Page 94 of The English Wife

She hated herself for thinking that way. She hated herself for picturing them together, Bay so broad and fair, Mr. Pruyn lean and dark.

Bay’s hands settled briefly on her shoulders. “It’s not much of a gift if you don’t want it.”

It would be so easy to say no. Take the doll’s house and stay where they were. To tell herself that she imagined what she’d seen.

No. No, she couldn’t pretend this away, not this time.

Georgie shrugged, fighting a surge of grief at the life that wasn’t. “I might have known we couldn’t hide here forever. You’ll want a house where you can have parties.”

“Do you want parties?” Bay stepped back, giving her room to turn. Why did he always have to sound so calm, so reasonable? As if this were about what she wanted.

Georgie turned, clutching the front of her dress to keep it from falling. “What do you want, Bay? Don’t pretend this is about me.” His silence maddened her. “You never had any idea of building me a house until you met Mr. Pruyn.”

Bay drew in a deep breath, measuring his words. “They’re only plans, Georgie. If you don’t want the house…”

“It isn’t about the house!” Her voice cracked through the room. Lowering it, she said, “I’m not blind, Bay. And I’m not stupid. I saw how you looked at him.”

She looked at Bay, willing him to say something, anything. But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. It was Bay, Bay who preferred to hide rather than fight, Bay who never lied with words, only with silence.

Georgie’s hands trembled with the desire to throw something, to scream, to shout, to shock Bay into speech. But what was the use?

Turning, Georgie struggled out of her dress, letting the rich fabric pool on the floor around her legs. She twisted to try to reach the slipknot at the back of her stays.

“May I?” Bay asked meekly.

When Georgie nodded, he pulled the loop. She sucked in blessed air as the sides of the long stays parted.

Looking up, Georgie caught sight of her husband’s face in the mirror, and she felt some of her anger fall away with her stays.

In a constricted voice, she said, “I hate feeling as though I’ve been ambushed.”

Bay took a step forward. “I didn’t mean to ambush you. Only to show you the house. David—Mr. Pruyn—wasn’t meant to have been there.”

“So I was to be kept in ignorance.” Georgie’s eyes met Bay’s in the mirror. “Do you think that makes it better?”

“I wasn’t hiding anything.” He might have been more convincing if his eyes hadn’t shifted away as he said it.

“Oh, no?” Georgie’s voice rose dangerously on the last word.

Bay started to put his hands on her shoulders, but thought better of it as she shrugged him away. “Nothing of a … of a meretricious nature has taken place.” A hint of humor lightened his worried face in the mirror. “There has been nothing said between me and Mr. Pruyn that couldn’t be said in front of a judge and four ministers.”

No, just the simmer of that tension made the more piquant by being denied.

“I’m not opposing council,” snapped Georgie. “Don’t play the lawyer with me.”

She could feel him draw in his breath behind her. “I didn’t mean—”

“Of course you didn’t. You never do.” Georgie wanted to put her head down on her dressing table and weep.

Nothing said, indeed. A hurried coupling in a hallway would have been less alarming in its way than those blameless conversations, in which nothing was said, but everything was felt. Oh, God. It was an impossible situation. That she should have to worry about her husband and a man—a man. It defied thinking.

“If it were another woman,” said Georgie, holding her husband’s gaze in the mirror, “I would fight for you. I would fight in every way I know how. But this—” She bit her lip to hold back tears as the despair and the bewilderment threatened to overwhelm her. “This is something I can’t provide you.”

It was a measure of his feelings for her that he made no move to deny it. Instead, he simply rested his hands on her shoulders, pillowing his cheek on the top of her head. “It was only meant to be a doll’s house.” He sounded as lost as Georgie felt.

Georgie turned in Bay’s embrace, wrapping her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek against the buttons of his waistcoat. She felt as though the stage set of their life was collapsing around them, the walls revealed as pasteboard, their habitual clothes as costumes.

“I wanted … I wanted to be a proper husband to you. An ordinary husband.” Georgie could hear the pain in Bay’s voice, pain and confusion that mirrored her own.