Page 33 of The English Wife

Quickly, Janie interposed, “Do look again, Mr. Lacey. It’s a poor likeness, I know…”

“Mrs. Van Duyvil, Miss Van Duyvil, Mrs. Newland—I cannot tell you how much it pains me to say this.” Mr. Lacey didn’t sound particularly pained. He sounded impatient, as though this were a trying but necessary appointment, like a visit with one’s banker. “It’s a poor likeness because it’s not Annabelle. Don’t you think I know my own cousin?”

“Grief can play tricks with memory,” began Janie, at the same time her mother said, with withering majesty, “It has, by your own admission, been many years since you last saw your cousin, Mr. Lacey.”

Only Anne said nothing.

“There’s been a trick played, but it’s not with my memory.”

“May I suggest, Mr. Lacey,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil in acid tones, “that you return to your memories and leave us with ours?”

A lesser or a wiser man would have snatched up his hat and stick and fled. Mr. Lacey stood planted where he was, feet slightly apart, hat beating a tattoo against one knee. Almost, thought Janie, as though he were nervous.

“If I could—but I should never forgive myself if I left you in ignorance.”

“Don’t they say ignorance is bliss?” Anne prowled over to the tea tray, inspecting the comestibles. “Or perhaps it’s infamy that’s bliss? One gets so confused.”

“I feel it is my duty to tell you,” said Mr. Lacey, raising his voice to forestall any further interruptions, “that my cousin Colonel Lacey had a ward, a girl he brought up from a baby. She was raised as a sister to Annabelle.”

“How lovely for them,” said Anne brightly. “Aunt Alva, was that the supper gong?”

“You are very kind to have called, Mr. Lacey,” said Janie’s mother, in a tone that implied quite the contrary. “But we really mustn’t keep you any longer.”

“But you must hear me!” The frustration on Mr. Lacey’s face as he attempted to forestall them was, Janie thought, the first genuine emotion he had shown. “The woman in this picture—this isn’t Annabelle. This is Georgiana. Georgiana Smith.”

“Janie,” said her mother, “will you tell Katie to bring Mr. Lacey’s coat? He is just leaving.”

“I can see how the confusion occurred.” Mr. Lacey took a step back, speaking rapidly. “They were very like, both in feature and temperament. There were differences, of course. Annabelle was a little the taller. And George—”

“George?” Janie croaked. She could feel Anne’s swift look.

“Georgiana,” Mr. Lacey corrected himself. Ignoring Janie, he addressed himself to her mother. “Their likeness—it was more than chance. The bar sinister and all that, don’t you know. Everyone knew. No one spoke of it, but … well, these things do go on.” He took advantage of the ladies’ offended silence to press on. “I don’t know how to make you understand how it was in that house, Mrs. Van Duyvil. George—Georgiana—there was something not right about her. From the moment I met her, I knew. And I feared for Annabelle.”

“So what you are trying to tell me,” said Janie’s mother, in a tone drier than the arrangement of dead grass under a glass globe on the mantel, “is that my son’s wife was both an imposter and a madwoman.”

“No! Er, yes. That is, an imposter, but not mad. Ambitious. Cunning.” Mr. Lacey warmed to his theme. “She resented Annabelle, resented her position, wanted anything Annabelle had. She was mad about the abbey.”

The Annabelle Janie had known had shunned attention. There was no frenzied search for social status, no grasping for position. Quite the contrary, in fact. The only thing about Mr. Lacey’s allegations that rang true was her love for her home.

Mr. Lacey lowered his voice. “It pains me to say this—”

“But I imagine you will anyway,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil acidly. Janie might have enjoyed the spectacle of her mother outmaneuvered in her own drawing room, rendered powerless in the face of sheer gall, but she felt as though they had all been swept out to sea by the same strong wind and were now bobbing, rudderless, in the surf, with no hint of land in sight.

“—but I always suspected Georgiana of having a hand in my cousin’s untimely demise. Georgiana wanted to marry me, you see.” Catching Anne’s raised brows, Mr. Lacey added hastily, “So that she might be mistress of the abbey. With Annabelle gone … she thought she was in with a chance.”

“An imposter, a madwoman, and a murderess,” said Anne, sinking into a chair. “How very enterprising. It makes me quite exhausted just thinking of it, don’t you agree, Janie?”

Janie murmured something noncommittal, her mind churning, bobbing. She felt like Mr. Carroll’s Red Queen, contemplating three impossible things before breakfast.

Janie’s mother remained standing, Lot’s wife, turned to a block of salt.

“I thought it best to tell you,” said Mr. Lacey apologetically, but there was a hint of satisfaction behind it; the messenger enjoying being the bearer of bad news.

“But if this … this Miss Smith murdered Annabelle,” Janie blurted out, “how could you have thought to find Annabelle here?”

Her words seemed to break the general paralysis.

“For that matter,” chimed in Anne, fluttering her unnaturally dark lashes, “how do we know that you are who you claim? You might be anyone.” As Mr. Lacey sputtered, she said serenely, “You see? It is much easier to make absurd claims than to disprove them.”