Page 63 of The English Wife

Janie remembered that first meeting in the kitchen, in his imposture as Katie’s cousin. She looked skeptically at him over the remains of her apple tart. “Or so you claim. It might take a good actor to play a bad one.”

“You have a devious mind, Miss Van Duyvil.” It did not sound like a compliment.

Janie gave her napkin a twitch. “Call it, rather, common sense.”

“Another gift from your Dutch ancestors?” Mr. Burke raised a brow, deliberately provoking. “Along with the Delftware, of course.”

Was he trying to change the subject? His theatrical career appeared to be something Mr. Burke had no desire to discuss. Which, of course, made Janie all the more curious. “How did you go from theater to … your current profession?”

“Sure, and it’s all a form of the human comedy, isn’t it?”

Janie frowned at him, refusing to be deterred. “Did you always want to be on the stage?”

“I wanted to eat,” said Mr. Burke bluntly. “I drove a milk wagon for a time, but given that I didn’t like the dawn and the horse didn’t like me, it seemed better to look for other employment.”

“So you exchanged milk bottles for an inkwell?” said Janie, for lack of anything better to say. It seemed very hard to imagine the urbane Mr. Burke on the seat of a milk wagon. “You don’t seem—”

“Common?” Mr. Burke offered, and Janie felt her cheeks redden. He pushed his plate firmly back. “Let me dispel any illusions you might have about me, Miss Van Duyvil. I’m as common as they come. I was a foundling. Left on the steps for the nuns.”

“That’s very … romantic,” Janie ventured.

“No,” said Mr. Burke, “it’s not. There were dozens of us, left every week. The unwanted ones. There were so many of us that they had a cradle put outside the church. For deliveries, you might say.”

The bitterness in his voice made Janie flinch. “You don’t know that nobody wanted you. Your mother might have been ill—she might have had no other recourse.” She’d seen it often enough at the Girls’ Club, women who had taken one misstep, forced to hide their conditions, give up their babies. She’d seen them crying in secret, only in secret, because to admit the truth would mean ruin. “This might have been her way of giving you a better start in life.”

“Or of getting rid of an impediment.” Mr. Burke smiled crookedly. “You’re determined to make a heartwarming story out of this, aren’t you, Miss Van Duyvil?”

Janie wasn’t willing to let it go that easily. “But just think. You might be anyone.”

Mr. Burke choked on a laugh. “A lost prince? You’ve been reading too much Little Lord Fauntleroy. More likely I’m the illegitimate child of some poor soul just off the boat.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Even if it had been. Janie rested her palms on the table, in heady defiance of her mother’s strictures. “Just think, you can be anyone you want to be. You have no family telling you how you’re meant to behave or what you’re meant to do or meant not to do. There’s the whole world in front of you for the taking.”

For a moment, he almost seemed to be listening. But then he gave his head a quick shake. “Or for the stealing. I’ve lived in ways you can’t imagine.”

Janie didn’t have to ask what he meant. Even she had seen it, through the windows of the carriage, the young children huddled together in alleys for warmth, scavenging for food.

“You’re right. I can’t imagine it.” Janie stared down at her own hands, so smooth and unscarred, the nails carefully shaped. “There are times when I look at the women at the Girls’ Club and wonder if I could have lived as they have lived. I wish I could be that strong. I … I don’t think I would do as well, if I tried.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Burke leaned back in his chair, his eyes on her face. “You’re not at all what I expected.”

“My mother feels the same way.” She’d meant it lightly, but it didn’t come out that way. Abruptly, Janie said, “Would you like a cup of tea before you leave for your train? We can take it in the library.”

“A foundling taking tea at Illyria. Your ancestors must be rattling in their graves.” Mr. Burke rose and circled to the back of her chair to draw it out for her. “Do you have anything stronger than tea?”

Janie slipped out of her seat, very aware of Mr. Burke behind her. “Sherry, I think.”

He gestured her to precede him, a strangely courtly gesture for a former milkman. “I’d say the day calls for it, wouldn’t you?”

“Mrs. Gerritt,” said Janie, feeling defiant and bold, “would you bring the tea things to the library?”

“For propriety’s sake, I take it?” murmured Mr. Burke as they walked together from the breakfast room to the library, down a corridor paneled in dark wood and hung with the murky portraits of someone’s ancestors. “Do you mean to drink your sherry from a teacup?”

Janie’s flush gave her away. Mr. Burke gave a bark of laughter.

“How can you be bold enough to seek me out, but not bold enough to take a tipple in your own house?”

“It’s not my house,” Janie pointed out. “It’s Bay’s. Was Bay’s.”