An Old Betrayal

CHAPTER THREE

Just before ten that evening Lenox’s carriage pulled to a slow stop in front of his house in Hampden Lane.

“A great many lights on downstairs for the hour,” he murmured to Graham, who was sitting beside him. “Yet Jane must be done with supper by now.”

Graham, who was reading the minutes of an electoral meeting in Durham, didn’t look up. “Mm.”

Lenox glanced over at him. “Do you never tire of politics?”

Now Graham did pull his eyes away from the paper, lifting his gaze toward his employer. He smiled. “I find that I do not, sir.”

“I sometimes think you’re better suited to all of this than I am.”

“As for the lights, I would hazard that Lady Jane is waiting for you to arrive home. Not Sophia, hopefully. Well past her bedtime.”

Lenox clicked his tongue in disapproval at the idea, though in truth he would have been selfishly pleased to find the child awake. Sophia was his daughter, now nearly two years of age, a plump, pink creature. All of the mundane achievements of her time of life — stumbling around in a mildly convincing impression of upright mobility, speaking fragmentary sentences — were an unceasing enchantment to her parents, and even to hear her name in passing, as he just had, still made Lenox happy. After a lifetime of polite boredom when confronted with children, he had finally found one whose companionship seemed a delight.

Lenox stepped onto the pavement from the carriage, Graham behind him, and started up the steps toward the house. It was a wide one for a London street; before they had married, Lady Jane and Lenox had been next-door neighbors, and by knocking down a few walls strategically they had merged their houses. It had only taken two or three hundred arguments (between two generally mild people) before it was finished to their satisfaction. It was done at last, at any rate, and thank the Lord for it.

With a nod good night, Graham opened Lady Jane’s old door, on his way to his rooms there, while Lenox took the front door to the left, the one that had been his own for so many years.

As he came in, the house’s butler, Kirk, greeted him and took his coat. “Good evening, sir. Have you eaten?”

“Hours ago. Why the hullabaloo?”

“Lady Victoria McConnell is visiting, sir.”

Ah, that explained it. Toto often visited at unusual hours. She was Jane’s cousin and also closest friend, a vibrant, sometimes flighty woman, good-humored, even in her thirtieth year now exceedingly youthful. She was married to an older man, a friend of Charles’s, Thomas McConnell; he was a doctor, though he didn’t practice any longer, such work being conceived as below the dignity of Toto’s great, very great, family.

“Are they in the drawing room?”

“Yes, sir.”

This was down the front hall and toward the left, and it was here that Lenox turned his footsteps, walking briskly past the flickering lamps in their recessed sconces along the wall. It was good to be out of the Commons. The debate was still going, and he had spoken several times more after returning from his visit to Dallington, but it had become apparent quickly that there would be no immediate vote — many men had much to say upon the merits and imperfections of the bill — and that the truly consequential speeches, from the frontbenchers, would be delayed until the next evening.

He came in and found Lady Jane and Toto side by side on the rose-colored sofa, speaking in low voices.

“Charles, there you are,” said Jane, rising to give him a swift kiss on the cheek.

“Hello, my dear. Toto, I fear you look distressed.”

She ran a hand through her blond hair. “Oh, not especially.”

He went to the sideboard to pour a glass of Scotch. “Did you have money on Scheherazade in the fourth at Epsom? Dallington lost his shirt.”

It was then, to his surprise, that Toto burst into tears, burying her face in Jane’s quickly encircling arms.

In a woman of slightly lower birth it would have been a distasteful spectacle. Rules soften toward the top, however. It was not the first time Toto had cried in Hampden Lane, usually because of a mislaid necklace or a serial novel without a happy ending, and it wouldn’t be the last.

“Don’t be beastly, Charles,” said Jane. “Toto, you and I shall go to my dressing room — come along.”

Toto, wiping her eyes, said, “Oh, who gives a fig whether Charles sees me cry. I cried in front of Princess Victoria when I was a child after my aunt pinched my neck — to keep me quiet — and had a square of chocolate as a prize, so who knows what good may come of crying in front of people, I say. Charles, come and set yourself upon that couch, if you like. You can hear it all, the whole truth about your horrid friend.”

As he sat Toto gave a fresh sob, and Lenox, having believed it to be another trifle, saw that Toto, whom he loved, was truly upset. Alarmed, he asked, “What has happened?”

There was a long pause. At last, softly, Lady Jane said, “She is worried about Thomas.”

Immediately Lenox’s thoughts flew to drink, and he felt a lurch of worry. There had been a time when McConnell was lost to that vice, in the earlier years of his married life with Toto, when she had been perhaps too callow to support him, he perhaps too weak to handle the disappointment of abandoning his vocation, finding himself lost in so many empty hours.

Matters had improved since that time, especially after the birth of their child, Georgianna — or George, as she was called — but not to the degree that bad news would ever come entirely unexpected.

As it happened, however, his fears were misdirected. Toto, steadying herself, said, “I believe he has taken up with another woman.”

Lenox narrowed his eyes. “McConnell? I can’t credit that.”

“It’s Polly Buchanan, the shrew.”

Lenox lifted his eyebrows. “Ah.”

“I don’t believe she’ll rest until she’s turned Sydenham into Gomorrah, Charles,” said Toto — her voice imploring, as if she wished it to be true, and then for him to believe it. Her doubts about her suspicion stood in the way of her anger, he could tell. Her face was anguished.

Polly Buchanan was a woman of twenty-five, the relict of a dashing and red-cheeked young soldier named Alfred Buchanan, who had married her in the year ’71. The week after their wedding breakfast he had gone out on a hunt in Middlesex wearing neither a coat nor a hat, contracted pneumonia, and almost immediately, with an appalling lack of consideration for his new wife, died.

With the sympathy of the world wholly hers, Polly had used the subsequent three years to flirt with every married gentleman in London, until she had a terrible reputation among their wives and rather a fond one in the clubs of Pall Mall. (“She turns a fine leg” was the sort of thing one portly gentleman at the Oxford and Cambridge might say to another.) Since she had never positively trespassed upon conventional morality and had excellent connections, she was still widely received — though rarely, any longer, much pitied.

“But Toto, dear,” said Lenox, “what cause can you have to suspect Thomas of seeing this woman?”

“They rode together across Hyde Park two mornings ago, three turns, and again, I am reported, this morning, three turns.”

“You were not there?”

“No. I was taking care of Georgianna while he complimented her hideous green eyes, I don’t doubt, the swine.”

There was a moment’s silence, into which Toto sobbed. When he spoke, Lenox’s voice was skeptical. “So based solely upon this rumor you have concluded—”

Toto looked up at him with furious eyes, but before she could reply Jane did. “No, Charles, you have come into the conversation halfway through. Thomas has been a different man for some weeks now.”

“Six weeks,” said Toto with profound emphasis upon the number, as if it were dispositive proof of an unspecified crime. Then she added, miserably, “He’s never seemed so happy in all the time I’ve known him.”

“Toto, dear, it must be something else. His work, for instance.”

“He’s working less than ever.” McConnell had a variety of scientific interests and an extensive chemical laboratory. “He goes two days sometimes without entering his study.”

That looked bad. “How does he occupy his time?”

“At his club,” said Toto. “Or so he says. I cannot face him tonight, Jane. I cannot face a lie from my own husband.”

“You may stay here,” said Charles.

Jane scoffed at that notion. “No, don’t say that, Charles. Toto, we would be pleased to have you, always, but you cannot run from your husband at the drop of a hat. Think, what if he is innocent of these trespasses and you stay away from home? Imagine his bewilderment. And then, is it good for George? You must rein in your imagination, Toto. It is for the best that way. Believe me, I only want you to be happy.”

But Toto, however, determined to deny her cousin this gratification, burst into a fresh sob, and for the next fifteen or twenty minutes said very little and would take no refreshment or consolation. Finally, with only a meager attempt at appearing reassured, she left, promising to call in again the next evening. She might have more information then, she thought.

It was bad, no doubt of that. When they had closed the door behind her, Charles and Jane looked at each other with tight-lipped sympathy, sighed at the same time, and without needing to speak about it to understand what each felt — the sorrow, the doubt, the faint tincture of intrigue — began to walk toward the stairs leading up to their bedroom.