Graham still hadn’t come home, and so in the front hallway it was Mary who exclaimed over his wound and took his overcoat. A cheerful constable named Addington was there as well and promised to stay the night. Lenox thanked him, asked Mary to find him some food, and then turned up the hallway toward the prospect of a nice smoke and some time alone in his library. It would be paradise, he thought.
But a different kind of paradise awaited him there. When Mary opened the doors Lenox saw that Lady Jane was sitting on the sofa, not even pretending to read.
“Oh, Charles!” she said, rising and rushing to his side. “Come sit next to me. Are you comfortable? Is it true what Addington says, you’ve been shot? Charles, how could you?”
Here she burst into unrestrained tears, which fell down her pale cheeks in little rivers. She clasped his hand tightly in hers. All the awkwardness of their last meeting was forgotten, and their old ease returned.
Laughing a little, Lenox said, “I’m awfully sorry. But it’s not even bleeding any longer, look!”
She laughed, too, in a hiccupping way, her spent nerves spilling over, and dried her eyes with Lenox’s handkerchief. In her plain pink dress and blue shawl, her hair falling in curls behind her ears, her large eyes bright and wet, she had never looked more beautiful to her friend. He wasn’t sure what he saw precisely—simply some light that began in her and radiated out, which made her golden and lovely. Which made her Jane.
“What was it that happened, Charles?” she said.
“I was foolish enough to hide behind some curtains, and a bullet grazed me just here, between my left arm and my side. McConnell says it won’t hurt for more than two or three days, though. More important, did you hear about little Bella?”
She laughed again, and finally her eyes were dry. Still, though, she hadn’t let go of his hand. “I like it, don’t you?”
“I think it’s a perfect name,” he agreed.
“Toto’s so happy, too.”
“And McConnell couldn’t wait to find his way home this evening.”
Then, suddenly, the conversation stopped. They were still looking into each other’s eyes, but for the first time in their long friendship neither of them could say anything. At last Lenox said, “Michael Pierce, the man I met at your house, he was—”
“He asked me to marry him, Charles.”
Lenox managed to say, “He seemed like a decent fellow when we met, though it wasn’t for long. I would—”
“I said no, of course.”
Their hands were still together, their eyes still met.
“Where have you been, Jane? What have you been doing, these past weeks? I feel as if my best friend were a ghost. What were you doing in the Seven Dials?” Preemptively, he added, “I saw you there accidentally, I promise.”
“Of course I believe you, Charles. Of course.” Hesitantly, gingerly, she went on. “As I told you, Michael is my brother’s friend.”
“Yes,” he said, his heart racing.
“It’s simple enough. He was at Eton with my brother, and they became friends on the rugby pitch—but Michael was always wild, never a very good student. After his classmates went to university, he came to London and became a dilettante, a wastrel. He drank in low and high company alike. He even”—she shuddered—“he behaved badly. Until one night outside a public house in the Seven Dials, when a man named Peter Puddle tried to rob him at knifepoint. Michael was carrying a loaded blackjack and dealt him a blow to the head and—and killed him, Charles.”
There was utter silence in the room.
“Michael’s uncle, Lord Holdernesse, and my brother were the only two men who knew the secret. Lord Holdernesse arranged his transit to the colonies, and paid Peter Puddle’s wife and children a weekly remittance and bought them a small house in the Dials. When he died, my brother began to pay the remittance and took me into his confidence; and for years now, three years I suppose, I’ve visited them one morning each week.
“At first they were sullenly respectful toward me—then friendlier—and finally a real friendship has sprung up between us. But then Michael returned, last month.”
It was all so clear now, Lenox thought.
“He was rich, and wanted to make amends; and since he returned I’ve been visiting them not in my spare morning hours but nearly every day, trying to broker some kind of peace—to give Michael, whom my brother loves, some sort of redemption.”
“You needn’t say another word,” Lenox answered, “and if I’ve been rude enough and unkind enough to question you, or make you feel accountable to me—I’m so sorry.”
She sighed, tears standing in her eyes. “Then he came along with this absurd proposal of marriage, apparently persuaded of some affection between us that never existed. And of course I said no.”
“Of course.”
“But oh, Charles, no—don’t you see—if he had been perfect, if he had been—”
Lenox, with a strange mixture of courage and happiness roiling in his heart, interrupted her, to say, “You know, for years I’ve been expecting somebody to come along and marry you. I knew it would be a duke or the Prime Minister or a bishop or somebody. I always look out my window and expect him to be strolling along to your house.” He laughed. “And I would have accepted it with good grace, I hope. I knew you deserved the world. But for every moment that I’ve known you, Jane, for the entire time I’ve looked out through the window, I’ve loved you, too. Ardently, and without any anticipation of return. But while I have the courage to say it I must: You are the wisest person I know, and the most beautiful woman I know. And I love you from the bottom of my heart, and—and I want you to be my wife.”
Different tears wet her eyes now, and a luminous smile was on her face.
“Will you?” he asked.
“Oh, of course, Charles,” she said. “Of course I will.”
She put her small hand on his shoulder and lifted her face to him, and they kissed.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The next few days were the happiest of Lenox’s life.
He and Jane took long walks along the river, the sun arching high above, watery, warm, bright, leaves scattering at their feet, as they spoke: spoke again with the same ease and intimacy they always had, but in a way so sweetened by love, so strengthened by the acknowledgment of love, that it seemed the smallest word carried the entire freight of their emotions. They told a few friends, and together had several small dinner parties to announce their engagement. (The happiness of a dinner party! He could scarcely believe how becoming part of a couple changed the pleasures of that ritual.) Toto and McConnell, Dallington and the Duchess of Marchmain, Cabot and Hilary, these old friends were constantly in and out of their houses, half as if they were already married. Lenox had a long conversation with Graham, a roundabout, reassuring conversation that ended with the two men pulling out a map and planning in great detail their tour of Morocco.
So the days passed, the weeks passed, each moment within them a small perfect crystal of happiness, undaunted by what might come next—the happiness of those living entirely in the present.
A month later, it was truly autumn. Along their little slip of London, leaves were falling at any breeze and the glow of fireplaces shone in every window, while above the high houses birds fell and rose on the cooler drifts of air. There was that note of melancholy in the air that comes briefly when at last summer is really over—when there will be no more exotically warm days interspersed among the colder ones—when finally people pull their collars up against the wind and children submit to heavy sweaters. A pink-cheeked, nightfall time of year, when the light was always diminishing.
The “Oxford and India Scandal,” as one paper had taken to calling the Payson case, had for some weeks been the talk of London. At dinner parties people had discussed the strange reappearance of the fearful James Payson and decried his decision to retreat to Scotland with his son; rumors that he was much changed, mellow even, were instantly dismissed. People’s hearts lifted w
hen they spoke of Lady Annabelle and fell when the conversation turned to young Bill Dabney, whom the press had cast as the heroic figure in the story, the loyal and unquestioning young Englishman who had laid down his life for friendship. In England there is always a nostalgia for Oxford and Cambridge, almost especially among people who never went there, and so it was Dabney who captured people’s hearts. At the funeral, which Lenox and Lady Jane attended, it had been hard to witness his parents’ deep and silent midcountry sorrow.
There was one certain memorial for him. The multitude of gems, gold pieces, semiprecious stones, and silver dishes that had lain in the dusty walls of the September Society, and above all the great sapphire that had lain with them, had reverted to the East India Company. Under the strength of popular demand, they had sold the sapphire in an instantly famous auction (to participate required a letter from one’s bankers attesting to savings of at least a hundred thousand pounds sterling) to an obscure German count, and donated the proceeds of the sale to Lincoln College, where among other things a seat in classics would be founded in Bill Dabney’s name. His father had written the bequest: “To be given to lads of great spirit and loyalty, who possess both the gift of friendship and the dignity of greatness.”
Meanwhile the villains of the September Society had long turned against each other, and eventually the greatest offenders were brought to trial. Maran had resigned instantly from Parliament, and the full implications of his corruption were only slowly coming to light. His malfeasance had been at once of a unique and utterly mundane kind: One moment he would be diverting sums to obscure military manufacturers that turned out to be hastily assembled fronts of fellow September Society members, who kicked back to Maran; the next he would be doing something as simple as finding a sinecure in government for the underqualified nephew or cousin of a fellow veteran. These various stratagems to defraud Her Majesty had only begun to be parsed, and it was clear that at least an indirect accomplishment of Lenox’s and Goodson’s had been to save the country a great deal of money and scandal. In fact, the discovery had put back into broad public favor Lord Russell’s reform bill, which called for among other things greater transparency in government spending—and which Lenox had only recently been discussing in that lunch in Parliament with Russell himself.
Lenox had received a note of congratulations from the Prince of Wales and gone to see His Highness, but turned down the majority of other invitations in favor of nights in with Jane, Toto, and Thomas, the occasional drink with James Hilary or Lord Cabot, and his books—and one celebratory cup of champagne with a newly engaged couple: George Payson and Rosie Little. She had flown to London against her father’s wishes when she learned that he was alive and, with more courage than Lenox had suspected of her, laid the truth before Payson. In turn he had confessed that when he had flirted with her at the dances, his intentions had been more serious than she realized. Despite the ire of their parents (Lady Annabelle’s moderated by her overwhelming happiness), they were as happy as any people in the world, and determined to be happy their whole lives long. Rosie, for one, viewed Lenox as her closest friend, and it appeared that soon enough he would be godfather to two new children.
And so the case passed from one stage of notoriety to a lower one; and so it passed out of the common conversations of the day, and things were returned to normal.
There had been one black moment: a letter of congratulations from George Barnard, the powerful, rich government official, onetime courter of Lady Jane, and, Lenox knew for certain, criminal mastermind. There was still work to do there—but he was too happy, for those few days, to contemplate it just yet.
On an afternoon just after the height of the scandal’s celebrity, Lenox and Lady Jane were in his library, having lunch. She was telling a story animatedly and laughing when there was a knock at the door outside. Graham, restored to his front hallway at last, answered it. A moment later he appeared with three visitors in tow.
“Sir Edmund Lenox, Mr. Hilary, Mr. Brick,” he said, leading them in.
“Thanks,” said Lenox and rose to shake their hands. “How do you do, Mr. Brick? I don’t believe we’ve met since we had lunch in Parliament. James, Edmund, how are you? All three of you know Jane, of course.”
“Hello, Charles,” said Edmund. “Hello, Jane.”
“And congratulations, to both of you,” added Brick.
“I’ll add mine once more, too, just for good measure,” said Hilary pleasantly—a Bingley personified, Toto always said. “The springtime, I hear?”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Lady Jane. “We’re awfully happy.”
Looking at them, it was plain this was true. The pink in her pale cheeks was a sign of her high spirits. As for Lenox, he seemed to stand a little higher. He had already abandoned most of his bachelor ways with an ease that had surprised him.
“Sorry to barge in, Charles,” Edmund said when they were all sitting. “I know you and I were meant to have supper tonight, but as it turns out I’ll be in the House. Brick, Hilary, will you speak? I told you a thousand times I didn’t want to come.”
“Didn’t want to come?” said Lenox. “Why on earth not?”
It was Brick who spoke. “He feared the whispers of nepotism. But we’re here on the strength of my word—mine, Hilary’s, half a dozen other men.”
“Look here—what’s this about?”
Hilary spoke up, beaming. “We’d like you to run for Parliament, Charles.”
“Parliament?”
“There’s a by-election soon outside Durham—”
“In Stirrington?” said Lenox.
Brick spoke to Edmund. “There you are,” he said. “I thought as much after that lunch—your brother knows politics.”
“At Stirrington,” Hilary went on. “It wouldn’t cost you above eight hundred pounds—a good deal of money, of course, but that’s your lookout—and though you’d only be in for eight months or so, when the regular elections came back around you would be excellently situated.”
“The Member there is Stoke,” said Brick, “and he’s never done a single useful thing in his life, but his first will be to throw his weight behind you pretty heartily. The Stoke name still means something there, so that will be a help to you.”
“Parliament?” said Lenox, slightly in shock.
“Yes,” said Edmund grumpily. “Don’t sit there gaping at us, won’t you?”
Lady Jane held Lenox’s hand, looking at him. “You ought to, Charles. You’ve always wanted to.”
“Why me?” Lenox asked.
Brick spoke. “You gained my attention when we dined together, as I only just said. Hilary speaks very highly of your acumen—says he often comes to you for advice when the cacophony of voices becomes too jarring.”
“Not often,” said Lenox. “Certainly not often.”
“Lord Cabot specifically mentioned you to me. Lord Russell put in a good word. And the press about this Payson matter hasn’t hurt.”
Lenox sat looking at three of the most powerful five men in the party he had always pledged allegiance to, three men offering him what had always been his dream, to do the work his father had done, his grandfather had done, that Pitt and Burke and Palmerston and Peel had done—he looked at them and said, “No.”
“No!” said Edmund, now truly roused.
“I have to speak to Jane about it,” said Lenox.
“I’m right here, telling you that you ought to say yes!” said Lady Jane, her hand on his forearm.
He looked at her doubtfully. “Do you mean it?”
“Do I mean it? Of course I do! It’s where you belong, Charles.”
This was why he loved her: because a thousand times he had said, “This is where I belong, Parliament,” to himself, but never to another soul.
He looked at the three men. “Then I accept, of course. It shall be my honor.”
“Capital!” said Brick.
The three men crowded around him and shook hands.
“You and I c
an talk about strategy,” said Hilary, who had a prominent voice within the Liberal Party on matters electoral. “You’ll have to visit Stirrington soon. Have you ever been?”
“No.”
“No matter. There’s an excellent election agent there, Talmadge. We’ll wire him with your name and background straight away.”
“It will play well that you’ve worked on so many highprofile cases,” said Brick.
“How about a meeting this afternoon, Charles?” said Hilary, looking in his pocket diary. “Say, four o’clock?”
“Of course. Where?”
“Oh, in the Members’ bar. You’ll have to get used to it, won’t you?” Hilary said this slyly and then stood, checking his watch and suddenly looking preoccupied. “We’ll speak then—and have a celebratory glass of champagne!”
Hilary and Brick shook Lenox’s hand and congratulated him, then tipped their hats to Lady Jane and walked out. Edmund said he would stay behind for a moment.
“Well, Charles, and are you pleased?” he said when they were gone.
“Dazzled, more like. I have to thank you.”
“On the contrary, it was Brick’s idea, and then Hilary’s, though of course when they mentioned it I enthusiastically recommended you.”
“I still owe you my thanks, then.”
Jane said, “Your father would have been so proud!”
“He was awfully proud of you, Edmund, when you took your seat.”
“Yes, but I think Jane is right—he would have loved to see the day when we sat side by side on the benches of Parliament.”
“Don’t be too hasty, either of you,” said Lenox, though with a smile on his face.
“Well, well,” said Edmund, standing. “After you see Hilary, stop in with me, won’t you?”
“Yes, of course,” said Lenox.
“Then I’ll go.”
Edmund said good-bye and walked out into the chill evening, putting his hat on as he went. In the street he thought of something else he wanted to tell his brother, and turned back toward the house—but through the window of the library he saw Lenox and Lady Jane speaking excitedly, and then saw them embrace. So he reminded himself to mention it later and stepped into his carriage, a comprehending smile on his face, off again to work, as above him rivers of autumn pink and purple ran across the heavens.
The September Society Page 26
