Page 72 of The English Wife

“No. I haven’t.” Mr. Burke stood very still, his eyes dark and serious on her face, as though he were trying to puzzle her out, make sense of her. “Genevieve.”

She couldn’t very well accuse him of taking liberties when she was the one who had made him free of her name.

“This is the nursery.” Confused and annoyed, Janie swept up her skirt and blundered into the doorframe.

“All right, then?”

Janie wasn’t sure which smarted more, her elbow or her pride.

“Quite,” she said and took a step aside, gesturing Mr. Burke to precede her. She must, she decided, be a very bad person, because she took a perverse delight in adding, just a moment too late, “Mind the toy soldier.”

When he had finished hopping and swearing under his breath, Mr. Burke said, somewhat raggedly, “Your nephew forgot his grenadiers.”

“They were my brother’s.” Janie’s amusement faded. She could picture her brother lining them up in rows, enacting mock battles. No, not battles. Parlays. Bay had always been more a negotiator than a fighter, relying on charm rather than force. “I imagine my nephew has soldiers enough of his own.”

Mr. Burke glanced at her sideways. “Were you a child here?”

“Briefly.” Janie held up the candle, turning old toys into strange shadows. “The nurse’s room is on the far side.”

Instead of crossing the room, Mr. Burke wandered over to the wall, squinting at the tiny figures. “What’s that on the wall?”

Janie obligingly held her candle closer. “Fairy stories. Rapunzel, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk…” She squinted at a sun-faded figure. “The goose with the golden eggs?”

She could feel Mr. Burke come to stand beside her. “They killed it, didn’t they?”

It was a little absurd to be standing shoulder to shoulder, avoiding looking at one another. She could smell woodsmoke and old leaves and aged whisky. And, beneath it, soap and skin. “In the story? Yes.”

Mr. Burke made a noise deep in his throat. “How many jewels was your sister-in-law wearing when she disappeared?”

Too many to count. Although many had. Pearls, sapphires, diamonds, strung about her neck, embroidered into her dress, affixed to the heels of her shoes.

Janie had an uncomfortable idea she knew what he was getting at. On the wallpaper, the farmwife’s hands were around the neck of the goose, ready to squeeze. She turned away, taking her candle with her. “I don’t know.”

Mr. Burke followed, navigating around the fallen toys. “A king’s ransom, the papers said.”

“You are the papers.” Janie reached for the door of the nurse’s room, only to find Mr. Burke’s hand on the handle before her. “You should know better than to believe what they say.”

“Is that what you think of me?” He was blocking the way, looking across at her with a long furrow across the bridge of his nose. “I don’t deliberately set out to perpetrate falsehoods, Miss Van Duyvil. Even if they will sell papers.”

It would have been easier to blame all their ills on interfering reporters, inventing scandal. But the whisky still had hold of her, and if wine brought truth, how much more so whisky?

Janie let out her breath with a whoosh. “No, I don’t believe you do … Jimmy.”

Mr. Burke quirked a brow, but moved aside to let her pass. “That’s not Queensbury rules.”

Janie decided there was something to said for being under the influence. She made a dismissive gesture. “I never claimed to be a gentleman.”

Mr. Burke’s eyes swept her from her tousled hair to her dusty hem. “No, you didn’t.” He reached at random for the wardrobe door. “This is the room?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t here to spar with Mr. Burke. “I believe this was once the nurse’s room, but it looks as though someone stayed here more recently.”

Mr. Burke’s fingers skated over the wrinkles in the coverlet. “It does, indeed.”

There was no reason for her cheeks to go red. A bed was a bed. “That was Viola, this afternoon. But the bedclothes were already wrinkled.”

“Do the locals know the house is empty?” When Janie looked at him quizzically, Burke added, “If someone were looking for a place for an illicit tryst, this would do nicely.”

The wall against her back, Burke’s hands on her waist, her hips.