Page 84 of The English Wife

Had he looked at Anne like that, ten years ago?

“Walk with me,” Janie said.

“Anywhere,” began Mr. Burke, but Janie cut him off.

“Down the hall will do.” When they were in the alcove by the back door, Janie stopped and turned. She could see Mr. Burke’s shoes, scuffed and worn against the carpet runner someone had donated three years ago. Without preamble, Janie said, “A decade ago, my cousin attempted to elope with an actor from Mr. Daly’s theater. She was retrieved, and the actor, I understand, made to lose his position.”

She looked up to find that Mr. Burke’s face had gone blank. “That’s a very politic way of putting it,” he said.

Janie’s teeth dug into her lower lip. “But … accurate?”

He let out a long sigh. “Such as it is.”

“Such as it is?” Janie echoed. She felt frozen, her wits gone sluggish. What are you talking about? he was meant to have said. “In what way is it incorrect?”

“Not so much incorrect as incomplete.” Mr. Burke shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down at her, his brows raised. “There’s a sequel to the story, of course—but I think you already know it. Mr. Daly, who was a kind man, put in a word with the theater critic at The World, who pulled a string here and a string there and found the actor a job delivering papers.”

“You,” said Janie, the word scraped from the back of her throat. “You didn’t tell me.”

“It didn’t seem … relevant.” Mr. Burke followed her as Janie yanked, blindly, on the handle of the door and stumbled out into the patch of flagstone that they called a garden. “And it was a long time ago.”

The cold hit Janie like a slap. “Ten years ago.”

“Twelve,” Mr. Burke corrected her quickly, trying to catch her eye. “It was twelve years ago.”

“Twelve years ago. Why not? What difference does two years make, more or less?” Janie put out a hand, and felt the scratchy wood of the garden wall against her palm.

“Janie.” Mr. Burke’s hand touched her shoulder. Janie moved sharply away. An expression of annoyance crossing his face, Burke rested one hand on the wall next to her head. “Miss Van Duyvil. Look. When I got the news about … about your brother … I’ll admit it. There was a certain … oh, I don’t know. Did I want to rub your mother’s nose in the dirt? Yes. Of course I did. But it was mostly about the story. That’s my job: getting the story. What happened twelve years ago happened twelve years ago. When you came to see me—”

The wall scraped against the back of Janie’s dress. “You saw an easy mark?”

“I admired your guts,” he said roughly. “I admired you.”

For a moment, they stood like that, close enough to kiss. And then sanity returned, and Janie pushed away from the wall, treading on Mr. Burke’s foot in the process. “Like you admired Anne?”

Mr. Burke emitted a muffled curse as he shifted from one foot to the other. “I barely knew your cousin. I was sixteen. People do stupid things at sixteen. I won’t lie to you—”

Janie could hear herself emitting a very unladylike snort.

Mr. Burke winced, but pressed on. “I flirted with her. I was flattered. Who wouldn’t be? But I wasn’t in love with her.”

Janie glared up at him. “Then why did you elope with her?”

“I didn’t elope with her!” Vaguely, Janie was aware of heads sticking out of the windows above, people leaning out to listen. But Burke was there, in front of her, his expression strained, blotting out everything else. “Your cousin showed up with her bandboxes and told me we were running away together. That was all. I never meant … it was a stupid mistake, that was all.”

“How naïve do you think I am?” Janie wrapped her hands in the folds of her skirt, as though that could stop their shaking. “My mother had you stripped of your livelihood. That’s not the sort of thing you forget.”

Mr. Burke scraped a hand through his hair. “Believe it or not, but your mother did me a good turn when she had me turned off. I hated the stage. When you’re onstage … you can’t see for the lights in your eyes. Not to mention that I was a miserable actor.”

Janie’s eyes stung from the wind. “I’d say you were a very good one. You’ve been performing with me for weeks.”

“It hasn’t all been a performance.” That all cut like a knife. Realizing his mistake, Mr. Burke winced. “Janie, believe me—”

“Believe you?” Janie couldn’t keep the incredulity out of her voice. The wind was making her cheeks burn and her chest hollow. “How you must have laughed when I came to you. Revenge offered up on a silver plate.”

“Not silver,” said Mr. Burke, so softly his words were barely audible above the wind. “Gold.”

It wasn’t fair of him to look at her like that, as though she were a lady in a portrait and he her swain. When, in fact, it had all been a lie, a lie from start to finish.