Not that the lib­er­als were much bet­ter on the whole! Nei­ther was a col­lec­tion of men to be ide­al­ized, he re­flected, help­ing his aged rel­a­tive down­stairs—sadly, for the na­tion. The best de­fense of them all was per­haps that the gen­eral stan­dard of in­tel­li­gence and man­ners in the House of Lords was lower still.

  “What do you make of Jasper’s daugh­ter?” he asked Matilda as he guided her down the hall­way to­ward the front door.

  “It doesn’t mat­ter in the slight­est what I think of her, as you put it,” said Matilda. “She is our cousin. But I will tell you that her lit­tle friend is a gem. Here we are—let us brave the cold! You are young, it needn’t bother you.”

  Lenox, grate­ful that some­one still con­sid­ered him young, de­posited his cousin with a kiss into her tiny car­riage, with the fur blan­ket on its bench; and promised to look out for her let­ter by the next day’s first post.

  He was re­turn­ing to the party when he heard, in the gen­eral con­ver­sa­tion, his cousin An­gela, more an­i­mated than he had ever known her yet.

  He turned to see who had elicited this note of free­dom and hap­pi­ness in her voice, which he him­self had been try­ing to coax out since that day on the dock, and saw that it was Ed­mund, of all peo­ple. Lenox frowned—what could Ed­mund have said that was so en­ter­tain­ing? He glanced be­tween them, and look­ing at An­gela, for just a sec­ond, by the time­less light of the can­dles and the fire­place, he saw Jasper com­plete: above all else, the large, wide-set, lu­mi­nous eyes, full of in­no­cence.

  Lenox crossed to the pair, who were by the fire­place. Sir Ed­mund was jot­ting down some­thing on a piece of pa­per on the man­tel.

  “What has left you two so mirth­ful?” the younger brother asked.

  “We were go­ing over sums,” said Ed­mund.

  “Sums?” said Charles.

  “Yes. These are the to­tal her­ring catch by coastal county.”

  “Is this sub­ject of in­ter­est to you?” Lenox asked An­gela, eyes wide with sur­prise.

  “A great deal! In­deed, Ed­mund has said I may visit him in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day and look through all the books my­self.”

  “She has a re­mark­able head for num­bers,” said Ed­mund, beam­ing.

  * * *

  Lenox did not find an­other mo­ment to breathe un­til nearly eleven o’clock, when fi­nally the high hum of the party di­min­ished into the noise of sev­eral softer, longer con­ver­sa­tions, and a few more bod­ies be­gan to leave. Cross­ing the hall back to the sit­ting room af­ter see­ing one of Jane’s nieces off, he heard, “Sir, sir!” be­hind him.

  He turned and saw one of the foot­men. “Yes?”

  “Note for you, sir. Left by the door.”

  Lenox glanced over at the clock on the wall. It was long since the last post. He took the en­ve­lope with a thanks and tore it open, hop­ing it was from Mon­tague; through­out the evening, some part of his mind had re­mained over at the green­house.

  But the note was not from Mon­tague. It was un­signed, and bore only four words, writ­ten in a crude scrawl.

  Your Jane bet­ter stop

  He felt his heart be­gin to thump in his neck. He felt the pa­per crum­ple in his fist with­out re­al­iz­ing that he had been clench­ing it.

  Stop? Stop what?

  “James!” he called sharply be­hind the re­treat­ing foot­man.

  James turned back, and hear­ing Lenox’s thun­der­ous tone tried to con­ceal his high spir­its—it had been a thrilling work­day, af­ter all—be­neath a se­ri­ous face.

  “Sir?”

  “Who gave you that note?”

  “Oh, sir—the bell was rung and it was there on the ledge with no one about, sir,” cried the young man quickly. “By the time I got there at least, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  Lenox stood alone in the hall for a few mo­ments, me­thod­i­cally work­ing through the pos­si­ble au­thors of the note. It was ad­dressed to him, he ob­served in the coolly me­chan­i­cal part of his mind, not to Jane.

  His mind trav­eled down sev­eral paths but he could not find a way to make Ja­cob Phipps the sender of the note. Some­one from the opium dens? That would have been fright­en­ing, ex­cept he was nearly cer­tain he rec­og­nized the rude scrawl of a Lon­don gram­mar school En­glish­man, or was all but sure he did, af­ter two decades of study­ing his coun­try­men’s writ­ing.

  He went down to the street. He had fetched their po­lice whis­tle from in­side and blew it three times.

  It was only a mo­ment or two be­fore Wat­son, their lo­cal con­sta­ble, ap­peared. He was a stout, light-mus­tached per­son of twenty-five or so. He looked just like a fel­low named Ex­eter that Lenox had once known.

  “Mr. Lenox?” he called when he was still some twenty yards off. “All well at the party?”

  Lenox lifted a hand to him and waited. A few flur­ries had be­gun to fall from the sky. “Hello, Wat­son—could you please take this over to the Square and give it to the fel­low in charge.”

  Wat­son read the note, as Lenox had in­di­cated he should, and his eyes widened. “Straight­away, sir.”

  There was a po­lice stand on Grosvenor Square, where sev­eral of­fi­cers were al­ways sta­tioned. “I would be hap­pier if some­one looked down the street reg­u­larly tonight. I shall tell the staff to set dou­ble locks and ex­tra lights out­side.”

  “No one will get in, sir,” said Wat­son, nod­ding. “Let me run back to the Square.” He paused. “Sir, is it true Princess Alexan­dra was here tonight?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think this in­volves her.”

  Lenox hadn’t needed to clar­ify that the Princess was safe, though, he saw af­ter an­swer­ing—it was the celebrity of the thing that in­ter­ested Wat­son. “Very good, sir. Some­one will be back shortly. Should have been here any­way.” He glanced at the car­riages.

  “You can re­port back down­stairs. Speak with Kirk—he will tell me the news. I have these guests to see to. Thank you, Wat­son, thank you very much.”

  Lenox went through the next hour on re­flexes, his mind only on the note; he em­barked upon no new con­ver­sa­tions, only round­ing off old ones with good­byes.

  Two of the very last peo­ple at the party were Sir Ed­mund Lenox and young An­gela. They were just by the man­tel where Lenox had left them count­ing her­ring ear­lier. Car­bury was lin­ger­ing nearby, laugh­ing along with them when he un­der­stood what they were say­ing—three sheets to the wind.

  “Hullo, Charles!” said Ed­mund, who his brother knew from his vol­u­ble cheer­ful­ness had also drunk a bit too much wine. “I am due back in Par­lia­ment, damn the place. But some­times the call to con­ver­sa­tion of a rel­a­tive re­quires—no, com­mands”—he hic­cupped twice, be­hind his short brown beard—“the de­lay of other plans, how­ever cru­cial they may—”

  “You are tipsy, brother,” said Lenox, smil­ing.

  “I re­sem­ble that!” said Ed­mund, and his eyes nar­rowed as he laughed at his own wit, bang­ing the man­tel lightly with a fist.

  An­gela was look­ing at them both with cu­rios­ity, a lit­tle stu­pe­fied by drink her­self. Lady Jane had come from across the room.

  “Where has Sari gone?” An­gela asked her.

  “Sari went to bed an hour ago, dear,” she said. “And so should you do. Here is the maid to take you up­stairs—thank you, Ginny—Charles, get your brother a glass of cold wa­ter. Ed­mund, one of your young men is down in the bil­liards room. He will take your leg­less ine­bri­ate self to a car­riage—”

  “Oh, Jane! The un­fair­ness of that!” cried Ed­mund.

  Jane was giv­ing An­gela a squeeze as she guided her and the maid to­ward the door. “And, Charles, I would like to speak to you,” she said over her shoul­der.

  He rec­og­nized ur­gency in her voice, though it re­mained mild. He won­dered why. “Of course,” he said.

  “It re­ally is un­fair,” Ed­mund said, shak­ing his head and set­ting down his glass. Glad­stone would not lay eyes on him till late morn­ing—that much Charles knew for a fact, hav­ing been his brother all his life. “I had just been think­ing what a jolly party it was, too.”

  CHAP­TER TWENTY-THREE

  The hosts of the party met again, alone, in the front hall­way, Lenox com­ing back in­side from see­ing off his brother’s car­riage.

  “Hello, dar­ling,” she said, tak­ing off her gloves. “There is some­thing I must tell you be­fore some­one else does.”

  “Is ev­ery­thing all right?”

  She stared at him lev­elly. Her pink and laven­der dress showed her shoul­ders to ad­van­tage; she looked par­tic­u­larly be­com­ing, he thought.

  “Yes, though you won’t like it. I went out to protest last Sun­day from noon to two, along with three other women—Mary Evans, Rachel Mc­Carthy, and Lady Tifton. I in­tend to do the same again to­mor­row.”

  “To protest.”

  “We sat by West­min­ster Abbey and held up our signs for about ninety min­utes, from half twelve un­til two o’clock. Then we left.”

  He didn’t say any­thing; they held each other’s eyes.

  “I didn’t think I would be rec­og­nized,” she ad­mit­ted. “I dressed in­con­spic­u­ously and wore my low black hat.”

  “But?”

  Lady Jane’s gloves were off and she held the pair in her right hand, loose at her side. She looked away. “Now I know I was. Toto told me tonight that she heard it from Di­ana Cullen that I was there.”

  “Oh, Jane.” A penny dropped. “A young man men­tioned it to me at the gym­nas­tik­saal yes­ter­day, too—Jane!”

  A look of fury passed over her im­per­turbable face. “Aren’t you go­ing to ask what we were protest­ing, Charles?”

  “Jane—”

  “Be­cause you know full well, you know very, very well—”

  “But, Jane—”

  “Jane what!”

  They were both shocked by the harsh­ness of her voice, and stood there for a mo­ment. Two maids were com­ing in from the back hall, car­ry­ing pails of ashes from the fire­places, and their eyes went wide. They turned im­me­di­ately and left.

  Jane, trem­bling slightly, gave him a look of loathing, then stalked off.

  He called af­ter her, but she didn’t look back. He stood in the hall­way, stunned. Around him var­i­ous half-fa­mil­iar ser­vants from Ed­mund’s house and thor­oughly fa­mil­iar ones from his own moved the house back into its cus­tom­ary shape, un­der Kirk’s gaze. At length, he re­treated to his study.

  The idea of women vot­ing was not new. In­deed, it had been a sub­ject of din­ing-ta­ble dis­cus­sion for Lenox’s en­tire life­time. It had even come up for vote in Par­lia­ment in 1871, los­ing by sev­enty-odd votes—though many of the yeses, it was said, were sym­bolic, and would have turned to nos if de­feat had not been as­sured.

  What was new—what was rad­i­cal of Lady Jane, in a way that wor­ried Lenox down to his bones, a feel­ing the anony­mous let­ter seemed to vin­di­cate—was the idea of protest. Af­ter the Chartists and the Rev­o­lu­tions of 1848, pub­lic protest of all kinds was a sub­ject of ter­ror in Eng­land. Es­pe­cially within their class. It was still less than a cen­tury since the be­head­ings in France, af­ter all.

  In 1869 there had been a first protest by women in fa­vor of vot­ing rights—so shock­ing it made the news­pa­per head­lines for weeks. Since then there had been scat­tered protests here and there by the tiny group of pas­sion­ate, ar­dent—many of Lenox’s ac­quain­tances would say de­ranged—women who wrote the pam­phlets and pe­ti­tioned Par­lia­ment. They met with al­most uni­ver­sal dis­ap­proval.

  As she would read­ily ad­mit, Jane had been rad­i­cal­ized by hav­ing their daugh­ters. Just the week be­fore she had asked him, “Do you mean to tell me that in your view those boys from num­ber four­teen are smarter than our Clara, or Sophia?”

  This was a low blow. The three boys who lived four doors down at 14 Ham­p­den Lane, Otis, Win­ston, and Ger­ald, were mean-spir­ited mean-faced lit­tle heirs. Their breath­tak­in­gly dis­so­lute fa­ther was the holder of the Fal­mouth lord­ship, which was at­tached to a boggy par­cel of land in dis­tant Northum­ber­land that no Fal­mouth had vis­ited for any­thing other than le­gal rea­sons in cen­turies. The boys were all at Ton­bridge. They had vile rep­u­ta­tions up and down Ham­p­den Lane.

  By con­trast, of course, Lenox’s daugh­ters were to his eyes like two stars plucked down from the fir­ma­ment.

  “I do not dis­agree in the slight­est that women’s ed­u­ca­tion—”

  “But not the vote?” Lady Jane had said.

  “Yes, the vote, too!” For he had al­ways sup­ported the vote for women, mildly and now more surely. But to protest! So­cially it would have con­se­quences for her, a fact he felt some sor­row over, for he knew that de­spite her im­per­turbable air, she cared about her friend­ships.

  He took a note­book from his top drawer and fetched his cloak and heavy hat and mit­tens down from the stand. He looked at the fire and the liquor stand next to them with a lit­tle re­gret. His side twinged, and he felt some long­ing for that arm­chair. His ribs hurt. He thought per­haps he just ought to go to bed.

  Then he re­mem­bered Ed­mund, up ev­ery night till four plot­ting the fu­ture of the na­tion, and went into the hall­way.

  “Kirk, what is the weather?” he said.

  “Start­ing to sleet, sir. A con­sta­ble is sta­tioned out­side, sir, I was asked to in­form you.”

  “Yes, I know. Check all the doors and win­dows again, please.” Kirk was used to this in­junc­tion from his long ser­vice in the house of a de­tec­tive and in­clined his head in a nod. “Did you sur­vive the party? And the staff?”

  “It went very well, sir. They are eat­ing fam­ily sup­per now, sir.”

  “Good. I shall be out. In fact, if Jane asks I shall be out rather late.”

  Lenox went out into the cold street. He touched his hat to the con­sta­ble and paused out­side his car­riage to tell the coach­man his des­ti­na­tion was the Coach and Horses. There was a hot stone at the foot of the back­seat, and Lenox warmed his legs against it.

  It al­ready seemed like days and days since he had said good­bye to Aunt Matilda at just this spot. The cold made the lights flicker harder; and as they started along, the noise of the rough cob­ble­stones, bear­ing him once more into the path of ad­ven­ture, was like a half-at­tended con­ver­sa­tion with a very old friend. He didn’t know what to think about what Jane had told him. He didn’t like that it had been a se­cret. He was hurt. But there was work ahead, and he stead­ied him­self to do­ing it.

  CHAP­TER TWENTY-FOUR

  EARL’S DAUGH­TER GRAND­STANDS FOR LADY VOTE!

  That was the head­line in one pa­per the next morn­ing. They looked it over at break­fast, at which An­gela did not ap­pear at all, and Sari only briefly, shad­ing her eyes, to fetch two plates of food. Lenox told them the maid might have done it, but Sari wanted to choose for An­gela, who she said had what Jasper had used to call “a morn­ing nog­gin”—and said it so in­gen­u­ously, in her British-In­dian ac­cent, that Charles could not help but laugh.

  Now it was Jane and Lenox alone again, she at her cor­re­spon­dence, he read­ing the damned ar­ti­cle.

  “Were you re­ally in ra­tio­nal dress?” Lenox asked.

  Lady Jane did not look up from the note she was writ­ing. “Don’t be ab­surd.”

  Charles read aloud from the ar­ti­cle that Lady Jane, as if she were the de­tec­tive her­self, had ar­ranged to be brought to her at its first print­ing at five that morn­ing.

  “Lady Jane Lenox, wife of for­mer Lib­eral MP for Stir­ring­ton Charles Lenox—well, they act as if Dis­raeli him­self weren’t in fa­vor of the vote—ap­peared yes­ter­day in Trafal­gar Square in a protest de­signed to men­ace pub­lic traf­fic and threaten the safe con­duct of peo­ple through this busy thor­ough­fare—”

  “Rank ed­i­to­ri­al­iz­ing,” said Lady Jane, still with­out look­ing up.

  She was writ­ing thank-you notes. They would be in the hands of the par­ty­go­ers that af­ter­noon. By her side were two tri­an­gles of toast with mar­malade, from which she oc­ca­sion­ally took a small bite, and a strong cup of tea.

  They had not dis­cussed the protest, but her pres­ence here, when she would nor­mally have writ­ten these let­ters in her morn­ing room, seemed like an of­fer of truce.

  Lenox had only ar­rived home at day­break. No one had ap­peared at Con­duit Street. But he had got­ten to know Mon­tague bet­ter, and they had dis­cussed the case so thor­oughly that Lenox now had the en­cour­ag­ing feel­ing that two minds were mas­ter of its de­tails.

  “Along with three other women, in­clud­ing Mary, daugh­ter of Sir Lu­cas Evans. Ap­pear­ing in ra­tio­nal dress, the high­born women, lend­ing their cred­i­bil­ity to the vile rab­ble-rous­ing of the spin­ster aunts of Clapham—”

  At last Lady Jane looked up, in­dig­nant. “That is an un­for­giv­ably rude way to re­fer to those women.”

  “I agree.”

  “I was wear­ing a coat, any­how” she went on. Her ex­pres­sion showed frus­tra­tion, not anger. “I sup­pose it must have been taken for some­thing else, though they would have had to be nearly blind—”

  “I’m sorry,” Lenox said gravely, and stead­ied his tired eyes on her. “I’m sorry that—well, that we ar­gued, I sup­pose.”

 

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