The English Wife: A Novel

by Lauren Willig

  He sounded sincere, but Janie knew by now that that was no guarantee. “You might have provided the information for it.”

  “And left my name off the byline? I’d be handing a prime piece to someone else. That’s not ambition, that’s foolishness.”

  “Unless you thought you might get still more out of it.”

  He looked puzzled for a moment until realization dawned. “By winning your confidence back?”

  Janie folded her arms across her chest. “Yes. You said it yourself. It’s foolish to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

  And she had been foolish to bring back that night. The memory of it, of their kiss, was a tangible thing between them.

  Mr. Burke dropped his head into his hands, rubbing his temples with his gloved fingers. “I’ve really made a botch of this, haven’t I? For what it’s worth, I’ve recused myself. I’ve asked to be assigned to another story.”

  The sounds of the people stampeding into the courtroom muted into a distant hum. “Why would you do that?”

  Burke lifted his head, his expression rueful. “Because I don’t know how else to prove to you that my intentions are pure.”

  “Your intentions were never pure,” said Janie in frustration. “I always knew that you were helping me for your own gain. That didn’t matter. What mattered was—”

  What mattered was that she had trusted him. She had trusted him, and he had lied to her.

  “Yes?” Burke prompted.

  Janie pressed her eyes shut. “That we were working together, for a common end. Truth. You were the one who suggested it, Mr. Burke, not I. I never wanted you to suppress the truth. As long as it was truth you were telling.”

  Mr. Burke’s face was pale above his muffler. “You can’t think I would have manipulated the facts for my own vengeance?”

  Janie couldn’t keep the hurt from creeping into her voice. “Why not? You lied to me from the first.”

  Burke tucked his chin into his muffler. “I didn’t lie, exactly. I only … omitted.” When Janie gave him a look, he said quietly, “I wouldn’t have doctored the evidence. You may not believe it of a mere journalist, but I do take pride in what I do. There’s honor even among thieves. And reporters.”

  “There you are.” The silence was shattered by the clack of heels and the swish of several petticoats over the floorboards. Janie turned quickly to face Anne, but not quickly enough to head her off. Anne sailed towards them, still talking. “I was afraid we were going to have another body. And you are?”

  “Anne,” said Janie with resignation. “I believe you know Mr. James Burke? Once of Daly’s Theatre.”

  “You? But … you’ve changed.” Anne looked her onetime lover up and down. “The last time I saw you, you were in tights and a doublet.”

  “Not exactly practical for this weather.” Burke inclined his chin. “Mrs. Newland.”

  “So formal, Mr. Burke?”

  “It’s a bit late for auld lang syne.” Janie noticed that Burke looked at her as he said it, not Anne.

  Anne determined to get his attention back. “Do you still act?”

  “Only for private parties,” said Burke shortly. “In a strictly unofficial capacity. Just ask your cousin.”

  Anne’s eyes narrowed. She stepped between Janie and Burke. “If you thought to tease my cousin into providing you with a story, you’re wasting your time. Janie has nothing to tell you.”

  Janie wasn’t sure whether to feel protected or insulted. With Anne, it might be either.

  Burke folded his arms across his chest. “On the contrary. I find Miss Van Duyvil’s conversation most enlightening.” His face softened as he looked at Janie. “I’ve learned a great deal about my own shortcomings.”

  Janie shook her head at him, taking Anne by the arm. “We should go back, Anne.”

  Anne ignored her. “What did she tell you? Nothing of any note. If you want scandal, you’d do better to talk to me.”

  Burke looked at Anne for a long time, but it wasn’t a lover’s gaze. “I had thought you Van Duyvils banded together.”

  Anne’s laugh had no humor in it. “You forget. I’m not a Van Duyvil. Aunt Alva is my mother’s sister.” Her face twisted as if she were looking into a distorted mirror. “She ruined my father and stole his house. And my future with it, but who’s keeping count?”

  “How can you tell what your future might have been?” Janie demanded with exasperation. “Anything might have happened, good or bad. We can’t presume it would have been better simply because it didn’t happen.”

  “The grass is always greener. It’s the human condition to romanticize what we can’t have.” Burke looked at Anne. “Most of which we wouldn’t want if we got it.”

  Anne’s lips thinned. “Really, Janie, I would think you would know better to stand out here talking to the press.” Turning, she uttered her parting salvo. “If you don’t care what happened to Bay, I do.”

  The sound of her footsteps echoed down the corridor. Even knowing Anne as she did, the words hit Janie hard. It was easy to forget that this was about Bay. He had always been so absent even in his presence, a voice in a distant room.

  She had enlisted Burke’s aid to clear Bay’s name, but how long had it been since she had considered Bay? The truth was that she had become swept up in the challenge, in the excitement of it. In Burke.

  Janie gathered up her skirts. “I should be getting back.”

  “Wait.” Burke made as if to reach for her arm, then let his hand drop. “She only said it to hurt you. It’s my fault. I provoked her.”

  Janie shook her head. “She means it. She loved Bay.”

  “Did she?” Something in Burke’s voice brought Janie’s head up. He was looking down the hallway, his expression thoughtful. “You know what they say. Love is a first cousin to hate. By her own testimony, your cousin was the one who set you looking for Mr. and Mrs. Van Duyvil.”

  “What are you implying?”

  “Hell hath no fury?”

  It would be less alarming if there weren’t a ring of truth about it. “A cliché isn’t an answer.”

  Burke raised a brow. “That’s not a cliché. That’s Shakespeare.”

  Janie narrowed her eyes at him. “Taken out of context.”

  “Try it this way, then. In context, as it were. How much does your cousin hate your family?”

  “Not at all, I would have said,” said Janie slowly. “She loved Bay. She … she spars with my mother, but that’s not to be wondered at. My mother holds the purse strings, and Anne doesn’t like being told what to do.” Or, rather, Anne liked doing exactly what she’d been told not to do. It was as impossible to imagine Anne without opposition as it was to imagine Bay in a temper. Anne always had a grievance; Bay never raised his voice. Was that true? Or was it only what she had assumed about them? “I could see Anne flying into a rage and flinging something at Bay, but killing him…”

  “One blow, the medical examiner said. It needn’t have been intentional.”

  Anne, grabbing Bay’s dagger in a fit of rage, pointing it at him, shocked and horrified when it penetrated cloth and flesh. Yes, Janie could see that.

  Janie rested a gloved hand against the scarred paint of the wall, tracing the contours of a stain. “When we were children, Anne broke a vase. She hid the pieces, and then, when they were found, she tried to blame a maid.”

  “What happened?”

  “The maid was dismissed.” Janie’s lips pressed together. “Mother knew, but…”

  “It was easier to blame the maid?”

  “Yes.” It took a moment for Janie to remember to whom she was speaking. Anne had been responsible for Burke’s shame, his loss of livelihood, while she had gone blithely on to marry one of the most eligible men in New York. What better vengeance than to see her jailed for murder? Janie rested her temple against the wall, feeling impossibly weary. “I shouldn’t be saying any of this to you. You would think I would have learned my lesson by now, wouldn’t you?”
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br />   “You’re talking to me because you have no one else to talk to. Don’t think I delude myself that it’s otherwise.” Quietly, Burke added, “You’re being more generous with your cousin than she would with you. She’s jealous of you, you know.”

  “Of me? Hardly.”

  Burke straightened, pushing away from the wall. “Why do you think she went to such lengths to annex Teddy Newland? Not for love, I’m guessing. It’s because his name was coupled with yours.”

  “You’ve got it backwards. Teddy—” Burke lifted his brows at her casual use of the name. Janie lifted her chin. “Teddy fell in love with Anne. Men tend to do that.”

  “Not all of us.” At Janie’s look, Burke said, “She’s like smallpox. I’ve been exposed.”

  Janie was surprised into laughter. She turned it into a cough. “Then what am I? Measles?”

  “Nothing so mundane.” To her surprise, Mr. Burke lifted her hand and carried it to his lips in the European fashion. “You, Miss Van Duyvil, are plague. Utterly incurable.”

  It was insulting. It was dreadful. It was the most romantic thing she had ever heard.

  “Thank you. I think.” Just managing not to smile, Janie said, as drily as she could, “If you’re trying to charm me into complaisance, you might want to attempt something a trifle more lyrical.”

  “I wouldn’t try to cozen you with verse. You’d see through me in an instant.” Mr. Burke looked at her ruefully. “You already have.”

  Was that an admission? Janie was having trouble keeping up with what was real and what wasn’t. It was infuriating that someone should appear so trustworthy by admitting to being untrustworthy.

  She straightened her back and lifted her chin. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I’ve learned my lesson, Mr. Burke.”

  “So have I.” The mocking note was gone from his voice. Looking down at his gloved hands, Burke spoke with difficulty. “I shouldn’t have kept the truth from you. I didn’t know you. And then—by the time I did know you enough to care—I cared too much to tell you. I meant it. About admiring you. That wasn’t a lie.”

  “Court is returning to session.” The bailiff was prowling the hall, rousting out stragglers. “Court is returning to session.”

  Janie gathered her worsted skirts. “I should go.”

  “You should,” agreed Burke. Janie turned to go, but his voice followed her, hoarse, painful. “Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?”

  Janie hesitated. Then she said, decisively, “Don’t recuse yourself.”

  Burke blinked at her. “What?”

  She might not trust his emotions, but she believed him when he said that his work mattered to him. And this is what they had set out to do, wasn’t it?

  “Find the truth,” said Janie. “And publish it.”

  A pirate’s grin spread across Burke’s face. “For you, Miss Van Duyvil? With pleasure.”

  “Not for me,” said Janie. “For Bay.”

  She turned and walked back to the courtroom, hoping her mother wouldn’t notice how long she had been gone.

  TWENTY

  Cold Spring, 1898

  November

  “Mother Van Duyvil. What an unexpected pleasure.”

  The rain fell outside the parlor window in a grim drip. Ordinarily, Georgie loved the parlor at Duyvil’s Kill, with its pier glasses topped by eagles, the simple white of the woodwork, the peaceful gray of the walls, but today it felt grim and dark, and, with Mrs. Van Duyvil in it, far too small.

  It was the first time Mrs. Van Duyvil had graced them with her presence in Cold Spring, and it wasn’t to visit her grandchildren.

  Without preamble, she seated herself in a chair covered with needlepoint worked by a long-ago Van Duyvil. “You have that architect living with you.”

  “I’ll call for tea, shall I?” said Georgie. “Did you want to see Mr. Pruyn about a commission? Bay has been wondering when you intend to move uptown.”

  “I don’t,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil shortly. She waited, with ill grace, while Georgie gave instructions to Mrs. Gerritt’s niece for tea and biscuits to be brought. As soon as the door had closed behind the maid, she said, “People are talking.”

  “They do tend to do that. Particularly on wet days.” Georgie seated herself across from Mrs. Van Duyvil, her simple wool skirt and white shirtwaist in marked contrast to Mrs. Van Duyvil’s plum grosgrain. Some beauties faded when they reached middle age; others hardened. Mrs. Van Duyvil was the latter type, the good looks of her youth ossified into a sort of armor.

  Upstairs, there was a crash and a wail. Mrs. Gerritt had assured Georgie that all three-and-a-half-year-olds had the devil in them, but sometimes it seemed like the devil had decided to make their home his own special project, particularly on wet days when the twins couldn’t get outside.

  Bay’s mother would have to call on a wet day.

  Mrs. Van Duyvil looked at Georgie. Georgie looked at Mrs. Van Duyvil. They regarded each other with mutual dissatisfaction.

  “If you’ve come to see Bay, I’m afraid you’ve missed him. It’s his day to go into town.”

  “I know,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil with a magisterial dignity that turned it from a simple statement of fact into a divine pronouncement. Omniscience apparently went along with the pedigree.

  Georgie made a mental note to contract the grippe right around Christmas.

  The silence lengthened. The rain continued to plop against the sill, the fire to pop and crackle in the grate.

  “Would you like to see the children?” Georgie offered.

  “You can have them brought down if you like,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil, as one prepared to humor the feeble. “Later.”

  “Bast is the very image of Bay,” Georgie offered, wondering how long it could possibly take to make a pot of tea and, following that, how long to drink it.

  “I should hope so.” Mrs. Van Duyvil lowered her chin and fixed Georgie with an ominous stare, like a rain cloud about to burst. Georgie stifled a sigh. Best to get it over with. “Do you know what people are saying about you and Mr. Pruyn?”

  “No,” said Georgie frankly, “but I can imagine.”

  Mrs. Van Duyvil must have been expecting a very different sort of reaction. Forgive me, for I have sinned? A swoon and a cry of Alas!? Georgie didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed.

  Mercifully, the door opened, and Molly tottered in with the tea tray. “Thank you, Molly. You can put it just there.” To Mrs. Van Duyvil, Georgie said, “I don’t bother myself about gossip. What is it that they call it? The last resort of the idle? I’m surprised that you pay attention to such things, Mother Van Duyvil.”

  “This,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil with frigid dignity, “was brought to my attention.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Georgie. “People do like to make trouble, don’t they? I shouldn’t worry myself about it if I were you. One lump or two?”

  “You do not seem to realize the gravity of your position.”

  “No,” agreed Georgie, “I don’t. People gossip. It’s what they do. I have no control over wagging tongues. They’re more to be pitied than censured, really.”

  When Bay came back from town, Georgie promised herself, she was going to let him know that next time he could deal with his mother himself. Although, she thought wryly, that was highly unlikely. Mrs. Van Duyvil appeared to have both her offspring hypnotized, like a snake with a charmer. If the snake were to take charge of the charmer, that was.

  Mrs. Van Duyvil recovered herself. “Those tongues wouldn’t wag, as you so inelegantly put it, if you hadn’t provided them the means. Living out here—”

  “In my husband’s ancestral home?” interjected Georgie.

  “—shunning society, entertaining your lovers under my son’s very roof.” Mrs. Van Duyvil was somewhat stunted in her oration by the cup of tea thrust in her direction. It was very hard to rant while accepting a cup of tea. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Georgie took a sip of
her own tea. It was too weak. It was always too weak. She blamed it on the Revolution. Since the Boston Tea Party, the Americans had apparently been conserving their tea leaves. “Lovers? I had thought I was only meant to be cuckolding my husband with Mr. Pruyn.”

  Mrs. Van Duyvil frowned at her. “That’s beside the point.”

  “I should have thought it was very much the point. If there’s a parade of men trooping through my bed, I should like to know who they are. So, I imagine,” she added thoughtfully, turning her teacup this way and that to admire the blue painting on the old Delftware, “would Bay, given that he shares that bed.”

  On some nights, at least. And only to sleep.

  “He would,” said Georgie, “be very surprised to find company there.”

  “There is,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil frostily, “no need to be vulgar.”

  “Isn’t there? Some are born vulgar, some become vulgar, and some have vulgarity thrust upon them. In my case”—Georgie gave up all pretense of civility—“you might say that it was brought to my attention.”

  Mrs. Van Duyvil breathed in deeply through her nose. It was really rather impressive watching her take control of her temper, settle her face in its accustomed lines. “I understand,” she said in a tone of forced benevolence, “that you were not born to our society.”

  “No,” said Georgie, picking up the blue-and-white plate. “I was born to a much older one. Biscuit?”

  Mrs. Van Duyvil ignored her and the biscuits. “Had you placed yourself under my tutelage, I might have schooled you in the behavior appropriate to Bayard’s wife.”

  Georgie tried not to choke on the crumbs of her biscuit. Behavior appropriate to Bayard’s wife? Her mother-in-law hadn’t the least idea.

  “Ours is a very small world,” Mrs. Van Duyvil was saying, “a small and select one. The old families are meant to set an example. We have a position to maintain. I should have thought that Bay would have explained that to you before you married.”

  He had. Not in those words, however.

  “You forget, Mother Van Duyvil. My family held their lands long before this country was even thought of.” Georgie could feel Annabelle coming upon her, Annabelle in all her pride. She sat very straight in her chair, her chin up at Annabelle’s angle, her voice, her posture, everything the image of Annabelle outraged. “A Lacey signed the Magna Carta.”