That Churchill Woman

by Stephanie Barron

  “The caning?” he asked nonchalantly. “Sneyd-Kinnersley, Mummie. The headmaster. He uses a willow switch, not rattan. He assures me rattan is far more painful, and the customary tool of punishment in the British colonies. Sneyd-Kinnersley says I am to be grateful.”

  “Grateful.” Jennie’s hand hovered over the web of cuts and weals. “The man’s a sadist!”

  “What does that mean?” Winston demanded.

  “He enjoys hurting people.”

  “I should jolly well think he does! He wallops all of us. Only I am beaten every day, I’m afraid, because I’m particularly incorrigible. Or so the headmaster says. A boy who must be broken to bridle, as he puts it. Incorrigible means incapable of correction. I never seem to do things correctly.”

  Winston’s voice, which had been determinedly casual, wobbled on that last word. He had been trying to fend off tears, Jennie realized suddenly—for him, the blatant exposure of his back to her gaze was more shameful than the beatings. With an inner howl of anguish, she reached for his small hands and kissed the palms, one at a time.

  “You’re right, darling. Not even a chance visit from Mummie is worth all the cost of St. George’s. Should you like to try a different school next term?”

  “Could I please just come home, Mummie? With Jack and Woom here in the nursery?”

  “Not at your age,” Jennie told him gently. “In another year you’ll be a man of ten, you know.”

  His eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Indeed. Ten is a very great age; it’s double digits. But please, Mummie—if it’s not too great a trouble—if you have a moment to find another school where the headmaster is not a sadist—I should be jolly grateful.”

  “Win.” Jennie kissed his forehead and folded him tight in her arms. “You have my word.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “What an innocent,” Jennie whispered tartly to Charles. The blond girl she had noticed at Ascot, insipid in pale pink gauze, was making her curtsey to the Prince of Wales. Her long lashes trembled on her cheeks, and she seemed as though she might swoon at Bertie’s feet. “First the Royal Enclosure, and now your party at the New Café! Who is she?”

  “The heiress to a prodigious Midlands factory fortune,” he replied. “Let’s meet her, shall we?”

  Charles led Jennie over to the Prince, who was standing with two of his other guests—the Duke of Braganza, and Empress Sisi’s son, Prince Rudolf of Austria. Jennie dropped her deepest curtsey to the royals.

  “Ah, Lady Randolph and our excellent host,” Bertie rumbled. “Miss Fairfield, you will wish to thank Count Kinsky for the pleasure he gives us this evening! Such a handsome way to squander one’s winnings on the turf!”

  “Everything is so l-lovely,” the girl stammered. Her doe eyes met Charles’s artlessly. “The lights! The refreshments! And such distinguished guests! It is all like a faerie dream!”

  Charles kissed Miss Fairfield’s fluttering hand. “May I introduce Lady Randolph Churchill?”

  The girl’s mouth formed a wondering O, and her slender fingers pressed her heart. “Lady Randolph! But this is better than a princess!”

  “Do not allow your sovereign to hear you say so,” Jennie advised with her warmest smile.

  “But you are in all the Society papers! And how gorgeous you appear! I declare it is truly a faerie dream!”

  Jennie wore sapphire-blue silk that night in tribute to Charles and his first memory of her in Ireland. The gown was hardly new, but that didn’t matter. She knew she glowed like a rare gem in it, her black hair massed in ringlets at the back of her head and trailing becomingly over her bare shoulders. Her Cartier star flashed on her brow. She was simmeringly, supremely happy—and the closeness of Charles, the warm musk of his skin, sang through her veins.

  More like a panther than a woman.

  “Allow me to offer you some lemonade, Miss Fairfield.” Bertie offered the girl his arm. Awed, she gazed meltingly up into his face. He patted her hand and led her away.

  So the wolf makes off with a lamb, Jennie thought wryly. How did the chit stumble into the heart of the Marlborough House Set? And then, with a sense of foreboding…Is it possible that Charles…?

  A sigh grazed the nape of her neck; the violins were tuning.

  “Dance with me,” he urged.

  * * *

  —

  Tziganes music, Charles called it. Stolen from those who wandered homeless in Transylvania, and dressed up nattily for London’s West End. Jennie was to love the sound of it for the rest of her life, but she heard it for the first time that evening in June, as she whirled in his arms through the red-damask-lined rooms.

  Charles had brought in a group of musicians from his own country, the Hungarian Violins: five academically trained men who caught the Gypsy strains from the eastern edge of the empire. Their music throbbed with a strange sorrow that worked its way into Jennie’s blood, like the bubbles of the champagne Charles poured so freely. Tragedy and passion were the high notes; loss and regret, the harmony.

  It was after midnight when Bertie claimed a dance from her, a waltz in the best Viennese tradition. She treated the Prince with the deference due to a monarch and all the sauciness permitted an American lady of rank; his eyes glowed covetously when he looked at her, his hand pressed possessively in the small of her back. Despite his girth he moved with surprising lightness, his bearded face bent unswervingly to hers. Jennie could feel the heat of his skin through his wool dress coat; too real, too human. Perspiration beaded his forehead. He had been drinking claret and smoking cigars with a clutch of cronies most of the night.

  “It is not every evening I am tempted to the dance floor,” he offered, in his slightly German-accented growl. “Nor every night I find such bewitching provocation.”

  “Your Highness is a shameless flatterer,” Jennie replied with a glance from under her lashes.

  “I would never deceive a lady.”

  “Then I am honored, sir.”

  They whirled past a pier glass framed heavily in gold, the reflection of the entire glittering room doubled and thrown back in Jennie’s face—massed orchids and the fan of women’s dresses strident against the darker figures of the men. The café was stiflingly warm. It was possible she had drunk too much champagne.

  “You ought to take care, my dear,” the Prince murmured. “We all permit you a remarkable degree of license, because you are such excellent company; but it won’t do, you know, to run away from your husband. I won’t mention his name, of course. We haven’t formally reconciled as yet.”

  “Your Highness! What can you possibly mean?”

  Bertie looked deliberately across the room at Charles Kinsky, who was bringing a smile to Miss Fairfield’s guileless face with some half-considered pleasantry. “You are so very clearly smitten, my dear. Very smitten indeed, and it is never well to betray too warm a preference. Poor Edith Aylesford, you know…such a melancholy thing, to be forced to cut an acquaintance of such long standing…”

  “Lady Aylesford’s conduct was very sad. But it can have nothing to do with me.” Jennie’s tone was light but her feet were suddenly leaden; Bertie meant business. He was reining her in. She wanted to dash impetuously from the room, skirts clutched in her fingers, but she forced herself to smile at him. Her gaze serene. Her voice a lie. Dread bursting inside.

  “I am sure, Lady Randy, you should never be so foolish as poor Edith.” The Prince’s eyes were half-lidded, the pupils enormous and black. “None of your friends could wish it. We hope for nothing but your continued success and happiness.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she murmured, with a graceful sweep of her head, as though he had not just cut out her heart. “I hope I shall always be sensible of your goodness to me, and never do anything unworthy of it.”

  He squeezed her right hand, poised high in his. “I am sure you will not. These Austrians are
all very well, of course, with their horses and their dash, but there’s nothing like one’s real friends. You will remember that.”

  “How could I forget?” Deliberately, Jennie threw him a mischievous smile. He must never know he had shattered her joy in the space of a waltz. “Now, tell me, Prince. When does Your Royal Highness mean to reconcile with my husband?”

  * * *

  —

  She might have left the party immediately, offering a hurried farewell to Charles, but ignorant of her trouble he smiled down into her eyes and swept her back onto the floor for the final dance. She did not have the strength to deny either of them. He held her far closer than the Prince had dared and whispered in her ear.

  “Come home with me tonight.”

  Jennie shook her head, fighting for enough calm to speak. “Impossible. I’ve been warned off.”

  Charles’s hand tightened over hers. “What do you mean?”

  “Bertie says I’ve become a worry. To him and our friends. They fear a scandal. Because I’m too obviously enchanted by you. Oh, Charles—we shall have to part.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense.”

  “On the contrary. This is of the first importance. All our fortunes are at stake.”

  His head reared back; he was staring at her. “We must talk. I’ll escort you home.”

  “No, Charles. It ends here.” She gazed over his shoulder, suppressing an impulse to break from him. Unbearable to be safe in his arms and yet at war; but if she left the floor now, when every eye was on them—the moment was far too public—

  “We’ve enjoyed a great deal of amusement together,” she managed with false brightness, “but I’ve drawn too much notice in the wrong quarter, I’m afraid. That smacks of bad breeding—and I don’t wish to pay the royal penalty for it. Or cause you to do the same.”

  “Are you out of your senses?” Charles muttered. “Jennie—!”

  “Don’t play the heartbroken lover!” Her voice carried over their heads to the couple turning beside them. Jennie bit her lip, tasting blood, and stared directly into Charles’s eyes as they waltzed toward the far side of the room. The tziganes music shivered and swore. “You’ll solace yourself, I’m sure, with that pretty little blonde. Wherever did you find Miss Fairfield, Charles?”

  “She was invited at the request of the Prince of Wales,” he said through his teeth. “He’s been in pursuit of her the past month.”

  Jennie’s eyelids were wet.

  “Come with me,” he repeated urgently into her ear. They moved together like two palms pressed in prayer. Like two halves of a scallop shell she’d once found on the granite shore of Newport and treasured as a child. “We’ll run away from all of them. Take passage for Paris. I’ll get an embassy posting there.”

  She thought of her boys—Winston with his lacerated back and Jack, begging her to sit on his cot.

  “Do you know how they bully the small sons of notorious women, at the best public schools in England? I should be handing my boys a death sentence.”

  Edith Aylesford had never seen her children again, once she fled to Paris with Blandford. She had lost all maternal rights.

  Jennie could feel the rest of the party watching them. The Duke of Braganza. Fidgety Archduke Rudolf. Bertie, with his lips mouthing a cigar, his hooded gaze following her like a hawk. End it now.

  “Jennie, I love you,” Charles said tensely. “Don’t do this.”

  She laughed carelessly and sank into a curtsey before him, bringing the waltz to a close.

  “Such a pleasant party, Count—as with everything you do.”

  She had mastered the art of protective cover years ago.

  “Jennie—”

  She did not look back as she left him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Hours later, she could not say what slight sound woke her. The room was filled with moonlight. Jennie sat up in bed, the lace edge of her nightdress slipping down one shoulder and the heavy weight of her black hair tangled at her waist. The windows were open to the night air. The faint breeze stirring the silk curtains was damp with old rain.

  In the country near Blenheim there would be nightjars calling and the cries of fox kits, but here in London there was only the rumble of vegetable carts making for Covent Garden and iron-shod hooves ringing against the cobblestones. Her bedroom overlooked the narrow garden at the rear of the house, with its high walls and its gate giving onto the mews.

  There it was again—a rustle in the ivy, which was thick and ancient and as strong as a blacksmith’s forearm. Jennie tensed, her eyes probing the luminous shadows. The pale blue hangings of her bed, looped about mahogany posts, obscured her view. Fear of what she could not see suddenly knifed through her. She swung her legs noiselessly from beneath the coverlet, and reached with one hand for the drawer of the bedside table.

  The rustling in the ivy grew louder; the intruder climbing it was nearing the windowsill. Jennie groped for the snub-nosed little pistol Papa had given her—a memento of a morning only a year or so ago, when the two of them had amused themselves in a shooting gallery off Bond Street. She had clipped the hearts and clubs of every playing card Papa had put up for her, then toasted him with champagne when they were done. She kept the pocket pistol loaded by her bedside. Not even Randolph knew that.

  Now she rose and leveled the gun at the silhouette rising above her windowsill. There was only one cartridge. She would have only one chance. For that reason, or perhaps to test her nerve, she cocked the hammer and said quietly into the darkness, “Come an inch farther and I’ll shoot.”

  The rising shadow hesitated, stilled.

  They waited, both of them. Neither breathed.

  Then he vaulted over the sill and onto the floor and Jennie squeezed the trigger, gently, as Papa had taught her long ago when she was just a child at Jerome Park. The pistol had a percussion cap and the snub nose made it anything but accurate. The cartridge fired where the intruder’s head had been a fraction of a second before. Jennie’s breath stopped in her throat as she waited for the thud of a body—

  The intruder rolled to his feet on her bedroom floor. His hand encircled her right wrist and bent it back, painfully. She gasped and tried to smash the pocket pistol against his temple to bring him down. He laughed at her effort.

  And then she knew who it was.

  “Charles!”

  He turned her clenched fingers so that the pistol targeted the floor, and bowed low over her hand. “Lady Randolph.”

  She dropped the gun with a dull thud and knotted her fingers in his dark curls, wanting to hurt him, needing to scare him as he had scared her. He lifted his head. He was breathing hard.

  “You fool,” she whispered, furious. “This might have been any room. Randolph’s.”

  “It was the only one with open windows. And I just left your husband at his club.” Releasing her, he stooped to pick up the gun. “Never carry a single Deringer. That’s why they’re sold in pairs—so you can get off a second shot if you miss the first time.”

  “I didn’t miss!”

  “No,” he agreed. “I did.”

  He dropped the pistol on the bed behind her. Smoothed her bare shoulder and touched the pulse at her throat. She drew a calming breath, willing her pulse to steady, and said, “What are you doing here?”

  “We have things to discuss.”

  “I said everything necessary at the café.”

  “Not so,” Charles countered. “You never said that you love me, Jennie. Say it now.” His fingertip traced her parted lips. “I want to feel you say it.”

  She shook her head once, a mutinous child.

  “Now.”

  “I never mix emotion with pleasure, Charles.”

  “And I’m simply pleasure?” He drew her head close to his.

  “We’ve both enjoyed our…time together. But it
’s done.”

  “That’s the wisest thing to say.” His lips touched hers. “But it’s not enough for me, Jennie. Do you remember that night we first saw each other at Sandringham? How you looked at me, and I at you? Both of us knew then we would never be the same.”

  “You assume too much.” She tried to laugh.

  “I’m simply saying what we both know.”

  His mouth caressed the soft skin at the base of her ear. She tensed against him, denying his impulses and her own, and then he released her and stepped back.

  One of the things she admired most about Charles was his ability to control himself. He was like her in this—completely in command of his impulses. She’d counted on that.

  “You may have given your body and your bed to any number of men in the past, Jennie, but you have never done this before.”

  “Done what?”

  “Lost your soul for love.”

  “Without a soul, who would I be?”

  “Mine,” he answered, very gently.

  Then he moved to the window. Lifted his leg over the sill.

  “When you’re ready…when there is no other choice left for you to make…I’ll be waiting. But I will not accept less than your entire heart, Jennie.”

  He grasped the ivy. She listened to his swift descent in the darkness. Then she ran to her sill and looked down into the garden.

  “I won’t be owned!” she called after him fiercely. “By you, or anyone!”

  * * *

  —

  In the days that followed, days utterly empty of Charles Kinsky, Jennie wondered repeatedly whether she was wrong.

  Had she turned him away out of good sense—or fear?

  That same consuming fear she’d first sensed at Sandringham, as she listened to Charles play the Eighth Prelude?

  Loss of self. Loss of independence. Emotion so deep and wide I might drown myself.

  Unless she did as Charles demanded—gave herself over entirely to her feeling for him—he would cut her out of his life.