The English Wife: A Novel

by Lauren Willig

  Georgie reached for her husband, and he stepped back, away from her. She felt something in her chest turn to ash, like the coals on the hearth.

  Why was it always like this? Why, why, why? Always apologizing for not being Annabelle, for being the lesser one, for wanting anything of her own.

  Georgie’s voice rose. “I might have been Annabelle, if circumstances had been different. We had the same father and the same upbringing. My mother just lacked the marriage lines.”

  Bay’s Adam’s apple moved up and down. He pressed his eyes closed and then said hoarsely, “Who else knows?”

  Georgie swallowed a wave of hurt. That wasn’t what she’d wanted; she’d wanted Bay to fold her in his arms and press her head to his chest and tell her not to worry, that a name was just a name, that she was the one he cared for, that he would make it all better. That he loved her, whoever she might be.

  Georgie forced her lips to move. “Giles Lacey. He came because of David.”

  And wasn’t that something? She wasn’t the only one who had omitted the truth. But Bay didn’t seem to realize the parallels. “Will he expose you?”

  “He says he will.” There was only a yard between them, but Bay felt a very long way away. “But, Bay, I don’t see how. It’s just his word against ours. Who would believe him?”

  “Unless he can find proof.”

  “What sort of proof? Our nurse used to say she could only tell us apart when she saw us side by side. Even if someone were to see me—someone who knew us both—it’s been seven years, Bay! I’ve changed. Annabelle will have changed, too. Why couldn’t I be Annabelle now? Even if someone had pictures of us both … who’s to say which is which now?”

  “Pictures,” Bay muttered, a strange expression crossing his face. He turned on his heel without another word, moving rapidly from the room.

  Georgie hurried after him. “Bay, wait—”

  But it wasn’t the stairs he was heading for, it was their old bedroom. Georgie felt her chest constrict at the onslaught of memories, the way Bay had rubbed her feet when she was heavy with the twins; the way he had cradled her and read her poetry by the light of a single candle when their stirring and kicking had meant that she couldn’t sleep, and Bay had said if she wasn’t sleeping, then he couldn’t either. Until he had fallen asleep, that was.

  “Bay,” began Georgie, thinking of everything they had shared, of the children. “We can make this right—I’m sure we can.”

  “That’s what I’m doing,” said Bay tersely, dropping to his knees and pulling out a box from underneath the bed. It was an old hatbox filled with a miscellany of papers and photographs. He brushed past her, the hatbox round in his arms. “Making this right.”

  He was making back for the nursery, for the warmth of the nurse’s room, where the coals cracked and popped on the grate.

  “What are those?” Georgie asked breathlessly, half tripping on her skirt as she stumbled after him, trying to close the distance.

  “Proof,” said Bay in a clipped voice, and before she could stop him, he dropped a handful of papers on the grate.

  Georgie coughed at the acrid smell as the photograph paper caught fire. She could see her own face begin to blacken and curl.

  “Bay!” She lunged for the grate, but her husband caught her by the wrist. Papers scattered.

  “Don’t you see?” Bay’s strong arm was between her and the grate, and Georgie could hear the desperation in his voice, the fear. “It’s the only way to make it go away. If he doesn’t have any pictures, he can’t compare them.”

  Georgie smacked hard against his chest. That had been a picture of them both with the twins, her babies when they were still small enough to be held one in each arm, gone, gone up in smoke as though it never was.

  “And what about me, Bay?” She smacked him again, her eyes blurred with tears. “How do you make me go away?”

  “I’m not trying to make you go away.” Releasing her, Bay sat down heavily on the bed, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  “Then what’s all—” Georgie gestured wordlessly at the floor. The debris of their life together lay scattered around her feet. A playbill from the Ali Baba, a photograph of her archery triumph that first summer at Newport. “You can’t make the past five years go away by throwing them on the fire. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “I wasn’t trying to get rid of the past five years. I just wanted—”

  “What?”

  “What else am I supposed to do, Georgie? How else am I supposed to fix this?” Bay lifted his head and looked at her helplessly. “I don’t know what to do, Georgie. I don’t know what else to do.”

  Georgie looked at his bewildered face, feeling as though she’d rowed out from shore a long ways only to find that the boat was leaking, probably had been leaking all along. Where was the Bay she had thought she knew, the one who solved problems, who made everything better?

  He had never existed, she realized. She had invented him out of a quiet manner and a pair of broad shoulders.

  “We’ll do what we always do,” she said. “Go on. Pretend it’s not there. We’re very good at pretending.”

  Just as they had pretended Charlie never happened, just as they pretended that David was merely a good friend. Just as she had pretended to herself that once the house was finished and the ball was over, their lives would be different.

  But they wouldn’t, would they? This was what it was, what they were.

  “Georgie, this is serious,” Bay said, and Georgie felt her hackles rise, because what did that mean? Did it mean that nothing else was, had been? “I’m not even sure if our marriage is valid. I think it is—but it’s not something that’s ever arisen in my practice.”

  “Our marriage is valid as long as we say it is.” Georgie stared at her husband, willing him to understand. “Who’s to say I’m not Annabelle if we both say I am?”

  Bay shook his head. “The law doesn’t work like that.”

  “Why not?” demanded Georgie. “I’ve spent years lying for you, Bay. I’ve let people accuse me of goodness only knows what so that your reputation can remain unsullied. I’ve let you keep your lover under the same roof as our children, for the love of God. And this is all you can tell me? That the law doesn’t work that way?”

  Bay scraped a hand through his hair, the same color as Bast’s. “What do you want me to do, Georgie? I can’t change your birth.”

  The words left a nasty taste in Georgie’s mouth. “Is that you speaking or your mother? Forgive me. I had forgotten about the great legacy of the Van Duyvils. I’m so sorry I tainted your sacred bloodline. You’ll have to change the quarterings on your coat of arms now, won’t you? Add a bar sinister and maybe some theater masks.”

  Bay let her rant herself out, speaking with a patience that made Georgie want to throw something straight at his head. “I didn’t mean it that way. I certainly don’t think of you that way, but the world—”

  “Bugger the world.” There was something strangely satisfying about the shock on Bay’s face, about knowing that she’d triggered some emotion. “Bugger them all. What do I care about the world or the world about me? I cared about you, Bay. And I thought you cared for me.”

  Bay half rose from the bed. “I do. I do care for you.”

  Georgie blinked back tears. “But not enough to fight for me. Not enough to say to hell with the world, to hell with Giles Lacey, to hell with everyone who isn’t us.” She wasn’t aware of what she was going to say until the words came out, crackling in the air between them. “I want a divorce.”

  “Georgie…” Bay looked like he didn’t know whether to reach for her or back away. “You don’t mean that. Do you?”

  “I—” It was mad. There were the children to think of. But Anne had been right. Divorce wasn’t the bar it had once been. And the children were Van Duyvils. The Van Duyvil name covered a multitude of sins. And what would it be to be free? Not alone and scared as she had been all those years ago, but an indep
endent woman of means? “I don’t know.”

  Bay sank back down on the bed, looking up at her with a combination of concern and skepticism. “Is this about David?”

  “No. It’s not about David, Bay.” Except insomuch as she wanted someone who looked at her the way David looked at Bay, as though she’d hung the moon in the sky. “I want someone who loves me enough to stand by me.”

  Bay’s brow furrowed. “Haven’t I stood by you?”

  “No. You whisked me away. It’s not the same thing.” Bay’s face was a mask of incomprehension. Georgie took a deep breath. “Let’s put it this way. Would you have married me if you had known who I was?”

  The moment of hesitation told her all she needed to know. “I married you knowing you were an actress,” Bay offered.

  “It’s not the same, is it?” Georgie smiled crookedly, because it was either that or crying. “I want someone who will tell the world to go to blazes for me. Maybe that person doesn’t exist—but I’m sick of being second best, Bay.”

  “But … divorce?”

  The way he said it made Georgie think of his mother. “Are you afraid you won’t be received?”

  Bay showed a spark of life. “I don’t give a … I don’t care what Mrs. Astor thinks of us. But what about the children, Georgie? They’ll be damaged goods. You know that.”

  “They’re Van Duyvils. As you’ve pointed out, that counts for something in your world.” His world. Never really hers. Georgie wasn’t sure what her world was. But she knew she wanted the chance to find out. “Alva Vanderbilt’s children don’t seem to have suffered.”

  “It’s not just the … the social repercussions.” Georgie watched Bay struggled for the words and felt her heart ache for him. He looked up at her with that honesty she had never been able to resist. “I do love you, Georgie.”

  “I know.” Georgie sat down on the bed beside him and felt Bay’s arm come around her shoulders. He smelled of bay rum and Mrs. Gerritt’s own secret soap. So familiar. So safe. She wanted to bury her head in his chest and stay there forever. Georgie let her head drop into the familiar place on his shoulder. She didn’t want a divorce. Not really. Not entirely. “We don’t need to do anything hasty. Bast gets that horrible cough every winter. No one would think it odd if I were to take the twins away for a season. To Italy, perhaps. Or Switzerland. Just to see.”

  She could feel Bay’s cheek against the top of her head, his breath ruffling her hair. How many times had they sat like this?

  “Why not Florida?” Bay asked, his voice muffled.

  Georgie rubbed her cheek against his jacket, feeling the rub of the wool. “Your mother’s rule extends to Sarasota Springs.”

  Bay coughed in a way that sounded suspiciously like a sob. “Don’t take them away from me, Georgie.”

  “Only for a season, Bay.” Georgie straightened in his arms, looking him in the face, seeing the familiar tracery of lines around his eyes, the faint gold around his chin. “You’re their father. They adore you. I would never try to take them away from you.”

  “What if I gave up David?” Bay sounded like a little boy, promising to give up his pudding if it meant he could have his old dog back. “What then?”

  Part of Georgie wanted to leap at the offer. But what did that mean, really? That Bay loved her, she knew. But not enough. Never enough. “And make you miserable for nothing?” she said with an attempt at humor that failed utterly. “I want something for me, Bay. Something that’s mine.”

  Not Annabelle’s leavings, not the crumbs of her husband’s attention.

  “I would offer you jewels,” said Bay with a touch of the wry humor that had won her heart, “but I don’t think that will answer, will it?”

  “No. I’ve never longed for jewels.” Pushing herself up from the bed, Georgie began shuffling up the papers Bay had dropped on the floor, the ones that hadn’t gone into the fire. Back into the hatbox they went. “We should go back.”

  Bay didn’t move. “We can resolve all this, Georgie. I know we can. There’s no need for divorce.”

  Georgie looked down at her husband. “Even if Giles Lacey tells the world I’m not Annabelle? Your mother will be clamoring for the papers to be drawn.”

  “You said it yourself. If we stand together, it’s our word against his.” Georgie admired the attempt at resolution, even if it wasn’t entirely convincing. “Or we could pay him off.”

  “No,” said Georgie firmly. “If we give him money, he’ll only present that as proof that we had something to hide. We’ll never be free of him. And neither will Viola or Sebastian.”

  Bay flexed his neck, wincing. “Then what are we going to do about him?”

  This was the response she had wanted: working together as a pair. But something about the way Bay said it made her feel more alone than before.

  One thing she did know, she wasn’t going to let Giles Lacey get the better of her. Not again.

  Georgie held out a hand to help her husband up. “Leave him to me, Bay. I’ll think of something.”

  Bay took the offered hand, rising stiffly to his feet. “I could have Mr. Tilden speak to him.”

  “What is he going to do, bore him to death? Mr. Tilden would run straight to your mother, you know.”

  Bay grimaced. “Maybe that’s what we need. There’s no one more fearsome than my mother in a snit.”

  “A snit doesn’t sound very fearsome,” said Georgie, plunking the hatbox into her husband’s arms.

  “It does,” said Bay, “when it’s my mother.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Cold Spring, 1899

  February 11

  “You needn’t show me the way, Mrs. Van Duyvil. I know it already.” Giles Lacey smiled a wolf’s smile. “This is, after all, a copy of my house.”

  “An improved copy.” Janie watched her mother struggling to maintain a pleasant countenance. After a day of Giles Lacey, even her mother’s vaunted control was wearing thin. “Without the inconveniences of the original.”

  Janie was beginning to wish she had followed Mr. Burke’s advice and taken a train back to town. Snow had been falling all day, light flakes at first, and then heavier. It couldn’t be past three, but dusk was already beginning to fall, the uncertain light turning the snow-covered topiary into shambling snowmen, advancing on the house, pace by pace.

  The temperature hadn’t risen, but the winds had, rattling the casement windows and finding the cracks in the masonry. Her mother was wrong. Mr. Pruyn had done far too faithful a job of replicating Lacey Manor, leaks and all. Baronial mansions might be all very well for show, but they weren’t very comfortable to live in with the mercury dropping well below zero.

  “That,” said Giles Lacey, holding the door for Mrs. Van Duyvil, “is only because I refused to sell the original.”

  “Bats in the belfry and all?” suggested Anne lazily, but there was a nervous energy about her that belied her languid air. The look she directed at the backs of her aunt and their guest was decidedly inimical.

  “The belfry was torn down in 1648,” said Giles Lacey, in what was clearly a sore point. “A little matter of unpleasantness with some humorless souls in Parliament. And we didn’t have bats.”

  “Everyone has bats,” said Anne flatly. “Some are just … battier than others.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Anne.” Mrs. Van Duyvil swept into the small parlor with a rustle of taffeta and a tinkle of jet beads. She was in high dudgeon at the prospect of being forced to take dinner in the breakfast room, the dining room having been so cold that a frost had formed on the soup at lunch. “We’ve never had bats on Fifth Avenue.”

  “No, of course not,” murmured Anne, crossing into the small parlor, Janie behind her. “They wouldn’t dare, would they?”

  Anne reminded Janie of the Nubian lion in the menagerie in Central Park, pacing warily in its cage, swishing its tail at perceived threats, ready to pounce if necessary. Because she also suspected Giles Lacey? Or because she feared being discovered? Hell
hath no fury, Burke had said, and while it might be a cliché, clichés were clichés for a reason.

  Or she might just be building a mountain out of a perfectly humdrum molehill. Anne and her mother had always sniped at each other. Being snowed into a Gothic replica was enough to make anyone edgy.

  Janie coughed as she took a well-upholstered chair at the back of the room. The smoke from the fire wasn’t rising properly, making her feel as though she were being slowly kippered.

  Mrs. Van Duyvil looked at the fire with disfavor. “This is unacceptable.”

  Contrary to her expectations, the fire refused to reform its behavior.

  “Mrs. Gerritt says we haven’t enough coal for the larger parlors.” Anne draped herself over one of the sofas farthest from the fire. “The roads are blocked. The coal men can’t make their deliveries.”

  “Ridiculous,” pronounced Mrs. Van Duyvil. “And when it runs out, what then? Are we meant to take an ax to the movables?”

  “I would start with that table,” said Giles Lacey, gesturing to a Louis XIV commode dripping with ormolu. “All that gold is hurting my eyes.”

  “That,” snapped Mrs. Van Duyvil, “is a historic piece.”

  “Historically commissioned by Bay,” Anne contributed from her spot on the sofa.

  “No one,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil with a repressive glance at her niece, “is throwing anything on the fire.”

  “Like a great big pyre…,” Anne murmured. When Mrs. Van Duyvil glared at her, she said, “Well, it would be fitting, wouldn’t it? Like a Viking chieftain being burned with his ship. Was it the Vikings who did that? I wouldn’t remember. Bay would know. Or are we not meant to speak of Bay?”

  Mrs. Van Duyvil didn’t answer. She only paced on and on: from fire to window to chair and back again, her skirts rustling, her beads glowing dully in the red light of the lamps. Her hands plucked at the brooch at her neck, a mourning brooch, set with pale gold hair. Bay’s? Or the boys who hadn’t lived for Janie to meet them?

  Janie couldn’t blame her mother for being restless. She could see Bay in every cartouche on the wall, every fold of the curtains. His shadow stretched over them like an extra person in the room. This house was Bay’s creation, even more than it was Annabelle’s, every piece chosen by Bay, and nowhere more so than this parlor. Janie half expected to hear Bay’s step behind her, to turn and find him standing in the doorway, watching them all. Not a ghost, but Bay himself, as he had been.