Page 15 of The English Wife

“Do you wish to invite a stranger into the family’s affairs?” Her mother’s words were shards of ice, each knife sharp.

It was too late to back down now, too late to wish the words unsaid.

Janie stared down at the red morocco binding of the book in her lap. “They’re in our affairs, whether we invite them or not.” She could picture James Burke, in the kitchen, his green eyes making mock of her scruples. “They don’t care for the truth; all they care for is a good story. If someone had a grudge against Bay…”

Her words trailed off as her mother fixed her with a hard, brown stare. “I had never thought to see the day that a daughter of mine would pander to the common press.”

“It’s not about the press. It’s about … about justice.” Janie wasn’t sure what she meant, only that she couldn’t let it go. Not now that she’d come so far. “What of the children? Surely, Viola and Sebastian deserve better than to have their father branded a murderer and … and suicide.”

The horrible words tainted the air between them. The scent of the hothouse flowers on her mother’s dressing table saturated the room, overripe and sickly, cloying at Janie’s nose.

After a long, long moment, her mother turned back to her dressing table.

“You are overwrought.” Her mother reached for a strand of beads, held them against her high collar as though to study the effect, and then set them down again. Without looking at Janie, she said, “You needn’t bother to come down to dinner. A tray will be brought to your room.”

Janie’s hands tightened around the book in her lap as she felt the familiar patterns closing around her. She was twenty-six years old, but her mother could still send her to bed without supper.

“I … I don’t mind coming down.” She winced as she said it. Anne wouldn’t have asked. Anne would have simply brazened her way downstairs in a Paris gown and dared Mrs. Van Duyvil to say anything about it.

Sometimes, Janie wondered if her life would have been different if she had been more like Anne, showier, stronger. There was a state of constant war between her mother and her cousin, but there was, she thought, a form of understanding as well. They respected each other, as warring nations do.

But she wasn’t like Anne. She was only bold and brave within the covers of her books.

“We mustn’t risk your health.” Her mother slid a ring onto her finger, considered it, and replaced it with another. Her eyes met Janie’s in the mirror. Her lips twisted into something like a grimace. “You are the only child I have left to me.”

Janie lowered her eyes to her lap, guilt and resentment twisting in her stomach.

In the churchyard at Grace Church were two small graves, two brothers Janie had never known, both carried away by the measles that had, miraculously, spared Bay. They never spoke of them, but Janie had always known that she was meant to be another boy, a replacement for Peter and Nicholas. Her failure to be so had been the first in a long series of disappointments that she had offered her mother.

She wasn’t really delicate, but it had become a family myth, invoked when convenient.

You wear yourself to the bone with your charity work, Janie. Surely, there is no need for such zeal at the expense of your health?

How pale you look in that gown, Janie. It seems a trifle … youthful, don’t you think?

Never an outright command, always an expression of concern. It was very hard to rail against measures taken, ostensibly, for one’s own good. And perhaps they were. Whenever Janie felt herself pushed to the point of rebellion, she remembered those gravestones and her protests died, stillborn, on her lips.

And now Bay was gone, too.

“I am sorry.” It seemed such an inadequate thing to say and, somehow, very odd to be apologizing for her own existence. Lifting her eyes to her mother’s, she asked, tentatively, “Will you bring the children to town?”

“No.” Her mother rose from her seat, moving abruptly away. “They’re better where they are.”

Alone, on the Hudson, with the snow swirling around the battlements. “In the house where their parents—”

Her mother tugged at the bell to call her maid. “It’s their home, Janie. And they’re only—what?—two years old? They’ll scarcely notice the difference.”

“Three and a half. Nearly four.” It didn’t matter. Her mother knew exactly how old the twins were. To the day, Janie had no doubt. It was just more convenient for her to pretend otherwise. “It was only a thought.”

Maybe her mother was right. Maybe it was better to leave the children in their castle on the Hudson, rather than confining them to a suite of rooms on the fifth floor, with lessons in the morning and formal outings on fine afternoons. She had been a child in this house; she knew what it was like.

But she couldn’t quite stop herself from adding, “These are Bay’s children. Van Duyvils.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” The words cracked through the room, loud enough to make Janie’s ears ring.

Janie saw the flush rise up her mother’s neck, creeping up from her jet collar, past her dangling earrings, up to her brow. Lower your voice, Janie. Ladies don’t shout. But that had been a shout just now, unmistakably a shout. It was the first time she could recall her mother raising her voice. Ever.

Someone cleared her throat from the doorway.