Page 102 of The English Wife

“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.”

Actually, Georgie was quite sure he hadn’t, but Mrs. Van Duyvil didn’t know that.

Mrs. Van Duyvil smiled pityingly. “That’s all very well, but it isn’t exactly the Declaration of Independence, is it?”

There were no words adequate to the occasion. “No,” said Georgie in a choked voice. “It only preceded your declaration by more than five hundred years.”

Mrs. Van Duyvil brushed that aside. “My dear Annabelle, you must see that you simply cannot go on in this manner. There is still time to return to town before the season begins in earnest. If you and Bayard were to take your place in our box at the Opera—”