Page 58 of The English Wife

“Are you planning to be particularly trying, Mr. Burke, or is it my company that cloys?”

She’d meant it as raillery, but it came out too close to home.

“Neither. Call it Dutch courage. Appropriate enough here, wouldn’t you say?” Mr. Burke gave his head a little shake, as though calling himself to order. “If you knew something unpleasant was about to happen, but you couldn’t do anything to stop it, would you want to know anyway?”

No, Janie wanted to say. There’d been enough unpleasantness to last a lifetime already. But what poor sort of character would that make her? She didn’t want to stick her fingers in her ears and let Troy burn around her. She would rather be out there with a bucket, flinging water at the flames.

“Yes, I would,” Janie said at last. “And you don’t know that you can’t stop it. I don’t believe anything’s really inevitable until it happens. We just call it inevitable to make ourselves feel better about it, to excuse ourselves for not having done anything.”

“Like your brother’s death?” Mr. Burke cast a wary eye on Viola, who was playing with Polly in and out of the legs of a stone bench. He moved to stand beside Janie, not touching her, but so close that she could feel the warmth of him through her coat. “There’s nothing you could have done.”

“How do you know?” The words wrenched out of her.

Janie pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, wishing she could take the words back. She hadn’t even known she was thinking them until she said them. But there it was. If she’d noticed Bay was missing … if she’d walked outside five minutes sooner … they would none of them be here.

Tightly, Janie said, “Tell me what you have to tell me, Mr. Burke. We’ve had enough theatrics.”

“Don’t you think I wish it were?” Mr. Burke lowered his head towards her, his words for her alone. “There’s another scandal about to break. Theodore Newland is citing your brother as a corespondent in his divorce.”

Newport, 1894

August

“I’m afraid there’s no card with this one.” Janie handed Georgie a silver sugar shaker, elaborately chased with bulbous flowers that might have been roses, as imagined by someone who had never seen one.

“Perhaps the sender was ashamed? I would be.”

Janie swallowed a chuckle. At least, Georgie thought, it might have wanted to be a chuckle when it grew up. “I’ll just put it on the list as unknown.”

Balked of a proper wedding, society had deliberated and deemed it necessary to send wedding presents anyway. No one wanted to be accused of stinting Bayard Van Duyvil of his due or being found wanting in the eyes of his English bride. Since gifts deserved a showing, Mrs. Van Duyvil the Elder had sent out cards for a ball in celebration of her son’s marriage. An entire room had been set aside for the display of society’s munificence.

Arranged for all to see were silver services crusted with the Van Duyvil acorns; gold-edged china from Limoges and whimsical figurines from Dresden; lace-trimmed tablecloths embroidered by nuns from Spain and blown-glass ornaments from Italy. And then there were the jewels, more than Georgie could wear in a lifetime: parures of garnets set in gold, aquamarines surrounded by seed pearls, combs and bracelets and pendants and rings.

Mother Van Duyvil had gifted her with a tiara—and promptly taken it back again. It was to be hers on loan, for the correct occasions.

“And when the time comes,” her new mother-in-law had said with a tight little smile.

That time being, presumably, when the dowager Mrs. Van Duyvil shuffled off the mortal coil, leaving a daughter-in-law trained in her ways to bear the family tiara.

The tiara was displayed in pride of place on a red velvet cushion so that all might gasp at her mother-in-law’s largesse. Largesse and approval.

It was a bit hard to remember that it was only four months ago that Georgie had been living in a garret room with peeling paper, with only the clothes on her back to call her own. And now diamonds. On loan.

That was nothing new, was it? Her life had always been on loan, a life lived on the fringes of Annabelle’s. A Miss Smith wasn’t on the same level as a Miss Lacey. Miss Smith took the chair farther from the fire, the smaller slice of cake, the plainer dress, and all because of an accident of birth that put her on one side of the bar sinister and Annabelle on the other.

How old was she when she had learned the truth? Georgie wasn’t quite sure. Sometimes it felt like she had always known. Was it Annabelle who had taunted her with it? Perhaps. There had been times when they had been the best of friends, but Annabelle, charming when so inclined, loving when in the mood, had been ruthless in crushing what she saw as any display of rebellion, with whatever weapon came into her arsenal.

Annabelle. How odd that after all that had passed, Georgie missed her still. Missed her and loved her and hated her, all in one.

What would Annabelle say to see her now, decked in silks and pearls, dining on gold plates?

So vulgar. But what would one expect of an American and an actress?

Bit by bit, Georgie found herself bringing Annabelle back, piecemeal, a gesture here, a turn of phrase there. She found herself adopting Annabelle’s mannerisms, her inflection, that haughty tilt of the chin, that devil-may-care grin she flashed over her shoulder just before she did something that was bound to get Georgie into trouble later on.

Some days, she could almost imagine that she was Annabelle. She would look into the mirror and see Annabelle’s face transposed onto her own. But it was only fair, wasn’t it? A life for a life, a Lacey for a Lacey. She’d paid her dues. Wasn’t it her turn to enjoy the benefits?

“Annabelle?” It took Georgie a moment to realize that her sister-in-law was speaking to her, that the sugar shaker was leaving rose-shaped dents in her palms. “Are you all right?”