The English Wife: A Novel

by Lauren Willig

  “Some privilege,” said Georgie gruffly, closer to breaking than she wanted to admit. All she wanted was to turn her face into his waistcoat, sink into the warmth of him. She held herself rigid.

  Bay gave her elbow a squeeze. “Won’t you let me be the judge of that?”

  They emerged at Aldford Street. Bay snapped his fingers at a hansom, handing Georgie in over the wheel before climbing in beside her. Georgie held to the strap and peered out the window at the park, at the flower sellers and the children with their hoops, the Americans wearing the wrong sort of clothes. The normalcy of the scene ought to have belied her fears, but it only made it worse. At night, in the dark, she might have dismissed Giles as fancy. But not here in the sunshine, where the children played, where nightmares weren’t meant to come true.

  She had spent years looking over her shoulder for Giles, but London was a large city, a place where people could lose themselves. And Giles would never think, never imagine, that she might go on the stage. Giles had never been a particularly imaginative man. She’d known that, even at the height of her infatuation, when he was new to the abbey, a welcome addition to the confines of their small society.

  He had been with a woman. An heiress? It should have occurred to her that sooner or later Giles would come to London to try his chances on the great marriage market. He had a high opinion of his own face and form, which, coupled with the charms of Lacey Abbey, might win him a woman to replace what he felt Annabelle had unjustly stolen from him, the money sitting untouched and untouchable in Annabelle’s name.

  The hack lurched to a stop on the strand, near the D’Oyly Carte Theatre.

  “Why are we stopping? What is it?” Georgie tried not to let anxiety course through her. It might be a hundred things, from a balky horse to a basket of apples fallen in the street.

  She swayed as the cab made a sharp turn, following another taxi into the narrow turning circle in front of the Savoy Hotel.

  “I have rooms at the Savoy. I thought”—Bay looked at her and almost faltered, then soldiered on—“I thought you might be safer here. This was a fortress once, didn’t you know? If it was good enough for John of Gaunt…”

  Georgie had meant to say something flippant, something about her reputation, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, she said, in a low voice, “There’s no need for you to be mired in this. You’ve done more than you ought.”

  Bay’s hand half reached for hers, then fell away. “You’ve had a shock,” he said, and the concern in his voice sapped her to the core. “Have a brandy, at least.”

  “I—”

  “Would you like me to drive on?” called the cab driver. “There’s two others waiting behind me.”

  “No,” said Bay, just as Georgie said, “Yes.”

  Giles had been a soldier once. He had seen little action, but he had kept himself fit, shooting, riding, fencing. He might appear idle on first glance, but Georgie knew him to be ruthless where his own interests were concerned, a ruthlessness made all the deadlier by the lack of thought that accompanied it.

  If Bay stood in his path, Giles would strike first and think of the consequences later.

  Mustering all her strength, Georgie said, “I would prefer that you drop me at my lodgings. I’d like … I’d like to rest. I’ve had too much sun, I think.”

  With absolute certainty, Bay said, “You’re planning to run.”

  Georgie’s fingers knotted in the folds of her skirt. “Why do you say that?”

  Bay’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “Because I know you.”

  “You’ve known me for three months!”

  “Isn’t that enough?” he said, and there was both resignation and humor in his voice, a rueful acceptance of forces beyond his control. How could she argue with him? It was true; she felt that she knew him better in three months than she would have known most people in three years. “If you must run, at least let me help you. Please.”

  “All right.” Georgie gave him her arm and let him help her down, feeling her resolve eroded by small steps, first the hack, now this. What next? It wasn’t the big decisions that set the course of one’s life; it was the slow accretion of all the little ones. She hung back as Bay handed the fare and a generous tip to the cabbie. “What will the people at the hotel think?”

  Bay wrinkled his nose at her. “Do you care?”

  “I care for you.” It had come out wrong. Georgie kept her head down as they entered through the oak doors. “I meant, your reputation matters more than mine. What if one of your American friends hears?”

  “You mean like the Rheinlanders?” The lobby was bright with electric lights, making the gold-rimmed mirrors and equally gilded hotel patrons glitter and sparkle. Georgie felt unspeakably drab amid the American opulence of the hotel. “Jock will clap me on the shoulder and call me a sly dog, and Carrie will send letters round to all her friends with thinly veiled comments about continental dissipation.”

  Georgie felt her dusty half boots sinking into thick carpet. “What about your mother?”

  An expression of unwonted cynicism passed across Bay’s face. “She’ll complain about European manners but secretly be delighted I’m more of a man than my father.”

  “Was that why—”

  “Was that why what?” Bay turned to the man at the desk. “Room 618.”

  Why he had cultivated the acquaintance of Sir Hugo, Georgie had almost asked. An attempt to prove his manliness, to please his mother, even in the most roundabout way.

  Georgie looked down at her plain cotton gloves. “Never mind.”

  She was distracting herself, clutching at irrelevancies to blunt her fears. Was it the doors of the electric lift closing behind them that gave every action such a sense of inevitability? Or merely the meeting with Giles, heightening her senses, turning her from a reasoning, thinking person into a hunted animal, seeing a threat in everything and everyone?

  This was Bay, she reminded herself as the lift rose upwards. Bay. Whose one license, in three months, was to hold her hand in the park. He wasn’t Giles; surely, no one could act as Bay had been acting and not betray some flaw in the performance. Even the most patient of roués tended to give some signal of his intentions.

  But they hadn’t been alone before.

  Bay turned the key in the lock of his room, revealing a sitting room with yellow upholstered furniture and a window with the drapes looped back, framing the Thames in all its glory. A door stood ajar, providing a glimpse of a baronial bed, luxurious with pillows. Bay shut the door between the rooms, and Georgie felt herself let out the breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding.

  Their eyes met across the room.

  “What about that brandy, then?” Georgie demanded.

  Brazen was safe. Brazen made people think you were worldly. Sometimes, she envied Kitty, who had been taught to fight for herself from the moment she was born, clawing her way from the cradle. Georgie had been raised as a lady, which, she had learned, was of very little use outside the drawing room.

  “Straight or with water?” asked Bay solemnly, but there was something in his eyes that made Georgie turn away and look out at the sun on the water and the graceful arches of Waterloo Bridge.

  “Any which way.” She braced her palms on the windowsill, her gloves grimy and cheap against the gleaming woodwork. The Savoy had only been built four years ago, and everything seemed expensive and new. Rather like Bayard Van Duyvil. He belonged in this sort of room. She didn’t. Turning, Georgie took a deep breath and accepted a broad-bellied brandy glass. “Bottoms up.”

  She took a small sip, holding the liquid on her tongue, feeling the sting of it beneath the sweetness.

  Bay held the glass in the palm of his hand, letting his skin warm the bowl. He stood a safe distance away, by the fireplace in which no coal burned. “What do you intend?”

  Georgie seated herself carefully in a well-upholstered armchair. “I had thought I might go to Edinburgh. They have theaters there, I’m sure. Or there�
��s Paris. I can speak French—after a fashion. It’s better than my Italian, in any event.”

  “Is it worth it?” Bay set down his brandy on a small table.

  Georgie stared down at her own drink, feeling the sting at the back of her eyes, the hard lump in her throat. “It’s better than finding out the alternative.”

  Bay sank to the ground beside her chair, folding his long legs under him. Georgie could feel the tug as the hem of her skirt was trapped beneath his knee. “Why are you so afraid of him?”

  Georgie yanked her skirt free. “I … I balked Giles of something he wanted once. He’s not a man who forgives easily.”

  Bay didn’t say anything. He just waited, looking up at her.

  Georgie clutched her brandy snifter between her palms. “Giles wanted to marry Annabelle. The estate didn’t pay for itself, but there was some money, from Annabelle’s mother—”

  Georgie broke off, forcing herself to be honest, to give credit where it was due, even if it cut her to the core. It would be so much easier to brand Giles a villain, black to the core, but it was never that simple, was it?

  She looked at Bay with haunted eyes. “It wasn’t just the money. I think he really fancied himself in love with Annabelle. In his way.”

  A dangerous, grasping sort of love, about catching and possessing. Annabelle was to be his prize as much as his wife. At least, as long as the attraction lasted. Giles was the sort who grabbed at toys and broke them when he got bored.

  “I take it that, er, Annabelle didn’t want him?” Bay’s voice was gentle, undemanding.

  “No.” Georgie’s voice was hoarse. “No, she didn’t.”

  She had gone over it again and again, endlessly, wondering what would have happened if they’d all just given in, if Annabelle had married Giles.

  But she couldn’t. It couldn’t have happened any way other than the way it had. The story played itself out, again and again, and it always ended the same way, like a demonstration of the ruin of Pompeii.

  “I think I can guess what happened next.” There was a quiet anger in Bay’s voice that hadn’t been there before. “Mr. Lacey didn’t take no for an answer. He came after you. And you’ve been running from him ever since. Is that right?”

  Georgie tried to speak, but her lips wouldn’t move. She nodded dumbly.

  The back of her head, banging against the wall; the frantic whinnying of her mare, fighting to be free of her stall; dust and hay and the taste of blood in her mouth.

  Tears ran soundlessly down her cheeks, making wet tracks down her face, onto the bodice of her dress. Georgie tried to swipe them away, but they kept falling, falling like rain.

  “Georgie.” She couldn’t see Bay, but she could feel his hands, gently, removing the brandy snifter from hers, and the small clink as he set it down. “Georgie. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

  Georgie choked on a hiccup. “You don’t really believe that.”

  It was just the sort of thing everyone said. Of course Giles could hurt her. She’d always been small, small and slight. She’d never really thought of it, though, never reckoned her character in terms of size, until Giles had forced her to realize her own weakness, the limits of her own strength.

  Bay put a handkerchief into her hand, the linen crisp beneath her fingers, laundered and starched. It seemed almost a shame to soil it with her tears.

  “Thank you,” Georgie managed. There was a monogram on the handkerchief; she could feel the intertwined letters beneath her fingers. She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to get control of herself. “You’re right, I suppose. He can’t hurt me if he can’t find me.”

  “He can’t hurt you if you’re married to me.” Bay rose to his knees before her chair. “Marry me, Georgie.”

  Georgie struggled to sit upright, losing Bay’s handkerchief in the folds of her skirt. The tears were still blurring her eyes; she could see a kaleidoscope of Bay’s, all spinning this way and that, blond and blurry. “Don’t be daft.”

  “I mean it, Georgie.” Bay retrieved the handkerchief and handed it to her. Georgie received it in numb fingers. “Marry me. He can’t hurt you then.”

  Georgie pushed back as far as she could in the chair, trying to keep herself detached, to stay away. Her hand clenched around Bay’s handkerchief. “You’re wasted on the modern age. You should have been at Arthur’s court.”

  “It’s not chivalry.” Bay sat back on his knees, tilting his head back to look up at her. Georgie had to fight with herself not to lean forward, not to smooth the tousled hair back from his brow. “I’m being selfish, not noble. When I’m with you, the rest of the world falls away. New York can sink into the harbor, London can be swept into the Thames—none of it matters.” He grimaced. “I’m putting it very badly, aren’t I? I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to give you up. And there’s really only one way to make sure that I keep you with me.”

  Marriage. For a moment, Georgie let herself be swept away by the dream of it, orange blossoms and old lace.

  She pressed her eyes close together, feeling the sting of old tears, her throat scratchy and dry. “You’re a Van Duyvil. You can’t marry a chorus girl.”

  “But you’re not really, are you?”

  Georgie made a noise that was half-laugh, half-hiccup. “You’ve seen me onstage. In breeches. You know exactly what I am.”

  “Yes, I do.” Gently, Bay took both her hands in his. “You don’t need to pretend with me, Annabelle.”

  Pain began to throb in Georgie’s temples; her tongue felt thick and fuzzy. “Why did you call me that?”

  Bay squeezed her hands tenderly. “You don’t need to pretend with me. I guessed your secret long ago. I’ve known almost from the beginning.”

  “My secret.” Georgie could feel her pupils dilating, her eyes going black.

  “You gave yourself away from the first time you said Annabelle Lacey,” explained Bay earnestly. “Every time you said the name, there was a catch, as though you needed to be reminded that she was meant to be someone else. And then there was your voice, your manner, the way you looked when you spoke of Lacey Abbey…”

  “I told you”—Georgie felt as though she were choking on the sea of words, fighting her way up through an undertow—“I was Annabelle’s companion. I was raised with her.”

  “Georgie! Don’t look like that.” Bay was chafing her wrists, concern in his blue eyes, eyes like a cloudless sky. How could he understand what she was, what she had done? “Do you really think I would unmask you? I didn’t say it to alarm you, only to let you know … well, that I know. That I’m in your corner.”

  “I don’t—I can’t—I’m not Annabelle.” Her voice came out as a croak. Georgie didn’t blame Bay for looking skeptical. It wasn’t the most convincing negation. “Annabelle is gone. Don’t you understand? Annabelle is gone.”

  Bay rose slowly to his feet, looking down at her. She had forgotten how tall he was; she had come to think of him as a mind, rather than a body. “Are you afraid your cousin will find you?”

  “He’s not … I’m not … he is my cousin, yes, but—”

  Only on the wrong side of the blanket.

  The words wouldn’t come; she couldn’t choke them out.

  Bay put a soothing hand on her shoulder. “He can’t do anything to you once you’ve married me.”

  Georgie lurched away, laughing a laugh that had more than a touch of hysteria in it. “Is that your feudal Dutch ancestors speaking?”

  Bay took a step back, looking at her with such tenderness and pity that Georgie wanted to rend her hair and scream. “It’s common sense. Whatever he may have done in the past, he won’t risk an incident with the wife of a wealthy foreigner. You’ll be Mrs. Bayard Van Duyvil, under the protection of the United States of America.”

  “A whole country to protect me?” Her voice was harsh, mocking. She knew she was being ungracious, but the alternative was worse. “What do you get out of this? I’m damaged goods, however you look at
it.”

  “Not to me.” Bay stayed where he was, a full yard away, his hands hanging loose at his sides, but his look felt like a touch. “When you talk to me, I know you’re talking to me. You don’t look past me and see my mother or my name. You don’t giggle or simper or pretend to opinions you don’t have simply to please me.”

  “Are you saying,” said Georgie, “that you like me because I insult you?”

  Bay took a half step closer and caught himself, his hands clenching at his sides. “I like you because you’re you. Because you’re not afraid to say what you mean. Because there’s no pretense about you.”

  “Oh, Bay.” Georgie choked on something that wasn’t quite a sigh and wasn’t quite a sob. “I’m nothing but pretense. I told you that when we met.”

  It seemed like a lifetime ago, that horrible night on that miserably cold walk to the Criterion with Kitty simpering up at Sir Hugo and Bay a stranger beside her. It was incredible that there had been a time when she hadn’t known every shade of emotion on this man’s face, every timbre of his voice, when she couldn’t anticipate his words before her own.

  “I think,” said Bay softly, “that you are the truest person I have ever met.”

  Georgie closed her eyes against the sting of tears. “You’re feeling sorry for me, that’s all. In the morning, tomorrow, you’ll think better of it all. I won’t be your ruin, Bay. I won’t.”

  “You’re not my ruin. You’re my—”

  “Millstone?” Georgie provided, with gallows humor. “Your doom?”

  “The doom of the Van Duyvils?” The corners of Bay’s eyes crinkled. It was an expression that was so uniquely his: humor and patience and a certain wry resignation that sat oddly with his golden charm. “Never that, Georgie. You’re not my millstone or my doom. But I would be proud to call you my wife. If you’d have me.”

  If she would have him? He had it the wrong way around.

  Georgie placed her palms flat on the upholstered arms of the chair, using her arms to lever herself to her feet. “It’s a beautiful dream, Bay,” she said, and every word hurt. It hurt to kill a dream, like tearing the petals off a rose in full bloom. But what if the plant was diseased? What then? “But even if all else weren’t as it is … it wouldn’t work, Bay.”