Page 70 of The English Wife

Annoyed with herself and her traitorous body, Georgie pulled herself up and set off back down the path, the sunshine making rainbows at the corners of her eyes. Only a few hours more. Only a few hours more and Anne would go off with her new husband in a haze of rice and gossip, and she could retreat to a dark room and nibble very, very slowly on a soda cracker.

Charlie and Bay were still standing by the belvedere. Below her, the men were arguing, their voices low and intense, their heads close together. Georgie could see her reticule in Bay’s hand, held in that awkward way men had with feminine things.

“—best forgot,” he was saying, his voice low.

“Maybe you can forget.” Charlie’s trained, advocate’s voice carried over the sound of the leaves. “I can’t.”

“Charlie, I told you—”

“You mean you ran away. That’s not an argument. That’s an admission.”

“This isn’t one of your cases, Charlie!” Bay pulled away, visibly agitated, and Georgie started forward, ready to come to his aid, to extricate him from the conversation. “You can’t talk me into submission.”

“Fine,” said Charlie. “Here’s another argument.”

The afternoon sun glittered in Georgie’s eyes, bright on the river. She put up a hand against the dazzle. Charlie grabbed the lapels of Bay’s jacket. Bay held up a hand in protest, the hand holding Georgie’s reticule. It swung in the air, the beads scintillating, setting up a gentle chime.

Georgie opened her mouth to call out, but the words froze on her lips as Charlie Ogden pulled her husband’s head to his and sealed Bay’s lips with his.

In Bay’s hand, her reticule swung back and forth and back and forth as Georgie’s world narrowed to the glitter of the beads and then to nothing at all.

FOURTEEN

Cold Spring, 1899

January

Lips on lips, palms on flesh. In the dark, there was nothing but sensation. Janie could taste the whisky on Mr. Burke’s tongue, or perhaps it was her own. She could feel the coiled strength of him through the fabric of his jacket, his hair soft underneath her fingers.

Fragments of poetry danced through her mind like crystal baubles. Long-dead rogues and roués, urging women on to indiscretions, but the words rang like chimes in Janie’s head. Nothing, nothing was here right now except this, except them. Mr. Burke had vowed her no vows, pledged her no pledges, made her no promises, and there was something in that which gave Janie the strength to wrap her arms around his neck, to meet him kiss for kiss, not because he’d asked, but because he hadn’t, because this was what she wanted, here, now.

His hands moved from her shoulders, down her sides, and she felt herself arching to meet his touch as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She felt desirable, powerful, not a spinster to be pitied, but Cleopatra, seduced and seducer.

Their lips parted with an audible sound. In the dark, Janie could hear the raw grate of Mr. Burke’s breath as he dropped his hands from her hips, taking an unsteady step back, away from her. “Miss Van Duyvil.”

It didn’t feel cold in the hall anymore. Janie could feel the heat between their bodies. Her lips felt swollen, well used. Her hair was half-loose around her face. The humor of it all bubbled up in her, the absurdity of such formality when a moment ago, they had been kissing as though the world might end.

“Mr. Burke, I presume.”

She could hear him choke on a laugh. Strange to know someone so little and yet know them enough to be able to read volumes into the slightest sound. “My friends call me James.”

Janie remembered the catcalls in the newsroom. “Not Jimmy?”

“Not unless they want a black eye.” She could feel the cold return as Mr. Burke moved away from her, stepping back with an air of renunciation. “Miss Van Duyvil—”

“Genevieve.” It had been so long since she had spoken her real name that it sounded strange on her lips. “Or Janie, if you must.”

She could feel Mr. Burke’s attention. “Not Jane?”

Everyone always assumed it must be. It was a good name for a spinster, Jane. “No. I was named after the patron saint of Paris. My father insisted.”

“Genevieve.” She could hear Mr. Burke trying the name, testing it. He breathed out a long breath, his voice ragged. “I think it would be safer if I stuck with Miss Van Duyvil.”

Janie gathered her tumbled hair together in both hands. “Safer for whom?”

“Both of us?” Mr. Burke’s eyes followed the movement of her arms, her body. “This … I … damn.”

Janie stared after him, her hands frozen in her hair, every inch of her body alive, seized with a heady sense of—what? Excitement, exhilaration, power. Power to know that she had made Mr. Burke’s breath come short, his hands tremble, that here, in the dark, in this quiet place, someone wanted her.