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.
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.
“Taking mistresses and losing too much at cards?” retorted Georgie. She felt the puff of breath against her hair as Bay gave a choked laugh. “We’ve never done anything in the ordinary way, have we?” she said hoarsely. Bay shook his head in response.
She wasn’t sure how long they stood like that, their arms wrapped around one another. Her hair felt suspiciously damp, but she wouldn’t for the world have said anything about it. She only held Bay tighter, wishing Anne to perdition, wishing the world to perdition, wishing she could dig a moat around the house and set them all adrift on the sea, away from all harm, floating like Noah above the waters.
But even Noah had come to land eventually, hadn’t he?
Georgie drew in an uneven breath. “A house wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, would it?” she said. “I always wanted to be mistress of Lacey Abbey.”
The words tasted like ashes on her tongue.
“We can find another architect.” Bay’s voice sounded rusty. His hands gripped her like Sebastian’s after a nightmare, holding tight to her dress in the middle of the night.
“No.” Georgie drew back, looking at her husband’s red eyes, the crease in his cheek where her hair had made a line. She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Weren’t you the one who told me that running away never solves anything? I … I liked your Mr. Pruyn.”
As much as one could like a rival for one’s husband’s affections.
There was a queen of England, Georgie remembered vaguely, who had chosen her husband’s mistress for him, groomed her, presented her. Because if she hadn’t, someone else would. She had kept her husband and his mistress under her eye, made them her own. Just one happy family.
“It’s better this way,” said Georgie, as much for herself as Bay.
In the country, no one need know. In the country, there would be no rumors of intimate tête-à-têtes in Anne’s parlor. Other women’s husbands had vices, too. Some consorted with loose women; others lost fortunes over cards. Surely, this wasn’t such a dreadful form of vice. Just another weakness to be managed, like a taste for betting on horses.
She was being sensible, that was it. Sensible. This was the sensible thing to do. But why did she feel like the word was about to choke her?
She took a step away, a step away from Bay, not looking at him. “How many women have husbands who build them a house for their very own? It’s a romantic gesture, isn’t it? It will be the talk of the town.”
“Georgie—” Bay’s voice was very low.
“We’ll have Mr. Pruyn here to stay with us. It’s a big project; surely his other clients can spare him.” Georgie kept on talking, faster and faster, knowing that if she didn’t say this now, she never would, that she would stick her head back in the sand and try to pretend everything was as it should be.
Until the next Mr. Pruyn, the next Charlie Ogden. Better to come to terms with this Mr. Pruyn, to keep it all under her own roof, under her control. She wouldn’t let Anne outmaneuver her.
“If Mr. Pruyn should … if he should chance to wander into the wrong room…” Georgie couldn’t bring herself to be more explicit. “I will make no objection to it. Provided the children and the servants don’t know.”
Bay said nothing.
“Am I mistaken?” Georgie’s voice had a desperate edge. “Tell me if I’m mistaken.”
Slowly, Bay moved his head. Just the slightest fraction, but it was enough.
“I would have told you if I knew how,” he said, and Georgie felt his helplessness right down to her bones. He had tried to tell her, hadn’t he? About Charlie. And she hadn’t let him, any more than he had let her tell him about Annabelle.
They had both wanted to hold on to their illusions.
She could tell him now. She could even the scales. But the words were frozen on her tongue even as Bay dropped down to his knees in front of her, saying, “I should have told you. But I … I didn’t know what to tell.” In a softer voice, he said, “I couldn’t bear for you to despise me.”
In England, they jailed men for relations with other men. It was something nice women weren’t supposed to know about, but she wasn’t a nice woman; she was an actress.
“I don’t despise you.” She didn’t, not really. She despised herself more than him. Georgie reached for his hands and gripped them as tightly as she could. “I don’t want to expose you, Bay. Why would I? It would be horrible for all of us. I just want you … I want you to have what you want.”
Bay looked up at her with something like hope. Raggedly, he said, “And what about you? What do you want?”
“What I’ve always wanted,” she lied. “Lacey Abbey. I get a house out of this, don’t I?”
She tried her best to sound cocky, but it was a desperate failure.
“Georgie.” Bay rose to his knees, her hands in his, like a scene from an old painting, like a suitor in a garden, only this wasn’t what it seemed, was it? It had never been what it seemed. “I never meant to hurt you. I thought I could … I thought it would go away.”
Georgie blinked back the tears stinging her eyes. It wouldn’t do to blubber. Hoarsely, she said, “It might be worse. You might keep mistresses like Teddy. Or have intrigues with my friends.”
If she had any friends. The totality of her dependence on Bay weighed on her as it never had before. He wasn’t just her husband; he was her sole companion, her only friend. Vi and Bast were lovely, but they were only babies.
Slowly, Bay rose to his feet, stroking the hair back from her face, looking at her with such love and concern and guilt that Georgie nearly forgot her resolve not to blubber. “I do love you, you know.”
“I know,” Georgie croaked, standing a little unsteadily. “You’d be mad not to, paragon that I am.”
Bay didn’t answer. He only wrapped her in his arms, holding her as though he could fold her into him, and Georgie clutched him back, grateful that he couldn’t see her face, grateful for the scratch of wool against her cheek, breathing in his scent like a sot downing his last bottle of gin.
It was all right. It would all be all right. This was the sensible thing. And familiarity bred contempt after all, didn’t it? Bay could have his little intrigue and she would have her house and their children would grow and play and Mr. Pruyn would go away in time and she would still be here and it would all be as it was.
As it was. Had anything ever been as she thought it was?
But Georgie wouldn’t let herself think that, not now. She could only hold on to her husband with both hands and promise herself that the best way to keep someone was to let him go.
For a time. Only for a time.
Carmel, 1899
February 9
“Do you recall the time?”
“It was just about midnight.” Janie could see the artists on the press bench sketching as rapidly as they could, trying to capture Anne in the act of answering. Anne was chic in deep purple banded with black, the appropriate level of mourning from a married woman to a first cousin.
The coroner consulted his notes. “What made you notice Mr. Van Duyvil’s absence?”
“As I said”—Anne spoke with exaggerated patience—“it was nearly midnight. My cousin and his wife were meant to be opening the German. The German,” she added graciously, “is a customary dance.”
“I trust the members of the jury shall take note of that,” said the coroner, his voice as dry as the papers in front of him.
The coroner was a slight, thin man in a rusty suit with an equally rusty set of whiskers, a seller of patent nostrums by trade. Janie knew that her mother had dismissed him on sight. But there was a shrewdness about him that belied the rustic air of his outdated suit and whiskers.
It was only just past noon, and she had watched the coroner deal efficiently with the parade of official witnesses: the medical examiner, who testified that Bay had been killed by a single blow with a narrow-bladed knife; the police constable who had first been called to the scene; the detective who had been assigned to the case. Watching them, Janie realized that the sense she had had of being marooned, helpless, had been a mirage. While she had slipped away to The World’s offices, the police had been doing their work, interviewing servants, cataloguing evidence, dredging the river.
There was little that was sensational in any of it. The press had begun to grow restless. The reporters from The World, The Journal, The Sun, and The Times fidgeted and checked their pocket watches and the train timetables, craning their necks to try to catch sight of more entertaining witnesses.
But then Anne had been called, and it was as though the courtroom sat up again and took notice. Here was life! Here was color! No dull, droning lists of waiters interviewed or acres of ground searched, but the notorious Mrs. Newland herself, as beautiful in person as on the page.
“Don’t she look like something out of the theater?” Janie heard one woman say loudly to another.
Next to her, her mother’s lips grew a little more pinched. It couldn’t, Janie knew, be easy to see Bay exhumed, again and again, the fatal moment taken to pieces, polished, put back together. Again and again. Like Caesar being stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. Her mother hadn’t only lost a son, she had to relive his passing with each witness, men and women who had never known Bay, for whom this was just another death.
Janie would have taken her mother’s hand, but for the fact that she knew any such gesture would arouse more ire than gratitude. To offer sympathy would be a sign that sympathy was needed and that her mother could not endure.
“Had anyone else remarked on their absence?” inquired the coroner, making a note to himself.
“No,” said Anne. Janie looked up sharply, at the familiar face beneath the purple hat with its short veil. Anne examined her own gloved fingers. “It was a lively event. Everyone was much occupied.”
“And you?” the coroner prompted with remarkable patience. “Why were you not much occupied?”
Anne looked at him over the luxurious fur stole that she had slung about her neck to keep out the drafts of the courtroom. “I had come to Illyria to help my cousin and his wife with the preparations for the ball. My cousin’s wife had been raised in the country; she wasn’t used to entertainments on such a scale.”
She lied so smoothly. Janie’s eyes flicked to the press bench, where the reporters were scribbling down Anne’s words with no appearance of doubt. If Janie hadn’t known better, she would have believed it herself. One of the members of the jury was nodding knowingly, as if in agreement. Of course she had come to help with the entertainment, what else?
Only the coroner seemed unimpressed, although whether it was because he doubted Anne’s testimony or because he was generally unimpressed, Janie couldn’t tell. “Mrs. Newland, there have been”—he gave a delicate cough—“representations made that you might have been pursuing a private meeting with Mr. Van Duyvil.”
Everyone in the courtroom sat up a little straighter. Janie’s mother stared straight ahead, her profile as wooden as the masthead on the prow of a ship.
“Representations?” Anne repeated with scorn. “By the press, you mean? I should have thought that officers of the court would know better than to allow themselves to be led by the fancies of threepenny papers.”
Some of the jurymen looked abashed; Janie had no doubt they had all been reading the threepenny papers and enjoying them, too.
“If you would answer the question, Mrs. Newland?”
Anne tilted her head delicately, setting her earrings glinting in the gaslight. “There was a question?”
The coroner measured his words out carefully. “Did you have a meeting planned with your cousin?”
“If I had an illicit tryst planned,” demanded Anne impatiently, “would I have brought my cousin’s sister with me as audience?”
The coroner was unruffled. “My apologies, Mrs. Newland, but we must, within the bounds of decency, explore every avenue. You sought the aid of Mr. Van Duyvil’s sister?”
“She wasn’t dancing,” said Anne with casual cruelty. Or perhaps she didn’t mean it to be cruel. It was a statement of fact; Janie hadn’t been dancing. But that wasn’t what Anne had said when she came to her, Janie was certain. Anne had told her that Mrs. Van Duyvil had sent her. Hadn’t she? “Janie—Miss Van Duyvil—thought my cousin and his wife might be overseeing preparations for the spectacle by the river. So we went out to find them.”
There, for the first time, Anne’s voice faltered.
In that pause, Janie could hear her cousin’s voice calling, over and over, Bay, Bay, Bay. The courtroom was humid with the press of bodies, but Janie felt cold suddenly, cold and alone.
Bay, Bay, Bay …
The coroner’s voice was calm and steady. “Can you tell me, in your own words, what happened after that, Mrs. Newland?”
“You know what happened.” Anne’s voice was brittle. “We found my cousin’s body on the ground in the folly.”
A shock went through the room. At the starkness of her words? Perhaps. Maybe it was just that they were used to innuendo and polite circumlocution. Maybe it was because they knew pain when they heard it.
“Can you describe what you saw?”
For a moment, Anne looked like she would object. But she closed her mouth again and began speaking flatly, methodically. “My cousin went first. I heard her say her brother’s name. I saw her kneel beside him.”
No. That wasn’t how it had happened. Had it? The night was a blur of ice and snow, but Janie could swear, would swear, that it was the other way around. This was Janie’s story Anne was telling, not her own.
Was Anne lying? She had lied before, but Janie couldn’t tell, couldn’t read anything into that closed face, that flat, unemotional voice. Or perhaps it was her own memory that lied.
She had never realized before just quite how much Anne looked like her mother, like the Bayard side of the family. It was there in the lines of her face, the angles of her shoulders, the uncompromising sound of her voice.
“Can you identify this shoe?” The coroner was directing Anne’s attention to the exhibits that had been presented and numbered earlier, the sad collection of items discovered by the river.
“It was Annabelle’s.” Anne’s voice was very flat.
“And this brooch?” A flash of light, a large diamond at the center, surrounded by smaller diamonds radiating out.
“Also Annabelle’s.”
But it wasn’t. Janie looked sharply at Anne. Had it been Anne’s? She wished she had more of an eye for costume. She could remember the necklace in the shape of a B Anne had worn, with its dangling pearls, copied for the occasion from a painting of Anne Boleyn. But had there been a brooch as well? Or had it been Annabelle’s?
No. Annabelle’s costume hadn’t boasted large jewels, much less a diamond the size of a small sun. That, Janie remembered, had annoyed her mother. Which might have been the point of it.
She hadn’t been sure at the time whether her mother was annoyed because Annabelle wasn’t putting on a good showing or because Annabelle’s own restraint had made every other woman look blowsy and overdressed in comparison.
No, the diamond brooch was never Annabelle’s.
But that she had seen it somewhere, Janie knew. It teased at the back of her memory, a glimmer of diamond set against brocade. Just like half the costumes in the ballroom.
“Thank you, Mrs. Newland,” the coroner was saying, and Janie realized she had missed the rest of Anne’s testimony, whatever it might have been. “We shall have an hour’s recess.”
There was the rustle of people stretching stiff limbs, the hushed murmur of voices that gradually grew louder as the coroner rose from his chair, the jurymen abandoned their box, and the aura of solemnity fell away. The room was a room again.
The reporters were jostling each other to get to the telephone in the hallway, to phone their stories in to their editors. Some clever souls bypassed the rush, running to the post office to use the wire. At the back of the room, away from the press bench, Janie thought she caught a glimpse of a familiar brow beneath a battered black hat, but the crowd was shifting and pushing through the doors, and he was lost again.
Janie turned to Anne. “I wasn’t first. You were.”
“Was I?” There were lines on either side of Anne’s mouth; powder had fallen into the cracks, turning them into a spider’s web. “I forget.”
“Does it matter?” said Mrs. Van Duyvil impatiently. “They should be looking for the true culprit, not putting on a show for the masses. One can only hope that Mr. Lacey can make the magistrate see sense.”
“Mr. Lacey?” Janie looked quizzically at her mother.
“English accent,” supplied Anne helpfully. “Curly hair.”
“He is a man who has suffered much from the same scheming adventuress who murdered your brother. He deserves your sympathy, not your mockery.” Mrs. Van Duyvil looked thoughtfully out at the courtroom. “Perhaps I shall invite him to stay with us at Illyria.”
“Forgive my tardiness. The crowd, you know.” Mr. Tilden appeared by their side with an apologetic cough. “I have arranged for a private parlor at the nearest hostelry.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Van Duyvil, her voice as dry as autumn leaves. “It will be a luxury to be free of the scrutiny of the press.”
“Don’t you think they deserve their pound of flesh?” Anne was at her most flippant, her face shuttered, making up for her ordeal on the stand. “They’ve got little enough else. We might at least put on a show for them.”
“I do not put on shows.” Mrs. Van Duyvil took Mr. Tilden’s proffered arm. “Come, Janie.”
“Heel,” murmured Anne. “There’s a good girl.”
Mrs. Van Duyvil shot her a look over her shoulder. “Your levity is singularly ill placed.”
A clerk escorted them through the back regions of the courthouse, out a small door giving onto an alley, away from the hordes outside the courthouse. It felt very odd to be slipping through side doors, hustled through service entrances. An apologetic man met them at the back of the hotel, apologizing for conveying them through the nether regions. Their luncheon was hurried and largely silent. They returned to the courtyard as they had come, like thieves, beneath a hard, flat sky from which no light shone.
They had been returned early, but already people were milling about, making sure of their seats. No one wanted to miss the trial of the century. Never mind that last year there had been another trial of the century and another one the year before that. There were still ten months left to the century and this was the trial of it. For now.
The people fell back, like courtiers at Versailles, as they passed. Janie’s mother stalked stone-faced through their midst, looking neither left nor right.
“Miss Van Duyvil.” A man stepped out of the throng, his voice low. Even muffled in coat, hat, and scarf, Janie would have known him anywhere. It was in the way he moved, the way he spoke. “A word. If I may.”
Janie could feel her entire being come alive, anticipation and trepidation and irritation, a hundred emotions roiling together beneath her black dress, her black gloves, her black half veil.
It took all her training not to stop, but to turn slowly, very slowly. “One word. But you’d best be quick about it.”
The crowd trailed after the scandalous Mrs. Newland. It was easy, too easy, to fade into the background, to melt around a bend in the corridor, where a mop and bucket stood abandoned, the water at the bottom of the bucket sporting a thin crust of ice.
“Mr. Burke,” said Janie, resisting the urge to tug her hat back into place. “Have you phoned in your story to your editor? You’d best be quick. There’s a line for the telephone.”
Burke made a swift, awkward movement. “There’s no story to phone in. I’m not covering the inquest.”
“No?” Janie looked at him skeptically. “If you’re not here to report, why have you come? Don’t tell me it’s for the beauties of nature. You’ll hardly find them in the courthouse.”
“Won’t I?” Mr. Burke removed his hat, clamping it under his arm. “I’m here because I needed to speak to you. When I saw the evening edition, I went through ten kinds of hell. Crazy, isn’t it? I know you think I’m dirt, but … I needed you to know. I didn’t write that story.”
He sounded sincere, but Janie knew by now that that was no guarantee. “You might have provided the information for it.”
“And left my name off the byline? I’d be handing a prime piece to someone else. That’s not ambition, that’s foolishness.”
“Unless you thought you might get still more out of it.”
He looked puzzled for a moment until realization dawned. “By winning your confidence back?”
Janie folded her arms across her chest. “Yes. You said it yourself. It’s foolish to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”
And she had been foolish to bring back that night. The memory of it, of their kiss, was a tangible thing between them.
Mr. Burke dropped his head into his hands, rubbing his temples with his gloved fingers. “I’ve really made a botch of this, haven’t I? For what it’s worth, I’ve recused myself. I’ve asked to be assigned to another story.”
The sounds of the people stampeding into the courtroom muted into a distant hum. “Why would you do that?”
Burke lifted his head, his expression rueful. “Because I don’t know how else to prove to you that my intentions are pure.”
“Your intentions were never pure,” said Janie in frustration. “I always knew that you were helping me for your own gain. That didn’t matter. What mattered was—”
What mattered was that she had trusted him. She had trusted him, and he had lied to her.
“Yes?” Burke prompted.
Janie pressed her eyes shut. “That we were working together, for a common end. Truth. You were the one who suggested it, Mr. Burke, not I. I never wanted you to suppress the truth. As long as it was truth you were telling.”
Mr. Burke’s face was pale above his muffler. “You can’t think I would have manipulated the facts for my own vengeance?”
Janie couldn’t keep the hurt from creeping into her voice. “Why not? You lied to me from the first.”
Burke tucked his chin into his muffler. “I didn’t lie, exactly. I only … omitted.” When Janie gave him a look, he said quietly, “I wouldn’t have doctored the evidence. You may not believe it of a mere journalist, but I do take pride in what I do. There’s honor even among thieves. And reporters.”
“There you are.” The silence was shattered by the clack of heels and the swish of several petticoats over the floorboards. Janie turned quickly to face Anne, but not quickly enough to head her off. Anne sailed towards them, still talking. “I was afraid we were going to have another body. And you are?”
“Anne,” said Janie with resignation. “I believe you know Mr. James Burke? Once of Daly’s Theatre.”
“You? But … you’ve changed.” Anne looked her onetime lover up and down. “The last time I saw you, you were in tights and a doublet.”
“Not exactly practical for this weather.” Burke inclined his chin. “Mrs. Newland.”
“So formal, Mr. Burke?”
“It’s a bit late for auld lang syne.” Janie noticed that Burke looked at her as he said it, not Anne.
Anne determined to get his attention back. “Do you still act?”
“Only for private parties,” said Burke shortly. “In a strictly unofficial capacity. Just ask your cousin.”
Anne’s eyes narrowed. She stepped between Janie and Burke. “If you thought to tease my cousin into providing you with a story, you’re wasting your time. Janie has nothing to tell you.”
Janie wasn’t sure whether to feel protected or insulted. With Anne, it might be either.
Burke folded his arms across his chest. “On the contrary. I find Miss Van Duyvil’s conversation most enlightening.” His face softened as he looked at Janie. “I’ve learned a great deal about my own shortcomings.”
Janie shook her head at him, taking Anne by the arm. “We should go back, Anne.”
Anne ignored her. “What did she tell you? Nothing of any note. If you want scandal, you’d do better to talk to me.”
Burke looked at Anne for a long time, but it wasn’t a lover’s gaze. “I had thought you Van Duyvils banded together.”
Anne’s laugh had no humor in it. “You forget. I’m not a Van Duyvil. Aunt Alva is my mother’s sister.” Her face twisted as if she were looking into a distorted mirror. “She ruined my father and stole his house. And my future with it, but who’s keeping count?”
“How can you tell what your future might have been?” Janie demanded with exasperation. “Anything might have happened, good or bad. We can’t presume it would have been better simply because it didn’t happen.”
“The grass is always greener. It’s the human condition to romanticize what we can’t have.” Burke looked at Anne. “Most of which we wouldn’t want if we got it.”
Anne’s lips thinned. “Really, Janie, I would think you would know better to stand out here talking to the press.” Turning, she uttered her parting salvo. “If you don’t care what happened to Bay, I do.”
The sound of her footsteps echoed down the corridor. Even knowing Anne as she did, the words hit Janie hard. It was easy to forget that this was about Bay. He had always been so absent even in his presence, a voice in a distant room.
She had enlisted Burke’s aid to clear Bay’s name, but how long had it been since she had considered Bay? The truth was that she had become swept up in the challenge, in the excitement of it. In Burke.
Janie gathered up her skirts. “I should be getting back.”
“Wait.” Burke made as if to reach for her arm, then let his hand drop. “She only said it to hurt you. It’s my fault. I provoked her.”
Janie shook her head. “She means it. She loved Bay.”
“Did she?” Something in Burke’s voice brought Janie’s head up. He was looking down the hallway, his expression thoughtful. “You know what they say. Love is a first cousin to hate. By her own testimony, your cousin was the one who set you looking for Mr. and Mrs. Van Duyvil.”
“What are you implying?”
“Hell hath no fury?”
It would be less alarming if there weren’t a ring of truth about it. “A cliché isn’t an answer.”
Burke raised a brow. “That’s not a cliché. That’s Shakespeare.”
Janie narrowed her eyes at him. “Taken out of context.”
“Try it this way, then. In context, as it were. How much does your cousin hate your family?”
“Not at all, I would have said,” said Janie slowly. “She loved Bay. She … she spars with my mother, but that’s not to be wondered at. My mother holds the purse strings, and Anne doesn’t like being told what to do.” Or, rather, Anne liked doing exactly what she’d been told not to do. It was as impossible to imagine Anne without opposition as it was to imagine Bay in a temper. Anne always had a grievance; Bay never raised his voice. Was that true? Or was it only what she had assumed about them? “I could see Anne flying into a rage and flinging something at Bay, but killing him…”
“One blow, the medical examiner said. It needn’t have been intentional.”
Anne, grabbing Bay’s dagger in a fit of rage, pointing it at him, shocked and horrified when it penetrated cloth and flesh. Yes, Janie could see that.
Janie rested a gloved hand against the scarred paint of the wall, tracing the contours of a stain. “When we were children, Anne broke a vase. She hid the pieces, and then, when they were found, she tried to blame a maid.”
“What happened?”
“The maid was dismissed.” Janie’s lips pressed together. “Mother knew, but…”
“It was easier to blame the maid?”
“Yes.” It took a moment for Janie to remember to whom she was speaking. Anne had been responsible for Burke’s shame, his loss of livelihood, while she had gone blithely on to marry one of the most eligible men in New York. What better vengeance than to see her jailed for murder? Janie rested her temple against the wall, feeling impossibly weary. “I shouldn’t be saying any of this to you. You would think I would have learned my lesson by now, wouldn’t you?”
“You’re talking to me because you have no one else to talk to. Don’t think I delude myself that it’s otherwise.” Quietly, Burke added, “You’re being more generous with your cousin than she would with you. She’s jealous of you, you know.”
“Of me? Hardly.”
Burke straightened, pushing away from the wall. “Why do you think she went to such lengths to annex Teddy Newland? Not for love, I’m guessing. It’s because his name was coupled with yours.”
“You’ve got it backwards. Teddy—” Burke lifted his brows at her casual use of the name. Janie lifted her chin. “Teddy fell in love with Anne. Men tend to do that.”
“Not all of us.” At Janie’s look, Burke said, “She’s like smallpox. I’ve been exposed.”
Janie was surprised into laughter. She turned it into a cough. “Then what am I? Measles?”
“Nothing so mundane.” To her surprise, Mr. Burke lifted her hand and carried it to his lips in the European fashion. “You, Miss Van Duyvil, are plague. Utterly incurable.”
It was insulting. It was dreadful. It was the most romantic thing she had ever heard.
“Thank you. I think.” Just managing not to smile, Janie said, as drily as she could, “If you’re trying to charm me into complaisance, you might want to attempt something a trifle more lyrical.”
“I wouldn’t try to cozen you with verse. You’d see through me in an instant.” Mr. Burke looked at her ruefully. “You already have.”
Was that an admission? Janie was having trouble keeping up with what was real and what wasn’t. It was infuriating that someone should appear so trustworthy by admitting to being untrustworthy.
She straightened her back and lifted her chin. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I’ve learned my lesson, Mr. Burke.”
“So have I.” The mocking note was gone from his voice. Looking down at his gloved hands, Burke spoke with difficulty. “I shouldn’t have kept the truth from you. I didn’t know you. And then—by the time I did know you enough to care—I cared too much to tell you. I meant it. About admiring you. That wasn’t a lie.”
“Court is returning to session.” The bailiff was prowling the hall, rousting out stragglers. “Court is returning to session.”
Janie gathered her worsted skirts. “I should go.”
“You should,” agreed Burke. Janie turned to go, but his voice followed her, hoarse, painful. “Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?”
Janie hesitated. Then she said, decisively, “Don’t recuse yourself.”
Burke blinked at her. “What?”
She might not trust his emotions, but she believed him when he said that his work mattered to him. And this is what they had set out to do, wasn’t it?
“Find the truth,” said Janie. “And publish it.”
A pirate’s grin spread across Burke’s face. “For you, Miss Van Duyvil? With pleasure.”
“Not for me,” said Janie. “For Bay.”
She turned and walked back to the courtroom, hoping her mother wouldn’t notice how long she had been gone.