That Churchill Woman

by Stephanie Barron

  She made this last sally sound like a joke, but from the taut expression on Minnie’s face, Jennie knew her cut had gone home.

  “There is my young friend Miss Tennant,” Princess Alix announced in her toneless voice. “Such a sweet creature.”

  Bertie beamed at Margot. “Ah, Miss Tennant—the Princess has spoken much of you! You must sit right by me at supper, eh? And tell me all about yourself?”

  “Oh, no, Sir,” Margot replied clearly. “I am not dressed for the part. I expect some of the ladies think I have insulted them by coming in my nightgown.”

  So the girl had heard, Jennie thought. Seething, she stopped a passing footman. “Mrs. Paget requires her cloak, James. You will escort her to the door.”

  “But I have not the slightest desire to leave!” Minnie protested shrilly.

  “Alas, where duty lies, desire must give way.” Smiling, Jennie met her gaze implacably. “Mrs. Paget has no alternative but to go. James? If you will?”

  * * *

  —

  Several hours later, while the Hungarian Violins crooned their melancholy song and her guests waltzed beneath the electric lights, Jennie slipped from her saloon. She had tamped down on her ill-timed anger and smoothed over the ugliness of the public spat. Her friends were too well-bred and too conscious of the royals to mention it. But Jennie would breathe a profound sigh of relief only when the evening was over.

  She discovered the Tennants in her foyer, putting on their wraps.

  “You cannot be leaving!” she said in dismay. “And I haven’t had a moment to speak with you!”

  Sir Charles twinkled at her. “You know I don’t dance and I detest sitting up, Lady Randy. I ought to have been in my bed long ago. Margot’s presented me to her Prince, which is enough for one night.”

  “You must return, Miss Tennant, when you’ve more time at your disposal,” Jennie urged. “I long to paint those cheekbones.”

  “Only if you promise to visit Grosvenor Square and attend a meeting of the Souls,” Margot replied.

  “The very invitation I’ve longed for! But it’s too bad you won’t waltz with us this evening.”

  “Another time—when I’m wearing a ball dress.” Margot cast down her eyes at her fichu of carnations. “The Prince referred to me as an original, and I should hate for the name to stick. Lord knows what damage it might do beyond these walls.”

  “I have never been anything but original.” Jennie glanced over her shoulder, toward the distant hum of her party. “I cannot be one of them, after all. Much better to be the best possible version of myself.”

  Margot studied her appraisingly. “I should say you’ve taken Lady Randolph to a high level of art.”

  Impulsively, Jennie hugged her. “I look forward to watching Miss Tennant do the same.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “I call it infernal cheek for Salisbury to turn up his nose at my budget, when he’s never been out of his tailor’s debt in his life….” Randolph broke off his querulous tirade to glare at Jennie across the breakfast table. “You’re not listening. Confound it! If a man’s wife can’t be bothered to show him respect—”

  “Randolph, look at this.”

  Abruptly, Jennie passed him a letter from her stack of morning mail.

  He scanned the few lines rapidly, his mustache working. “Who and what is Arthur Brisbane when he’s at home?”

  “He claims to be the London correspondent of the New York Sun.”

  “Is that a reputable paper?”

  “Extremely.” Unlike the Times and the Herald, which only wrote about finance and politics, the Sun published articles about real people’s lives as well—their tragedies, romances, triumphs, suicides. It was the most widely read newsprint in New York. Jennie pressed her fingers against her eyes. Brisbane’s words scintillated behind the closed lids.

  …must call to your attention, rumors of a separation pending between yourself and Lord Randolph…allegations of infidelity on both sides….The writer is assured that divorce proceedings are presently to be entered into…have attempted to obtain information from Mr. Leonard Jerome of Manhattan, in New York, who has refused to comment….

  “No reputable paper would send this.” Randolph tossed the letter aside. “I’ll threaten the rotter with libel.”

  “That’s not enough!” Jennie thrust her chair away from the breakfast table. “Don’t you see that it’s the rumors we’ve got to stop? This…Arthur Brisbane…is merely a symptom, not the disease! More queries will follow. We must draw out the poison behind the words, Randy, or watch your reputation and career be savaged on both sides of the Atlantic!”

  Randolph shrugged. “I shouldn’t worry overmuch, darling. No British journalist would dare to print such trash.”

  “If this kind of talk has reached New York, matters have gone far enough.” It was the Town Topics threat enormously amplified. Jennie paced angrily back and forth before the sideboard, her hands fisted at her sides. “Divorce, Randy! I cannot believe that Papa has been embarrassed by inquiries of this sort. It is beyond intolerable that the Sun is badgering him.”

  “I’ll have Alasdair draft a reply,” Randolph sighed. “Assuring Mr. Brisbane of our complete marital cordiality. And threatening him with the full force of British law if he suggests otherwise.”

  “Is that all?” Jennie was astounded at Randolph’s indifference. The press was hounding them in their own home. Didn’t he understand it was too late for denials?

  “Failing that, I can always have the man horsewhipped,” her husband drawled. “But forgive me, Jennie, if I have more important things to think of—such as the passage of the annual budget of Great Britain!”

  * * *

  —

  Watery sunlight gilded the London streets that December afternoon as Jennie slipped from her hansom onto the rancid paving. She had driven to an address in Fleet Street, heavily veiled and warmly cloaked against inquisitive eyes and the yellow coal-laden fog that curled around her ankles. The offices of the New York Sun were on the building’s first floor. Stifling a fit of nerves that nearly made her turn back, Jennie hastened up the narrow flight of battered wooden stairs, her black leather pocketbook tucked under her arm.

  A door with opaque glass panels confronted her. She hesitated, then rapped on the wooden crosspiece.

  “Come,” ordered a voice heavy with drink and cigar smoke.

  Her gloved hand turned the knob. She stepped into a room that was larger than she had expected. Broad windows at the far end shed a liminal glow. Four men were scattered about the office—one with spectacles and wildly untamed blond hair, bent over a monstrous ledger propped on a desk, his pencil furiously adding sums; another smoking a pipe, with his hands thrust into torn trouser pockets; a third, bearded and gray-haired, lying on a settee with his booted feet crossed and his eyes firmly closed. An empty bottle of spirits sat on the floor at his elbow beside the stub of a cigar.

  The fourth man was leaning out of an inner room. He wore a green eyeshade on his balding pate and in his right hand he held a sheaf of scrawled paper. As Jennie watched, he scattered the pages unceremoniously on the slumbering man on the settee.

  “It’s too long by eighty-six words.” Then his eyes fell on Jennie’s veiled figure. “Hello—who’s this?”

  “I am looking for Mr. Arthur Brisbane,” she said clearly.

  “I’m the chap,” he retorted. “What have you got for me?”

  She assessed his face. Lined with hard living, grim about the mouth. The eyes were small and gave away nothing. He didn’t look like the sort of man who’d strike a bargain. For an instant she regretted her impulse to come. But what choice did she have?

  “I wish to speak with you,” Jennie commanded, “in private.”

  There was a pregnant silence. With a tubercular cough, the scribbler set down his pencil. Th
e man with the pipe pulled it from his mouth, smoke spiraling to the ceiling.

  “Lift your veil,” Brisbane challenged.

  Jennie complied.

  The newspaperman whistled. “Lady Randy, calling special on Our Arthur! Come along into my private office, my lady.”

  * * *

  —

  “I received your distressing communication this morning,” Jennie quavered from behind the handkerchief she had pressed to her eyes. She had worn black for the occasion, as though she were in mourning.

  “I expect you did,” he agreed. “I had it delivered by special messenger. I make a rule never to spare expense in matters of national sensation. And divorce in a Cabinet household certainly qualifies! Lord Randy might’ve been PM one day, if it weren’t for your careless ways, my lady.”

  “It takes two to ruin a marriage. But I cannot tell you how your message worked upon me, Mr. Brisbane. I am prostrate in all my trouble! I do not know whom to trust—to whom I may turn….”

  “Matters have reached a crisis, then?”

  Jennie heaved a convulsive sigh and bowed her head.

  “You may repose complete confidence in me, your ladyship.”

  “If only I could believe that! You have no notion, Mr. Brisbane, how difficult my life is! With my husband in the public glare—and the vultures of opinion, so entirely unsympathetic…”

  “I’m sure it isn’t easy for a lady in your position,” he soothed. “And handsome as you are, it’s no wonder you’ve a surfeit of beaux. If I may ask, does Lord Randolph know that you are here?”

  He was greedy, Jennie saw, for exclusive information. Brisbane wanted to be first to publish the Churchill bombshell.

  “I daren’t tell him!” she gasped. “He abhors newspapermen. And we meet so rarely…my husband practically lives at the Carlton Club. I can only imagine:”

  ‘Friends of the illustrious couple reveal that Lord Randolph no longer resides at home.’

  “But as you are a representative of the American press—and have consulted my beloved father—”

  “An openhanded gentleman if ever I knew one,” Brisbane agreed.

  “—I felt I could trust you. I need not say that the courage required to come to this office has quite drained my slender reserves.”

  Jennie raised her crumpled scrap of linen to her eyes. From his derisive look, Brisbane obviously had the poorest possible opinion of her morals and intelligence. He would not hesitate to take advantage of her vulnerability.

  “I have here in my pocketbook a signed statement”—her voice was low and ashamed—“which I am prepared to turn over to you, Mr. Brisbane, detailing the state of my marriage and the proceedings Lord Randolph and I contemplate, in the very near few days.”

  “Indeed?” Brisbane reached across his scarred desk. “If I might just glance at it?”

  “Of course!” Jennie kept her grip on the pocketbook and managed a pathetic smile. “You will understand that in my position, the wife of the Chancellor of the Exchequer—the target of unbridled speculation—I have taken particular pains with my statement. It is extremely important to me that it be published by a friendly organ, such as the Sun, with all the sympathy due to American brides exiled on these cold English shores. My husband will no doubt find other allies.”

  “You have my word, Lady Randy,” Brisbane assured her. “You shall be accorded the delicacy and honor due to a daughter of New York.”

  Jennie pressed her hand fervently against her breast. “You are very good, Mr. Brisbane. Before I may entrust you entirely with my statement, however, I must inquire…which friends of mine were so kind as to confide my trouble to you?”

  Brisbane’s mouth curled sardonically. “A good pressman never gives up his sources.”

  “But I wish to thank them!” Jennie’s voice throbbed. She reached out a gloved hand and pressed the journalist’s wrist. “The knowledge of their support has given me strength to come to you today! To know that there are those willing to take my part…to offer a sense of solidarity, and fellow feeling…Please, Mr. Brisbane—do not deny a broken woman her last possibility of returning a kindness?”

  Brisbane hesitated.

  “If you will not speak,” Jennie urged, “surely you might write down the name of the friend to whom I owe so much? It would relieve my mind immeasurably. And, I need hardly add, my father’s. Leonard Jerome might do much to advance your career in New York, Mr. Brisbane, if he knew his cause for gratitude. I am sure his interest in your work would be as warm and eager as mine.”

  Jennie watched Brisbane waver, her breath suspended. Would he take the bait?

  “If I might just see your written statement—”

  She took up her handkerchief again and gave a stifled sob.

  Roughly, Brisbane tore off a sheet of foolscap and scrawled a name. He thrust it toward Jennie.

  Mrs. Arthur Paget.

  She met Brisbane’s gaze, her eyes limpid with gratitude. “You swear to this? On your oath as a gentleman?”

  “Of course.”

  “I cannot be surprised,” she said with a catch in her voice. “Dear Mrs. Paget is my oldest friend! We met as girls, you know, Mr. Brisbane—mere children—in the Family Dancing Class at Delmonico’s. She has always thought first of others before herself.”

  “Indeed.”

  Delicately, Jennie pressed his ink-stained fingers with her gloved ones. “Pray do me one last favor, Mr. Brisbane. Attest to the truth of what you have told me. I wish to make the communication to others more powerful, in a position to help your career.”

  The King of Wall Street hovered in the air between them.

  “With pleasure, my lady.” Brisbane signed his name beneath Minnie’s.

  “Thank you,” Jennie breathed. Her gloved hand trembling, she folded the foolscap carefully and secured it in her pocketbook. Exchanging, as she did so, a sealed envelope with Brisbane’s name on it.

  The journalist’s hand closed over it avidly.

  “I authorize your exclusive right to publicize this statement, Mr. Brisbane, on both sides of the Atlantic,” Jennie said earnestly. “I hope we may always regard each other with the same depth of respect that has characterized our meeting today.”

  “Your servant, Lady Randolph.”

  Brisbane rose from behind his desk and bowed. Jennie dropped her veil over her face and swept from the inner office.

  Heart racing, she ran down the flight of stairs. It was vital to reach the safety of her waiting hansom before Brisbane tore open the envelope flap and unfolded the stiff sheet of letter paper embossed with the Connaught Place address.

  In light of recent rumors impossible to meet with a dignified silence, Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill are pleased to assure a wondering Public that they are happier than ever in their Union, and, if spared by a benevolent Providence, look forward to many more years of marital accord.

  * * *

  —

  Jennie drove straight from Fleet Street to 35 Belgrave Square. When the Paget butler blandly informed her that Minnie was not at home to callers, Jennie pushed past him and stormed furiously up two flights of stairs to her old friend’s boudoir.

  “My father was a great student of Niccolò Machiavelli,” she announced as she thrust open the door, her veil thrown back and her eyes flaming. “He assures me, Minnie, that the Master’s teachings may be distilled to a single sentence: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

  Minnie turned from her mirror, aghast. “Have you gone mad, Jennie Jerome? Get out of my house at once!”

  Jennie crossed the pale rose-and-white room in three strides, heedless of the lady’s maid clutching vainly at her arm. “I have Arthur Brisbane’s written and signed testimony of your attempt to destroy my life. I shall not hesitate to use it.”

  Minnie’s mouth o
pened slackly, then snapped closed. She uttered a dry cackle. “There is nothing you can do. A mere journalist’s word, indeed!”

  “That is where you’re wrong.” Jennie held up her bit of paper triumphantly. “I intend to show this to the Princess of Wales. Alix abhors blackmail, Minnie. She will know immediately how to deal with you. The Polite World will cut you dead from this day forward. You will never enter Sandringham or attend the Queen’s Drawing Room again.”

  A strangled sound formed deep in Minnie’s throat. Her fingers tensed upon her hairbrush, as though she longed to hurl it at Jennie. “Give me that paper!”

  “Never.” Jennie whirled for the door.

  “Wait….Wait.” Minnie held out both hands in supplication. “Tell me—what must I do? What can I do?”

  Jennie made her burn with suspense. She paused a moment to tuck her precious paper inside her pocketbook. Then she looked shrewdly at Minnie.

  “You will apologize for your willful and vicious attack. Immediately.”

  “I am heartily sorry, Jennie. I don’t know how—”

  “And you will scotch every poisonous rumor of divorce you have circulated through the drawing rooms of Mayfair.”

  “As God is my witness,” Minnie muttered fervently.

  “And, finally…regardless of whether you are otherwise engaged…you will attend the opening of Ruddigore this Sunday evening.”

  “I shall?” A line appeared between Minnie’s plucked brows.

  “As my guest. Expect my carriage to call for you at seven.”

  * * *

  —

  That Sunday night when Jennie, magnificent in a gown of peacock-blue brocade, entered a box at the Savoy, Randolph was by her side. The crowd of Fashionables surrounding them rose to their feet and spontaneously applauded the Churchills. Jennie managed to look astounded and thrilled as she acknowledged the tribute, and Randolph gallantly kissed her hand. As she had suspected, gossip about their marriage had flown all over London. But Minnie Paget, who could be counted upon for the truth, smiled brittlely at Jennie’s side.