Page 93 of The English Wife

Georgie felt ashamed of herself. It wasn’t Mr. Pruyn’s fault, was it? He couldn’t help having a certain quality of mind. The tea was acid on Georgie’s tongue.

“Yes?” she said, trying to make herself look less like a Gorgon in a rage.

“I would like—” Mr. Pruyn stumbled over the words, and Georgie wasn’t sure whether it was because she was trying to turn him to stone with a look, or because this was a man who was trying to bare his heart over tea. Under other circumstances, she might have found it endearing. “I would like to build houses people want to live in.”

“How very daring,” said Georgie acidly. She had a house she wanted to live in. With her husband.

“Goodness, aren’t you getting on,” said Anne, rustling up to them in a slither of heavy silk. “Would you like a cake, David darling?”

Obediently, Mr. Pruyn reached for a tea cake. Bay sat with his plate balanced on his knee, watching his wife, his cousin, and Mr. Pruyn with a wary look in his eye.

Georgie waved away a tea cake. The back of her throat burned with bile. All those times Bay had come into the city, he must have come here. It didn’t matter if nothing untoward had occurred between Mr. Pruyn and Bay; they had been meeting here in secret, under Anne’s eye. Anne, who had lost her own husband and had gone back to the one man she had always regarded as truly hers, whatever she needed to do to keep him.

Just because Anne’s marriage was falling to bits, did she have to destroy Georgie’s as well?

Georgie could feel herself shaking, shaking with rage as she sat there in her wicker chair, pretending to smile and nod, all her anger and rage bubbling over at Anne. But it wasn’t Anne, was it? It was Bay. All of Anne’s scheming, all of her designs, would have been nothing if the desire hadn’t been there.

But what did she know, really? She was imagining things, creating monsters out of shadows. Maybe Anne’s innuendo was just innuendo. Maybe the house was just a house.

“—long will it take to build?” Anne was asking.

“A year, if all goes well,” said Mr. Pruyn. He looked at Georgie. “If Mrs. Van Duyvil likes the design.”

“You needn’t have the house if you don’t want it,” said Bay quickly. Georgie saw his eyes flick towards Mr. Pruyn and away again. Just that. Just that small look. But it made Georgie’s whole body go stiff.

She could say no. She could tell him she was happy with the house as it was. And then she would wonder, always, every time Bay took the train to town to go to the office whether he was taking tea in Anne’s Moorish sitting room, whether he was walking with Mr. Pruyn in the enclosed garden behind Anne’s house.

She had taken Annabelle’s name, why not her house as well? She would finally, after all this time, be mistress of Lacey Abbey.

The only issue was the cost.

“Nonsense. It’s a lovely idea,” said Georgie, smiling and smiling and smiling until she thought her jaw would break. “How many husbands indulge their wives so?”

NINETEEN

Cold Spring, 1896

May

They traveled in silence back to Cold Spring.

Georgie felt a qualm as the trap pulled up in the gravel circle in front of the house. She had come to love the old white-walled house, with its sash windows and crooked ceilings. Lacey Abbey might have been the home of which she dreamed as a child, but this house was real. This was where she had prowled the hallways with Vi in one arm and Bast in the other, rocking and rocking and rocking them. This was where Bay had laughed himself to tears when the new wallpaper for the nursery had arrived and a well-meaning great-nephew of Gerritt’s had pasted the first panel in upside down, making kings and jesters dance on their heads.

There was no ballroom, no music room, no conservatory. No patterns in rosewood or Moorish arches. It was a family home, a home built for living, not entertaining, and Georgie found herself, suddenly, reluctant to remove from it.

They didn’t stand on ceremony in the country. In town, a maid would help Georgie out of her gown. Here, Bay did the honors, in the bedchamber, where his brushes jostled with hers on the dresser.

Georgie bent her head as Bay worked the buttons on her dress, systematically, one by one. Behind her, she heard him say, “If you don’t want the house…”

“And put all of Mr. Pruyn’s work to waste?”

Bay’s hands stilled briefly on her back. Such a small gesture, but so telling. Mechanically, he resumed his progress. Another button and another. “He’s been paid for his time.”

In coin? Or in kind?

“Far be it from me to disrupt your plans.” Her voice sounded mocking, ugly. Georgie winced, grateful that Bay couldn’t see her face. Reluctantly, she added, “It was a kind thought.”

Or it would have been, if she hadn’t seen the way her husband looked at the architect.