Page 87 of The English Wife

Slowly, Georgie approached the model. It was strange, disorienting, seeing it again all this time, even stranger seeing it in miniature, as though her childhood memories had turned upside down on themselves, everything large suddenly small, and she, a giant, looming over it all.

The grounds were all wrong. The tiny trees were in the wrong place, and the river sat at the bottom of a steeply wooded hill. But the house itself was exactly as she remembered it, down to the cracks in the leaded windows. Georgie touched a finger delicately to the door half-hidden in a curve of the masonry. At any moment, a tiny Annabelle might come running out the door, dark hair barely contained with a ribbon.

The house sparkled, as though seen from underwater.

“Happy birthday,” said Bay softly.

Georgie blinked her eyes and said, unevenly, “Did you have this made for the children?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Bay looked thrilled with himself, delighted at having surprised her. “It’s for all of us.”

“A dollhouse?” Georgie pressed a tiny door, and it swung open, but she couldn’t find the catch that might let her see the inside of the house.

“It’s your house,” Bay said proudly. “Our house. I commissioned an architect to make a model. I’d thought we could tear the old house down, but it seems it’s easier to build farther along the bluff.”

“Tear down … you mean to build it? Really build it?” Georgie couldn’t seem to quite get her head around the idea. She looked sharply at her husband. “The men doing the survey—that wasn’t for the water company.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Bay beamed at her. “I’ve been thinking of this for a long time, but I wasn’t sure it could be done. I looked into buying the house itself and shipping it here, piece by piece—”

“Bay!”

“Through an intermediary,” he said soothingly, putting a hand on her shoulder. “But the owner isn’t selling.”

“No,” murmured Georgie. She let out a long breath, disgusted with herself that after all this time, Giles still had the power to frighten her. “He wouldn’t.”

“So I had my agents find what plans and pictures they could and hired someone to build it!” Bay gestured grandly towards the model. “Your family’s house and my family’s land, united for our children.”

“How very symbolic,” said Georgie drily, not sure whether to be touched or horrified. “But won’t it be ridiculously expensive?”

“No more so than building a house in town. And since we’re not…” Bay let that sink in, adding as an afterthought, “Anne found the architect for us.”

“Mr. Morris?” said Georgie doubtfully. Mr. Morris had designed Anne’s house, but she rather doubted he would bend his highly expensive talents to something so unexciting as a reproduction, even for so rich a client as a Van Duyvil.

“No, a younger member of the firm,” said Anne, rousing herself from her divan. Her richly patterned skirts flowed sinuously around her legs. “Just starting out, but really quite talented. You must come and meet him.”

Bay glanced quickly at his cousin. “He’s here?”

“But of course. How could I let him miss the grand presentation? David, darling, you’re wanted.” Sliding her arm through Georgie’s, Anne led her to a door half-concealed beneath a fall of fabric. “I’d wanted to conceal him behind a tapestry, but David demurred. He said it was too frightfully medieval, and he was afraid someone might stab him with a dagger just to go with the Shakespearean theme. Ah, David, darling, there you are.”

The fabric rippled, and there he was.

He was tall, as tall as Bay, but slender where Bay was broad, like a figure carved out of ivory, intricately worked, all sharp angles and hollows, artistry in flesh and bone, patterned all in black and white, his lean frame clad in a dark suit, his eyes as dark as his hair, the fairness of his skin contrasting with the shadows beneath his cheekbones. To call him beautiful would be a misnomer. Beauty implied a symmetry of feature, and Mr. Pruyn’s figure and face were angular in the extreme. But their very angularity had their own raw beauty, like a crag in the Highlands, at which one gazed and gazed and gazed again.

Georgie, looking at him, found she had nothing at all to say. The ordinary sorts of words, the polite social nothings, felt entirely inadequate to the occasion.

“And this is Mr. Pruyn,” said Anne.

EIGHTEEN

New York, 1899

February

ANNABELLE AN IMPOSTER! announced the headline on The World.

The Journal had been caught napping. The evening edition had had none of it, while The World triumphantly blazed the story.

The World, Burke’s paper.