A Death in the Small Hours

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Lenox was speechless.

“Well, Charles?”

“You have my congratulations! I scarcely know what else to say, I’m so surprised.” Amid all of the various puzzlements the news presented, one stood out. “You only saw her in passing yesterday, though, I believe? Has this been settled for some time?”

Frederick shook his head. “With the parcel of cuttings I left for her yesterday evening was a letter, and this morning I had her acceptance by messenger. I had scarcely dreamed she would say yes — had fully planned on proceeding with my plans to hand Everley over to Wendell — but now this wonderful thing has happened, you see, it changes everything. You are not dissatisfied with my conduct, Charles? She is a wonderful woman.”

“Dissatisfied, never, so long as Miss Taylor is happy. Merely knocked for a loop, cousin.”

“The gap in our ages is very great.”

“Lord Wrexham married a seventeen-year-old when he was in the back half of his eighties. I don’t think you and Miss Taylor will excite much comment.”

“Except in Plumbley.”

Lenox laughed. “It’s true, they’ll be surprised in Plumbley.”

Frederick put a hand on the champagne bottle that stood in its silver bucket by the table. “Perhaps we might have our toast now?”

As the idea lost its newness over the course of their breakfast, as he grew accustomed to its counters, it came to seem less outlandish to Lenox. He pictured them as they had been at Everley, amiably walking through the gardens, she with a sobriety beyond her years, after the annealing tragedies of her youth, he with a long provincial gentleness that looked, perhaps, something like youth.

Then her birth was good, if not excellent, and her character was sterling.

He recalled the glint in Freddie’s eye after his long day upon the road to Bath with Wells and Oates. What had he said that night? It shows a man what he wants from life, believing he will die. The past weeks had certainly changed him. It was a happy change, too; after their second glass of champagne together, the squire’s face was shining with an unwonted joy, with a vitality that had been missing a month before.

What would Jane think? he wondered.

Dallington might be disappointed. Still, he would have dozens of chances to marry, if he wished, while Freddie must have given up on the idea, what, ten or twenty years before. It was providence that had brought Miss Taylor to his home.

“Have you spoken about when you are to be married?” Lenox asked, spearing a sausage on his fork

“No. I am inclined to wait until the spring. At any rate I am staying in London a few days longer than I had anticipated, that I might see her.” A troubled look passed over his face. “Perhaps a wedding would be undignified, though.”

“Never in life. It needn’t be a large wedding, or a town wedding, of course.”

“The difficulty of being married in Everley is that I’m the magistrate.”

“Rodgers can do it,” said Lenox, smiling.

Frederick laughed. “It is not unlikely that I can persuade the vicar to do the job.”

After they were finished they went to the club’s library and sat among its lines of morocco-bound books, smoking and talking in low voices. Frederick was an unexcitable soul, but there was a placid euphoria in his words and gestures.

After they had parted, the squire off to see his heir, Lenox stopped by the Commons briefly to have a word with Graham, then returned to Hampden Lane. There he found his wife pacing the front hallway.

Lady Jane had a combination of warmth and reserve that Lenox loved; she was rarely discomposed, and absorbed news quietly and methodically, but never coldly. He was surprised, therefore, to observe her agitation.

“Jane,” he said.

“You had better come into the drawing room. Miss Taylor would like a word with us together.”

“Is everything quite well with Sophia?”

“Yes. Did your uncle tell you — no, come in, speak with her for yourself.”

He put a hand on her wrist to stop her pacing. “Freddie told me. You are not upset, surely?”

“I am upset for John Dallington, yes, and I think it entirely inappropriate that two people of their respective ages should break convention and make themselves a spectacle.”

“Come, this is not like you,” he said in a quiet voice. “It means Freddie will keep Everley.”

“As if I cared a fig for that.”

Suddenly Lenox perceived that Jane’s plans for Dallington and Miss Taylor had borne a far greater weight of aspiration than he had previously understood. The Duchess of Marchmain was one of her closest friends, her concerns quite intimately Jane’s concerns. “Is she quite upset, Dallington’s mother?”

“You were always as blind as a mole, Charles. Everyone in London is speaking about her son’s behavior at Gordon’s. She hasn’t slept in weeks, she hasn’t—”

There was more to it than that. They were losing their governess, she was a new mother, easily rattled, she had put Lenox’s speech before her own needs for many weeks now. And her friends were, perhaps, all unhappy. “Did the post this morning bring anything else from Toto?”

She looked him in the eye, her lip trembling. “No, unfortunately, it did not.”

“Come and sit with me for a moment in the study, my dear. You shall have a glass of sherry.”

“At eleven in the morning?”

“At eleven in the morning.”

It was low of him, but he felt a kind of pleasure in bringing his own calm to bear on her consternation for once. So often it had been the reverse. He led her into his study, sat her by the fire — low and glowing orange now, soon rekindled — and stayed with her there until she had regained her composure. In time, he knew, she would find great happiness in Freddie’s betrothal.

After ten minutes, she said, “Miss Taylor is still in the drawing room, Charles. She’ll have heard you come home.”

When he entered the drawing room Lenox smiled kindly at the governess. She was more self-possessed than Lady Jane, but he didn’t know what words had passed between them, and there was a certain color in her cheeks that might have indicated high emotion. Then again it was a cool day.

“I’m so sorry it has taken me this long to come and see you, Miss Taylor,” he said.

She rose. “I received this letter from your cousin yesterday, Mr. Lenox—”

“I don’t need to read it, only to offer my congratulations.”

“I would feel happier if you read it, since I live under your auspices, currently.”

To oblige her he took the note. It was written very formally and rather beautifully, too. Since I first walked with you in the west gardens a fortnight ago, Frederick began, I have entertained the liveliest affection for you — indeed I might call it love, if I did not fear it would be a trespass against your goodwill. I write now to ask whether you might reciprocate my emotions. It went on to describe his situation in detail, what she might expect as an allowance, the society of Plumbley, his general aversion to London (though he agreed that he might take a house in town for “a week or two in the season, should we be wed, preferably the shorter duration”), and ended by describing all that he found congenial in her character, and restating his admiration of her.

“I think it is a very fine letter,” said Lenox, “and again, can only offer you my congratulations. We shall be sorry to lose your services, of course, but it will be a delight for Sophia to know you as an aunt.”

“Do you think him a good man?” asked the governess, waving away his politeness.

“I know of none better.” Lenox hesitated for a moment. “For some time I thought John Dallington might have been courting you, however.”

She smiled. “John? He’s only half a boy, you know. About Freddie — you do not think I would be making a mistake? I believe I love him,” she said, and for the first time he heard the tone of petition in her voice.

It was because of this tone that he saw what he had not before. What she sought was not his congratulations, but something else, something she could not find elsewhere: a father’s advice.

With a sense of tenderness, mingled with pity, he gestured for her to sit down. “Let us take it point by point,” he said, and semi-conciously his voice lowered a half-step. “First let us discuss his social position, then, and after that we can move on to his finances, and then we ought to review his—”

“Oh, yes, thank you,” she said, sitting back, and her face was flooded with relief.