Page 105 of The English Wife

She liked David, she did. But she would like him better if he were Bay’s brother or cousin. Or simply their architect.

Bay fastened his cuffs with opal cuff links, links David had given him for his birthday. He shrugged into his jacket and leaned over to brush a perfunctory kiss against Georgie’s cheek. “You needn’t rush. We’ll be in the dining room.”

Georgie forced a smile. “I’ll be down presently.”

But Bay was already out the door. Because David would be at breakfast, and David would have ideas.

Perhaps she ought to have taken Bay up on the offer to send David back to town.

And what then? Was she to become one of those wives who monitored her husband’s comings and goings, who read his letters, who followed him to town? She had hoped that having the affair under her roof would rob it of its sting by taking the mystery out of it, but it hadn’t really. Instead, it had forged an odd domestic arrangement in which she found herself more confidante than spouse.

Queen Caroline’s example wasn’t working as well as she had hoped.

David and Bay were both at the breakfast table by the time she came down, deep in discussion of rivets and trivets or whatever else it was that brought their heads so close together over the kippers and eggs. Nothing an outside observer could fault. But she wasn’t an outside observer.

She had thought that, surfeiting, the appetite would sicken and die. That after a month or two or three at most, David would go back to town. But he hadn’t. It had been eighteen months now. The children called him “Uncle David” and bullied him into building them elaborate block castles. Georgie had apologized for providing him a busman’s holiday, but David only unfolded his long limbs from the floor and said, no, really, he liked it; it was good practice for him.

Why did he have to be so annoyingly likable?

“Good morning,” said Georgie, and the dark head and the fair lifted, echoing back the greeting with unfeigned warmth, and she could have wept, because it would have been easier if she hated David or David hated her. Then she could plot and scheme with impunity. But she was weaponless here. She might say that she was hoist by her own petard if she had any idea what a petard was. Something unpleasant, no doubt.

There was color in Bay’s cheeks; outside the last few brown leaves rustled on the trees, making a picturesque backdrop to the view across to the new house. “I’ve been telling David of our scheme.”

He did it so well, Bay, making her feel included, loved. Our scheme, with that smile just for her. Georgie took a piece of toast and took her place, not at the other end of the table, but beside David, who poured her coffee without being asked, preparing it just as she liked with a generous dollop of cream and no sugar.

Georgie took it from David with a nod of thanks. “Will the house be ready in time?”

David held his own coffee cup between his hands. “Enough of it,” he said, taking the question very seriously. “We won’t have all the furniture in, but the main rooms should be finished, and there won’t be any falling masonry.”

“That would certainly provide excitement,” said Georgie. She looked at Bay. “We could drop a gargoyle on Carrie Rheinlander.”

Bay swallowed an enormous mouthful of eggs. “It’s not nice to speak of Jock that way,” he said with mock seriousness, and for a moment Georgie felt as though it was just them again. But just for a moment. “David tells me they’ve made remarkable progress.”

“Oh?” Georgie could feel her smile cooling a bit. She couldn’t help it. She knew the house was meant to be hers, her gift, but she couldn’t quite muster the requisite enthusiasm. She liked the old house; she liked this dining room with its arched cabinets built into the walls, filled with porcelain brought back from the east by some enterprising Van Duyvil ancestor.

It wasn’t Bay’s fault; he had tried to involve her. But when it came to poring over the drawings of cabinetmakers and visiting warehouses, Georgie found she had very little interest. She had grown up in a home that hadn’t been planned; it just was. It wasn’t that the furniture or the decoration had been particularly precious or rare. Quite the contrary. It was there because it had always been there, the more valuable mixed with the mundane, and far more of the latter than the former.

But it was hard to make Bay understand that. It must, thought Georgie, crumbling a muffin into smaller bits, come of always having only the best. One didn’t understand the comfort of the mediocre.

David was saying something about the amazing strides that had been made, how much faster the work had gone than expected. “—have done it without the help of Mr. Lacey.”

“What?” Georgie’s head came up.

David took another gulp of his coffee. “The current owner of Lacey Abbey. He was remarkably helpful about sending pictures and plans. Of course, there are no original plans, but he sent me a copy of some eighteenth-century renderings.”

“You wrote to Giles?” Georgie hadn’t realized she had pushed back her chair, was standing, until she saw Bay and David staring up at her. Her hands were clenched clawlike, around the edge of the table; she could feel her whole body shaking.

Bay rose from his chair, putting an arm around her, easing her gently back into her chair. “Annabelle and her cousin are estranged,” he said to David, over her head.

“That’s one way of putting it.” Georgie’s voice was hoarse, but she found that speaking braced her. She wasn’t living in an attic room in Ealing anymore. Giles had no power here. “He’s a vicious brute.”

It felt good to say it out loud. She had never done so before, had always felt that she had deserved what he meted out.

David looked from one to the other, his thin face a picture of distress. “I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t,” said Bay quickly. “How could you?”

Georgie felt a flare of annoyance that in this it was David that Bay thought to comfort. But it wasn’t like that. Of course it wasn’t. She lifted her hands to her temples, pressing hard with her fingers. “It was a long time ago.”