London, 1894
February
“I don’t think I’ve been warm since I left Italy.”
Mr. Van Duyvil hunched down into the collar of his coat, rubbing his hands together for warmth. The coveted table by the fire had already been taken when they arrived at the Feathers, leaving only this spot, by the crack in the window that never quite seemed to be mended.
“Here,” said Georgie, pushing a cup across the table. “This will chase the chill away.”
Mr. Van Duyvil accepted it cautiously. “What it is?”
“Not Blue Ruin,” said Georgie drily, and Mr. Van Duyvil had the grace to look abashed. “Warm port and lemon. Works a treat on wet days. It would take a fair bit of it to put you under the table.”
She’d been scandalized once at the idea of drinking in a public house, but her standards had changed along with her speech over the past three years. There wasn’t any more harm to port and lemon than a genteel glass of sherry, and it did more than coal to keep the cold at bay.
Mr. Van Duyvil took a tentative sip. “It’s … not bad.”
Georgie snorted with laughter. “You get used to it.” One got used to a lot of things. She curled her fingers around her own glass, feeling the warmth seep into her skin. “What were you doing in Italy? Sketching statues?”
Mr. Van Duyvil choked on his port. “Hardly. I can’t draw a straight line, much less a landscape.”
“Ta, Bert.” Georgie nodded her thanks as the landlord slapped two pieces of steak-and-kidney pie down between them. “Why Italy, then?”
“A Grand Tour, I suppose you would call it. My last year of law school … I’d been buried in my books for so long. I wanted something … something different before going into practice.”
She’d forgot that he worked for a living. Georgie took another swig of her port and lemon. “Are you certain you’re a solicitor? You’re not at all my image of one.”
Mr. Van Duyvil’s eyes met hers quizzically. “You aren’t my image of an actress.”
“Several stage managers felt the same way,” said Georgie drily. She declaimed prettily enough for drawing room entertainment, but not for Drury Lane. She had found work, initially, as a dresser at the Alhambra and moved from there to a chorus role at the Olympic.
Whether or not that was moving up, she couldn’t say. The pay was better, but the clothing was scantier.
Mr. Van Duyvil wasn’t deterred. “It’s your voice. It doesn’t sound like your friend’s.”
“I’m a good mimic.” But apparently not mimic enough. She’d thought she’d mastered the dialect of her new world. When Mr. Van Duyvil continued to look at her, Georgie elaborated, “I grew up as a companion to a young lady.”
The detail seemed to whet his interest rather than discourage it. “Were you relations?”
Georgie bit her lip. “You might say that.”
“Might?” Mr. Van Duyvil looked at her searchingly, as though she were a riddle he could solve. “Usually one is a relation or one isn’t.”
Georgie stared down into her port and lemon. Best to give him the sanitized answer, the tidy one she trotted out for company. “My father … my father was a soldier in the colonel’s regiment. They’d served together in India.” She could picture the colonel, sun-browned and bluff. “I was raised with the colonel’s daughter, Annabelle. Annabelle Lacey.”
It had been so long since she had said the name that it felt heavy and strange on her tongue. Was it strange that this far away, that name still had the power to hurt her?
Gently, Mr. Van Duyvil said, “What happened to her?”
“Why should you think anything happened to her? Your pie will get cold if you don’t eat it.”
“I didn’t mean to pry.” Mr. Van Duyvil set his fork down next to his uneaten pie. His eyes lingered on her face. “It was just something in the way you spoke of her—of Annabelle Lacey.”
Hearing that name made Georgie’s throat burn; her dress felt too tight across the shoulders. Everything felt wrong and strange. The sympathy in Mr. Van Duyvil’s voice cut deeper than any insult.
“She’s gone,” Georgie blurted out.
To say it made it feel like it was happening all over. The pain of it. There were times when Georgie missed Annabelle so, and others when she wanted to close her eyes and imagine Annabelle out of existence, to pretend she never was, had never been, because if she hadn’t been, then none of it would ever have happened.
“Annabelle’s gone, and I ran off to tread the boards. As you see.” Georgie picked up her port and lemon, raising it in a mock toast.
Mr. Van Duyvil lifted his glass, but didn’t drink. “Were you close?”
“At times.” Memories, like the flash of a kingfisher’s wing. Annabelle’s reflection in the water of the river, laughing. And then later. Later. A slipper by the river’s edge; a hair ribbon caught on a floating branch. “At times. You know how it is, when you grow up with someone.”
To her surprise, Mr. Van Duyvil nodded. “My cousin Anne. She’s more of a sister to me than my own sister. For better and worse. There are times—” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “There are times when we feel like two parts of the same person. If that isn’t too fanciful.”
“No.” Georgie’s voice was hoarse. From the port, of course. It took her that way, sometimes. “No, not fanciful at all.”
It was surprisingly seductive to be allowed to speak of Annabelle. How had their conversation become so intimate? She had shared more with Mr. Van Duyvil in an hour than she had told Kitty in a year. It must be because he was a stranger, an American. She could use him as a Catholic would a confessor, murmuring one’s sins into the ear of a stranger.
Georgie cleared her throat, trying to get the huskiness out of her voice. With forced lightness, she said, “What’s the problem with your sister?”
Mr. Van Duyvil took her cue, saying, with an expression of mock distress, “There isn’t any. That’s the problem. She’s very correct.”
Georgie couldn’t help laughing. “And your cousin?”
Mr. Van Duyvil’s lips creased in a smile so indulgent it made Georgie feel almost jealous. “Is anything but correct. She tried to elope with an actor when she was seventeen. The family caught her and brought her back. She wasn’t repentant. She was furious.”
Seventeen. The same age Georgie had been when she had staged her own elopement of sorts. But she hadn’t run away with a man; she had run from one. “You sound like you admire her.”
Mr. Van Duyvil glanced through the thick panes of the window, a faraway expression in his eyes. “I’ve always wanted to be as strong as Anne.” His eyes came back to Georgie’s, rueful, resigned. “I wouldn’t know how to begin, though.”
“You could always elope with an actress.” She’d spoken without thinking. Hastily, Georgie said, “I didn’t mean … never mind.”
Mr. Van Duyvil politely ignored her confusion, pretending to consider the notion. “It’s not a terrible idea. At least it would stop my mother trying to marry me off to the daughters of her friends. Do you have an actress to recommend?”
Was he flirting? Georgie hoped not. Despite herself, she’d been enjoying their conversation. It would be disappointing to find Mr. Van Duyvil like the others, just angling for one thing.
Georgie shrugged. “I’d suggest Kitty, but she’s holding out for a title.”
“And what about you, Miss Evans?”
“Georgie.” In her topsy-turvy world, to be on first-name terms felt somehow safer than being a miss. It reminded her, as the bard would say, feelingly what she was. A survivor, outside the social pale. “I’m not looking for a prince—or a baronet.”
“What about a mere mister?”
Georgie stabbed her fork into her pie. “Not until man is made of some other matter than earth.”
Mr. Van Duyvil raised a brow. “Much Ado? It is Much Ado.”
“About something,” said Georgie. There were times when it was best to be blunt. “I’m not looking for a protector.”
“What are you looking for?”
A bit of peace. A place she could call her own.
Unbidden, the image came to her of Lacey Abbey; the broken cloisters laced about with thick summer growth, the heady scent of primroses and honeysuckle, the whisper of Queen Anne’s lace against the folds of her dress. In memory, those summers seemed to last forever, all the boredom and dissent leached away by longing. She wanted that back: the sunlight on the water, the lazy song of the birds, the blackberries ripe on the branch. She wanted Lacey Abbey as it had been and could never be to her again.
“Another drink,” said Georgie and twisted to catch Bert the barman’s eye. “Now. Tell me more about your cousin Anne and her actor…”
New York, 1899
January
“Extra!”
“Mind how you go, lady!”
“Boy! Hey, you! Get out of the street!” The streetcar driver rang his bell, scattering a ragged band of newsboys as it clanged by on its tracks.
Janie’s nose tingled with the smell of burned pretzel, roasting chestnuts, and the inevitable presence of horse manure, faint now in the stinging cold. It was a familiar backdrop to the less familiar scents of ink and paper, the shouts of the newsboys, the clamor of traffic, the rumble of wheels and printing presses buried in basements beneath the headquarters of The Tribune, The Sun, The Journal, The Times, The World, each racing the other to produce the biggest headline, the most sensational story.
Right now, Bay’s and Annabelle’s deaths were that story. Janie could see it shouting out from the sandwich boards, above the fold on the papers being parceled out to the newsies.
WHERE IS ANNABELLE VAN DUYVIL?
MURDERED SOCIALITE’S BODY STILL MISSING
Keeping her veil close about her face, Janie yanked her skirts out of the way of an inquisitive horse, skirting a small, ragged band of boys. She shouldn’t be out and about at all; the rules governing mourning were strict. In three weeks, she might accept condolence calls. In six months, she might call informally on friends, lightening her mourning from black to violet. But what rules applied to this situation? What was the rule when there was no body to bury, when, instead of the muffled knocker enforcing silence, the bereaved household was riven with the cries of the press? In a world gone mad, the proprieties lost their importance.
The World Building was easy enough to find, even in the midst of such bustle: the rusticated façade dominated the street, but it was the dome that set it apart, flaming even in the weak winter sun, stretching higher than the spire of Trinity Church. It was something well out of the human scale, this monument to the news of the world.
Or, at least, thought Janie tartly, the gossip of the world. The building, with its echoes of the Renaissance, made promises that the institution itself failed to keep.
It was grander inside than she had imagined, the elaborate ironwork of the staircase more suited to a palace than a printing house. The air was thick with smoke—cigar smoke, pipe smoke, smoke from the equipment below—and the floor rumbled and rattled beneath her feet. Everyone seemed to know where they were going in this entirely masculine world, clustered in small chattering groups, striding importantly to and fro.
“Can I help you, miss?” A man broke off from his group and slouched over, trailing cigar ash.
Janie spoke without thinking. “Is the building quite safe?”
The man gave a bark of a laugh. “That’s just the presses, miss. There’s enough steel in these walls to hold up half of Manhattan.” He removed the cigar from between his lips, held it out, and eyed her lazily. “You looking for someone?”
“Yes,” said Janie, and then, more definitely, “yes. I’m looking for a reporter. A Mr. Burke.”
“Come for the reward?” He jerked a finger towards a gilded cage that was spewing forth men in battered hats and warm mufflers. “Newsroom. Twelfth floor.”
Janie would have thanked him, but he was already turning away, absorbed back into his conversation, a conversation in which she could hear her own name, Van Duyvil.
Might he have…? No. No one knew her here. There were benefits to being nondescript. She’d never had her engraved portrait in the papers. Her clothes were good, but not showy. There was no one to guess at her for what she was.
And even if there were? What did it matter now? She had spent her life in terror of saying the wrong thing, wearing the wrong gloves, showing a fraction too much ankle, the relentless abjuration to be a lady, behave like a Van Duyvil, whatever that was supposed to mean. But all that paled to insignificance now, seemed small and petty against the drama playing out in the papers, the memory of Bay, golden and fallen.
The gilded cage of the elevator jerked and swayed as it rose in the air. The dial on top jerked ever upwards. Six. Higher than the top of her mother’s house. Eight. Higher than Grant’s tomb. Up, up, up in the sky, away from the known world, the brownstones that clung close to the pavement, the long skirts that trailed on the ground.
Janie heard the sound of the newsroom before the elevator doors opened, a sound like a locomotive, the rattle of hundreds of typewriters, the shrill of a telephone, male voices raised to carry over the din. The elevator man had to ask her whether she meant to take another trip before Janie, with a murmured apology, gathered up her skirts and hurried belatedly into the Tower of Babel.
The room was large, larger than Mrs. Astor’s ballroom, but it seemed small, crammed as it was with rolltop desks jammed together any which way, creating a crazy labyrinth of winding paths. Around the walls, placards shouted their messages in large letters: ACCURACY ACCURACY ACCURACY! read one, and THE COLOR—THE FACTS—THE COLOR another.
Rather more color than facts, Janie would have said. But there was an undeniable energy to the room, the clacking typewriters, the shouting voices, that put energy into her step and color in her cheek.
The room was heaving with men, the air ripe with the smell of tobacco, sweat, and yesterday’s dinner. Janie had never seen a man in his shirt and suspenders before, not even her father or brother. But here, jackets had been dropped over the backs of chairs, sleeves rolled up over forearms. Hats lay discarded on desks and dangled from hooks.
She ought, she supposed, to be intimidated by such a palpably masculine environment, but something about it reminded her of her Girls’ Club, the charity for working-class girls at which she volunteered two mornings a week, or sometimes more when she was feeling particularly low. Nothing here was for show or display; they all were what they were, pounding away at typewriter keys, holding the phone receiver to a crumpled shirt front as they looked up and shouted something across the room. It felt, thought Janie, like being at the edge of a beehive; there was something very impressive about all that concentrated activity.
It did rather put a damper on her grand plan, though. Janie had imagined the newsroom as a series of offices with glass doors, doors which could be closed. She had envisioned herself sweeping mysteriously into Mr. Burke’s office, a woman of the world in her black veil. A few murmured words and she would be in the reporter’s own private sanctum.
Mr. Burke might not even be here. He might, at this very moment, be in her own kitchen. Perhaps, thought Janie wryly, she ought to have stayed there and waited for him to come to her.
A man sat at a raised desk by the elevators. From the fact that he bellowed more loudly and more frequently than the others, Janie presumed that he must occupy some position of authority.
She moved quickly to intercept the balding man in the gold-rimmed glasses. “Pardon me, sir—”
“Do any of you layabouts have any copy?” he shouted, before looking impatiently at Janie. “If you’re looking for the residences, you’re on the wrong floor.”
“I’ve come to see Mr. Burke,” said Janie, keeping her voice low. “About … a confidential matter.”
In stentorian tones, the editor bellowed, “Jimmy! Lady to see you!” and the entire newsroom paused in their efforts to inspect this new diversion.
“Eh, boys, Jimmy’s got a girl!” someone shouted.
Another head popped up, shiny with hair cream. “Lady, if you’d like to do better…”
Janie took a half step back. “If he’s not here, I can always come back another time.”
“Burke!” shouted the editor again, and from somewhere in the middle of the scrum, a tall form unfolded himself and began weaving his way through the aisles, replying easily to the banter that accompanied his progress.
“Chief. Miss—” His eyes narrowed as he recognized her through the flimsy stuff of her veil. He recovered with practiced ease, feigning ignorance with such skill that Janie might have believed him herself if she hadn’t known better. “May I help you, miss?”
What was it the man downstairs had said? “I’ve come about the reward,” said Janie hastily.
It was the wrong thing to have said. A dozen ears pricked up. Even the shrilling of the phones didn’t seem to distract the reporters, who had all turned to her like sharks scenting blood.
“What did you see?”
“Was it intact?”
“Have you got pictures?”
Mr. Burke cupped Janie’s elbow with exaggerated gentility, but Janie could feel the warning pinch of his fingers as he steered her towards the elevator. “Now, now, gentlemen. You know the rules. This is my story.” Mr. Burke paused only to snatch up a coat and hat, talking all the while. “And it’s probably nothing more than an old boot. What was it last time? Two sticks and a head of cabbage?”
The elevator doors jerked closed on the sound of laughter and retorts.
Mr. Burke shrugged into his coat, wrapping a muffler around his neck. “If we want to speak in private, we’ll have to go outside.” Dropping his voice, he added, “Don’t tell me you’re really here for the reward?”
The contempt in his voice was bracing. Janie straightened. Her height might be a disadvantage in a ballroom, but she was grateful for every inch of it here. “I might be if I knew what it was,” she said coolly.
Mr. Burke gave a bark of laughter. “That’s rich. But then I suppose your sort never miss the chance of adding to your coffers, do you?”
“My sort?” Janie had to keep her voice to a whisper, for the sake of the elevator man. “You mean human beings? Your paper wouldn’t offer rewards if they didn’t believe them an incentive.”
“Touché, Miss … er, miss,” drawled Mr. Burke, but Janie didn’t feel as though she had won anything. The elevator decanted them into the crowded lobby. “If not the chance of lucre, what brings you to my humble place of business?”
“The pursuit of truth.” The words came out sounding impossibly priggish. Janie ducked her head as they exited the building into the full force of the wind. Breathlessly, she said, “That is what you claim to seek, isn’t it?”
“You sound as though you doubt it.”
Janie gestured helplessly towards the newsies marching up and down the street. WIFE’S AFFAIR TURNS TO DOUBLE MURDER! VAN DUYVIL DRIVEN TO IT, SAY FRIENDS.
“Can you blame me?”
Mr. Burke’s hand tightened on her elbow as a streetcar went clanging past. “That’s The Journal, not The World.”
“Is there any difference?”
“Yes. Their circulation is higher.” His dry tone almost surprised Janie into a laugh. “If you think so poorly of my profession, why are you here?”
Now was the time for her pretty speech, the one she had practiced before her mirror last night. Instead, Janie heard herself saying, “Because I need information, and you claim to purvey it.”
“There it is again. That word claim.” Mr. Burke waved to the policeman regulating traffic. It was rather miraculous, the way the traffic parted at his call. Mr. Burke took her elbow and led her past the pawing horses and impatient drivers, nodding his thanks to the policeman. “Is it our inability to know the world that you doubt, or simply my morals?”
She hadn’t expected this sort of resistance, or, if she were being honest, that he would be so well spoken. “You can’t expect me to think highly of a man who obtains entry into my kitchen under false pretenses,” she said apologetically.
“Would you have admitted me under my real ones?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Isn’t it just? If you want the fruits of my labor, you can’t be squeamish about the means.”
“That depends on the ends, doesn’t it?” At Mr. Burke’s raised brow, Janie hurried on, “I don’t mean to sound Machiavellian about it—but if there were an injustice being committed and one might use one’s skills to stop it…”
“Ah,” said Mr. Burke, his steps slowing as they reached the plaza in front of the pale bulk of City Hall. “So if it’s for the purpose of selling papers, it’s immoral, but if it’s to prevent injustice, all’s fair.”
He’d twisted her words, pushed them out of all meaning. But … “In essence, yes,” said Janie.
They slowed to a stop by the entrance to City Hall Park. Mr. Burke’s voice dropped, his eyes fastened intimately on hers. “Do you know something that makes you believe an injustice is being committed, Miss Van Duyvil?”
For a moment, Janie teetered on the edge of telling him what she knew. But what was it, really? A name, half-heard, that might not even be a name.
George …
Janie tucked her gloved hands into her sleeves and walked briskly towards the fountain at the center of the park. “My knowledge of my brother’s character.”
The branches above them were sere and bare. In the summer, it would be a leafy profusion, a bit of green in the heart of the city, but now the park seemed small and scraggy, the fountain in the middle weathered, the basin cracked and dry.
“Character,” repeated Mr. Burke. “If that’s the only reason you’ve dragged me into the elements, you might have stayed by your warm hearth.”
“Do you doubt my knowledge of my brother?”
“If I had a penny for every time someone told me, ‘Little Johnny’s a good boy. He would never do that’…” Janie winced at Mr. Burke’s falsetto, deliberately grating. Dropping his voice, he said flatly, “Character isn’t written on a man’s face, Miss Van Duyvil. Or a woman’s.”
Without its usual sprays of water, the fountain seemed plain and bare. Even the gilded finials on the lampposts had lost their luster. “You think me deluded.”
Mr. Burke tucked his hands in his pockets and looked down at her. “You’re grieving,” he said gruffly. “It takes people different ways.”
If he had been flippant, if he had twisted words into knots, Janie might have taken her defeat and gone about her business. But his reluctant kindness, the condescension of his kindness, infuriated her. “That,” she said tartly, “is precisely what the constable in Cold Spring said when I told him I had seen Annabelle in the water.” She waited a moment for that to sink in before turning on her heel. “I know perfectly well what I saw and what my brother was. It’s only on the stage, Mr. Burke, that mourning makes men mad.”
She’d expected him to follow her, but he didn’t. Instead, she heard the hollow sound of gloved hands clapping. Slowly, she turned and found Mr. Burke planted where he was, applauding her as he might an act at the circus. “Well played, Miss Van Duyvil. May I say that you’ve missed your calling? You would have been a great success on the stage.”
It wasn’t, Janie suspected, meant as a compliment, but she couldn’t help but be tickled all the same. It was rather refreshing to be treated as a woman of parts, a woman with secrets and mysteries, not just poor Janie, who couldn’t catch or keep.
“It’s not an act, Mr. Burke. I don’t believe my brother killed his wife. If I were to sit back and allow verdict to be passed by the laziness of the police and the rapaciousness of the press, I would be doing him a gross injustice.”
Mr. Burke folded his arms across his chest, but his expression was serious now, his attention caught. “Isn’t this a conversation you should be having with the police?”
“Why? So they can offer me brandy and send me home? They didn’t believe me when … we both know the police follow the press, not the other way around.”
“That’s a great compliment, Miss Van Duyvil.”
“It wasn’t meant as one.” With nothing to lose, it was easy to speak her mind. “With great power comes—”
“—great responsibility,” Mr. Burke finished for her. “You do me too much credit, Miss Van Duyvil. I’m just a hack with ink-stained fingers.”
Sensing weakness, Janie pressed forward. “If The World were to raise doubt as to the commission of the crime, the police would be forced to follow suit.”
“Is that what you want? A goad for the police?”
“Yes,” Janie lied, although she wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted. To know that something was being done, that Bay wasn’t being tried solely in the court of rumor. “If there is anything you might have discovered in the course of your investigation that might lead to doubt, that might raise other avenues of inquiry … I’ll pay you.”
Mr. Burke’s expressive features hardened, like ice over stone. “To publish misinformation?”
“No!” Janie was appalled by his misapprehension. “To learn the truth. To discover what really happened. I wouldn’t want to spread a lie.”
Mr. Burke eyed her skeptically, as though she were a piece of dodgy fish at the seaport. “What if the truth is just as unpalatable as the rumor?”
The papers were saying that her brother had killed his wife and himself. “Nothing could be as unpalatable as the rumor,” said Janie firmly.
“Don’t tempt fate, Miss Van Duyvil,” said Mr. Burke grimly. “You might not like what it throws at you.”
Something in his tone made the skin on Janie’s neck prickle. “What is it? What do you know?”
The sun had come out behind a cloud, with the pitiless brightness of January, creating a nimbus around Mr. Burke’s head and throwing his face into darkness. “What would you say if I told you that Annabelle Lacey died in 1891?”
Janie could feel the cold creeping through the wool of her coat. “Are you mocking me, Mr. Burke? Annabelle couldn’t—she wasn’t. I saw her last week.”
The blinding light made rainbows around Mr. Burke’s face. Janie had to squint to see him. “I misspoke. Let me rephrase that. Annabelle Lacey was presumed to have died in 1891.”
Janie shook her head. “You must be mistaken. Or misinformed. Annabelle married my brother in 1894. She held a ball”—her voice caught, but she soldiered on—“she held a ball last week.”
“Dead women hold no balls?” Mr. Burke looked at her with something like smugness. Janie didn’t like it. “Annabelle Lacey disappeared from her home in Lincolnshire in the spring of 1891. It’s a matter of record. The housekeeper found a shoe beside the bank of the river and a hair ribbon caught on a twig.”
A shoe, lying on its side, melting snow creating a dark stain on the pale satin. A scarf, spangled with jewels, floating on the water.
Janie blinked again, banishing the images. “No. That was last week, not eight years ago.”
“Would you like to read the telegram from my colleague at The Lincolnshire Standard? Miss Lacey’s cousin, Mr. Lacey, went to some effort to have her declared dead. The local coroner, apparently, refused to sanction an inquest on the ground of insufficient evidence.” Mr. Burke folded his arms across his chest, his eyes on Janie’s face. “Do you still want to know the truth whatever the costs, Miss Van Duyvil?”
Janie eyed him warily. “How did you learn all this?”
Mr. Burke bent and picked up a fallen twig from the rim of the fountain, snapping off the branches, one by one. “The telegraph is a remarkable thing, isn’t it? It stretches clear across the Atlantic.”
It was strange to think of those wires clicking and clicking, noon and night, carrying secrets from one end of the world to the other, turning the Atlantic into a fishpond, the globe into something one could fit inside one’s pocket. She had known Annabelle for five years, and yet Mr. Burke, if he was indeed speaking the truth, knew more of Annabelle’s past in one exchange of the telegraph than Janie had learned in five years.
Mr. Burke might be lying. He might have fabricated it all out of thin air, in an attempt to scare her back to the serenity of the drawing room.
Serenity? Ha. Janie lifted her chin. “Was there anything else?”
Mr. Burke looked at her sideways, a long, appraising look. After a moment, he said, “It takes seven years in England for a missing person to be deemed deceased. In 1898, Mr. Lacey applied again to have his cousin’s death made official. Something about an inheritance, I gather.” His voice was carefully bland. “One can only imagine his surprise when he was told that she was alive, married, and living in America.”
They paused in front of the statue of Nathan Hale. Someone had left a wreath on the pedestal; the garland was wilted, the ribbon frayed. Janie stared at the frostbitten flowers. “Annabelle never spoke about her life in England.”
Not even at the beginning, that first summer in Newport, when all the clucking matrons and disappointed debutantes had tried to draw her out, making pointed comments about her aristocratic connections. Annabelle had merely smiled and changed the subject, quietly regal in a way that put the petty jealousies of others to scorn.
Janie had taken it as a sign of good breeding. But what if it was something more?
Mr. Burke clasped his hands behind his back, seeming to scrutinize Mr. Hale. “So you have two possibilities. Either Annabelle Lacey died and the woman you knew as Annabelle Lacey was an imposter—or Annabelle Lacey, for reasons best known to herself, found it expedient to disappear. Until she married your brother.”
Janie looked away from Nathan Hale’s incorruptible face, into that of the man beside her. It was, she thought, an interesting face, all long, lean lines and unexpected angles. Secrets were written in the hollows of those cheeks, in the long, flexible line of his lips—his own and those of others. And Janie realized, for the first time, the magnitude of what she was taking on, the cost that might come of bearing the secrets of others.
“Well?” said Mr. Burke. “Have you heard enough?”
Above her, Nathan Hale gazed off into the clouds, scorning her weakness. Here was a man who hadn’t folded in the face of danger. He had been executed here, on this spot, just a little more than a century before, giving his life so that a principle might stand.
“No,” said Janie crisply. “My offer stands.”
Mr. Burke raised a brow. “Money for information?”
Janie nodded.
“What if,” said Mr. Burke, his eyes fixed on Janie’s, “money isn’t what I want?”
He was trying to scare her. She knew that. But she couldn’t quite keep her voice as steady as she would have liked as she asked, “What do you want, Mr. Burke?”
Mr. Burke straightened. “Information,” he said crisply. “You might call it … a window into your world.”
Janie could have kicked him. “Isn’t the kitchen door enough for you?”
Mr. Burke smiled dangerously. “Don’t worry. I don’t intend to sully the premises. One can only learn so much below stairs. It’s not every day one has access to the daughter of the house.” He was trying to provoke her. Again. “Well, Miss Van Duyvil? Do you accept my terms?”
Janie wondered if this was how Faust had felt when he’d summoned Mephistopheles. Somehow, these pacts ceased to seem like such a good idea once the devil was driving the bargain. “Yes. On one condition.”
“Only one?” said Mr. Burke. “You surprise me.”
Janie refused to be goaded. “If we are to work together, I will need your pledge of honesty. No lies, no omissions, no half truths.”
Mr. Burke gave a short bark of a laugh. “You don’t ask for much, do you? Only the moon.” When Janie didn’t budge, he said softly, “What of you, Miss Van Duyvil? Will you give the same to me?”
The golden dome of the World loomed behind them, a reminder that any careless word might be printed tens of thousands times over, projected to everyone with the three cents to buy the evening edition.
“I will deal fairly with you, if you deal fairly with me,” said Janie. And then, before she could think better of it, “Is Katie your cousin?”
A look of reluctant admiration crossed Mr. Burke’s face. “No.”
There was something reassuring about that blunt admission. Or it might just be, Janie admitted to herself, that she wanted to be reassured.
The wind had risen, shaking the bare branches above their heads, making Janie’s veil flutter wildly. The same wind made Mr. Burke’s coat flap around his legs, but he stood solid all the same, providing a wind block of sorts.
Janie looked up at him. “Well, then,” she said.
“Well, then.” Mr. Burke held out a gloved hand. “Let the games begin.”
Janie surrendered her hand into his grasp, expecting a crushing clasp. Instead, he bowed over her hand with exaggerated care. His fingers on hers were delicate, but firm. Janie could feel the tingle of his touch through the leather of her gloves. Nerves, that was all. Nerves at the impropriety of what she was undertaking.
“One more question,” Janie said at random, seizing on the first thing to come to mind.
“Yes?” Mr. Burke’s hand still held hers.
Quickly, Janie said, “What was the reward? The one I was meant to come to claim.”
Mr. Burke released her hand, taking a step back. “Et tu, Brute? You put honesty to the test quickly enough.”
The sun had gone back behind the cloud, and the sky was gray and cold, heavy with the threat of snow.
“It wasn’t meant as a test.” Katie had been a test. This was just a question. “I assume I could discover the answer myself by purchasing a paper.”
Mr. Burke gave a curt nod. “The World is offering $500 to anyone who can find Annabelle Van Duyvil’s body.”
There was something rather chilling about the image, the woman she had known, reduced to a commodity, sought after by bounty hunters. “Why didn’t you say so?”
Mr. Burke cast her an ironical look. “I suppose I was trying to spare your blushes.”
Janie had had enough of being spared. “Don’t.” In her most businesslike voice, she said, “I work at the Girls’ Club on Frankfort Street Tuesday and Thursday mornings. You may send a message to me there if you have any news.”
“Not to the house?”
Honesty for honesty. Janie lifted her eyes to meet his mocking gaze. “My mother and cousin know nothing of this. I would prefer—”
“—to keep them in ignorance?” Mr. Burke appeared to be more amused than appalled. “What other secrets are you keeping, Miss Van Duyvil?”
“None that would be of any interest to you,” said Janie. “Good day, Mr. Burke. I will look for your note at Frankfort Street.”
As Janie hurried away in the gathering dusk, she could see them standing there still: Mr. Burke and Nathan Hale, both staring after her.