Page 69 of The English Wife

Bay put a hand to the small of Georgie’s back, ranging himself with her. “I hear you’ve been making a name for yourself at the bar.”

Mr. Ogden’s face was thinner than his sister’s, his eyes more intense. “You might have done the same.”

“My heart was never in it.” Bay’s voice was apologetic, but Georgie could feel the tension in him, the controlled stillness. “I still have nightmares about Dean Langdell’s Cases on the Law of Contracts.”

“You never seemed to mind burning the midnight oil at the Law Review.” Mr. Ogden’s eyes had the zeal of the inquisitor sighting an apostate. Georgie might not have been there, a mere fly on the windowsill. “Your note on the right to privacy, the right to be let alone, is one of the best I’ve read.”

Bay made a slight gesture of negation. “Mr. Brandeis’s note, you mean. I only helped in editing it.”

“‘The matters of which the publication should be repressed may be described as those which concern the private life, habits, acts, and relations of an individual.…’ It’s a powerful idea, that a man’s private life should be his own.”

“An idealistic one, you mean,” said Bay. “Even Mr. Brandeis admitted to exceptions. And he only spoke of publication in print, not of gossip.”

Mr. Ogden took a step forward. “But if one once admits a right to privacy, where might it lead? If the principle could be established…”

“Would it change human nature? The law can only do so much.”

Charlie’s eyes burned with the inner fire of the born debater. “Where the law leads, people will follow.”

Bay shook his head. “The law might constrain behavior, but it lacks the power to shape it.”

This was apparently an old argument, and one in which Georgie had no part. She stepped away from Bay’s hand. “Would you excuse me?”

Bay blinked and recalled his attention to her. “Are we boring you?”

“Not at all,” Georgie lied. “It makes a change from hunting stories.”

“The fox that got away?” Georgie sensed hostility beneath the casual words. Not surprising, she supposed, from Carrie’s brother. He looked deliberately back at Bay. “There’s a case on that. Pierson v. Post.”

Bay cocked his head. “Supreme Court of New York … 1806?”

Charlie looked smug. “1805.”

Georgie rolled her eyes. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

Bay hurried after her. “And leave me to be embarrassed by how much I’ve forgotten? He’ll bring out the rule against perpetuities next, and then I’ll be truly lost.”

Georgie’s stomach was roiling again. She managed a smile. “Perpetually?”

Bay looked at her with concern. “I’ll walk you back to the house.”

Georgie put out a hand, a fleeting touch to his arm. “No, stay. Enjoy your perpetuities. I won’t be a moment.” She turned to nod to Carrie’s brother. “Mr. Ogden.”

Charlie Ogden tipped his hat to her. “Mrs. Van Duyvil.” To Bay, he said, “If you won’t admit the power of law to shape opinion, what about the Ten Commandments?”

“Divine law, not human.” Georgie could hear Bay’s voice behind her as she made her way around a hedge, back to the path to the house. “You can hardly compare the second circuit to Moses.”

“What about the Supreme Court, then?” Their voices faded as Georgie climbed up the slope, following the twisting path through a lane of hedges, past the dry twigs of a rose arbor. They had come farther than she realized. She had a stitch in her side; she felt light-headed.

They had had a governess once who swore by a drop or two of scent for dizziness. Georgie paused by a bench, reaching for her reticule, but her wrist was bare. She could picture her reticule, the beads flat and lusterless, resting on the belvedere below.

Bother. She rested on the bench for a moment, but people were beginning to drift from the house into the gardens, and she didn’t want anyone to find her here, like this. She could only imagine what Carrie Rheinlander would have to say.

She should, she supposed, tell Bay she was increasing. Georgie let out a little puff of air. She had wanted to wait until after Anne’s wedding, to keep the news something between them, not marred by Anne’s acid congratulations.

Only a few hours more.

In the meantime, she could go to the house and make polite conversation or return to the belvedere and fetch her reticule and her husband.