The English Wife

by Lauren Willig

  Georgie thought of the house where she had spent her childhood, the ruins of an old abbey built onto and around, medieval cloisters turned into garden follies; a sixteenth-century house built onto the ruins of a twelfth-century church; an eighteenth-century manor grafted onto that. The family who owned it liked to claim they could trace their roots even deeper than that, back, back, back before William the Conqueror.

  “There are times,” she said drily, “when a week feels like a century.” Especially that first year in London, living from meal to meal, scrabbling to find the coin to pay her landlady. She could look back on it now, the fear, the desperation, as though it were a story told about someone else. The Ali Baba was hardly Illyria, but it would serve. So long as it lasted. The image of those empty seats nagged at her. Georgie pushed the worrying thought aside. “It’s all in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?”

  “Truth or beauty?” Mr. Van Duyvil asked wryly, and Georgie had that hint again, of something beneath that mild surface, something more complex than it appeared.

  Truth is beauty, beauty truth … she had believed that once, with the same confidence with which she had believed that rank meant security and lineage gentility. But a long row of family portraits hadn’t protected Annabelle.

  “Truth and beauty are meant to be one and the same, aren’t they?” she said belligerently. “That’s what the poets say.”

  Even if it was a lie, even if a beautiful face, a warm voice, could be nothing more than a lure, the presage to pain.

  “But are they?” Mr. Van Duyvil’s question was without mockery. Georgie couldn’t tell if he was in earnest, or merely playing at it.

  Truths weren’t what she offered. “You’re asking the wrong person. I work in the theater. Everything is an illusion.”

  “You say that very honestly.”

  There was something disconcerting about Mr. Van Duyvil’s concentrated attention. “Is it less a lie for being an open one?” she asked.

  The last thing she could be accused of was being honest. He’d been gammoned, poor man. The cost of a dinner and all he would get at the end was words for his trouble, twice-used words at that. It was his friend who would go home to a warm bed at the end of the night, at least, if the way Kitty was leaning on his arm was any indication, while Van Duyvil would be left to sport the blunt.

  Van Duyvil shook his fair head. “You’re too quick for me, Miss Evans. You spin webs with your words.”

  Georgie shrugged. “There’s nothing in them to hold. I only work with borrowed words.”

  “Aren’t all words had at second hand?” Mr. Van Duyvil tilted his head back to look at the smoke-gray sky, and Georgie became aware, for the first time, of the difference in their heights, and of how close he had been leaning, how low he had bent to listen to her. “When you think about it, everything has been said before, in one way or another. It’s only our experience of it that makes it new.”

  He wasn’t going to be having any new experiences tonight, not with her. With deliberate derision, Georgie said, “I thought you didn’t weep for Hecuba. Do you always argue both sides, Mr. Van Duyvil?”

  Mr. Van Duyvil’s face lit with an unexpected smile. “I’m an attorney. I’m paid to argue both sides.”

  “An attorney?” Georgie couldn’t have been more shocked than if he had told her he was the Prince of Wales or the dustman. Attorneys were elderly men with whiskers down to their chins; they were respectable and professional and had no truck with rakes such as Sir Hugo.

  Or, more to the point, rakes such as Sir Hugo had no truck with them.

  Mr. Van Duyvil smiled at her astonishment. “Like you, Miss Evans, I’m paid for my words. Except in prose, rather than verse. And rather more heretofores and wheretofores.”

  “Aren’t attorneys meant to be elderly and respectable?”

  They came to a stop before the pale stone façade of the Criterion, marble nymphs simpering down from their niches. Mr. Van Duyvil spread his hands wide. “Mightn’t attorneys be young once, too?”

  “And respectable?” She hadn’t meant it to sound like flirting. It just came out that way.

  “What makes you think a lawyer is more proof against the frailties of the flesh than any other man?” Mr. Van Duyvil’s eyes met hers, as bright as ice over water. “Knowledge of the law is a trade, not a guarantee of virtue.”

  Georgie’s skin heated despite the February chill, excitement and trepidation mingled together.

  “If you will—” Sir Hugo jostled rudely between them.

  Georgie jerked quickly aside, her heel catching on the hem of her skirt. Mr. Van Duyvil lurched forward to steady her, but Sir Hugo was there before him, catching her around the waist in a grip that belied his languid manner.

  Sir Hugo gave her a squeeze before releasing her. The intimacy of his hand on her hip made the bile rise in Georgie’s throat. “I acknowledge the obvious fascination of Miss Evans’s … conversation, but there are other hungers that demand to be satisfied.”

  “I presume you mean supper?” said Mr. Van Duyvil, a warning in his voice.

  “What else? Would you prefer to continue to debate the number of angels dancing on pins, or shall we proceed to our table? Unless, of course,” Sir Hugo added silkily, smiling at Georgie in a way that made her skin crawl and her throat tight, “you would rather forgo the formality of a meal.”

  Georgie found she was shaking, although whether with anger or fear, she couldn’t have said. “The price of this meal is too dear for me. I’m for home—alone.”

  “There’s no need for that.” Mr. Van Duyvil stepped between her and Sir Hugo, shielding her with his body, his eyes on Sir Hugo’s face. “You are making the lady uncomfortable, Hugo.”

  “And we mustn’t do that.” Sir Hugo turned to the waiting maître d’. “My good man, we require a table for these … ladies.”

  “We have a table for you on the first floor, sir,” said the maître d’. One couldn’t turn away Sir Hugo Medmenham, even when he appeared with two rouged drabs in tow, thought Georgie. She repressed the hysterical bubble that rose in her throat. Was that what they were? Was that what they would be if the Ali Baba closed its doors?

  A coin passed from Sir Hugo’s palm to the gatekeeper’s. “Then take us there. Before we grow much older.” To Mr. Van Duyvil, he said, in dulcet tones, “We must all gather our rosebuds while we may, mustn’t we, Bay? They wilt so rapidly once plucked.”

  A voice whispered in Georgie’s ear. Go on, tell them if you like. Who do you think will believe you?

  A voice from another day, another time, but there was something in Sir Hugo’s stance, something in the glitter of the silver head of his cane, that made Georgie snatch her coat back from the hovering waiter’s grasp.

  “I’ve lost my appetite.” She reached for Kitty. “Come on, Kitty. It’s late.”

  “Not that late.” Kitty made an impatient face at Georgie, rolling her eyes in the direction of the staircase. “It’d be rude to leave now.”

  “Yes, terribly rude,” drawled Sir Hugo. “Who knows what pleasures the night might prove?”

  “Supper,” said Mr. Van Duyvil in a clipped voice.

  Sir Hugo inspected the head of his cane, the silver shimmering dizzyingly in the lamplight. “Do you have an objection to dessert?”

  Mr. Van Duyvil gave up pretending. Or maybe it was all pretense, thought Georgie, shrugging rapidly into her coat. The other diners were beginning to stop and stare, but she didn’t care. “Not of the sort you imply.”

  “How narrow you are in your tastes,” said Sir Hugo, but it was enough to drive the color to Mr. Van Duyvil’s cheeks.

  “And what of your fiancée, Hugo?” Mr. Van Duyvil’s voice carried, causing stares from a party coming up the stairs from the theater below. “Would she approve?”

  There was a charged silence, broken only by the muted sounds of conversation and cutlery from the surrounding rooms.

  Sir Hugo broke his gaze first, turning to Kitty with exagg
erated solicitude. “My dear, this company wearies me. Shall we leave them to their supper and their virtue?”

  Kitty nodded her head and put her hand in the crook of Sir Hugo’s arm. “There’s champagne at the Alhambra.”

  “We’ve a matinee tomorrow, Kitty,” Georgie warned.

  “We can sing those songs in our sleep.” Kitty’s smile was bright, but there was desperation in the way her fingers curled into the fine cloth of Sir Hugo’s coat. “Don’t fuss, Georgie.”

  Don’t fuss. That was what Annabelle used to say, too, so sure of herself, so sure that nothing could touch her.

  “Hugo—” Mr. Van Duyvil stepped forward to intercept them.

  Sir Hugo merely ushered Kitty past him. “Good night, Miss Evans. Bay. I recommend you try the oysters.”

  Arm in arm, not looking back, Sir Hugo and Kitty strolled down the stairs and into the fog. In the mist, they shimmered like ghosts before disappearing around the curve of the street.

  And Georgie stood there, watching them go, feeling her chest rise and fall beneath her bodice, her hands damp in her gloves.

  Georgie wanted to run after her friend and grab her back—but Kitty wouldn’t thank her for it. She had to remember that.

  “Sir?” said the maître d’. “Sir. Will you be wanting a table?”

  “No,” said Georgie too loudly. She looked fiercely at Mr. Van Duyvil, daring him to challenge her. With deliberate crudity, she said, “You’d best go fishing for your oysters elsewhere.”

  Mr. Van Duyvil blinked several times. He wrenched his eyes away from the misty street and back to Georgie. “I’ll see you home.” Hastily, he handed the long-suffering maître d’ a fistful of coins. “For your troubles.”

  Georgie was already halfway down the stairs. “I’ll see myself.”

  Mr. Van Duyvil hurried to catch up with her, his greatcoat billowing around him. “Let me put you in a hackney, at least.”

  Georgie thrust her hands deep in her pockets and kept walking, setting her face against the wind. “There’s no need.”

  “There’s every need.” Cutting around her, Mr. Van Duyvil signaled to the rank of cabs waiting down the street from the Criterion before turning back to Georgie, two deep lines furrowing the skin between his eyes. “He doesn’t mean ill.”

  Georgie looked at him incredulously. Did he really believe that? Perhaps. A man might gamble and whore and still be accounted a good fellow provided he held his liquor and paid the most pressing of his debts. “Not to you, maybe.”

  The cab pulled up in front of them. Mr. Van Duyvil put a hand to the door, but didn’t open it. He looked down at Georgie, saying slowly, “I don’t understand.”

  Georgie shook her head, impatient with herself and with him. “A man might keep his word to his friends. But what’s a woman to him?”

  “I—” Mr. Van Duyvil blinked, his Adam’s apple moving up and down in his throat. “Would you like me to go after them?”

  Georgie started to laugh, but Mr. Van Duyvil’s face was serious. “Spare your sword, Sir Galahad. They wouldn’t thank you for it, either of them.”

  “Did you want a ride or not?” called the cabbie.

  More coins, jingling in Mr. Van Duyvil’s hand. Rich American, Kitty had said. Either he was or he was making a good show of it. Mr. Van Duyvil opened the door, stepping back to allow Georgie to enter. “Take this lady—”

  Georgie’s lips pressed into a thin line. She was hardly going to tell him her address. Not even if he was what he appeared, an innocent abroad.

  Mr. Van Duyvil shut the door and took a step back. “Take this lady wherever she instructs you.”

  Georgie felt the breath that she had been holding release. She felt both relieved and yet … not disappointed. Ashamed? If this Mr. Van Duyvil was genuinely kind, then she had used him ill.

  He may have been friends with Sir Hugo, but there was something terribly forlorn about him, alone on the street corner, outside the Criterion.

  “Good night, Mr. Van Duyvil,” said Georgie, grudgingly.

  “Good night, Miss Evans.” He tipped his hat to her, and then, the words almost lost beneath the crack of the coachman’s whip, something that sounded like, “I’m sorry.”

  Georgie tightened her hand around the leather strap as the cab jolted forward. She willed herself not to look back. What was the point? It was hardly likely that her path and Mr. Van Duyvil’s would cross again.

  But she looked back all the same, to see him standing there still, dwindling away to a creature of mist and fog as the dray horse’s hoofbeats echoed hollowly in Georgie’s ears.

  THREE

  New York, 1899

  January

  “Mother?”

  Servants could enter without knocking, but not Janie. She rapped again at the oak door, half hoping there would be no answer.

  Another knock, more tentative now. Janie heard noises on the other side of the door, a sound like a dog panting, heavy, wet breathing. Like sobs. Janie paused, one hand pressed flat against the door, unsure whether to enter or leave. It seemed the sort of thing a daughter should do, comfort her mother in time of grief. But her mother wouldn’t thank her for being caught out in a weakness. If that was what it was, and not the sound of the wind howling in the chimney, or, as Janie’s mother would undoubtedly say, Janie’s own overactive imagination, turning silence into sobs and sorrow.

  Janie was about to slip away when the summons came. Her mother’s voice was muffled by the wood, but no less autocratic for all that. “What are you waiting for? Come in.”

  Janie cracked the door open. “Anne said you wanted me?”

  Her mother’s eyes were suspiciously red, but if she had been crying, she gave no other sign. “Sit and read to me.”

  No protestations of affection; no words of consolation. But for the black beads on Mother’s dress and the thin lines on either side of her mouth, it might have been any other night. Janie had always suspected that her mother’s demand that Janie read to her before supper was a form of penance for both of them: for Janie, for her failure to be married, and for her mother, for having a daughter so alien to her in taste and temperament.

  “Well? Don’t just stand there.”

  Murmuring an apology, Janie sat in her usual place, on a low stool on the far side of her mother’s dressing table. A book sat ready for her, a heavy volume in red morocco covers, with a leather bookmark inserted into it. Janie opened it and began reading at random, the words tripping off her lips without touching her mind.

  A small enough rebellion, to let her mind wander while reading her mother’s chosen words, but it made her feel as though she were keeping some small part of herself, something that hadn’t been pounded into drabness.

  Her father had been a collector of rare books. Not Americana, which might have been respectable in its familiarity, but French poetry and plays. He had been a quiet man in everyday life, his hair brown to his wife’s gold, a bit stooped in his stance, his Van Duyvil blue eyes blurred behind spectacles. And yet in the privacy of his own study, he became something else entirely: an actor, on his private stage. Janie’s earliest memories were of sitting beside her father in his study while the sonorous phrases rolled off his tongue.

  Her father had died when she was eleven years old, his absence scarcely detectable in the house in which his wife ruled as queen—except to Janie. Her mother found her one night, curled in her nightdress in her father’s chair, reading to herself from the fairy tales of Madame le Prince de Beaumont. Within a month, his books had been boxed, the room in which her father had stored his treasures dismantled.

  Janie had stolen what she could, squirreling a handful of precious books away in caches in the nursery.

  Bay had known, but he hadn’t said anything. By some alchemy, he had persuaded Anne to hold her tongue as well. Anne had shrugged and said she didn’t see what the bother was about a bunch of old books. Janie might have told her if she could have found the words, but, as always with her brother an
d cousin, her tongue tied in knots, and all she could do was hug the book to her chest and duck her head.

  When she thought of Bay, that was what she remembered, his hand silently replacing the book that had fallen from beneath her pillow. They might not have been close, but he had always been kind, not out of any desire for gratitude, or to extract favors in return, but because that was part of who he was. It came as naturally to him as breathing.

  They had never confided in one another. But Bay had shielded her in a dozen ways: drawing their mother’s attention away from Janie at the breakfast table, giving her a respite from the endless admonitions to sit up straighter, chew more quietly; stepping in front of her in the water at Bailey’s Beach to shield her from curious eyes that day her bathing costume had torn.

  The Bay she had known wasn’t capable of pushing his wife into a river or plunging a knife into his chest. What had happened in that house on the Hudson?

  Janie let the book fall into her lap. “What happens next?”

  It took her mother a moment to realize the reading had stopped. Mother’s head turned a fraction, the slight tightening of her brows the only sign of her displeasure.

  “Nothing that need concern us.”

  She hadn’t seen him, Janie reminded herself. Her mother hadn’t seen Bay, spangled with snowflakes like silver thread; hadn’t heard the horrible rattle and wheeze of his breath as he struggled to speak.

  And even if she had, her mother came of an older, sterner school that prized self-control over sentiment. Janie had always thought her mother would have made a brilliant Roman matron, all strong profile and impeccably draped white robes, half-marble even in the flesh. No, that was unfair. It wasn’t that her mother was made of stone, devoid of feeling; it was more that the deeper the emotion, the more firmly her mother strove to contain it. And Bay’s loss must have cut very deep, indeed.

  Bay had been her mother’s darling, the hoped-for heir to the Van Duyvil name.

  Janie closed the book around her finger, feeling the weight of the pages digging into her flesh. “Will there … will there be an inquest?”