Page 28 of The English Wife

Georgie nodded, but couldn’t quite trust herself to speak. Nothing had come along. The burlesques were closing, one by one, replaced by musical comedies featuring a different class of actress, with more emphasis on the singing and less on the legs. Her voice might be good enough for the Ali Baba, but it wouldn’t fly at the Gaiety.

She’d thought she couldn’t sink lower, but it seemed that there was nowhere to go but down.

“I’ve been thinking of a change of profession,” she managed as they strolled with the rest of humanity onto the footpath that ran between the Serpentine and the Row. “There’s an opening at the ribbon counter at Liberty’s.”

“You would work as a shopgirl?”

“Is it any more shameful than showing my legs for money?” The words came out more sharply than Georgie had intended. She tried to soften her tone. “I thought Americans were all for industry and hard work. You’ve a profession, after all.”

“If I ever practice it.” Mr. Van Duyvil bent to retrieve a fallen doll, handing it back to the small child with a bow and a smile. Straightening, he grimaced at Georgie. “We’ll see how much longer I can contrive to escape it.”

Georgie felt a heaviness in her chest. “Do you return to New York soon?”

“Sooner than I would like.” Mr. Van Duyvil scuffed a well-polished shoe against the dirt of the path. “My mother writes me that my sister is all but engaged.”

“Felicitations,” said Georgie, her voice unnatural to her ears. “When may the happy union be expected?”

“Soon. As to the happiness of it…” Mr. Van Duyvil shrugged his shoulders.

Beneath his tall hat, his hair gleamed golden in the spring sunlight. Georgie felt herself memorizing him, the way the light and shadow played across his clean-shaven face, the way he moved, the way he walked, all the little details that made him so peculiarly himself and, over the last two months, inexplicably dear. She could feel herself pressing the details into memory, saving them like dried flowers kept in a spinster’s chest, relics of a past that might have been, of a future that never was.

“Do you not approve your sister’s choice, then?” She tried to keep her voice light, her tone neutral.

Mr. Van Duyvil’s sister should be nothing to her, her marriage none of Georgie’s concern. Because Georgie was nothing to Mr. Van Duyvil, she knew that, had always known that their time was limited, that his real life would, inevitably, close back around him.

She could feel it happening already, in the influx of wealthy Americans to London for the Season, in the evenings that she dined alone at the Feathers because Mr. Van Duyvil was, as he put it, doing his duty by his mother’s friends.

“I know Teddy Newland a little.” Mr. Van Duyvil paused by the railing that separated the equestrians from the pedestrians. “He’s exactly what my mother had hoped for—standing, breeding, money.”

“And your sister? What does she hope for?”

“My sister?”

“It is her marriage,” Georgie pointed out drily. “Surely, she has some say.”

“If you can think that, you haven’t met my mother.” Mr. Van Duyvil rubbed a hand against his temple. “I don’t know what my sister wants. To have a household of her own, I presume. It hasn’t been easy for her in my mother’s house. Sometimes, I wonder if I should have stood up for her more, at least made sure she could read a book without hiding it under her pillow, but if I intervened, who knew what might happen? It might only make things worse. No books under the pillow. No books at all.” Mr. Van Duyvil grimaced. “Teddy should be good for that, at least. He won’t care what she reads so long as she looks right in public.”

“You sound less than pleased for her.”

“Do I?” Mr. Van Duyvil glanced down at her, and she found herself struck, as always, by the warmth in those blue eyes, the honesty. “I suppose it’s because I see in it my own fate—and I find it a decidedly lowering prospect.”

“Standing, breeding, and money?” Georgie teased. “Poor stuff indeed.”

“It is when there’s no meeting of minds.” His voice was low; it seemed to resonate through her with the pounding of the horses’ hooves. “I don’t want to see my wife once a week at the Opera and pass messages through the servants in the between.”

Georgie dropped her eyes before the expression in his. “That’s the problem with fate, isn’t it?” she said, starting to walk again, speaking rapidly, just to cover the silence. “It has a way of catching up with you. You’ve overstayed your time here as it is.”

“Have I?” Mr. Van Duyvil caught up to her easily, his shadow covering hers, subsuming it. “I feel as though I could live a lifetime in London and still only know the part of it.”

Georgie glanced back at him over her shoulder. “Don’t go looking too hard. There are dark corners you’d do well to avoid.”

“There are dark corners in any city.”

“Don’t forget the dark corners in our hearts,” said Georgie mockingly.

“Those, too,” said Mr. Van Duyvil, so seriously that Georgie stopped by the rail to peer up at him. “Would you believe me…”

“Yes?” There was something about the way he was looking at her, the indecision, the earnestness, that made Georgie’s chest feel tight.