Page 59 of The English Wife

Georgie gave her head a little shake. “Just away with the fairies. I stayed too late at that awful party at the Breakers last night. We ought to have left when you did. Did you know that—”

“That Mr. Newland put on an impromptu performance?” Janie’s only sign of distress was the two circles of color high on her cheeks. With her fair hair dressed simply in smooth loops on either side, it made her look more than ever like a Dutch doll. “Yes, I heard.”

Someone had slipped something into the punch, and Teddy Newland had serenaded his new fiancée with a lute purported to have belonged to Rizzio, the doomed lover of Mary, Queen of Scots.

“It was dreadful,” said Georgie bluntly. “If Rizzio sounded like that, I don’t wonder that Lord Darnley had him killed. He sounded like a stuck cat.”

Janie ducked her head over the stack of gifts. “We’re almost to the bottom. Would you like me to finish them for you so you can dress?”

“Many hands make light work,” said Georgie in Mrs. Van Duyvil’s most sententious tones, and this time Janie did smile, just a little.

“A servant in time saves nine?”

“If the servant is in time.” Georgie did her best imitation of Mrs. Van Duyvil, but if she’d hoped for confidences, the effort was wasted.

Janie handed her the next package, wide and heavy. “This one is from the Rheinlanders.”

Georgie hefted it. “What do you think’s in it, gold bars? Oh, how lovely. A silver tray.” That made eighteen of them. As casually as she could, she asked, “Did Bay ever pay court to Carrie Rheinlander?”

Janie glanced swiftly up at her. “Carrie can be a bit … temperamental,” she said, and Georgie was reminded that just because someone was quiet didn’t mean she was unaware. She had begun to suspect that her sister-in-law was a great deal shrewder than anyone gave her credit for.

She also wondered with just how many people Carrie had shared her belief that the new Mrs. Van Duyvil was a substitute for Anne. Not that Georgie believed a word of it. It was just mildly annoying, like a mosquito bite one couldn’t quite reach.

As she arranged the card in front of the tray, Janie said carefully, “We all played together as children. Bay was very close to Carrie’s brother, Charlie Ogden.”

Georgie racked her brains for a Mr. Ogden. She had met several, of various levels of paunch and floridity of face, but not a Charles that she could recall. “Have I met him?”

“No. But you will at the wedding.” There was no need to say which wedding. Anne’s wedding was the wedding, the only wedding any of them spoke of, the wedding that had all of society gossiping and Janie hiding like a turtle in a shell. “Charlie is Teddy’s—Mr. Newland’s—first cousin.”

Everyone in New York appeared to be related to everyone else, with varying degrees of social distinction. In England, at least, these rules were laid out properly; one knew where one stood. Here, it was an unwritten code, but no less stringent for existing only in the minds of the cognoscenti.

Georgie rose from her chair, rolling her stiff shoulders. “You need a Debrett’s. It’s impossible to remember who’s who.”

“We have one,” said Janie sheepishly. “It’s called the Social Register. Mother doesn’t have a copy—she finds it vulgar—but I imagine you can find one at the Athenaeum.”

So much for disappearing into the wilds of America. Georgie frowned at her sister-in-law over the shocking display of silver plate. From the ceiling, overripe nymphs simpered down at her. “Will I be in it now?”

“I imagine so.” Janie placed a stiff, cream-colored card against a Wedgwood vase. “They print a new edition every year.”

It didn’t matter, Georgie told herself roughly. Even if by chance Giles heard of an Annabelle Lacey married to Bayard Van Duyvil, what could he do to her now? She looked out over the sea of silver and gold, the jewels glowing sullenly in the afternoon light, and breathed in deeply through her nose. Barbaric, she had thought it, when Mrs. Van Duyvil had told her of the custom of displaying the gifts. But now she found it comforting, like a warrior surveying the contents of an armory. What could Giles muster against this?

Georgie Evans, actress, might be easy prey, but Mrs. Bayard Van Duyvil was another beast entirely.

Mrs. Bayard Van Duyvil, née Annabelle Lacey.

“That’s the last of them, I think.” Janie stepped back to survey her handiwork, the tables draped in damask, laden with a king’s ransom in jewels and plate.

“Thank you.” Georgie stood on tiptoes to press her cheek, fleetingly, against her sister-in-law’s. “I’d best find Bay and make sure he remembers we’re to meet for portraits before supper.”

Her mother-in-law had hired a photographer to record the occasion for posterity, a carefully orchestrated vision of the past preserved for the future.

Bay wasn’t in their room or in his dressing room. His valet directed her to the library, where a maid, arranging flowers for the evening, bobbed a curtsy and said Mr. Van Duyvil might be in the gardens.

Liveried footmen held the French doors for her as she exited through the garden front; gardeners paused in their work to bow their heads. Pulling a veil down over her hat brim to shade her face, Georgie felt dazzled, and not just by the sun. It was mind-boggling to think that she was mistress of all this—or would be, someday.

Giles hadn’t thought her good enough for Lacey Abbey, but she had fooled him. She had everything he had thought to deny her, and he, in an odd way, had been the very instrument of her triumph, driving her to London, to the Ali Baba, to Bay.

She felt, as always, that surge of warmth at the thought of her husband, of Bay, humbled and half-frightened that he was hers, that after everything she had come to this, this fairy-tale place, with her handsome prince of a husband.