Why wasn’t he tempted, then?
Was it her lack of virtue? A woman who would pick and choose her lovers as deliberately as a chess player, with the tacit approval of her husband, somehow left him cold. Yet, what kind of a hypocrite was he to judge her? Hadn’t he treated people the same way—weighing, analyzing, judging how best they could serve him in his present and future plans?
He must be mad, indeed, not to accept what she offered him. He continued to examine his behavior as he lay in bed, preferring to think about anything but what lurked in the shadows of his mind.
Perhaps it was also his grief, as Eugenia tactfully implied, that kept him from satisfying himself with her. Wouldn’t it be the most natural thing to assuage his grief in the arms of a woman?
None of these reasons satisfied him completely.
What kept him from experiencing the bliss—however fleeting—of an illicit relationship?
Was it the memory of someone else? Was it the picture of a fresh-faced woman who knew nothing of the art of cosmetics, but whose inner beauty gave her a radiance no rouge or powder could ever duplicate?
Was it the memory of that loving, gentle hand stroking his head as she had Rebecca’s so many times in the past? The memory of those soothing words she’d whispered, and which he scarcely let himself believe even now, and of that soft kiss—had he imagined it?—that she’d planted on his head?
Simon reentered the castle after his walk. The baron’s Scottish retreat had proved to be a mammoth stone fortress. No one was about as Simon walked down the flagstone entry beneath a variety of trophy heads jutting out from the oak-paneled walls, staring ahead with their glass eyes like mute sentinels.
He wandered toward the library, thinking of time in terms of so many hours to kill. He had just poured himself a shot of scotch whiskey from a decanter left out for the guests, when Eugenia entered the room.
“There you are. How was your walk?”
“Fine,” he said, regarding her over the rim of his glass, beginning to be annoyed with her ability to appear silently at his side the moment he entered a room. In his present state, it made him think of a wraith.
She certainly didn’t look like a wraith. As usual she was exquisite. Simon wondered whether she ever looked rumpled. Her attire today consisted of a lovely royal-blue gown trimmed with a blue and green tartan. The color only accentuated the pale satin of her skin and deepened the green of her eyes.
“You look beautiful,” he commented, thinking such beauty shouldn’t be wasted. It seemed a pity she had so few guests here. In London, at least, she graced a salon where dozens of men flocked to pay her court.
“Thank you.” She gave him a soft smile, then reached for his glass. She took a sip, her gaze holding his. She handed the glass back to him, her fingers making contact with his.
“I worry about you.” As she spoke, she touched the curls over his forehead. “All this walking, and yet you are looking paler than ever. Are you sleeping?”
“Not well.”
She tsk-tsked, moving her head slightly from side to side. “I could help you, you know.”
“Could you?”
She removed her hand from his face. “You know I could. You’ve been awfully coy with me.”
“Have I?” He wasn’t sure if he wanted this conversation to lead where he suspected it would, but felt powerless to stop it.
“Yes, Simon,” she replied patiently. “It’s time you stopped playing the innocent. You are a big boy, and if you ever hope to succeed in the world, you have to begin playing by its rules.” She turned away as she spoke and walked to a vase of flowers a few steps away.
Her words reminded Simon of his father, and he had to make a conscious effort to dispel the distasteful image of a cunning manipulator who played by the rules that he himself created. Was Eugenia cut from the same cloth? Surely not the beautiful vision of female frailty who now took out a yellow chrysanthemum and twirled it around, watching it. “Rule number one—don’t keep a lady dangling indefinitely.”
Simon looked down at his drink. “You are absolutely right. I have been an awful bore, haven’t I.” He drained the glass in one swallow, realizing he might as well be hanged for a sinner as for a saint.
“You can be quite tedious at times with your mal humeur and injured looks,” she went on, her back still to him.
“Undoubtedly,” he agreed as he set his glass down on the silver salver beside the vase, its thump signaling his resolution to play the game to its conclusion.
“It’s understandable, but really Simon, we have all been through what you have been through.” Now that he’d finally decided to be amenable, she seemed to want to punish him. “You lost a daughter. Who hasn’t lost someone?”
“I understand that,” he said evenly, hurt despite himself by her callousness.
She turned to him, putting the flower up to his cheek and twirling it against his skin. “I am not a woman used to being ignored.”
He eyed her lazily. “I have just been telling myself that your beauty is being wasted here.”
She smiled at the comment, mollified to a degree. “It needn’t be, if the right man were to notice it.”
“Am I the right man?” He covered the hand that held the flower to his face.
She moved her hand away from his and brought the flower up to her exquisitely formed nostrils, as if to remind him she was the one establishing the rules. “Are you? That is the question, is it not?”
He was in no mood to be toyed with. Why couldn’t they just get on with it? “I realize the honor you are bestowing on me.”
“I feel I have been extremely patient. You have been here over a month, and yet you’ve ignored me the entire time.” Her well-modulated voice took on a petulant tone.
“I must apologize once again,” he said. “If I’ve been removed, it has only been because of my grief. You invited me here to get away from people. I’m deeply grateful for that. It is not your fault if I can’t seem to shake my gloom.”
“I invited you here so we could be alone.” Her voice lost its huskiness and became hard.
“With your husband?” he asked.
“Griffith and I understand each other. Besides, he is no longer here.”
“So I see.” Simon picked up a snuffbox from the table. “His presence does seem to pervade the place, don’t you find?”
“Oh, Simon, your scruples are a tad middle-class, are they not?”
He smiled at her, though he didn’t find the situation amusing in the least. “That is, after all, my background.”
She yawned. “I try to overlook it, but you do make it rather apparent at times.”
“Forgive me.” He bowed ironically.
“Oh, come on, Simon, let us get past this charade. I didn’t invite you up here to have you traipsing through the moor all day and sit with those old cronies all night. I invited you here because I find you attractive. I expected we could have a mutually satisfying seduction. How much more clearly must I spell it out for you? It is not every man I favor, Simon.” She tapped him with the chrysanthemum, her voice resuming its coy tone. “Do you know what my favor implies?”
Simon liked the turn of the conversation even less. “I believe I do.”
“I can make or break a gentleman’s public career, do you understand that?” She no longer looked like a woman to him. She reminded him more strongly of his father and his ilk, laying their plans, dealing with people’s lives with no consideration to right and wrong, concerned merely with the profit line.
“You think much of yourself,” he said lightly. “Are you indeed so powerful?”
Her laugh was deep and rich. “Do you want to try me?” She tossed the flower aside and ran her fingernail up his chest. “Liverpool is considering you for junior lord, is he not?”
He kept his expression neutral, not wanting her to see how much her knowledge surprised him. “And if he is?”
“Do you want it sealed and delivered by the time you return to Londo
n?”
“I shall have it, one way or another,” he replied evenly.
She smiled. “I wouldn’t be so sure. It has been some months, hasn’t it?”
He looked at her, distaste beginning to cool any ardor he could have worked up. “I have made it to where I am without a lady’s favor.”
Her voice softened as she took a step closer and regarded him. She was so close that Simon could detect the powdery surface of her skin.
“You have done well with your family’s wealth. But there is always that taint of—How shall I put it?” She pursed her beautiful lips. “The Levant?”
At her words, Simon flinched as if she’d slapped him. Very deliberately he removed her hand from his chest and took a step back. “Forgive me,” he said quietly, suddenly realizing the awful mistake he’d made in coming here.
He went up to his room and told Ivan to begin packing. Then he went down to the stables and informed his groom and coachman that they would be leaving the following morning at first light.
When Lady Stanton-Lewis came down at noon the next day, she asked a servant for Simon’s whereabouts. She was informed he had left a little after dawn. “I see,” she said calmly, her voice revealing nothing of the sudden, violent rage she felt within her.
A few days later she was back in London. The next evening she knocked on her husband’s door as he was preparing to go out for the evening.
“How was Scotland after I left?” he asked dutifully as his valet put the finishing touches to his cravat.
“Loathsome.” She watched as the valet helped him into his coat and then stood back to inspect the result. She waited, knowing her husband would dismiss the man shortly. Griffith knew she never came to see him unless she had something specific she wanted to discuss.
Sure enough, a few moments later they were alone. Her husband gave himself a final inspection in his mirror as he asked her, “Yes, my dear, you wanted to see me about something?”
“Yes. I’ve been thinking I really need to disassociate myself from that tiresome little Jew. He has become a bit of a nuisance. Any suggestions?”
Her husband smiled at her from the mirror. “I have just the thing. I’ve been watching him for a while now.”
Chapter Eighteen
Simon returned to London and sat down to his writing. This time he found himself making some progress. Although Parliament was not in session, he went around and visited those members who were not away hunting. He knew his only salvation now was his work, and he needed to connect himself once again with the people in power. He’d lost too much time.
A fortnight after he’d arrived and was well into a schedule of work, he had a visit from Althea’s brother.
The two shook hands, and Tertius looked at him earnestly. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to speak to you as I wished at the funeral and offer our condolences,” he began.
“No, no, that’s quite all right. It was I who was in no shape to hear anything anyone said to me. How is your wife, the baby?”
“Fine, everyone is fine.” He paused awkwardly, as if ashamed of their good health in light of Simon’s situation. He cleared his throat, looking away. “This is only the second time they’re in town, actually. Gillian has been eager to do some shopping and visit with friends and acquaintances while she’s here. We’d like to have you over for dinner some night.”
“Certainly,” Simon replied, though he knew he would find some excuse to refuse the invitation when it arrived.
“Listen, Simon,” said Tertius when they were both seated. “The reason I have come by today, is….” He hesitated.
Simon wondered what was wrong. It wasn’t like his friend to draw back from telling him something. Was it…could it be about Althea?
“Have you seen this?” Silently he handed Simon a folded-up copy of The Royalist, a Sunday paper known for its gossip.
“No.” He hadn’t read the society news since he left London. It no longer interested him.
“Look at the page it’s opened to.”
Simon dutifully unfolded the paper and scanned the headlines. “Young M.P. Serving King and Country under False Pretenses?” immediately caught his eyes. He read the small column, which described a young member of the Tory party, who, although baptized and swearing allegiance to the Church of England, was in fact a dyed-in-the-wool Jew, still participating in their ancient rites. The article ended with the question, Was he a member of the Tory party or of the party of the circumcision?
“Have you made any enemies recently?” was Tertius’s only question.
In the following days, the two-penny papers took up the story, adding lurid details. They insinuated at Simon’s involvement with a certain society lady without naming her name, called his father a moneylender, and referred to him as the “Ephraimite.” Grotesque caricatures pictured rituals he and his family practiced in secret.
Finally, Simon had had enough. He went to Eugenia’s residence one evening, in the hopes of getting to the bottom of the scandal. He could scarcely believe she would lower herself to such a thing for spite, but perhaps her husband had suddenly suffered a fit of jealousy.
Instead of immediate entry into her salon, he was made to cool his heels in a small antechamber. After a while he believed he wouldn’t see anyone but a servant, but finally Eugenia showed herself.
She greeted him indifferently.
“Good evening, Eugenia,” he said. He came straight to the point, throwing a newspaper on a chair. “Are you or the baron, or perhaps someone who attends your salon, behind these stories?”
She shrugged. “I know nothing of them.”
“Do you have someone else do your dirty work for you?”
“I told you in Scotland you were becoming a bore. Don’t become a nuisance as well.”
“For my part, I didn’t think you would prove so petty.”
“Tell me, Simon, can you refute these stories?” She eyed him sardonically. “Because if you can, the scandal will die down on its own.” She shrugged. “And if you can’t, well, I pity you.”
He clenched his fists, wishing for a second he could throttle that long, pale throat. He didn’t doubt she had made good her threats in Scotland. His rage left him as quickly as it had come. Did he really deserve anything better than this?
“Why, Eugenia?” he asked wearily.
She took a step closer to him and looked him straight in the eye. Gone was any tenderness he had seen on earlier occasions. “You know, Simon, I can’t believe I once found you amusing.” She gave an abrupt laugh. “Did you really think I would condescend to sleep with a conniving Jew?” She turned and left him then, the sparkling train of her evening dress swishing behind her as she exited the room.
For the first time in his life, he felt truly dirty.
Simon tried to ignore the attacks, but the stories became more and more lurid, insinuating the most awful customs practiced by his family members. His father tried to investigate the source, and suspected a connection to the man who had put Simon up for Parliament from his borough, but he couldn’t prove anything.
Finally, the chief whip called Simon in. The gist of the talk was that the prime minister himself felt the only honorable course left to Simon was to resign.
Simon left, feeling dazed and disoriented, like a boxer who has received one too many punches to the head. He began walking along the Thames, not seeing anything or anyone. He finally stopped when he reached London Bridge, exhausted. He stood there for a long time, looking out over the forest of masts down-river—a jumble of moored ships and small craft moving hither and thither. Everyone with a purpose, something to accomplish—everyone but him.
Finally he hailed a hack to take him back home.
A few days later he tendered his resignation.
Simon fought the yearning he’d had in him since he’d returned to London, but finally he could fight it no more. One afternoon he called for his carriage. He had hardly shown his face outside his house since his resignation, so the coac
hman’s alacrity in obeying him was almost comical. Simon instructed him to go across town. The address caused his coachman to cough and hesitate, but Simon told him it was all right.
Simon had never been to that section of London, although he knew one of the oldest synagogues in the city was located near it. His ancestors who had immigrated to England had probably helped found it and worshiped there.
Simon disembarked from the coach in Whitechapel. The first thing that assailed him was the smell. Garbage and filth was piled in the gutters to the sides of the muddy road. He brought a handkerchief up to his nostrils as he looked around. The dilapidated state of the structures shocked him despite what he had prepared himself for. He needn’t have worried about finding the mission. The neatly kept building stood out among the boarded-up and crumbling structures around him, like a cultivated flower among weeds.
Two painted window boxes were filled with evergreen boughs and sprays of holly berries. The door was neatly painted, too, the stone steps washed clean of the smelly garbage that littered the rest of the area. Simon picked his way through it, aware of the eyes of the loiterers upon him.
He was getting ready to lift the knocker, when the door opened and two lads rushed out. He looked down the hallway and, seeing several people standing or sitting about, he entered. The place smelled of soap and cabbage.
He hesitated a moment in the long corridor. From the comings and goings, he deducted the right-hand side held an infirmary. He walked down a ways, and heard the sound of children in the rooms on the left-hand side. He finally retraced his steps and knocked at the first door on the left, labeled Office.
“Come in.” He recognized Althea’s voice with relief.
He opened the door and immediately regretted having come. Four pairs of eyes turned in his direction. He recognized the young surgeon immediately. He was leaning over the desk where Althea sat. Another young man, dressed in a clergyman’s cassock, sat in a hard-backed chair before the desk. Another, older, woman sat in another chair. They all stared at Simon, as he stood with his hat in his hand in the doorway.
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