Page 30 of The English Wife

Dust shimmered in the air, making Georgie’s eyes sting. It couldn’t be; it was just that she was thinking about him, about that time. Just because he sat astride a horse with the same arrogant grace, that same proud carriage; just because his chestnut hair curled under his hat didn’t mean that it was he. She’d done this before, hadn’t she? Imagining him everywhere, seeing him in every man that passed in the street, every footstep in the shadow.

She blinked, but the man on horseback didn’t dissolve into a stranger; he turned to speak to his companion, and his eyes caught on Georgie. Caught and narrowed.

“Georgie?” Mr. Van Duyvil was speaking to her, but she couldn’t hear him over the roaring in her ears.

Her knees buckled. Georgie’s fingers scrabbled for purchase against the rail; she could feel it slipping through her fingers.

“Georgie!” Mr. Van Duyvil’s arm came around her, supporting her, bracing her. “Are you all right?”

Yes, she should say. Yes, quite all right.

But she wasn’t. Her lips worked, but the sound wouldn’t come out. She could hear it, the sound of tearing cloth; the wood of the stall biting into her back as he pushed her back. The smell of horses filled her nose, choking her.

This is what you wanted, isn’t it?

But not like that. Never like that. The pain of it. The shame. Lying broken on the dirt floor, bruises on her arms, watching his boots get smaller and smaller until they disappeared through the door into the sunlight. Those boots, just at the level of her eyes, winking away from her down the Row, up and down, up and down …

This isn’t over.

Mr. Van Duyvil’s face was very close to hers, his fingers chafing her wrists. “Miss Evans? Georgie? Are you ill?”

“All these years … all these years—” The words came out on a single breath, like a chant. “I never thought—”

She hadn’t thought. Georgie could feel mad laughter boiling up in her throat, choking her. Oh, God, after all this time. Nemesis didn’t go away, not ever, not really; it just waited until you didn’t expect it.

Mr. Van Duyvil straightened, his face serious. He kept one arm protectively around her waist, bracing her. “I’m taking you to a doctor.”

“It’s not … I’m not ill.” Even if she felt as though she was, her forehead clammy with sweat, her breath coming too fast, her stomach churning. The dust from the track shimmered in the sunlight. She forced herself to look up, but all she could see was laughing strangers. “Maybe I’m going mad. Maybe I imagined it. Imagined him.”

But she hadn’t. She knew that, deep in her bones, in the ache in her side and the weakness in her knees. He’d changed the way he wore his hair; he’d shaved his mustache. She’d not have imagined that.

“Imagined who?” Mr. Van Duyvil’s hands closed tight around hers. “Georgie! Talk to me. Tell me.”

Speak of the devil, they said. Speak of the devil and he’ll appear. But he already had. He’d seen her, knew where she was.

“Does it matter?” Georgie choked on the words. “He said he’d find me.”

“Who?” Mr. Van Duyvil bent close to her, the concern on his face undoing her. “Please. Georgie. Let me help you.”

Georgie forced out the name …

SIX

New York, 1899

January

Janie hurried into the drawing room, still in the skirt and waist she had worn to meet Mr. Burke. It was time for tea, her mother’s unbending ritual, and she was late.

“I’m so terribly sorry. The Girls’ Club—” She stumbled over her words as a man rose from one of the deep damask chairs, his dark suit blending with the ebonized mahogany of the mantelpiece. “I wasn’t aware we had visitors.”

“Only one,” said the man, smiling a crooked smile at her. His hair was a deep chestnut that glinted red in the lamplight, curling around his collar, longer than the fashion. His voice was English and educated.

She had seen him before, Janie realized, among the blur of mourners at Bay’s funeral. The church had been filled with Livingstons, Van Rensselaers, Astors, and Goelets, all paying their respects, doing her mother the courtesy of attendance despite the dubious circumstances. And, in the very back, this man.

“My daughter,” said Janie’s mother, with an edge to her voice Janie recognized, “is a martyr to her causes. Not even grief can deter her from her duties.”

“I didn’t mean—” She wasn’t meant to be out of the house while in mourning. Janie could feel herself flushing, automatically stuttering for excuses. But if she wasn’t meant to be out walking, her mother wasn’t meant to be receiving. Janie pulled herself together enough to say apologetically, “I do hope you’ll forgive my rudeness, Mr.…”