When Lenox saw Kitty Ashbrook the next morning, for the first time since he had departed London for the Christmas holiday, their interaction was noticeably different.
The pretense of platonic friendship, the deflecting banter of the crowded ballroom—both of these had evaporated, replaced by a deep, immediate, and reciprocal gratitude that they were together once more.
“You are most welcome,” she said when Lenox arrived exactly at ten, the first person there, indeed almost impolite in his promptness.
He felt the sincerity of her words. She was attired quietly, in a navy-blue dress with a small diamond necklace, and her rich, fragrant hair was clipped so that almost all of it fell over her left shoulder save a few bewitching strands curling down her neck.
Perhaps it was not that she had never looked so fine, but that her eyes had not searched his like this before; or perhaps that his had not searched hers.
He took both of her hands. “I am so very pleased to see you again, Miss Ashbrook,” he said.
For once he was conscious of his own dress: the gleam of his boots, the perfect turn of his collar. These were Graham’s standards, not Lenox’s. But he was appreciative of them now.
“I trust you passed an agreeable Christmas?” she asked.
“I did. Yet I missed seeing you here!” he said. “And you?”
She smiled. “We were quite gay. My cousin has a large family, and they squeezed us into it without even noticing, which is the nicest way, I think. Don’t you?”
“I do,” he said.
He might have been agreeing to anything on earth, for all he knew at that moment was the feel of her light, cool hands in his, the nearness of her face, her pale neck, her sweet eyes.
Why did he not kiss her? The question posed itself to his mind, and he thought—standing before the fire, the dainty prints of Bath and York Cathedral on the mantel just next to them, the broad windows overlooking Eaton Square casting a subtle loveliness of light into the room—that he would. The time had come. He could see it in her face, too, her spirit reaching toward his, and her body, her face, ready to follow at the slightest encouragement.
As he was leaning forward, however, the bell rang.
She dropped his hands with a squeeze and smiled apologetically. A frustration—yet one tinged with happiness, for deferral could only add a kind of charming unhappiness that contained the joy which would be theirs when at last they did kiss.
He hadn’t thought until this very moment of the man who had visited him at Hampden Lane, ordering him to leave Kitty Ashbrook alone. Now he expected to see this gentleman when the door opened. Instead, as it happened, it was a friend of Mrs. Ashbrook, and Kitty’s mother hurried in.
Soon the room was full of half a dozen people. Lenox still felt the electricity of his private moment with Kitty nearly an hour later, when he reluctantly departed. The carefully developed language of love was entirely insufficient, he discovered: the tingle of happiness on his face—no poem he had read had approximated that, what it had felt to be present in that room, alive with every fiber in him to Kitty’s movements, the subtle ways she adjusted her body, the glances she cast at him more often than, it seemed, wonderfully to his heart, she would have if she could have helped it.
He thought: I am in love.
It was slightly warmer in 1856 than it had been in 1855, and, buoyed by his visit at Eaton Square, Lenox walked home. At any rate it was dry; a wet winter was what Londoners dreaded, when it grew so damp that a small gust of breeze froze your bones.
At a bookstore on Cate Street Lenox broke his stride. It was a sign that had caught his eye.
Travails of an American slave!
Hear the brutality of the masters; sufferings of the enslaved; and more, from
MR. JOSIAH HOLLIS in person, seven o’clock in the evening, Jan. 5
Curious. He’d been quite sure Hollis had already gone back to America. The discrepancy troubled him, and he decided he would go to the talk two evenings hence.
This afternoon, however, he had plans. He went home, changed into more comfortable clothing (and with the change, out of the dreamy mentality induced in him by Eaton Street and Kitty—Kitty Lenox, she might be called soon!), and went to fetch Cobb.
Soon they were in a hansom heading west. They were on their way to see Edmund. “Now you shall meet my brother,” said Lenox, “and you may judge which of us is a truer representation of the decadence of our English way of life—as opposed to the invigorating purity of American capitalism.”
Cobb shook his head sadly. “I fear that we are no model at the moment. We’re trying to spread too much country across too little compromise these days. It will tell sooner or later.”
“You don’t think there will be a civil war?” asked Lenox.
“If there is, I am prepared to fight. I shall return to Vermont and enlist there. But to answer your question, I do not think there will be. The slaveowners will never dare secede, though it be their great threat.”
“I do not think you mentioned whether you have a family,” said Lenox.
He had not phrased it as a question on purpose, to give Cobb the chance to politely decline the confidence, but the American said, “I am recently married—in June of last year.”
“My congratulations! And you find it a happy state of affairs.”
Cobb smiled almost shyly. “Very. My wife is from South Carolina—Eliza—and she has turned our garden into something magnificent, complete with a little lamb for wool, and an icehouse. A very castle, you know—though you can see the next house over, two hundred feet off.”
“Indeed, it sounds idyllic.”
“It is, Mr. Lenox.”
“Does your wife object to your line of work? Its dangers?”
“Less strenuously than she objected to this long absence.”
“Ah, of course,” said Lenox. “I have a friend who is enduring just such a thing. He is in the military.”
They arrived at Edmund’s house and found him in his study. He welcomed his brother very gladly.
“May I introduce you to Mr. Winston Cobb, who is a member of the militia that guards Washington, D.C.? Mr. Cobb, this is my brother, Sir Edmund Lenox.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” said Edmund, and he and the small, tidy American shook hands. “Welcome to London.”
“Edmund, to hurry to the point, we came to ask about Samuel Jonas.”
Edmund frowned. “Jonas? Whatever for?”
“Never mind. What do you know about him?”
Edmund had resumed his seat, and Charles and Cobb had taken the two chairs across from him. “Not all that much. He rarely comes into Parliament. Quite rich, quite idle. Never leaves the Carlton.”
“What do you mean—that he rarely comes into Parliament, Sir Lenox?” asked Cobb.
Edmund smiled at this misnomer and said, without commenting otherwise, “Please, call me Edmund. What I mean is that he’s only in Parliament every tenth day or so that it assembles. Here in England I’m afraid that’s not uncommon. We’re very lax about attendance compared to you.”
“How did he make his money?” asked Cobb.
“The colonies.”
Lenox felt a buzz of excitement. “Which?”
“I can’t remember. Do you want me to look?”
“If you would.”
Edmund pulled down his thin light blue parliamentary record, a diary and registry that only Members possessed.
As he leafed through it, he said, “Of anyone on earth to want to see—that great oaf—but here we are. S. Jonas. Yes, here we are. He was … let’s see, he was briefly in South Africa, then a long while in Jamaica, and finally in Australia. Not a colony anymore, of course. I—”
Australia had been granted sovereignty to govern itself just a few months before, but nothing could have been of less interest to Lenox at present.
“When was he in Jamaica?” he said.
Edmund frowned. “It doesn’t give exact dates. The biographies are very brief. You may look for yourself.”
They did, and to his disappointment, Charles saw that his brother was right. It mentioned that he had spent “a good part of his thirties in Jamaica and America” but otherwise gave no detail.
Still, there it was: The three men, Sheridan, Witt, and Jonas, were all connected to Jamaica. Was it meaningful?
“You would not call him a powerful man in the House of Commons, then?” Cobb asked of Edmund.
“I would call him just about the least powerful man in the House of Commons,” said Edmund, “which is to say that he has one vote—a goodly measure of power for any Englishman.”
“I see.”
“Counterbalancing that is the fact he will be turned out in the next by-election. It is quite a certain thing.”
“Why?” said Charles.
“It’s a close district, and he has a good challenger this time. Last time he didn’t. I can’t remember his name, the new fellow. One from our side. Not that it matters, for Jonas is the greatest layabout you ever met, and even constituents hear of such a thing sooner or later.”
“Do you think we would find him at the Carlton now?” asked Lenox.
“I would bet a thousand pounds on it.” Edmund scorned the Carlton Club, a beautiful building on St. James’s Place, which served as both spiritual and second home to much of the conservative party. “Mr. Cobb, if you go there, have Charles take you over to the Athenaeum afterward for a cup of tea, so you don’t leave these shores without the experience of a real gentleman’s club.”
They called at the Carlton; and Edmund would have lost his thousand pounds. As it happened, Charles knew the club’s head porter fairly well, not least from the times he had dined with the Duke of Dorset there. He was a cordially peremptory fellow named Whyte, who spoke to them while making notes in his register.
“He’s usually here, sir, Mr. Jonas, but not today.”
“Yesterday?”
“Oh, yes,” said Whyte. “And the preceding … say, fifty. But you are the second fellow looking for him! I did not give the other his address.”
Lenox frowned. He would pay the thousand pounds himself rather than let Dunn solve this case before he did, if it were Dunn. “Could I trouble you for his address? I know information that may be in his interest.”
Whyte picked up a piece of paper. “I had already written it down, Mr. Lenox. Best regards to your brother. I’m sure he’s quite welcome anytime he’d like to cross the aisle.”