mr. Van Duyvil slowed his steps as he thought about it. “You could argue that he was expunging a stain—purging the corruption from society.”

  “By killing it off?” There was something heady about the way he was listening to her, really listening. “That’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater.”

  “Well … metaphorically.”

  “It’s hardly a metaphor when the stage is covered with bodies.”

  “The bodies of people who never were,” pointed out Mr. Van Duyvil. “It’s all a fiction.”

  “What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba, that he would weep for her?” quoted Georgie in exaggerated tones. “But he does weep for her, that’s the point.”

  “As I recall, that wasn’t quite the point—” Mr. Van Duyvil began, but Georgie swept his objections aside.

  “If the characters aren’t made real to you, if you don’t mourn for them when they fall, why watch the play?”

  “For the poetry?” A slow smile spread from Mr. Van Duyvil’s eyes down to his lips. “You are a passionate advocate for your art, Miss Evans.”

  And you, thought Georgie, are a far more accomplished flirt than you seem.

  “I was merely passing the time.” Georgie drew her arm from Mr. Van Duyvil’s, ostensibly to fix the angle of her hat. She looked up at him from under the brim. “I’m afraid we’ve been lumbered with each other, so we’d best make the best of it.”

  “I wouldn’t say—that is, I’m quite enjoying—” Mr. Van Duyvil’s eyes caught hers, and he made a helpless gesture. “This whole evening has been something quite out of the common. Hugo told me we were seeing Shakespeare.”

  Georgie smiled without humor. “And so it is—Shakespeare ground up like sausage and about as appetizing.”

  It was the Ali Baba’s specialty: Shakespeare with song, blank verse transformed into ribald rhymes, a nudge and a wink and a few bad puns. So far, Georgie had played Ophelia in a wetted slip, sighing and swooning across the battlements of Elsinore; Rosalind in breeches, strutting through the Forest of Arden; and a surprisingly musical Lady Macbeth, rending her bodice in strategic ways as she called upon the spirits to unsex her here.

  That had evoked a great deal of very predictable commentary from the stalls.

  “Just be grateful it wasn’t Macbeth,” said Georgie grimly. “You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen Birnham Wood showing its shimmy all the way to Dunsinane.”

  The skin around Mr. Van Duyvil’s eyes crinkled. “Isn’t it bad luck to say the name of the Scottish play?”

  “Did you think anything could make the Ali Baba much worse?”

  “I didn’t mean that the show wasn’t good. It was quite…”

  “Awful?”

  “I was going to say unique.” They walked in silence for a moment, before Mr. Van Duyvil ventured, “If you’ll forgive my asking … why Eleven and One Nights?”

  “The Grand Pajandrum—that’s Mr. Dunstan, the proprietor—thought it would be more likely to bring in the punters than Twelfth Night. Shades of Scheherazade and all that.”

  Mr. Van Duyvil looked down at her with new interest. “You’ve read the Thousand and One Nights?”

  “Bits of it.” Georgie wasn’t about to admit to reading. Men expected their chorus girls to conform to a pattern. It didn’t do to disrupt their thinking. Keep her head down and keep moving, that’s what she had learned. “Everyone was talking about it. You’ll have noticed the name of the theater?”

  “The name of the … oh.” Mr. Van Duyvil grinned sheepishly. “The Ali Baba. Of course.”

  “Instead of forty thieves, you only get your pocket picked by one—the ticket taker. Sorry. House joke.”

  “Mind the puddle.” Mr. Van Duyvil took her arm, guiding her away from a damp patch that was undoubtedly more than rainwater. His touch was gentle, respectful. He made her feel almost like the lady she might once have been.

  An illusion, like the stage on which they played. With murmured thanks, Georgie tucked her arm close to her side, wearing her coat like armor.

  Ahead of them, Kitty’s arm was entwined with Sir Hugo’s, his lips close to her ear as they made their progress down the ill-lit street. He was saying something about Deauville, and the races, and the beautiful people who filled the stands, his aristocratic drawl weaving webs of fancy around Kitty, a thousand and one tales of wonder. Although Georgie doubted Sir Hugo would keep her for the whole of one night, much less a thousand. That Kitty was caught, Georgie had no doubt. She could
see it shining in her eyes, glassy with gin and ambition.

  Oh, Kitty, thought Georgie. Kitty hadn’t got over the dream that her prince would come, would see her onstage and sweep her away to a life of riches and leisure, stretched out on a chaise longue with minions bustling about, bringing her bonbons. All it took was for one Gaiety Girl to marry a marquis and the entire chorus went broody.

  But the Ali Baba wasn’t the Gaiety.

  And Sir Hugo Medmenham was no prince.

  “What was that?” Mr. Van Duyvil was speaking, but she hadn’t marked him. Georgie gave her head a little shake. If Sir Hugo was suspect, then his friend must be as well, no matter how sympathetic he might seem. “Sorry. I was away with the fairies.”

  “That’s a different play, isn’t it?” The words were bantering, but the tone was gentle. Mr. Van Duyvil matched his stride to hers, keeping careful pace. “It’s no matter. I’d only asked if you had been at the Ali Baba long.”

  “Just over a year.” It had been a marked step up from her previous engagement, where she had been a member of a ragtag excuse for a chorus. “It’s hardly Drury Lane, but…”

  At least they don’t sell us with the tickets.

  That was what she had been about to say. But she caught herself in time. Just because Mr. Van Duyvil’s voice was kind, his demeanor respectful, didn’t mean it was safe to show a weakness. She’d met soft-spoken villains before, and not all on the stage.

  “It’s a pleasant enough place if you don’t mind the assault on the English language,” said Georgie flippantly. “Is this your first trip to London?”

  “It’s my first time abroad.” If Mr. Van Duyvil thought the change of subject odd, he didn’t comment on it. “You must think me very provincial.”

  “No more provincial than any Londoner. We’re none of us worldly here.” In the quiet side street, her voice sounded too brassy, too strident, a caricature of what she pretended to be. “Where are you from, when you’re at home?”

  “New York. We’ve been there since old Peter Stuyvesant, over two hundred years.” Mr. Van Duyvil gestured at the curve of the street, the soot-grimed façades of houses that looked as though they had been there from time immemorial. “That mustn’t sound like much to you.”