Page 62 of The English Wife

Georgie only shook her head without looking at him. In one breath, she said, “Carrie Rheinlander thinks that you only married me to get your own back over Anne’s engagement.”

Georgie could feel Bay’s breath against her hair. “Carrie Rheinlander is a nasty busybody who wouldn’t know an honest emotion if it bit her.”

Georgie turned in his arms, looking up at him. “Then what did Anne mean about your marrying for appearances?”

Bay’s eyes shifted away from hers. “When Anne’s unhappy, she lashes out however she can. She doesn’t bother with Queensbury rules.”

“A hit is only a hit if there’s something to hit.”

Bay’s hands tightened on her shoulders. “If I had wanted to marry someone for appearances, don’t you think I would have chosen from my own set?” His voice softened. “You know why I married you, Georgie. I married you because I couldn’t bear to let you go.”

It usually made her feel warm through and through when he said that, but today it left her cold. “And to save me from Giles,” she reminded him. Her hands flattened against the lapels of his coat. “I feel I know you less here than I did in London.”

“I hate Newport.” Bay ducked his head, abashed at his own vehemence. “There’s no space between spectacle and reality. I always feel … not myself … in Newport.”

“London, then,” said Georgie softly. “What were you in London?”

“More myself for being with you.” Bay’s blue eyes met hers, rueful, genuine, the man she had met in London, the man who had sat across from her at the Feathers night after night, who had endured a dozen performances of Eleven and One Nights. This was the man she had married, the man she loved. “Was it selfishness to bring you back with me?”

“No. Unless it was my selfishness as well, to want to come with you.” Georgie ought to have felt reassured, she supposed, but instead she felt obscurely troubled by worries she couldn’t quite name.

Maybe Bay was right. Maybe it was Newport, that hothouse environment of spectacle and show, where everyone whispered about everyone else. Maybe it was feeling herself under public scrutiny, knowing her very name to be a lie. Easier, perhaps, to look for weaknesses in others than admit them in herself.

Bay touched her cheek with one finger. “Shall we dress? If you can bear the costume my mother chose for you.”

“I’ve worn worse.” It was the first time either of them had touched on her past, and it felt strangely intimate, something that was theirs and theirs alone. “At least this is a skirt, not trousers.”

The corners of Bay’s eyes crinkled. “I rather miss those trousers.”

Georgie twined her arms around his neck, heedless of servants, of potential watchers. Let Newport gossip about how shamefully in love the Van Duyvils were. “I might be persuaded to put on a private performance.”

Gently, Bay unwrapped her arms, lifting first one hand, then the other, to his lips. “Tonight’s performance first.” He cocked a brow. “Should I be alarmed that my mother has cast me as Hades?”

“Why should you be alarmed?” said Georgie, trying not to mind. He was right, of course. The gong would go at any moment, and Mrs. Van Duyvil didn’t brook lateness. “I’m the one who’s about to be dragged down to the underworld.”

“For love,” Bay reminded her. “For love.”

Cold Spring, 1899

January

“How did you come to write for the papers?’

With Mrs. Gerritt serving, lunch was a necessarily stilted affair. One couldn’t discuss delicate matters with Mrs. Gerritt slapping dishes on the sideboard with a brisk efficiency that intimated that her time would be better spent elsewhere. She had already demonstrated her displeasure by showing Janie and her guest into the breakfast room rather than the dining room, as “no company had been expected.”

Janie and Mr. Burke had already discussed the unusually cold winter; whether the winter was really that unusually cold or it only seemed that way; and supplemented it with a précis of winters that had been either unusually cold or unusually mild. Having exhausted the weather as a topic, Janie cast about for something else suitably anodyne.

“You make journalism sound like a social disease,” said Mr. Burke, leaning back in his chair with exaggerated ease. Janie had noticed the way his eyes took in the richly paneled room, the stained glass, the Italian marbles and Flemish tapestries. In response, he had adopted a smilingly pugilistic manner that made conversation almost as difficult as Mrs. Gerritt’s silent disapproval.

“Do I? I didn’t mean to. I have a cousin who writes for the papers,” said Janie, by way of apology. “Or thinks he does. It’s mostly doggerel verse, all in rhymed couplets. When he gets away from his nurse, he sends large parcels to the papers.”

She decided not to add that said cousin claimed to be the reincarnated soul of Lord Byron, John Donne, and, on alternate Tuesdays, Shakespeare. The Byron days were particularly trying for his poor nurse, who had to suffer being pinched on top of being recited at.

“There are no rhymes in mine,” said Mr. Burke. Reluctantly, he said, “I came to the paper by way of the theater. I got my start performing in Mr. Herne’s plays.”

“You were an actor?” Perhaps that explained the odd sense of familiarity, the sensation that she had seen Mr. Burke’s face—or at least his name—somewhere before.

“Not a very good one.”