case, wandering around and trying to spot Hadrian.” He pointed at the sample Lenox had given him. “Two days—or perhaps less.”
“Thank you.”
McConnell ordered the bottles to his satisfaction, and the two men walked toward the door and downstairs by the same back staircase, ducking whenever they heard women’s voices echo through the house.
Chapter 31
The next evening, a Sunday, at just past six, Lady Jane and Lenox were standing in the middle of his living room while helped him affix his buttons properly, smooth down his dinner jacket, and complete all of those offices which a bachelor can occasionally find irksome but which are improved inestimably by a female hand.
Lady Jane herself was already in a plain light-blue dress that was tight around her waist and curved out like a bell below, with a black scarf tied around her neck and white kid gloves to her elbows. She always said that some beauty was offset best by complex and bright material, but that what small parcel of beauty she had was only overshadowed by it; as a consequence she dressed with as few frills as she possibly could and still be a la mode. She looked beautiful.
“We live at an odd time,” Lenox said, submitting to have his collar fixed.
“No odder than any other, surely, darling?” said Lady Jane distractedly.
“Much odder.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“For one thing, you and Barnard going to botanical gardens together.” Lenox shook his head.
She laughed. “Only one botanical garden. But what do you really mean?”
“Look at us! This ball will be the last word in everything conservative and correct, I don’t doubt, and all the unmarried girls will dance with innocent hearts, well chaperoned, and the young men by and large will behave politely and everything will be staid and proper and right, you know—much more staid and proper and right than anything was a century ago—or during the time of the great monarchs—or ever.”
“Is that so odd, Charles?” said Lady Jane.
“It is! For us to have such conservative values, values that would have constrained our most revered ancestors in their behavior?”
“I suppose.”
“But then,” said Lenox, warming to the subject, “at the same time! At the same time, the last fifty years have been revolutionary!”
“What do you mean?”
“Think, my dear, about all the reform. Parliament has granted unprecedented rights to the lower classes, unprecedented—things that would never have been dreamed of: property rights, voting rights—”
“I’m for that, though,” said Lady Jane.
“So am I, of course. But how odd a juxtaposition—”
“Finished! Go look in the glass, dear heart.”
Lenox went over to the mirror in the corner of his library and saw that she had done a very good job: his buttons were fixed, his tie was neat, and his collar was straight.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Don’t think of it. Only, you must save me a dance.”
“Must I?”
“Oh, Charles, you horrid man. Look. For all of what you’ve been saying, you aren’t even staid and right and proper enough to assent to a lady’s request. We fall behind the age of chivalry in that area, I suppose.”
He laughed. “Of course I shall dance with you.”
She looked at him crossly. “I withdraw the offer. Edmund will do, instead.”
“Very well, but he’s used to those country dances, you know. Much more active. No doubt he’ll twirl you around, things like that.”
“Don’t be a beast, Charles.”
He laughed again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. May I have the first dance?” He bowed and then proffered his hand.
“You may,” she said, and curtsied, which sent both of them into gales of laughter. It seemed like yesterday that they were children, peering through the slats of the staircase at their fathers’ dances and then pretending to dance themselves, barefoot on the rugs in a dark hallway.
It was nearly six by the time they were prepared to leave and the dinner before the ball began at seven, so they sat down on Lenox’s sofa and passed the remaining minutes chatting amiably until the half-hour struck and then hurried through the cold air—Graham behind them, holding an umbrella over them to block the few flurries in the air—and into the carriage.
Now there were only a few dozen houses in London that were equipped to host a ball and of those four or five were supreme: the McConnells’, the Duke of Westminster’s, Lady Rother-mere’s, and George Barnard’s. Each house had one or two balls a year, though Toto sometimes threw three, if only, she said, to clear Thomas’s sporting equipment out of the room, for he used their ballroom as a sort of indoor playing field for everything short of polo.
But people granted that Barnard’s house was unique in one way: He could seat two hundred at table and then afterward comfortably admit several hundred more to his own vast ballroom, which sat in the center of the first floor—above, among many other areas, Prue Smith’s bedroom. It was three hundred feet across, with light- colored wood floors. The walls were full of gold columns and huge paintings, and the ceiling was painted with the transit of Venus.
The ball would follow the usual form. Several weeks before, the women guests had received a white card, listing the dances on one side and with blank slots on the other, to fill in a partner’s name for each dance. It would be mostly quadrilles and waltzes, but while most balls had a four-person orchestra, people expected Barnard to have about a dozen musicians.
The dinner before the ball was a peculiarity, for some people sought the tickets eagerly while others cared for them not at all; at any rate, there was no consensus on their value though to be sure the lack of any invitation at all, to dinner
To the dinner were invited the circle of which Barnard would have liked to consider himself a member: Lenox and Lady Jane’s circle, whose de facto leaders were the Duchess Marchmain, Jane herself, and Toto, representing the three generations in descending order.
Barnard was a peculiar case. Great politicians were of course invited everywhere, but it was not clear whether he was of the first rank of politicians. Men of tremendous wealth were occasionally invited, though Barnard was unwilling to class himself with that group. But he was connected, by threads more numerous than strong, to enough of the correct people that he was sure to be invited many places and was sure to have his own invitations accepted. That is, to put it more briefly, some combination of money, birth, and power were united in him that was impossible to classify and was neither enough to disbar him from the first tier of society nor to include him fully in it—for whatever one takes that first tier to be worth.
Of one thing there was no doubt, however, and that was that fashionable London would appear tonight en masse, and when Lenox’s carriage pulled into Clarges Street he saw that it was but one of three dozen, making the street quite impassible and in some respect exhilarating, full of the excitement preceding a large well-organized party.
After some deft work by the driver and a gradual movement of the carriages, Lenox and Lady Jane were able to step onto the unfurled red carpet that led to the front door of Barnard’s house and, with just a few moments to spare, make the dinner table on time.
The people were of great interest and variety: the men belonged to the upper echelons of art, politics, science, and scholarship and the women were all either beautiful or matriarchal, with very few exceptions. The men wore dinner jackets and shining shoes and the women wore beautiful dresses, usually in gray or blue, with an
