Page 31 of The English Wife

“Lacey,” drawled Anne, from the depths of her own chair. “He has come to join us in our bereavement.”

“Mr.… Lacey?” repeated Janie, wondering if she had misheard.

“Miss Van Duyvil.” The stranger bowed over Janie’s hand. He had the physique of a dedicated horseman, heavily muscled in the shoulder and thigh. “I hope you will forgive me for intruding on your grief. You see, Annabelle was my cousin. And when I heard of her death … You do understand, I’m sure.”

“Of course,” said Janie numbly.

She could hear Mr. Burke’s voice in her ear. Miss Lacey’s cousin went to some effort to have her declared dead.

Here was Annabelle, dead. And here was Mr. Lacey in their drawing room. It was too much for coincidence. But if not a coincidence … then what? The man in her mother’s drawing room was no stage villain; his suit was well tailored without being dandified, his manner was ingratiating without being obsequious. He reminded Janie of the boys she had played with in Newport, who had grown up into just such ruddy-cheeked men, confident, uncomplicated, more interested in sport than books.

A bit like Teddy Newland, in fact.

Janie cautiously took a chair. “How is it that we’ve never met?”

“Have a cup of tea, Janie. You look chilled,” said her mother.

Anne laughed a low laugh deep in her throat.

“Anne, would you pour?” It wasn’t really a suggestion. “More tea, Mr. Lacey?”

All her life, her mother had managed her by incidentals, a cup of tea to be poured, a scarf to be fetched. Janie accepted the cup of tea from Anne, but didn’t drink. “I only wondered … Annabelle spoke so little about her family.”

Mr. Lacey settled back into his seat, balancing his own cup on his knee. He tipped his head back, looking to the plasterwork of the ceiling for inspiration. “My cousin and I were estranged, Miss Van Duyvil. It is—was—a source of great sorrow to me.”

Anne reached for a strawberry from the tray, a piece of hothouse extravagance. “Family can be a great trial, Mr. Lacey.”

Mr. Lacey’s eyes followed Anne’s lips as she placed the strawberry between them. “I wouldn’t say that, Mrs. Newland.”

Janie’s mother broke in, saying sharply, “I understand that it was your home that served as the model for my son’s renovations, Mr. Lacey.”

“My … oh, yes. Lacey Abbey.” With an effort, Mr. Lacey returned his attention to Mrs. Van Duyvil. “I don’t think of it as so much mine as in my trust. It has been in my family for many generations.”

The words felt flat to Janie, as though they had been recited too many times. “Annabelle spoke of it as a magical place,” she said.

“Yes,” said Anne, reaching for another strawberry. Her amber eyes were fixed, like a cat’s, on Mr. Lacey’s face. “One wonders why she ever cared to leave.”

Mr. Lacey shrugged, uncomfortable in his carefully tailored suit. “One never knew what Annabelle might take it in her head to do. She was always headstrong. Spirited, I mean. In a charming sort of way,” he amended quickly. “There was a time I had thought that we might … but here we are.”

“Thought you might what?” Janie’s mother asked.

Mr. Lacey ducked his head, the tips of his ears turning red. “Oh, that we might make a match of it. Nothing in it, of course. It was just what people said. And it would have been a way for Annabelle to stay in her home. Not that I would have turned her out. But it’s deuce—er, dashed awkward—to have an unattached woman under one’s roof.”

“Indeed,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil. She didn’t look at Janie. She didn’t need to.

Her very brevity seemed to encourage Mr. Lacey to an excess of speech. “I only came into the estate on my cousin’s death. I’d been in the Horse Guards”—that last with a glance at Anne, to see if she was suitably impressed—“but when the old, er, the colonel, died, I resigned my commission. But there was his daughter. Annabelle.”

An inheritance, Mr. Burke had said. Something about an inheritance.

Janie turned her cup in the saucer so the handle sat just so. “But wouldn’t Annabelle have had her father’s house?”

“I forget. You do things differently here. In America, I mean.” Mr. Lacey mustered an uncomfortable laugh. “The house was entailed in the male line. So Annabelle … well, she just wasn’t in it.”

Unless she was. They had only Mr. Lacey’s word that the estate had been entailed.

What would a man do to secure what he viewed as his patrimony?

“That seems rather hard,” said Anne, stretching sinuously in her chair, drawing Mr. Lacey’s gaze to the shimmering organza of her tea gown. The dark shades of mourning became her, turning her neck to pearl, throwing her golden hair into sharp relief. “To lose so much loveliness by a mere … accident of birth.”