When Lenox looked back upon that November and December of 1855, it was for the month’s Mondays and Thursdays. It was upon these days each week that Kitty Ashbrook and her mother received callers between ten o’clock and one in the cozy, elegant, light-filled rooms they shared in Eaton Square.
On the occasion of his first visit, it was Lady Jane who brought him. “I haven’t been invited,” he said when she proposed it.
“You must join us here in the second half of the century, Charles.”
“I’m more modern than you. Graham has just acquired a clothes press that runs by steam. Our ironing days are over.”
“I was unaware that your ironing days had ever begun.”
He frowned. “Well, not mine, specifically.”
“Mrs. Huggins!” she called out gently.
They were in Lenox’s breakfast room. The housekeeper appeared after a moment. “Yes, ma’am?” she said.
“Are the girls downstairs using a steam press? Or ironing?”
A stony look came onto Mrs. Huggins’s face. “I can attempt to ascertain the answer to that question now if you wish, ma’am.”
Lady Jane glanced over at Lenox, eyebrows raised. “Mrs. Huggins, I wouldn’t have it in my house, personally,” she said. “There are limits.”
“It’s a disgrace,” said the housekeeper.
“Mrs. Huggins!” said Lenox.
She looked implacably firm—ready to lose her job. “I cannot apologize, sir.”
“Nor should you,” said Jane indignantly.
“I mean to say, perhaps she should!”
“She can’t.”
“I cannot.”
Lenox looked between them in consternation. “This treachery! From two of the people closest to me!”
“The curtains come out more wrinkled than they went in, sir,” said Mrs. Huggins.
“I don’t know that we should be in such a headlong rush toward the second half of the century, Charles,” said Jane.
“I couldn’t have put it better, ma’am,” said Mrs. Huggins.
When the housekeeper had gone, Lenox gave up and said that he would go to the salon; he could not hope to beat Lady Jane in a battle of wits.
Jane had been correct that his introduction into Kitty’s household offered no difficulty. Miss Ashbrook and her mother, a trim and sympathetic widow of forty-four, herself very likely to marry again soon, one thought, greeted Lenox with great solicitude, insisting that he come again, which he did.
The mix of people there was lively and included many of the mother’s friends. But it was plain—if concealed in a very fetching way—that they were in London to get the daughter married. They had her looks, her manners, and her ten thousand pounds with which to do it—and that seemed to be a very good combination to many a gentleman. Eight or ten of these passed through on each of those Monday and Thursday mornings, often in the company of sisters or mothers. They ate toast with preserves from the orchards of the ladies’ cousin the Lady Cumberland; they lingered beside a charming small fireplace and made chat. They complimented the scenes of cottage life framed on the wall nearby, which might have been painted from Miss Austen’s novels.
At the center of this mannerly commotion, Kitty Ashbrook sat tranquil. She was sympathetic, witty and friendly and well read. She was dependably polite.
Yet it was easy to glance off her surface. Only on the third formal occasion they met did Lenox glimpse the human beneath again, as he had when they danced.
Jane had ceased to come with him after their first visit, and for just a few moments, this time, Kitty and Lenox stood alone by the fire, Mrs. Ashbrook entertaining two gentlemen at the windows by pointing out who else lived near them in Eaton Square, house by house.
“Do you go to a dance or a supper every night?” Lenox asked during this rare opportunity for private conversation.
“Nearly,” she said, holding a teacup and saucer as they stood. “And you?”
“I? No. When I was younger, perhaps.”
“Of course, a gentleman may dine out anytime he pleases, and expect to find congenial company—at his club. Women are not quite so fortunate. We must roll the dice each new night.”
“That’s true. Yet I think you must enjoy being out.”
She smiled, a bright and even smile, exceedingly pretty. “Say rather that when you have seen me I have been enjoying it,” she replied.
She was dressed in a green velvet dress, with a diamond pin holding her chestnut hair back from her forehead. “I am fortunate, then.”
“Or else you bring good fortune.” Though she had rarely been even this direct, he felt what he had occasionally felt—a sense that he was favored, yet no possible way of moving into greater intimacy. Except that now she added, “I often find that I look for you when I arrive at a dinner party.”
“Do you?” he said—stupidly. It was not at all a gentlemanlike question, uttered only because he was taken aback.
“I do,” she said. “You are generally not there, alas. Yet I cannot seem to pass eighteen hours without the pleasure of Mr. Campbell’s company.”
Lenox grinned. Campbell was at the window, and in age more suited to the mother than the daughter of these rooms—though his aims were fixed squarely upon the latter.
“Since you are so kind, I will say that I do the same. And I will add you one better.”
“Oh?”
“Because of you I have been reading Thackeray.”
“Have you?” she cried.
“Yes, and it takes an inconvenient amount of time, too—since the novels are so very hard to put down.”
“How lovely!” This was the first moment when he felt as if their gazes met naked. “And you find him agreeable?”
“Agreeable? I don’t know if that is the word. He is not easy on his fellow man.”
“At bottom it must be agreeable to see the world in its true nature,” she said. “For who could wish to be told a lie?”
“Some readers, I think.”
The bell rang. She smiled at him with some strange and real warmth and gave his hand a quick squeeze. “There I suppose you must be correct,” she said.
During subsequent calls they revisited this subject, and with this key unlocked the last door of formality that had been bolted in front of them. By early December Lenox would have said they had grown genuinely close, as close as good friends, yet still far apart enough that he often found he was heartsick for her. He began to ask Lady Jane (whose prestige in the social world this winter, though Lenox was only dimly aware of such motions, had never been higher) to find a way for him to be invited to certain evenings at which he knew she would be present.
Was that love? He thought it might be, yes. On the whole, he thought it was. He was in love with her beauty; of that there was no question, for each time he saw her now he marveled at himself for ever thinking her merely pretty. On some mornings, visiting the Ashbrook apartment, he felt a sudden (and of course impossible) urge to take her in his arms, to press his face into her hair and kiss her slender neck.
And he was in love with her mind. He knew this because they exchanged letters, and the letters were as of lively an interest to him as could be. Her charm to him did not rest exclusively upon her looks.
Yes: This must be love. What he didn’t yet know was how much love and marriage had to do with each other, or how well he had to know her before he declared himself.
It was Deere in whom he confided that doubt, as they were playing chess one evening.
Deere was to leave the country shortly. The decision had been taken, and Lady Jane, in this one case, had turned out to be mistaken—even her influence could not overcome the duty that Deere felt toward his Queen’s commands. His wife protested that they were not even her commands, but he could not see them any other way. It was a funny, stubborn purposeful self-delusion, upon which, Lenox faintly discerned, much of the character of the officer class must have depended. Deere was so liberal-minded in all other ways, yet so fixed in this one.
“I suppose the question is whether you can imagine life without Miss Ashbrook,” Deere asked Lenox.
They were in a very evenly matched contest, and for some time the young detective didn’t reply, contemplating his move. At last he pushed a pawn one place forward. He had improved.
Then, as it was Deere’s turn to lean over the board, Lenox took a moment to fill his pipe. It was a frigid evening. They had warmed brandy next to them, and were sat close enough to the windows that it actually made some difference. All the way on the opposite end of his study was the large, blazing hearth, filling the room with its inimitable scent of burning firewood.
“I can, of course,” said Lenox. “I am living it now. Aren’t I?”
“No,” said Deere. “Because you have the hope of seeing her tomorrow. And the tomorrow after.”
“Yes. Yet I do not know that there is one single person for each of us, for whom we are destined. Do you?”
“I believe I do,” said Deere lightly, still not looking up from the board.
“So did Gillham. Not to draw the comparison with you—but to myself.”
There was a divorce in the papers at that very moment—the handsome, tempestuous Earl of Gillham and his beautiful, tempestuous wife. The law was still such that only aristocrats were permitted to divorce.
“You are no Gillham,” said Deere.
“Thank you.”
“He’s much better looking.” The young lord moved a piece and then looked up, gazing frankly at Lenox for a moment. He had a face full of interest in others, its thin features, which might so easily have turned contemptuous and unkind in one so privileged as an earl, transformed into gentleness because they were continually animated with empathy. “You may yet come to believe that there is one person for each of us. And it may be Miss Ashbrook for you. I suppose only time will decide.”
“Of course.”
“As I said, I do. But of course, I married dizzyingly far above myself in temper and intelligence and goodness. I admit freely that my luck may have colored my opinion.” He gestured at the board and picked up his brandy. “Go on, Charles—your move.”