Page 80 of The English Wife

SIXTEEN

New York, 1899

February

“It distresses me deeply to be the bearer of bad tidings.” Mr. Tilden, Mrs. Van Duyvil’s lawyer, was deeply apologetic.

Janie rearranged the folds of her skirt and kept her head bowed. With the drapes drawn and no fire lit, her mother’s parlor contrived at once to be both stuffy and cold. After a week in the country, the house on Thirty-Sixth Street felt like a prison. All the more so for the cordons still in place outside, as the crowd pressed in, trying to sneak glimpses through the shuttered windows.

SCANDAL ON THE HUDSON! screamed The Journal. BAYARD VAN DUYVIL’S AFFAIR WITH COUSIN WHO WAS RAISED AS HIS SISTER.

The World was more direct, if no less sensational. CUCKOLD OR ADULTERER? BAYARD VAN DUYVIL CITED IN COUSIN’S DIVORCE.

Teddy Newland, apparently, could not be reached for comment on his yacht in the Riviera. His lawyers refused to confirm or deny the charge. But that didn’t stop The Journal from stretching the story until it squeaked.

The city was ripe with speculation. Annabelle Van Duyvil had discovered her husband’s affair with his cousin and killed him and herself. No, no. It was Bayard Van Duyvil who was the wronged party and Annabelle who was the adulteress. Warring camps took sides; omnibus drivers and chemists wrote letters to the editor in which they thrashed out the relative merits of each side.

A former maid at Illyria came forward with stories of scandalous goings-on that boosted The Journal’s circulation dramatically until it was proved, by The World, that the so-called maid had, in fact, never set foot in the house.

It was Mr. Burke’s name on the byline of that article, tearing the maid’s story to shreds. Discrediting The Journal was his job, after all, but Janie couldn’t help but feel obscurely heartened all the same. It made her feel as though she had a champion in the lists, someone ready to wield his pen on her behalf. The fancy made her half smile to herself, silly as it was, fountain pens in place of lances, papers for shields. And Mr. Burke in a bowler hat in place of a visor.

They had met twice more since Illyria, stolen moments in City Hall Park beside the statue of Nathan Hale: once he told her that his colleagues in London had identified the name of the actress on the program as a Georgina Evans, not Georgiana Smith, and the second time he warned her that the date of the inquest had been set and that Janie, her mother, and Anne were all to be called to testify.

The official notice had arrived hours later, presented by a harried Mr. Tilden. It had been easier than Janie expected to pretend she knew nothing about it, largely because no one ever imagined she might. As always, she sat in a chair a little behind the others, draped in crêpe and dullness. Janie Van Duyvil, who never did anything improper.

Except that she had. And she wasn’t sorry.

She was only sorry that the opportunity hadn’t arisen again. Did that make her shameless? Perhaps. Or perhaps it merely made her honest. She could still feel the burn in her skin from the wind, nipping her cheeks, making her feel alive. She had attended the most exclusive balls in the city, danced with New York’s most eligible bachelors, and yet she had never felt so alive as when she stood in City Hall Park with a reporter of no family, burning her lips eating hot chestnuts out of a twist of newspaper.

Mr. Burke had taken the paper away, insisting that she allow him to test them for her. Janie had reclaimed her prize, protesting that it hardly counted as gallantry to eat them all before they cooled.

“Even if I save you from a scorched tongue?” he’d countered.

“You don’t seem to be suffering,” Janie retorted.

“How do you know?” he’d said, and there was something in the way he’d said it that made her hastily return her attention to the chestnuts.

They’d both sobered quickly enough when Mr. Burke told her about the impending summons, but the thought of the afternoon still brought a glow to Janie’s chest, burned lips, frozen fingers, and all. For a moment, she had felt … like anyone else. Like Katie, who might walk out with a charming man on her half day, simply for the pleasure of being in his company.

It was nonsense, of course. Theirs was a partnership. Possibly even a friendship. She had felt more herself in their brief acquaintance than she had with anyone since her father had died. But anything else was—

“Impossible,” Janie’s mother said so forcibly that Janie half feared she had said something aloud. But Mrs. Van Duyvil’s ire was directed at the hapless Mr. Tilden. “The coroner must be aware that we are a household in mourning.”

Mr. Tilden gave a delicate cough. “If you have been called, you must testify at the coroner’s inquest. Your bereavement is, I fear, no excuse under the law.”

“Barbaric,” pronounced Mrs. Van Duyvil, white-lipped. “Would they make me exhume my son so they might batten on his body?”

Mrs. Van Duyvil looked, for the first time, old. Janie felt a sudden twinge of conscience. Her mother was so strong, so … so armored, that sometimes Janie forgot that she was grieving, that it was her heart and not just her family pride that was aching.

Mr. Tilden took a cautious sip of his sherry. “If it is any consolation,” he offered, “it is highly unlikely that you will be called to the stand, Mrs. Van Duyvil. I believe your summons was a mere formality.”

“To force me to dwell on my son’s death so that they may all glory in my grief?” Mrs. Van Duyvil’s nostril’s flared. Janie reached out a hand to cover her mother’s. Mrs. Van Duyvil brushed it away, saying brusquely, “And what of my daughter? Must she be subjected to this … farce?”

It was cold in the room, bitter cold, but a fine sheen of sweat could be observed upon the lawyer’s brow. Mr. Tilden wasn’t, thought Janie with some sympathy, accustomed to dealing with such matters. True, telling disgruntled relatives that they were to receive, after all, no bequest, must be unpleasant, but it wasn’t on the same order as court proceedings relating to unnatural death. To his credit, Mr. Tilden had done his best to refer them to a lawyer who did specialize in what he euphemistically referred to as “such matters,” but Mrs. Van Duyvil was adamant in her refusal. Entrust their private affairs to the sort of man who consorted with criminals and wore loud waistcoats? Never.

Useless to protest that not every trial lawyer was a William Howe, the flamboyant defender. Mrs. Van Duyvil’s mind was made up. Mr. Tilden had spent years drinking her sherry; he could very well guide them through the thicket of the coroner’s court without flinging them on the mercies of low people with large fees.

“Miss Van Duyvil”—Mr. Tilden tilted his head in Janie’s direction in a courtly gesture, then did the same for Anne—“and Mrs. Newland will undoubtedly be questioned as to their observations upon, er, discovering Mr. Van Duyvil.”