Page 122 of The English Wife

“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 independent 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?”