“I forgot to ring for it. I’ll do so now.”
“It’s rather cold.”
“Well, you see the fire,” said Charles, somewhat irritably. “Presumably you have not forgotten how to turn over a spade full of coal.”
Edmund smiled. “Tired of your meetings?”
Lenox was at his desk, signing a stack of cards Graham had prepared to send to his constituents in Stirrington. “I am giving strong consideration to the idea of life as a hermit. On the one hand it would be irksome to grow a beard to my ankles; on the other I should never have to go to Lord Furze’s for supper tonight, unless Lady Furze’s taste has changed dramatically.”
Edmund put more coal on the fire, and ordered the tea himself while his brother worked on. These tasks accomplished he settled into an armchair with an out-of-date copy of
After a while Lenox looked up from his work and out through the tall window. It had gotten colder, it was true. The fall had sharpened and deepened, the leaves upon the trees shading from the red and orange brilliance of their dying into the crackled brown of their deaths. The sunlight was paler now.
Though he had received the garlands of a victor after his speech there was some vague dissatisfaction in his heart. Perhaps it was that for all of this congratulation there seemed to be little real will to implement his ideas, and he knew, with an exhausted familiarity, that to pass anything through the House of Commons would mean months of persuasion and wrangling — that a single speech, though it had seemed so important, could not trim the sails of the ship of state.
He consoled himself — and his brother and Graham had consoled him — by remembering that he had placed the issue of poverty directly before his colleagues now. The papers had reported it so favorably, for the most part, that perhaps it would shame them into action. Even then there was the House of Lords to deal with, however; he had always found it fitting that just three people, shouting across each other, each a king upon his own remote plot of land, could make a quorum there. Maddening.
Presently the tea arrived. “Much better,” said Edmund as they moved to Lenox’s couches, nearer the fire. Between this and the tea the book-lined walls immediately seemed more welcoming, the thick blue carpet warmer.
A footman followed the tea tray in with the post. Amid the shuffle of letters Lenox found one postmarked from Everley, with the Ponsonby crest upon the seal. “A letter from Freddie,” he said, slitting it open.
Lenox read in silence for a moment, while Edmund drank his grateful tea. “A
“No.” Charles leaned across and handed the letter over. “See what you think of that.”
Edmund read the letter.
September 23, 1874
Everley
Plumbley, Som.
Dear Charles,
First I must congratulate you on your speech, which we have just had details of this morning in the Bath papers. As you know Fripp and I are committed Tories, but both of us thought many of your points inarguable — as for those that break along party lines, neither of us doubts your good faith. Fripp did add that he hoped the next time you visited you worried less about farmers’ shoes and more about covering your wicket, but I put him down straight away.
Everley is quiet since you left — Plumbley, too — and has reminded me why I feel, as you know, unequal to the ongoing task of her maintenance. In September I planted a line of spruce saplings along the west portico, against the better judgment of Rodgers — and now they have all but one of them died, which I view as final and irrefragable evidence that I have entered my senescence. It is a period I think better spent in a cottage in the village, a spacious and light-filled cottage, none of your dank rabbit holes, but a cottage nevertheless, and I therefore propose to come up to London on Monday next to see Wendell and discuss the transfer of ownership with him. There are three or six or even eight months of work left for me to do before I am satisfied that I have truly done my all by this house I have loved so much, and then it shall be his. I hope I may come to see you upon my arrival, however, as there are one or two subjects I should like to discuss before I see him.
Funny how quickly one grew accustomed to Jane, Sophia, and Miss Taylor! The house feels empty indeed. Return at any time the four of you please; and indeed if you do you shall have the best of Plumbley’s hospitality, being rather more of a grandee than they realized when they had you in their grip.
Ever,
Frederick Ponsonby
“Well?” said Charles.
Edmund shrugged. “If he feels himself unequal to the work—”
“Does it not sadden you? To think of — well, of mother, I suppose? It is very like the end of an era.”
“Eras go on ending,” said Edmund gently. “It is the sign of a small—”
“A small mind to deplore change, yes,” said Lenox crossly. “We had the same father, you know.”
Edmund smiled at his brother, whose brooding eyes were turned toward the fire. “My primary thought on the matter—”
The world would have to wait for Sir Edmund Lenox’s primary thought on the matter, however, because just then they heard the front door open. “Who could that be?” wondered Charles.
“Will it not be Jane?” Edmund asked.
Lenox said he thought not, that she was out visiting for the afternoon, that it was more probably Graham or someone unexpected, but within fifteen seconds the door of the study had made a liar of him. Lady Jane came in, surrounded by shopping bags, her bright smile and kind eyes alighting on each brother in turn.
“You wouldn’t believe the weather — porpoises in Piccadilly — I saw Meredith Hance and thought her nose might fall off it was so red. That’s terrible to say, Edmund I’m sorry. Oh, but Sophie! She must see her uncle! Miss Taylor! They are just in the hall.”
“Was she quite warm?” said Charles.
“It is hard to remember whether she wore seventy-eight layers of wool or seventy-nine, but at any rate, yes, I imagine she was.”
The governess, the red in her cheeks making her look rather prettier than usual, came in with Sophia, and then, the other three adults descending upon the child at once, made her safely to the sofa and sat sipping a very welcome cup of tea.
“I have clean forgotten,” said Jane, when at last they looked up from Sophia. “Edmund, we saw Molly.”
“Did you? In the park?”
“Yes. She invited us to supper tonight.”
“I hope you’ll come.”
“Certainly we shall. I do not think either of us is bespoken, Charles?”
“Lord Furze,” said Lenox shortly, and with a petulant sigh returned to the tottering stacks of paperwork upon his desk.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
By great fortune Dallington had almost immediately, upon returning to London, received another case. His health was fully intact again — that remarkable resilience of the young — and while he sent Lenox small notes, apprising him of new facts as they arose, the two men did not see each other after their return from Everley.
When he was announced as a visitor that Saturday morning, Lenox assumed it was because the young lord wished to consult with him about the case. It was a theft of some important blueprints from a clockmaker and watchmaker in Clerkenwell. Because there was no evidence of forced entry Scotland Yard refused to make an investigation, but Inspector Jenkins, returned from his foray into the ginsoaked parts of Belgium, had passed the
