Tarrytown, 1894
October
“Annabelle? Annabelle.”
Georgie struggled out of the darkness with a sick feeling in her stomach and the sense that something was very wrong.
Stop calling me that, she wanted to say. I’m not. I’m not. Don’t you know who I am? But her tongue felt thick and fuzzy, and moving made her want to retch.
A voice she recognized now, low, a whisper. “Georgie!”
And then a horrible stench that made her cough and start, flailing against a soft surface that only billowed around her when she tried to push against it.
“Stop that!” Georgie blinked open her stinging eyes to see Bay bending over her, one hand chafing her wrist, the other holding a vinaigrette, reeking of brimstone.
“You’re awake,” said Bay with almost comical relief. His face was a study in relief—but also something furtive, apprehensive.
Why should he … and then Georgie remembered. She remembered the garden and Charlie. And Bay.
“Get that thing away,” Georgie rasped, pushing the vinaigrette away.
The walls around her were papered with blue flowers. They bloomed improbably over the counterpane covering her. She was still in her dress beneath it, her stays loosened, but not removed. The ends of her stays poked uncomfortably into her hips.
Bay sat down abruptly on the bed beside her. He smiled unsteadily, reaching out to smooth the hair away from her face. “It’s only smelling salts.”
Georgie flinched away from his touch. “It smells like the devil’s own breath.”
Someone made a harrumphing noise. Georgie looked up to find her mother-in-law standing in the doorway, surveying the scene with displeasure.
Bay rose hastily, extending the vinaigrette to his mother. “Thank you for the vinaigrette, Mother. Would you mind returning it to Mrs. Newland?”
Mrs. Van Duyvil did not appreciate being dismissed. Ignoring her son, she said to Georgie, “You have caused a great deal of bother.”
Bay rubbed his tired eyes. “Hardly that, Mother. Only Charlie…”—was it Georgie’s imagination, or did Bay stumble over the name?—“only Charlie Ogden saw, and he certainly won’t go spreading stories.”
“If he won’t, his sister will.” Mrs. Van Duyvil looked pointedly at her son. “She’s spread enough rumors already.”
Rumors about … but no. Mrs. Van Duyvil wasn’t thinking about that. She hadn’t seen what Georgie had seen. Georgie felt a crazy urge to laugh. The rumors about Bay and Anne seemed a lifetime ago, entirely inconsequential.
“You might,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil to Georgie, “have shown the prudence to find a place of privacy before succumbing to the vapors.”
Georgie levered herself up on her elbows, saying hoarsely, “In the future, I will endeavor to save all swoons for more convenient locations.”
Bay stepped between the bed and his mother. “It will only cause more talk if we’re all gone. Someone from the family needs to see Anne off.”
Mrs. Van Duyvil nodded, tight-lipped, and retreated, vinaigrette in hand.
Bay sat on the edge of the bed, his hand near, but not touching Georgie’s. “She doesn’t mean to be unkind. She’s upset about Anne’s marriage. If you hadn’t been ill, it would have been something else.”
Why in the devil were they talking about his mother? She didn’t care about his mother. Georgie turned her head on the pillow, away from him. She could feel the mattress shift as Bay leaned closer.
“Are you … how are you feeling?” A finger brushed her knuckles, a whisper of a movement. Georgie looked up at Bay, his face so familiar and unfamiliar, all at once. “You scared me, collapsing like that.”
Don’t smile at me like that, Georgie wanted to say. Don’t smile at me as though I were a stranger and not a very bright one, someone chance met at a dinner party, someone with whom one had to make stilted conversation until the table turned and one could, with relief, turn to the person on the other side.
“It wasn’t exactly enjoyable for me either,” said Georgie, her voice rusty. All she could see was Bay and Charlie, Charlie and Bay.
“Here.” Bay rose hastily, pouring water from a pitcher into a glass. “Let me help you drink.”
The glass was crystal, etched with flowers. Usually, Georgie found the casual opulence of Bay’s world amusing, something out of a Punch cartoon, too ridiculous to be real. Today it felt all too real, pressing around her, stifling her.
She batted Bay’s hand away. “I’m perfectly capable of drinking by myself.”
Meekly, Bay proffered the glass, accepting the rebuff without complaint. Don’t, Georgie wanted to scream. Tease me, fight with me. Anything but looking so guilty.
Her fingers closed around the glass with difficulty; the room spun as she hoisted herself to a sitting position.
Bay hovered over the side of her bed, looking like a golden retriever who had lost his ball. “I shouldn’t have kept you in the sun so long.”
It wasn’t the sun. Georgie took a small sip of water, then another. The cool water felt good against her throat, keeping the queasiness at bay. She leaned back, against the pillow, letting her eyes drift closed.
“May I?” Bay took the glass from her, gently. She could hear the chink of crystal against mahogany as he set it down. “Mrs. Newland has called for a doctor.”
“There is no need.” With an effort, Georgie opened her eyes, forcing them to focus on her husband, her husband, his blond hair still streaked with sunshine from their months at Newport. Bay returned to his place on the edge of the bed, taking her hands in his, and Georgie let him, let the solid warmth of his fingers warm hers.
The sun had been in her eyes. What had she seen, really? It seemed absurd to think she had seen her husband kissing another man. No, not her husband kissing another man, another man kissing her husband.
Had it been a kiss, even? Or just an embrace between friends? Friends did embrace.
“I came back for my bag.” The words were painful to speak, each word like a shard of glass on her tongue. “You were … with Carrie’s brother.”
Yes, he could say. We were discussing torts.
Or, We didn’t want to bore you with law school memories.
But he didn’t. Georgie felt Bay’s hands tighten on hers, too tight. His grip would have hurt if the pain hadn’t all been located elsewhere, in the hunted expression on his face. “Charlie was my closest friend. In law school—”
What happened in law school? The words were frozen on Georgie’s tongue. She couldn’t speak them. She wanted to shove the genie back in the bottle, to pretend she had never seen anything at all, to screw up her eyes and stick her fingers in her ears and chant, “Not listening!” as children did. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t speak, and she couldn’t look away.
Bay bowed his head over her hands, his voice barely audible. “Charlie was the reason I left when I did. I had thought, if I could get away. He wanted…”—a pause, in which the echo of the laughter and voices from downstairs sounded obscene, like a child’s laughter at a funeral—“more than friendship.”
Georgie realized she was holding her breath, waiting for Bay to say more, to say something to reassure her. But he didn’t.
Rustily, she asked, “And what did you want?”
“Not that.” Bay released her hands, staring at the wallpaper as though for inspiration. “I didn’t want … I didn’t want to spend my life ducking behind doors.”
No, no, no. Bay’s face swam in front of her, curiously out of focus. That wasn’t what he was supposed to say. That wasn’t an answer. Or maybe it was, and it just wasn’t the answer she wanted.
She could hear Sir Hugo’s voice, a faraway buzz in her ear: They have what is known as a mariage blanc. A mariage blanc. A fancy term for a marriage of convenience, for a man who didn’t fancy women.
Yes, but they were French. And that wasn’t Bay, Bay who had married her in spite of everything, who had told her he couldn’t live without her, who had given her every indication of devotion, of tenderness.
Oh, yes. He was all tenderness. Especially in the marriage bed. Tenderness without passion, devotion without desire. They had tried. Goodness only knew, they had tried, in Paris with the chestnut trees blooming outside the window and the Parisian air whispering romance. Bay had no experience of marital relations; she knew that. He had told her so himself. The act of love was an art, not a birthright. It wasn’t surprising that their fumbling couplings had been more awkward than arousing. And Bay—Bay was so careful of her. Almost reluctant.
If Bay was tentative in his caresses, that was her past, her past coming between them. Bay was protecting her sensibilities.
Even now? Now that she had tried to show him, a hundred times over, that his embraces held no fear for her? How many times had she made a clumsy advance, only to have Bay gently stroke her cheek, kiss her forehead, close his arms around her in an embrace that was part affection, part deterrent?
He had married a woman without family, without recourse.
No. That wasn’t Bay. Georgie’s eyes ached with the strain of staring at her husband, at every line and crease of his face, the downward tilt of his mouth, the shadowed blue of his eyes, as if she might be able to see through the skin to the thoughts beneath.
She wasn’t being fair to him, to Bay. What had she seen, really?
Painfully, she pushed herself to a sitting position. “You didn’t ask him to … press his attentions on you.”
Don’t pretend you didn’t want this. Giles’s voice, a mocking echo.
Louder now, too loud, Georgie said, “It’s not your fault if someone presumes upon you.”
Unless the presuming had gone the other way.
“No, but—” Bay swallowed hard, the bed listing as he leaned closer to her, his face a picture of unhappiness. “I should have come with you back to the house. I should have seen you were ill.”
Georgie’s fingers groped for her husband’s. Somehow, if she could touch him, it would be all right. There was something about the physical presence of Bay, his touch, his smell, that soothed fears. “I’m not ill.”
Bay gave her hand a quick squeeze. “You’ve been pale for days now. And don’t tell me it was the lobster mousse.”
Georgie stared up at Bay, feeling herself falling back into the old patterns. If Bay looked guilty, it was because he had failed in his duty in her, leaving her to make her way to the house alone. That was all. So easy just to banter back, to let the familiarity of his voice, his manner, lull her into pretending nothing had happened. And what had? If anyone had kissed anyone, it had been Charlie kissing Bay.
Bay, she realized with a pang, had been far more generous with her than she with him. He had never once presumed to blame her for losing her virtue to Giles. How was this any different?
Except that she knew that she had once desired Giles.
Was that why she was presuming guilt? Because she knew herself guilty? No. Bay had made her see that she was wrong. If she was guilty of anything, it had been unworldliness. And maybe that was all Bay had done as well, had blundered into what he thought was a friendship.
Sir Hugo winked at her from a gallery in Paris. I cede him to you.
“Georgie?” Bay chafed her wrists, his brow furrowed with very real concern. “If you won’t confide in me, will you at least speak frankly to the doctor? Having come this far, I don’t want to risk losing you now.”
“I’m not sick,” Georgie repeated. Pushing herself upright against the pillow, she made her decision. She looked Bay in the eye and said baldly, “I’m increasing.”
Bay blinked at her. “Do you mean—”
He was looking at her as though she was all the angels and Mary rolled into one.
“It does happen, you know.”
Bay’s throat worked, but no words came out.
“It’s hardly the virgin birth,” said Georgie tartly.
“No. I—” He looked as though someone had just bashed him on the head with an oar. Georgie was tempted to hold up two fingers in front of his eyes and ask him how many he saw.
“You aren’t going to swoon on me, are you? Because that probably wouldn’t be good for the baby.”
“The baby,” Bay repeated, and Georgie saw that his eyes were suspiciously bright. He drew in a ragged breath. “Our baby.”
And before Georgie could say anything else, her husband seized her in a fierce embrace, his head buried in the crook of her shoulder, his hair tickling her neck.
“Our baby,” he breathed, making her squirm as his breath went down the back of her neck.
“The lobster mousse,” Georgie croaked, and Bay let go, his hair mussed, his face glowing with wonder, glowing so that she couldn’t help but smile back at him, helplessly, just for a moment, before there was a discreet knock at the door and a voice said, dubiously, “I was told someone was in need of a doctor?”
“Yes,” said Bay, standing and becoming Bay again, at ease and in charge, overriding Georgie’s no. “Yes, we are in need of a doctor.”
* * *
It was amazing how all-consuming he or she came to be, this person they couldn’t yet see or hear, although by December, Georgie had begun to feel movements, movements like a sea monster undulating under the water.
“It’s not nice to refer to our child as a sea monster,” Bay said when Georgie expressed that opinion.
“How do you know?” said Georgie, shifting uncomfortably on her chaise. She had been fitted with a special corset for her condition, but it seemed to poke even more than the ordinary kind. “We haven’t met him yet. He might be beastly.”
“With you as a mother?” said Bay gallantly.
Georgie stuck out her tongue at him. “If Dr. Greeley keeps me on a decreasing diet, I refuse to answer for the consequences.”
Her husband set down the papers he was reviewing, not legal documents, but blueprints, plans for the house they were to build on a plot farther uptown, all the way up in the east Seventies. Georgie might have been more enthusiastic about the plan had it not adjoined an empty plot already purchased by her mother-in-law.
“Didn’t I sneak up half a ham last night?” said Bay virtuously.
“Hardly half a ham.”
But that wasn’t the point. They shouldn’t have to sneak. Dr. Greeley was Mrs. Van Duyvil’s doctor, the decreasing plan his decreasing plan. Georgie was sick of decreasing, and she was particularly sick of Mrs. Van Duyvil, who had planned their lives to the minute. Every day, Bay went dutifully to the office, of which the senior partner was Mrs. Van Duyvil’s brother, Peter Bayard. Every evening, he attended his mother and sister at one of the many events that marked the season. While Georgie, by virtue of her indelicate state, was confined at home to a chaise longue.
Without ham.
Georgie swung her legs over the edge of the chaise, moving cumbersomely to a sitting position. With Christmas approaching, the whirl of gaiety was reaching frenzied proportions, a fact to which Georgie could only attest by the increasing carriage traffic outside her window. “Couldn’t we go somewhere? Somewhere away?”
“The mountains of the moon?” suggested Bay. Georgie gave him a look. Bay settled back in his chair. “We could go to Florida once the season is over.”
“I don’t want to go to Florida.” It came out sounding petulant, but wasn’t she entitled to be petulant? She was increasing, which, apparently, rendered her unfit for everything, including eating. She might at least get some benefit out of it. “It will just be all the same rules in Florida. And no ham.”
Bay made a sympathetic face. “When we have our own house…” he began.
“You have four houses,” Georgie said crossly. “None of which you occupy.”
“Yes, but the Florida house is let, and the Newport house is really more my mother’s—” Bay broke off, a strange expression crossing his face.
“Bay?” Georgie waved a hand. “I’m supposed to be the one in a strange state, not you.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before,” said Bay, looking like a little boy who had just found a toy under his pillow.
“Newport?” said Georgie dubiously. The place had felt like a marble mausoleum in the summer; she couldn’t imagine how grim it would be in the winter.
“No, not Newport. Duyvil’s Kill!” He grinned at her with such unfettered delight that Georgie couldn’t help grinning back, even if she felt there must be something quite wrong with a house with death in the name. “She’ll never follow us there. Of course, this isn’t really the time of year for it—but my grandparents lived there year round and didn’t mind the snow. It is somewhat isolated.”
“Bay, I was raised in the country. I’m not afraid of a few trees.” Georgie felt a surge of optimism. Isolated meant Mrs. Van Duyvil wouldn’t be there to tell her to stay in bed, or to tell the cook what she couldn’t eat, or to inform her that her corset wasn’t laced tightly enough, or to ask her to retire from the drawing room because heaven forbid anyone see what they already knew, that there was a perfectly legitimate child making a bump beneath her dress. “Didn’t Dr. Greeley say I might benefit from country air?”
The mention of Dr. Greeley had been a mistake. Bay’s smile faded. “I didn’t think. What if you need a physician?”
“I wouldn’t trust Dr. Greeley to deliver kittens,” said Georgie bluntly. “Is there a midwife near this house of yours?”
Bay looked doubtful, but he said, “There is Mrs. Gerritt. She’s housekeeper now—such as it is—but she was my nurse when I was very young.”
“Only when you were very young?”
Bay cast her a sheepish glance. “She didn’t get along with my mother.”
“Well, then,” said Georgie. There couldn’t be any better recommendation than that. “Can’t you send someone to her and tell her to open the house? Nothing elaborate. We won’t be entertaining. We’ll just need rooms made up for us. And a nursery.”
Bay’s eyes met hers, and she knew she had him.
The notion of going elsewhere, being by themselves again, felt like the promise of rain after a drought. No coughing in the ever-present coal smoke, no being shooed back indoors lest someone get a glimpse of the younger Mrs. Van Duyvil’s expanding stomach, no endless list of dos and don’ts.
And no worries about what Bay might be doing without her.
Despite their comfort together, despite Bay’s obvious joy over their child, there were nights when Georgie would sit on that thrice-blasted chaise longue and the clock would chime midnight and she would wonder if there was a Charlie Ogden at the ball, drawing Bay away to a library or a disused anteroom. She believed Bay when he said he didn’t want Charlie’s attentions, she did. And she knew—because Bay had told her, offhandedly, as if it were just another piece of society gossip—that Charlie was spending the season in the nation’s capital, tied up with a case that was to be heard before the Supreme Court, although what the case was, Bay didn’t say and Georgie didn’t ask.
She didn’t want to talk about Charlie or think about Charlie, but sometimes Charlie wandered into her mind all the same, Charlie and Sir Hugo. And it was those times that she heard Annabelle’s voice in her head, Annabelle mocking as only she could mock. “Really, Georgie, why did you think he would marry you if not for that?”
But never when Bay was with her, as they were now.
“Just think of it,” said Georgie coaxingly. “No coal smoke. No omnibuses.”
Bay leaned his head against the back of his chair. “No balls or receptions or endless nights at the Opera.”
Georgie was briefly diverted. “I thought you liked music.”
Bay stifled a yawn. He had had another late night with his mother and sister, another night when Georgie paced their room alone, listening to the carriage wheels beneath the window. “Does anyone go to the Opera to listen to the music? My mother never arrives until the middle of the first act, and we generally leave before the second.” He turned his head sideways. “There’s a pianoforte at Duyvil’s Kill.”
Georgie could feel the smile starting to curve her lips. “Is that a proposition?”
“Call it a proposal. Or perhaps an invitation.” Rising, Bay went down on one knee before the chaise. “Mrs. Van Duyvil, may I persuade you to elope with me to Duyvil’s Kill?”
“Can you elope if you’re already married?” asked Georgie, and then, “We really must think of a better name.”
Bay grinned at her, his face alight, and Georgie wondered if he had been chafing at his mother’s regime as much as she.
“Illyria, then. Come along, Cesario. We’ll break the news to my mother.”