That Churchill Woman Read online

  “He’s a Churchill, Arthur.” Jennie summoned a smile. “Fancies himself at death’s door at bedtime, then orders steak and kidney pie for breakfast.”

  She was surprised and touched that Balfour cared—it was rare for a bachelor to notice a woman’s anxiety, much less think of her children. Jennie felt a stab of uneasiness—what if there was no improvement in Roose’s next bulletin?—and thrust it firmly to the back of her mind.

  “Lord Salisbury!” She extended her gloved hand to Arthur’s uncle. If Gladstone’s Government fell, Salisbury would be Prime Minister—and could put Randy in his Cabinet. “And Mr. Chamberlain! How delightful to welcome you to Connaught Place!”

  “My lady.” Chamberlain grasped her hand and bowed low; for an instant Jennie feared he might actually kiss the satin of her glove. He was fiftyish, she guessed—handsome enough, with penetrating dark eyes and a square jaw. Jennie ran through what she knew: Chamberlain had driven two wives to their graves, and was raising six children with the help of in-laws. There was a boy a bit older than Winston, in his final year at Rugby—Neville, was it?

  A sudden stir at the door—the chatter fell away, and a footman in buff and blue livery appeared behind Jennie’s butler.

  “Their Royal Highnesses, the Prince and Princess of Wales!”

  Everyone in the room went still as Bertie sauntered in, Alix on his arm, magnificent in pale gold brocade. The ladies’ curtseys were like so many birds folding exotic wings.

  “Lady Randy,” the Prince rumbled as he bent over her hand. “And Churchill! It has been an age!”

  “An honor to welcome you, sir.” Randolph bowed.

  The enemies had agreed to parley.

  Deadly or not, Jennie thought, they all had to eat. There would be no turning back now.

  * * *

  —

  “I understand you are an accomplished artist, my lady.”

  She dimpled at Joseph Chamberlain, enjoying something almost American in his brash, uncultivated voice. The self-made man was standing with a tight knot collected beneath Jennie’s electric chandelier, in the broad passage outside her dining room. Six of Rosa’s extraordinary courses had floated around the table, and coffee was about to be served in the drawing room. Number 2 Connaught Place was hardly a vast London townhouse, but it was modern and stylish, and Jennie’s spare interior, so unlike the clutter of most Victorian rooms, was a perfect backdrop. She preferred a few good pieces of furniture and a handful of dramatic paintings, set against pale walls. Let the people in her life provide the color.

  “It’s a privilege to sit for Lady Randolph,” Sir Charles Dilke said warmly, “but one she has never extended to me. When will you consent to take my likeness, Jennie?”

  “Impossible, sir.” She narrowed her eyes at him. Dilke was known to be dangerous. Any number of women were ready to die for him, but some sixth sense made Jennie’s skin crawl. “I could never paint you black enough.”

  The gentlemen roared with laughter and raised their glasses, and at that moment Jennie spied a footman approaching with an envelope on a silver salver. Roose. Her fingers clenched; God give her strength if the news of Winston was bad and she was forced to take it in public.

  Jennie turned swiftly, her velvet train twisting around her legs, and accepted the note. Definitely from Roose. She recognized his hand.

  Sick at heart, she hid the letter against the drape of her bustle and moved hurriedly toward the drawing room. Rosa had set out fruit, pastries, and dessert wines on the sideboard at the far end, but no one had drifted toward them yet. Jennie could snatch a moment’s privacy. She glanced about for Randolph, but he was nowhere to be seen. She felt a stab of exasperation; must she manage everything herself this evening? Arthur Balfour caught her gaze and came immediately to join her. Her hand dropped in frustration again to her side. The message would have to wait.

  “Jennie,” Balfour demanded, “what the devil has got into your husband of late?”

  There had been a bad moment over the fish course, when Randy had mourned the decline of Parliament with Prime Minister Gladstone. “So many ill-educated Members,” he’d sneered as his eyes drifted indolently over Chamberlain. “Riffraff from places like Birmingham, who can’t understand Latin when they hear it in Commons!”

  Before Jennie could turn the conversation—inquire about Neville’s progress in school, and whether his father was pleased with the instruction at Rugby—the Radical did it himself. “It doesn’t need Latin to explain Tory Democracy,” Chamberlain declared, with a flash of teeth. “All of Birmingham knows that’s nothing but a sham, put about by a duke’s son to exploit the working man.”

  Jennie sighed at Arthur Balfour now. “Randy’s not sleeping well,” she attempted.

  “Randy’s peevish, temperamental, and rude. Even I can’t manage him anymore.” Balfour glanced around, afraid of being overheard. “The slightest tweak sets him off; one never knows what invective he’ll spout in Parliament. It’s like prodding a snake.”

  “He’s determined to fight Home Rule,” she said.

  “And we’re all worried about the Irish Question,” Balfour agreed, “but Randy has the power to decide the issue, if only he’ll use it!”

  The Irish Question—which had not been raised in her dining room that night, thank heaven—was whether Ireland was ready for self-government. Every single man at Jennie’s table held a different opinion.

  “I thought deciding was Mr. Parnell’s job,” Jennie replied mildly. Parnell was head of the Irish Nationalists, Gladstone’s principal supporter. He’d forced the PM to promise a vote on Home Rule that session—or lose power completely. And as Randy wanted the Gladstone Government to fall, he made a point of thwarting Parnell at every turn.

  “Parnell will shoot himself in the foot,” Arthur insisted, “if Randolph will only stop baiting him—and the entire country he represents. As it is, Randy looks like he’s calling for civil war every time he shouts Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right!”

  “Have some chocolate trifle, Arthur.” Jennie drew him to the sideboard. Roose’s note was burning a scar into her palm. She was desperate to read it. “Rosa made it especially for the Prince—which means it’s bound to have brandy in it.”

  “Please talk to your husband,” he urged her. “You could persuade him, Jennie, to soften his tongue.”

  “Try his secretary, if it’s softening you want,” she returned dryly. “Alasdair’s in far greater favor than I am at present. I imagine he and Randy have run off to the library, to escape the tiresome guests.”

  Balfour smiled faintly. “Then I’ll join them. If that’s the way it is, I’m sorry, Jennie. I’m keeping you from reading your letter. I hope it’s not bad news.”

  He had seen what she clutched in her palm, then. With a rush of gratitude, she watched Arthur leave the drawing room. Footmen were circulating among her guests with trays of coffee; no one seemed to need her. Jennie tore open the envelope and scanned Roose’s few lines swiftly.

  He’d written at dinnertime; it was now nearly midnight. The approach of the crisis…Should the left lung remain free—

  Good God. Jennie gazed unseeing into the middle distance. Winston might actually die. Might already have died, while she smiled and nodded and pressed delicacies on her friends. With the sudden yawning terror came a frantic desire for comfort—a strength she could grasp. Charles—

  “My dear,” Princess Alix said behind her, in the oddly toneless voice of the deaf, “is there news? Of your dear son? Bertie mentioned his illness. I am sure you are anxious.”

  Alix had sought her out with the instinctive kindness of a fellow mother, aware that if Jennie stood alone on the edge of her party, something must be wrong.

  “You must long to go to him. While we take up your care and time.” The Princess reached out as though to clasp Jennie’s arm, but dropped it again
as Bertie joined them.

  “You simply must lend me your cook, Lady Randolph,” the Prince drawled. “Her worth is above rubies. And therefore, the property of the Crown.”

  Jennie folded Roose’s note and smiled at them both. “If I parted with Rosa, Your Royal Highness would never dine here again! I must have some stratagem, Sir, to lure you to Connaught Place. I’m wagering on this excellent chocolate trifle. And now, Princess—shall I play Chopin for you?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A telegram from Robson Roose was delivered with Jennie’s breakfast tray. He had sent it at one A.M.

  The high temperature indicating exhaustion, I applied stimulants….I shall stay by the boy today.

  Chilled with fear, Jennie glanced at the ormolu clock beside her bed. Nearly a quarter past nine. She had fallen between the sheets a few minutes after two, when the last of her dinner guests had finally departed. She sifted frantically now among the pile of letters beside her teacup—there was nothing else from Roose. Thrusting aside the counterpane, she pulled on her dressing gown and went in search of Randolph.

  He was lounging over coffee in the breakfast parlor with Alasdair Gordon. The octagonal room, lined in pale green paper, was suffused with the aqueous light of a London March. Both men wore riding dress, neat dark gray coats and bowlers with breeches tucked into polished leather boots. Were they jaunting about Hyde Park together in the mornings now? Gordon’s classical beauty was only ripening with age. The schoolboy frame had hardened into a man’s, broad-shouldered and muscled. Randy, whose hair was thinning at thirty-seven, looked more and more like a gnome from a dark fairy tale. His gauntness worried Jennie. But she could not force him to eat; when she betrayed her anxiety, Randolph snarled.

  “Up already, darling?” he asked.

  Without a word, she handed him the doctor’s bulletins.

  Randolph scanned first one, then the other, and set both aside with a grimace of annoyance. “Very well. And?”

  “I must go to Win. Even Princess Alix suggested it last night—”

  “Chase back down to Brighton again? Don’t be a fool, Jennie! Roose hadn’t the slightest use for us when we were there. You’ll only upset the brat. Fussing over him.” Randy’s eyes flicked to Gordon, who had pushed back his chair, ready to leave them alone. “Don’t run away, Alasdair. This will only take a moment.”

  “Randolph, I’m afraid for him.”

  “Of course you are. Mother’s feelings, and all that. But Mrs. Everest is much the properest person to care for him. I’m sure Win prefers her, in any case. And we’re drowning in engagements.”

  Engagements.

  “He can’t breathe,” Jennie said fiercely.

  Randy threw up his hands. “It’s not as though either of us can breathe for him!”

  Alasdair Gordon moved gracefully to the door. “I shall be attending to correspondence in the library, sir, if you wish to ride later.”

  “No.” Randolph reached out and grasped his wrist. “Stay. I shan’t be another moment, dash it!”

  “I’m sure your mother never hesitated in her duty when your brothers were ill.” Jennie heard the venom in her voice.

  Randy’s cup clattered into its saucer. “I couldn’t say. I was little more than a year old when Freddie died.”

  “You were ten when Charles and Augustus passed.”

  “And I was safely away at St. George’s. Being, unlike our elder son, a compliant scholar who was rarely caned.” Randy was furious, Jennie saw, that she’d dared to mention his dead brothers. As though his own survival were somehow shameful.

  “You owe it to us all,” he added with deadly precision, “to stay away from Brighton. Winston’s contagious. We can’t risk the threat to young Jack. Or…ourselves. I won’t hear another word.”

  She whirled in the breakfast parlor doorway, hot tears stinging her eyes. What was this wave of hysteria and rage, rising from her feet to her throat, threatening to strangle her? Why the helpless wash of fear?

  Jennie paused at the foot of the stairs, one hand on the newel post, the other clutching at her skirts. Of course. Newport. Over twenty years ago now. Randy wasn’t the only one who’d lost someone dear.

  Grief tightened around her heart like an iron band. Still so fresh. And yet she had managed to keep living. Newport was an utterly different life…that might have happened to somebody else….

  She brushed a lock of hair behind her ear and began slowly to climb the steps, her hand clutching the banister for support. Memory climbed with her.

  Did anyone lay flowers at the distant grave?

  March 1863

  She was nine years old and absorbed in a book the first time her life turned upside down.

  Jennie never set foot in Papa’s library when he was there, because then it was his place and not the secret one she kept to herself while he was at his offices on Wall Street. The mahogany paneling glowed warmly even on the dreariest days, and the draperies were crimson velvet, so heavy that not a whisper of the carriage traffic from Madison Square filtered through the glazed windows. The only sounds were the settling of logs burning behind the brass fender and the rustle of thick paper as Jennie turned the pages. A Turkey carpet splashed carmine and indigo at her feet. The library smelled of cigars and brandy and old leather bindings, the dryness of paper and the wetness of ink. It smelled, Jennie thought, of Papa. Bookshelves soared two stories above her head, and at the far end of the room a spiral staircase led to a gallery. The ceiling was painted midnight blue, with constellations exploding across it in streamers of gold.

  Behind Jennie were enormous tables, with folios and prints set out on their shining surfaces, a magnifying lens here, a few oil lamps there. Stacks of monogrammed paper sat near crystal inkwells. Papa had discarded a pair of gold cuff links beside the silver clippers he used to cut his cigars; sometimes at night Jennie glimpsed him through a crack in the library door, shuffling the evening newspapers, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. He’d filled the room with comfortable chairs like the ones in his clubs—bucket chairs covered in soft leather that adapted to the men who sat in them. Jennie was draped sideways in one of these, her stockinged legs jackknifed over the chair’s arm. The library was most particularly her place when rain lashed the tall windows and the streets beyond, as it was doing now.

  “Miss Jeanette!”

  She started at her nursemaid Dobbie’s voice, and the heavy old volume slid off her lap.

  “Such a way as you’re sitting in that chair! I declare I’m ashamed of you.” Dobbie was a large woman with coffee-colored skin, a bright green skirt, and a red turban wrapped around her hair. Jennie had known her always. “Whatever are you reading?”

  “The Children of the New Forest.” Jennie scrambled down to retrieve her book. “Did you know that England has civil wars, too, Dobbie? In this one, the mother and father are killed and the children run away to live in the woods. The boys take care of their sisters. It’s immensely exciting!”

  “Put your skirts down,” her nurse scolded, “and come along right now.”

  “It’s unfortunate that we have no brothers.” Jennie set The Children of the New Forest broodingly on a table. “If Mamma and Papa are killed in our Civil War, I’ll have to put on a disguise—a cap and trousers would be best—and drive us all to Newport. There must be a forest there that we can hide in.”

  “And where are you like to find a cap and trousers?” Dobbie demanded.

  “The ragman. He comes to the kitchen door on Tuesdays. I’ve seen him.”

  “Such talk.” Dobbie grasped her hand and pulled her down the passage toward the massive sweep of front stairs. “A girl in pants. What would your mamma say? Come along now.”

  Jennie caught a glimpse of her younger sister—not baby Leonie, who was only three and taking her nap, but seven-year-old Camille—peering down through the balusters. T
he bow in Camille’s blond curls was askew and her face looked pinched and apprehensive. Had Dobbie found their cache of stolen sweets, wrapped in wax paper and hidden beneath the skirts of Camille’s least favorite doll? Or was it the broken china teacup from the nursery service—Limoges, like everything else in the Jerome house—that Jennie had buried furtively in one of Mamma’s potted ferns?

  “What is it?” she mouthed, as Dobbie dragged her up the stairs.

  “Bombs,” Camille said clearly. “It’s bombs, Jennie.”

  * * *

  —

  Dobbie made them both sort through their cherished toys while she tidied their clothes into trunks—“Only three dolls each, mind, as there’s a mess of things to be packed and the Lord knows if your father’s boat tries to take it all, we’ll sink halfway to Newport.”

  “When do we sail?” Jennie wanted to know.

  “Tomorrow.”

  Still no word about the bombs. Jennie didn’t care for dolls; Camille could take extra. “Are we running from the Rebels? Are they coming to New York?”

  “Not that I hear,” Dobbie said. Her worn hands gathered nightdresses, shifts, and sashes into neat piles. Jennie’s older sister, Clarita, had moved out of the attic nursery this year and had a bedchamber on the second floor, down the hall from Mamma and Papa, with her own dressing room and maid. At nearly twelve, she had a governess now instead of Dobbie and was learning deportment. Jennie could hear Clarita’s voice lifted complainingly; she had always hated packing. “Then why leave?”

  “I guess your pa’s worried about those Irish, down on the docks.” The whites of Dobbie’s eyes rolled toward her. “They’ve been getting into all kinds of trouble today, on account of the draft.”

  “What’s the draft?” Camille’s fair brows were crinkled in puzzlement.

  Jennie was going to explain it was a chill from an open window, when Dobbie said, “Soldiers. President Lincoln wants all the men in New York to sign a paper saying they’ll fight for the Union, but the Irish don’t want to. I guess most of ’em don’t feel they’ve been here long enough to die for much.” Dobbie reached for an armful of Jennie’s winter woolen dresses. “It ain’t the immigrants’ job to free slaves.”