Page 19 of The English Wife

Mr. Van Duyvil accepted it cautiously. “What it is?”

“Not Blue Ruin,” said Georgie drily, and Mr. Van Duyvil had the grace to look abashed. “Warm port and lemon. Works a treat on wet days. It would take a fair bit of it to put you under the table.”

She’d been scandalized once at the idea of drinking in a public house, but her standards had changed along with her speech over the past three years. There wasn’t any more harm to port and lemon than a genteel glass of sherry, and it did more than coal to keep the cold at bay.

Mr. Van Duyvil took a tentative sip. “It’s … not bad.”

Georgie snorted with laughter. “You get used to it.” One got used to a lot of things. She curled her fingers around her own glass, feeling the warmth seep into her skin. “What were you doing in Italy? Sketching statues?”

Mr. Van Duyvil choked on his port. “Hardly. I can’t draw a straight line, much less a landscape.”

“Ta, Bert.” Georgie nodded her thanks as the landlord slapped two pieces of steak-and-kidney pie down between them. “Why Italy, then?”

“A Grand Tour, I suppose you would call it. My last year of law school … I’d been buried in my books for so long. I wanted something … something different before going into practice.”

She’d forgot that he worked for a living. Georgie took another swig of her port and lemon. “Are you certain you’re a solicitor? You’re not at all my image of one.”

Mr. Van Duyvil’s eyes met hers quizzically. “You aren’t my image of an actress.”

“Several stage managers felt the same way,” said Georgie drily. She declaimed prettily enough for drawing room entertainment, but not for Drury Lane. She had found work, initially, as a dresser at the Alhambra and moved from there to a chorus role at the Olympic.

Whether or not that was moving up, she couldn’t say. The pay was better, but the clothing was scantier.

Mr. Van Duyvil wasn’t deterred. “It’s your voice. It doesn’t sound like your friend’s.”

“I’m a good mimic.” But apparently not mimic enough. She’d thought she’d mastered the dialect of her new world. When Mr. Van Duyvil continued to look at her, Georgie elaborated, “I grew up as a companion to a young lady.”

The detail seemed to whet his interest rather than discourage it. “Were you relations?”

Georgie bit her lip. “You might say that.”

“Might?” Mr. Van Duyvil looked at her searchingly, as though she were a riddle he could solve. “Usually one is a relation or one isn’t.”

Georgie stared down into her port and lemon. Best to give him the sanitized answer, the tidy one she trotted out for company. “My father … my father was a soldier in the colonel’s regiment. They’d served together in India.” She could picture the colonel, sun-browned and bluff. “I was raised with the colonel’s daughter, Annabelle. Annabelle Lacey.”

It had been so long since she had said the name that it felt heavy and strange on her tongue. Was it strange that this far away, that name still had the power to hurt her?

Gently, Mr. Van Duyvil said, “What happened to her?”

“Why should you think anything happened to her? Your pie will get cold if you don’t eat it.”

“I didn’t mean to pry.” Mr. Van Duyvil set his fork down next to his uneaten pie. His eyes lingered on her face. “It was just something in the way you spoke of her—of Annabelle Lacey.”

Hearing that name made Georgie’s throat burn; her dress felt too tight across the shoulders. Everything felt wrong and strange. The sympathy in Mr. Van Duyvil’s voice cut deeper than any insult.

“She’s gone,” Georgie blurted out.

To say it made it feel like it was happening all over. The pain of it. There were times when Georgie missed Annabelle so, and others when she wanted to close her eyes and imagine Annabelle out of existence, to pretend she never was, had never been, because if she hadn’t been, then none of it would ever have happened.

“Annabelle’s gone, and I ran off to tread the boards. As you see.” Georgie picked up her port and lemon, raising it in a mock toast.

Mr. Van Duyvil lifted his glass, but didn’t drink. “Were you close?”

“At times.” Memories, like the flash of a kingfisher’s wing. Annabelle’s reflection in the water of the river, laughing. And then later. Later. A slipper by the river’s edge; a hair ribbon caught on a floating branch. “At times. You know how it is, when you grow up with someone.”

To her surprise, Mr. Van Duyvil nodded. “My cousin Anne. She’s more of a sister to me than my own sister. For better and worse. There are times—” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “There are times when we feel like two parts of the same person. If that isn’t too fanciful.”

“No.” Georgie’s voice was hoarse. From the port, of course. It took her that way, sometimes. “No, not fanciful at all.”