Page 141 of The English Wife

“I rather liked Teddy once.” The wistful note in Anne’s voice made Janie look at her in surprise. Anne shrugged, tossing her head so that her jet earrings danced. “Or might have, if he had given me the chance. He only married me because his mother didn’t want him to.”

“You had that in common, then,” said Janie drily.

Anne snorted in appreciation. “Aunt Alva would have loved to see me end my days in dreary spinsterdom, dressed in sackcloth and winding wool. It gave me such joy to disappoint her.” She glanced sideways at Janie. “She never did forgive my father for proposing to my mother instead of her.”

“But I’d thought—”

“That my father was a horrible parvenu with more money than taste?” Janie winced at Anne’s accurate imitation of Mrs. Van Duyvil. “He was. He was also madly attractive. Charisma, I think they call it. Your mother wanted him. My mother got him. You didn’t know?”

Janie shook her head. “No.” Such an inadequate word. “My mother never spoke well of your father.”

“She wouldn’t, would she?” Anne leaned back against the squabs. “She must have hated herself for wanting him. And him for not having her. And both of them for being happy without her.”

“You’ve thought about this a great deal,” said Janie cautiously.

Anne smiled her three-cornered smile. “I’ve had years to. It was misery living under her roof. If it hadn’t been for Bay—” She broke off, her lips tightening. Speaking rapidly, she said, “It does make you wonder about love and hate, doesn’t it? There are times when I hate Teddy so much that I wonder if I might love him. Strange, isn’t it? Maybe I’m more like Aunt Alva than I’d thought.”

“No.” The carriage rattled past a marble monument featuring a weeping angel. “My mother—she never questioned her own motives. What she did was right, whatever it was, and what everyone else did was wrong.”

Even when it came to murder.

“Do you know,” said Anne as she held out her hand for the coachman to help her out of the carriage, “you are not nearly as tedious as you used to be.”

Which, Janie knew, was as close to a declaration of affection from Anne as she was likely to get.

They stood together, alone in the wind, as the rector gabbled the final words over Mrs. Van Duyvil, eager to be back by his own hearth. The reporters hadn’t chased them to the cemetery: even they recognized that interments were private affairs, for the family alone. Or what was left of it.

Anne’s gloved hand groped for Janie’s. Janie held her cousin’s hand, the hills undulating around them, more like a picture in a sampler than a graveyard, but for the marble monuments that dotted the landscape, angels and weeping cupids and cenotaphs and gravestones. After the babble outside the church, Green-Wood felt echoingly silent. The silvery winter sunlight gave it a horrible beauty, a cold and empty beauty.

Which was, Janie thought, not a bad metaphor for her mother. Alva Van Duyvil had lived her life for show, but there had been nothing at the heart of it. She had been as empty as her coffin, a monument without substance.

Or maybe that was unfair. Maybe it was simply that it was easier to think of her mother as cold and empty than consumed with dark passions, love turned to hate, pride turned to snobbery.

“It’s a relief to see her in the ground, isn’t it?” murmured Anne. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. You were thinking it.”

“Not in so many words.”

“In other words,” said Anne, “yes. Oh, and amen.”

The rector closed his Book of Common Prayer with evident relief. “I am aware these are, er, difficult times,” he said, which Janie thought was a nice balance between dealing with a possible murderess and acknowledging the amounts of money said murderess had donated to the church over the years. “If there should be any way I might be of spiritual assistance…”

Janie shook her head.

Anne’s eyes narrowed on something past the victor. Her face transformed into a look of extreme earnestness. “How very kind of you,” she said, swaying forward, and taking the surprised rector’s arm before he could do anything about it. “Do you know, Father Chillingworth, my soul is riven—utterly riven—by these tragic events.”

Beyond the vicar, half-hidden by an angel with breasts like bowls of custard, a man stood watching them, his dark coat blending like a shadow against the gray stone.

“Er, yes. If you would like to make an appointment—”

Anne bore the vicar inexorably away in the direction of his waiting conveyance. “Wouldn’t it be simpler if I were just to share your carriage back to the city? I know Janie wanted to meditate over her mother’s grave, didn’t you, Janie? So she won’t mind in the slightest if we leave her to follow, would you, Janie?”

“This is very irregular,” the rector protested.

“Precisely why I need to speak to you,” said Anne firmly. “It doesn’t do to ignore one’s soul. Look at the dreadful things that might happen as a consequence.” She smiled her cat’s smile at Janie. “We’ll just leave you to look in your own heart, shall we, darling? Now, Father Chillingworth, if you would be so good…”

“That was a very neat kidnapping,” said Burke, stepping out from behind the weeping angel.

“Well, Anne has had some practice at elopements,” said Janie, speaking at random.