The English Wife: A Novel Page 23

  Georgie’s fingers groped for her husband’s. Somehow, if she could touch him, it would be all right. There was something about the physical presence of Bay, his touch, his smell, that soothed fears. “I’m not ill.”

  Bay gave her hand a quick squeeze. “You’ve been pale for days now. And don’t tell me it was the lobster mousse.”

  Georgie stared up at Bay, feeling herself falling back into the old patterns. If Bay looked guilty, it was because he had failed in his duty in her, leaving her to make her way to the house alone. That was all. So easy just to banter back, to let the familiarity of his voice, his manner, lull her into pretending nothing had happened. And what had? If anyone had kissed anyone, it had been Charlie kissing Bay.

  Bay, she realized with a pang, had been far more generous with her than she with him. He had never once presumed to blame her for losing her virtue to Giles. How was this any different?

  Except that she knew that she had once desired Giles.

  Was that why she was presuming guilt? Because she knew herself guilty? No. Bay had made her see that she was wrong. If she was guilty of anything, it had been unworldliness. And maybe that was all Bay had done as well, had blundered into what he thought was a friendship.

  Sir Hugo winked at her from a gallery in Paris. I cede him to you.

  “Georgie?” Bay chafed her wrists, his brow furrowed with very real concern. “If you won’t confide in me, will you at least speak frankly to the doctor? Having come this far, I don’t want to risk losing you now.”

  “I’m not sick,” Georgie repeated. Pushing herself upright against the pillow, she made her decision. She looked Bay in the eye and said baldly, “I’m increasing.”

  Bay blinked at her. “Do you mean—”

  He was looking at her as though she was all the angels and Mary rolled into one.

  “It does happen, you know.”

  Bay’s throat worked, but no words came out.

  “It’s hardly the virgin birth,” said Georgie tartly.

  “No. I—” He looked as though someone had just bashed him on the head with an oar. Georgie was tempted to hold up two fingers in front of his eyes and ask him how many he saw.

  “You aren’t going to swoon on me, are you? Because that probably wouldn’t be good for the baby.”

  “The baby,” Bay repeated, and Georgie saw that his eyes were suspiciously bright. He drew in a ragged breath. “Our baby.”

  And before Georgie could say anything else, her husband seized her in a fierce embrace, his head buried in the crook of her shoulder, his hair tickling her neck.

  “Our baby,” he breathed, making her squirm as his breath went down the back of her neck.

  “The lobster mousse,” Georgie croaked, and Bay let go, his hair mussed, his face glowing with wonder, glowing so that she couldn’t help but smile back at him, helplessly, just for a moment, before there was a discreet knock at the door and a voice said, dubiously, “I was told someone was in need of a doctor?”

  “Yes,” said Bay, standing and becoming Bay again, at ease and in charge, overriding Georgie’s no. “Yes, we are in need of a doctor.”

  * * *

  It was amazing how all-consuming he or she came to be, this person they couldn’t yet see or hear, although by December, Georgie had begun to feel movements, movements like a sea monster undulating under the water.

  “It’s not nice to refer to our child as a sea monster,” Bay said when Georgie expressed that opinion.

  “How do you know?” said Georgie, shifting uncomfortably on her chaise. She had been fitted with a special corset for her condition, but it seemed to poke even more than the ordinary kind. “We haven’t met him yet. He might be beastly.”

  “With you as a mother?” said Bay gallantly.

  Georgie stuck out her tongue at him. “If Dr. Greeley keeps me on a decreasing diet, I refuse to answer for the consequences.”

  Her husband set down the papers he was reviewing, not legal documents, but blueprints, plans for the house they were to build on a plot farther uptown, all the way up in the east Seventies. Georgie might have been more enthusiastic about the plan had it not adjoined an empty plot already purchased by her mother-in-law.

  “Didn’t I sneak up half a ham last night?” said Bay virtuously.

  “Hardly half a ham.”

  But that wasn’t the point. They shouldn’t have to sneak. Dr. Greeley was Mrs. Van Duyvil’s doctor, the decreasing plan his decreasing plan. Georgie was sick of decreasing, and she was particularly sick of Mrs. Van Duyvil, who had planned their lives to the minute. Every day, Bay went dutifully to the office, of which the senior partner was Mrs. Van Duyvil’s brother, Peter Bayard. Every evening, he attended his mother and sister at one of the many events that marked the season. While Georgie, by virtue of her indelicate state, was confined at home to a chaise longue.

  Without ham.

  Georgie swung her legs over the edge of the chaise, moving cumbersomely to a sitting position. With Christmas approaching, the whirl of gaiety was reaching frenzied proportions, a fact to which Georgie could only attest by the increasing carriage traffic outside her window. “Couldn’t we go somewhere? Somewhere away?”

  “The mountains of the moon?” suggested Bay. Georgie gave him a look. Bay settled back in his chair. “We could go to Florida once the season is over.”

  “I don’t want to go to Florida.” It came out sounding petulant, but wasn’t she entitled to be petulant? She was increasing, which, apparently, rendered her unfit for everything, including eating. She might at least get some benefit out of it. “It will just be all the same rules in Florida. And no ham.”

  Bay made a sympathetic face. “When we have our own house…” he began.

  “You have four houses,” Georgie said crossly. “None of which you occupy.”

  “Yes, but the Florida house is let, and the Newport house is really more my mother’s—” Bay broke off, a strange expression crossing his face.

  “Bay?” Georgie waved a hand. “I’m supposed to be the one in a strange state, not you.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before,” said Bay, looking like a little boy who had just found a toy under his pillow.

  “Newport?” said Georgie dubiously. The place had felt like a marble mausoleum in the summer; she couldn’t imagine how grim it would be in the winter.

  “No, not Newport. Duyvil’s Kill!” He grinned at her with such unfettered delight that Georgie couldn’t help grinning back, even if she felt there must be something quite wrong with a house with death in the name. “She’ll never follow us there. Of course, this isn’t really the time of year for it—but my grandparents lived there year round and didn’t mind the snow. It is somewhat isolated.”

  “Bay, I was raised in the country. I’m not afraid of a few trees.” Georgie felt a surge of optimism. Isolated meant Mrs. Van Duyvil wouldn’t be there to tell her to stay in bed, or to tell the cook what she couldn’t eat, or to inform her that her corset wasn’t laced tightly enough, or to ask her to retire from the drawing room because heaven forbid anyone see what they already knew, that there was a perfectly legitimate child making a bump beneath her dress. “Didn’t Dr. Greeley say I might benefit from country air?”

  The mention of Dr. Greeley had been a mistake. Bay’s smile faded. “I didn’t think. What if you need a physician?”

  “I wouldn’t trust Dr. Greeley to deliver kittens,” said Georgie bluntly. “Is there a midwife near this house of yours?”

  Bay looked doubtful, but he said, “There is Mrs. Gerritt. She’s housekeeper now—such as it is—but she was my nurse when I was very young.”

  “Only when you were very young?”

  Bay cast her a sheepish glance. “She didn’t get along with my mother.”

  “Well, then,” said Georgie. There couldn’t be any better recommendation than that. “Can’t you send someone to her and tell her to open the house? Nothing elaborate. We won’t be entertaining. We’ll just ne
ed rooms made up for us. And a nursery.”

  Bay’s eyes met hers, and she knew she had him.

  The notion of going elsewhere, being by themselves again, felt like the promise of rain after a drought. No coughing in the ever-present coal smoke, no being shooed back indoors lest someone get a glimpse of the younger Mrs. Van Duyvil’s expanding stomach, no endless list of dos and don’ts.

  And no worries about what Bay might be doing without her.

  Despite their comfort together, despite Bay’s obvious joy over their child, there were nights when Georgie would sit on that thrice-blasted chaise longue and the clock would chime midnight and she would wonder if there was a Charlie Ogden at the ball, drawing Bay away to a library or a disused anteroom. She believed Bay when he said he didn’t want Charlie’s attentions, she did. And she knew—because Bay had told her, offhandedly, as if it were just another piece of society gossip—that Charlie was spending the season in the nation’s capital, tied up with a case that was to be heard before the Supreme Court, although what the case was, Bay didn’t say and Georgie didn’t ask.

  She didn’t want to talk about Charlie or think about Charlie, but sometimes Charlie wandered into her mind all the same, Charlie and Sir Hugo. And it was those times that she heard Annabelle’s voice in her head, Annabelle mocking as only she could mock. “Really, Georgie, why did you think he would marry you if not for that?”

  But never when Bay was with her, as they were now.

  “Just think of it,” said Georgie coaxingly. “No coal smoke. No omnibuses.”

  Bay leaned his head against the back of his chair. “No balls or receptions or endless nights at the Opera.”

  Georgie was briefly diverted. “I thought you liked music.”

  Bay stifled a yawn. He had had another late night with his mother and sister, another night when Georgie paced their room alone, listening to the carriage wheels beneath the window. “Does anyone go to the Opera to listen to the music? My mother never arrives until the middle of the first act, and we generally leave before the second.” He turned his head sideways. “There’s a pianoforte at Duyvil’s Kill.”

  Georgie could feel the smile starting to curve her lips. “Is that a proposition?”

  “Call it a proposal. Or perhaps an invitation.” Rising, Bay went down on one knee before the chaise. “Mrs. Van Duyvil, may I persuade you to elope with me to Duyvil’s Kill?”

  “Can you elope if you’re already married?” asked Georgie, and then, “We really must think of a better name.”

  Bay grinned at her, his face alight, and Georgie wondered if he had been chafing at his mother’s regime as much as she.

  “Illyria, then. Come along, Cesario. We’ll break the news to my mother.”

  SIXTEEN

  New York, 1899

  February

  “It distresses me deeply to be the bearer of bad tidings.” Mr. Tilden, Mrs. Van Duyvil’s lawyer, was deeply apologetic.

  Janie rearranged the folds of her skirt and kept her head bowed. With the drapes drawn and no fire lit, her mother’s parlor contrived at once to be both stuffy and cold. After a week in the country, the house on Thirty-Sixth Street felt like a prison. All the more so for the cordons still in place outside, as the crowd pressed in, trying to sneak glimpses through the shuttered windows.

  SCANDAL ON THE HUDSON! screamed The Journal. BAYARD VAN DUYVIL’S AFFAIR WITH COUSIN WHO WAS RAISED AS HIS SISTER.

  The World was more direct, if no less sensational. CUCKOLD OR ADULTERER? BAYARD VAN DUYVIL CITED IN COUSIN’S DIVORCE.

  Teddy Newland, apparently, could not be reached for comment on his yacht in the Riviera. His lawyers refused to confirm or deny the charge. But that didn’t stop The Journal from stretching the story until it squeaked.

  The city was ripe with speculation. Annabelle Van Duyvil had discovered her husband’s affair with his cousin and killed him and herself. No, no. It was Bayard Van Duyvil who was the wronged party and Annabelle who was the adulteress. Warring camps took sides; omnibus drivers and chemists wrote letters to the editor in which they thrashed out the relative merits of each side.

  A former maid at Illyria came forward with stories of scandalous goings-on that boosted The Journal’s circulation dramatically until it was proved, by The World, that the so-called maid had, in fact, never set foot in the house.

  It was Mr. Burke’s name on the byline of that article, tearing the maid’s story to shreds. Discrediting The Journal was his job, after all, but Janie couldn’t help but feel obscurely heartened all the same. It made her feel as though she had a champion in the lists, someone ready to wield his pen on her behalf. The fancy made her half smile to herself, silly as it was, fountain pens in place of lances, papers for shields. And Mr. Burke in a bowler hat in place of a visor.

  They had met twice more since Illyria, stolen moments in City Hall Park beside the statue of Nathan Hale: once he told her that his colleagues in London had identified the name of the actress on the program as a Georgina Evans, not Georgiana Smith, and the second time he warned her that the date of the inquest had been set and that Janie, her mother, and Anne were all to be called to testify.

  The official notice had arrived hours later, presented by a harried Mr. Tilden. It had been easier than Janie expected to pretend she knew nothing about it, largely because no one ever imagined she might. As always, she sat in a chair a little behind the others, draped in crêpe and dullness. Janie Van Duyvil, who never did anything improper.

  Except that she had. And she wasn’t sorry.

  She was only sorry that the opportunity hadn’t arisen again. Did that make her shameless? Perhaps. Or perhaps it merely made her honest. She could still feel the burn in her skin from the wind, nipping her cheeks, making her feel alive. She had attended the most exclusive balls in the city, danced with New York’s most eligible bachelors, and yet she had never felt so alive as when she stood in City Hall Park with a reporter of no family, burning her lips eating hot chestnuts out of a twist of newspaper.

  Mr. Burke had taken the paper away, insisting that she allow him to test them for her. Janie had reclaimed her prize, protesting that it hardly counted as gallantry to eat them all before they cooled.

  “Even if I save you from a scorched tongue?” he’d countered.

  “You don’t seem to be suffering,” Janie retorted.

  “How do you know?” he’d said, and there was something in the way he’d said it that made her hastily return her attention to the chestnuts.

  They’d both sobered quickly enough when Mr. Burke told her about the impending summons, but the thought of the afternoon still brought a glow to Janie’s chest, burned lips, frozen fingers, and all. For a moment, she had felt … like anyone else. Like Katie, who might walk out with a charming man on her half day, simply for the pleasure of being in his company.

  It was nonsense, of course. Theirs was a partnership. Possibly even a friendship. She had felt more herself in their brief acquaintance than she had with anyone since her father had died. But anything else was—

  “Impossible,” Janie’s mother said so forcibly that Janie half feared she had said something aloud. But Mrs. Van Duyvil’s ire was directed at the hapless Mr. Tilden. “The coroner must be aware that we are a household in mourning.”

  Mr. Tilden gave a delicate cough. “If you have been called, you must testify at the coroner’s inquest. Your bereavement is, I fear, no excuse under the law.”

  “Barbaric,” pronounced Mrs. Van Duyvil, white-lipped. “Would they make me exhume my son so they might batten on his body?”

  Mrs. Van Duyvil looked, for the first time, old. Janie felt a sudden twinge of conscience. Her mother was so strong, so … so armored, that sometimes Janie forgot that she was grieving, that it was her heart and not just her family pride that was aching.

  Mr. Tilden took a cautious sip of his sherry. “If it is any consolation,” he offered, “it is highly unlikely that you will be called to the stand, Mrs. Van Duyvil. I believe you
r summons was a mere formality.”

  “To force me to dwell on my son’s death so that they may all glory in my grief?” Mrs. Van Duyvil’s nostril’s flared. Janie reached out a hand to cover her mother’s. Mrs. Van Duyvil brushed it away, saying brusquely, “And what of my daughter? Must she be subjected to this … farce?”

  It was cold in the room, bitter cold, but a fine sheen of sweat could be observed upon the lawyer’s brow. Mr. Tilden wasn’t, thought Janie with some sympathy, accustomed to dealing with such matters. True, telling disgruntled relatives that they were to receive, after all, no bequest, must be unpleasant, but it wasn’t on the same order as court proceedings relating to unnatural death. To his credit, Mr. Tilden had done his best to refer them to a lawyer who did specialize in what he euphemistically referred to as “such matters,” but Mrs. Van Duyvil was adamant in her refusal. Entrust their private affairs to the sort of man who consorted with criminals and wore loud waistcoats? Never.

  Useless to protest that not every trial lawyer was a William Howe, the flamboyant defender. Mrs. Van Duyvil’s mind was made up. Mr. Tilden had spent years drinking her sherry; he could very well guide them through the thicket of the coroner’s court without flinging them on the mercies of low people with large fees.

  “Miss Van Duyvil”—Mr. Tilden tilted his head in Janie’s direction in a courtly gesture, then did the same for Anne—“and Mrs. Newland will undoubtedly be questioned as to their observations upon, er, discovering Mr. Van Duyvil.”

  “I see,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil bitterly. “There was a time when an unmarried girl would not be put on display in such a way. But perhaps I am behind the times. I must offer up my offspring to the vulgarity of every passing member of the public who might take a fancy to enter the courtroom.”

  “For what it is worth, I do not believe that is the coroner’s purpose. He hopes, as do we all, to discover the method of Mr. Van Duyvil’s untimely death.” Mr. Tilden looked longingly towards the sherry.

  Mrs. Van Duyvil ignored him. “Then, why, I ask you, have they not done so already? It is nothing but sensation-seeking. We should be allowed to bury our dead in peace. Or such peace as we may find in this fallen world.”