Page 86 of The English Wife

Bay took the train to town twice a week to maintain his presence at the office. Georgie still found it strange that a man who could afford a private train car would deem it necessary to report to an office like a clerk, to do work that he didn’t need to do, but she accepted that this was part of Bay’s world, a world in which the arbiters of society lived far more opulently than dukes and yet still played at the professions.

“I didn’t go to the office,” Bay confessed, folding himself comfortably onto the ground at her feet. “I have a surprise for you.”

“Dada, Dada, Dada!” Polly the duck clanked behind Viola as she toddled towards her father with surprising speed. She tripped over her own fat little feet, and her father swooped her up, kissing her round cheeks.

Viola went to her father, but Bast came to Georgie, wrapping his arms around her leg just below the knee. Georgie nuzzled his head, smelling the perfect baby smell of him. “What sort of surprise? Not another patent carpet cleaner. Mrs. Gerritt nearly resigned.”

Bay smiled sheepishly. “Nothing that explodes this time, I promise.” He rolled onto his back, lifting a delighted Viola squealing in the air. “I won’t tell you. You’ll have to come to town to see.”

Georgie looked at him darkly. “This isn’t another of your mother’s plots—”

“To make us understand the importance of our position?” Bay finished for her. He lowered Viola gently to the ground, casting a quick look at Georgie. “No. It’s at Anne’s house.”

Georgie hauled Sebastian onto her lap, where he promptly wriggled to be free again. “Haven’t she and Teddy gone to Nice?”

“I believe their trip has been postponed.” Bay looked uncomfortable. “There was some disagreement. I don’t really know.”

That he did know, Georgie had no doubt. There had been times over the past two years when she had badgered Bay to betray his cousin’s confidences. He generally did, in the end, but since Georgie had very little interest in Anne’s domestic dramas, other than to ascertain that they would have no repercussions for Bay, and since Bay had long been aware that Georgie’s sympathy for Anne was limited, they avoided the topic as much as possible.

No matter. If Georgie truly wanted to know, she had only to read Town Topics, which covered Teddy’s indiscretions and Anne’s retaliatory affairs in loving detail.

“Teddy invited Ellen Morris to accompany them, didn’t he?” said Georgie shrewdly. Teddy was known to be carrying on an intrigue with one of his wife’s former closest friends. “And Anne is sticking at it.”

“Something like that.” Bay let out his breath in a grunt as his daughter crawled over his chest. Rolling onto his side, he said, “I wish she’d listened to me.”

Georgie scooped Viola up, wincing as a small fist closed around her pearl earring. “And still be in your mother’s house? I didn’t think you would condemn her to that.”

Bay grimaced. “A fair point.”

They had, at Mrs. Van Duyvil’s command, spent the Christmas season at the house on Thirty-Sixth Street, an experiment that had not gone well. Bay, accustomed now to being master of his own domain, had chafed at his mother’s restrictions. Quietly, yes, but his irritation had been obvious to Georgie, if not to his mother, who viewed him, as far as Georgie could tell, as more pawn than person.

Georgie had fretted over being away from the children; Bast had a cough, and she hated to leave him. Mrs. Van Duyvil had found this incomprehensible. The child had a nurse, after all. Georgie’s pointing out that that policy hadn’t precisely served Mrs. Van Duyvil’s offspring well had done little to improve relations.

Georgie and Bay had returned to the country earlier than planned, canceling several engagements, stimulating speculation, and winning Mrs. Van Duyvil’s condemnation.

None of which bothered Georgie in the slightest. She didn’t care what New York society thought, and she wasn’t afraid of Mrs. Van Duyvil. The woman might rule supreme over a certain swathe of New York society, but she couldn’t touch Georgie in Illyria.

Bay disentangled Vi’s fingers from Georgie’s earring, setting his daughter on his shoulders, out of harm’s way. “Well? Will you come to town with me tomorrow? I can promise you an excellent luncheon.”

It was hard to refuse Bay anything when he looked like that, smiling in the sunshine, one child on his back, the other tugging at his leg.

“All right,” Georgie relented. “So long as there’s no lobster mousse.”

It felt strange to be donning her town clothes again, to attempt to cinch her waist into Paris dresses not worn since before the twins were born. It didn’t matter that they were two years old, Bay had assured her; some women deliberately ordered Paris frocks and set them aside for two years so that they might not appear too showy.

“Showy or not,” Georgie grumbled, “it won’t matter if I can’t lace them.” But her maid made herculean efforts and crammed her into a day dress of green with purple dots that opened over an underdress of rich cream brocade. The leg o’ mutton sleeves, if somewhat outdated, made her waist seem narrower, and the pale green and cream suited her dark hair and eyes.

They emerged in the bustle of Grand Central Depot to find not a carriage, but a car waiting for them, driven by a uniformed chauffeur: Anne’s latest extravagance. The car made several loud and alarming noises, but eventually started, threading its way through the usual traffic of delivery wagons and stately barouches as they made their way uptown.

Bay’s gloved fingers found Georgie’s, and she let her hand rest in his. “Will you tell me what my surprise is?” she shouted over the noise of the engine.

Bay only squeezed her fingers and grinned.

The Newlands occupied a French Renaissance château on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Sixty-First Street, dripping with Gothic tracery. It was built for a speculator who had gone bankrupt, possibly due to the grand scale of his house, which contained marble from Italy, Tudor paneling from England, rooms lifted straight from French châteaux, and whatever else might be purchased at the greatest possible cost for the greatest possible show. Mrs. Van Duyvil, champion of the old-fashioned brownstone, had been appalled. Which was, Georgie suspected, the main reason Anne had teased Teddy to buy it for her.

A liveried footman escorted them inside, into a drawing room decorated in the Moorish style, with excessive arches, mosaics, and enough richly tasseled cushions to smother a large pasha. Anne lolled on a divan, in a Liberty gown that clearly illustrated a lack of stays.

But Georgie barely noticed her. Because there, on a table in the middle of the room, sat Lacey Abbey.