Page 92 of The English Wife

Georgie nodded. Just once. It was all she could manage. “And all the rest of it.”

“Did he?” Anne’s lips were a narrow line, too bright against her fair skin. “I am surprised. Bay generally tends to avoid unpleasantness.”

Yes. Yes, he did. He had told Anne more than he had ever told her. Or had Anne merely guessed? Maybe they were both wrong, maybe it was all imagination on both their parts.

“For better or worse, isn’t it? Every man has his flaws.” Georgie leaned forward a little in her chair. “And how is Ellen Morris?”

Anne didn’t have time to answer. The men had returned from their port. And if Georgie had had any doubts, they were extinguished in the instant. It wasn’t that they were standing too close; quite the contrary. They had the self-conscious stiffness of people trying to put distance between themselves.

Georgie’s stomach turned over. The last time she had felt like this, she had been expecting the twins. But she wasn’t expecting now, not unless an angel showed up at the window shouting hosannas and jamming a halo onto her head. They shared a bed, it was true, but nothing more. The twins’ birth hadn’t been easy. Bay had been all consideration.

So very considerate.

“Mr. Pruyn,” Georgie said, forcing herself to smile, to speak warmly. What use was a career on the stage if one couldn’t make use of it? “Do come sit beside me.”

Nervously, Mr. Pruyn took the seat next to hers, folding his long legs awkwardly beneath him. He moved like a colt, in fits and starts, still learning the use of his limbs.

“Tea, Mr. Pruyn?” said Anne in a voice like a bell. “I don’t need to ask how you like it.”

Bay looked as though he were trying to disappear into the fronds of an aspidistra. Georgie might have been amused if she hadn’t felt quite so ill.

Turning her back pointedly on Anne, she said, with the sort of rapt attention usually reserved for singers of popular ballads, “It is so kind of you to restore my home to me, Mr. Pruyn.”

Mr. Pruyn laced his fingers around one knee. The chair was too low for him, making his knees protrude like a schoolboy’s. “I would like to if I may. If there is anything in the design that isn’t true to the original…”

Nothing. Nothing about this conversation was true.

“Won’t you take your tea?” With a casual gesture, Georgie reduced Anne to the role of maid. Anne relinquished the cup and retreated. Georgie waited until Mr. Pruyn took a sip of his tea before saying with honeyed cruelty, “You have done a remarkable job under the circumstances.”

Mr. Pruyn looked at her over the rim of his teacup. His eyes were very large, a pale shade of gray, rimmed with dark lashes. “That sounds like damning with faint praise.” Before Georgie could comment, he added ruefully, “I had known there would be mistakes. I was working from pictures and … and your husband’s account of your descriptions.”

He cast a brief, betraying glance over his shoulder. Georgie found herself seized with a savage desire to kick him, to take him by the shoulders and turn him away from Bay. He had no right to look at her husband like that. Like Bay was a candle in the darkness.

Georgie forced herself to smile and say, “It is very hard to reproduce something one has never seen. I imagine you would rather be doing original work.”

In fact, she would be delighted to see him doing original work, somewhere far, far away. Surely, someone needed a cottage in Newport?

“Oh, no! Not at all.” Mr. Pruyn started to gesture with his teacup and caught himself just in time to save Georgie’s gown. “One learns through imitation. I’ve always admired the way some buildings seem to have grown out of themselves. They aren’t built to a grand master plan, they just grow. But it all looks right together. I’m not explaining it very well, am I?”

“On the contrary,” said Georgie grimly, “I see exactly what you mean.”

When he spoke of his work, Mr. Pruyn’s face held an almost seraphic glow. It was maddening to feel herself warmed by it, to catch herself wanting to like him.

Attracted by a quality of mind, Anne had said. Oh, yes, Georgie saw it. Saw it and wanted to kick and claw and scream.

Mr. Pruyn looked at her eagerly. “There’s something so dull about a sameness, don’t you think?”

Georgie took a sip of her own tea, forcing herself to keep from looking at Bay, sitting beside Anne on the other side of conservatory. “You don’t want to build a Palladian palace on a hill?”

Now that he was on his own topic, Mr. Pruyn sat taller; even his voice was deeper. “Like Mrs. Mills’s house at Staatsburg? I can’t think of anything I would like less. I want to build a house that looks as though it’s been lived in for centuries—for happy centuries.”

The scent of exotic flowers was beginning to make Georgie’s head ache. “You would like my husband’s house in Cold Spring, I think,” she said slowly. “It isn’t grand or romantic, but it was added onto by the generations, piece by piece.”

“Not a showpiece,” said Mr. Pruyn. “A home.”

“Yes.” One he was planning to replace. Go back, she wanted to say. Go back to wherever you came from. Stop cutting up my peace. “Can you construct a home, Mr. Pruyn? Is it something that can be created by design?”

“Er, I don’t know.” Mr. Pruyn looked taken aback by the force of her attack. “I should like to try.”