That Churchill Woman Read online

  “The future,” he answered.

  * * *

  —

  Clarita hated his mustache and found him a bore. But Jennie had never felt more alive. Her gorgeous skin was flushed and her amber eyes unnaturally brilliant, as though she suffered from fever. Randolph tossed her sentences like a volley of colored balls, and to her delight she served them back, spinning with laughter. Her mother noticed their sudden intimacy, the crackle of energy linking them, and was alert with worry. If Lord Randolph has come in search of a fortune—younger sons are often so desperate as to lack all principle—

  “I leave the Isle of Wight tomorrow,” he told her as he bowed over her hand at dinner’s end. “But you have my deepest gratitude, Mrs. Jerome, for making Cowes Week memorable.”

  “The pleasure was entirely ours, my lord,” she said with relief. And gave him her first smile.

  When the villa door closed behind him, Clarita heaved a dramatic sigh. Her golden curls were limp with humidity—the day had been oppressive—and her cupid’s-bow mouth drooped tragically at the corners. There had been no one to pay her compliments or attention all evening, though she had worn her most cherished cornflower silk and a sapphire brooch in her hair. She was three years older than Jennie and ought to have been treated with deference, but Jennie and that ugly Lord Randolph had talked of books and music and politics until Clarita feared she would scream.

  “I have such a headache,” she mourned. “How that man chatters! Like an organ-grinder’s monkey.”

  “I must write to your father,” Clara said worriedly. “Are you coming, Jeanette?”

  “In a moment, Mamma,” Jennie replied. “It’s such a beautiful night. I want a glimpse of the stars.”

  “Take care you do not catch your death.”

  Clara Jerome hurried upstairs. Lord Randolph might be leaving Cowes, but she felt his danger all the same. Jennie was precious to Leonard; he must be warned. If only her husband were not across the Atlantic…

  At the wide French windows, Jennie glanced over her shoulder; then, her breath in her throat, she hurried down the steps to the garden. Dew spattered the hem of her gown and her bare ankles.

  Randolph waited at the far gate that led to the sea.

  Neither of them spoke. They stood in the well of shadow cast by a towering yew hedge. Jasmine scented the darkness. They were nearly the same height; Jennie perhaps half an inch taller. Randolph reached for her shoulders—white and rounded as a Michelangelo in her pale evening gown. She had felt the headiness of their connection all night, but suddenly she wanted more—she wanted to feel his skin on hers. On impulse, heart racing, she took his left hand and slipped it inside her bodice.

  Randolph froze.

  She breathed his name and leaned toward him, her mouth parting under his.

  He felt the softness of her lips, her tongue, and broke from her quickly. His lips grazed her collarbone.

  Did he even think the phrase Marry me before he spoke it out loud?

  * * *

  —

  Pray take care, my own one, Jennie’s father wrote to her when he learned the news a week later. I fear if anything goes wrong, you will make a dreadful shipwreck of your affections. You were never born to love lightly.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You ride as well as I remember,” Kinsky remarked as he and Jennie halted in a clearing at the heart of the Sandringham woods.

  His voice was intimate, without the slightest reserve of a stranger. They might have known each other for years. Perhaps they had. Jennie felt herself lean mentally into Kinsky’s warmth. She was in the presence of a friend. She had learned with time and experience to distinguish them quickly from her subtle enemies.

  “My father threw me up on my first pony when I was two,” she said, with a hint of challenge.

  “So did mine.” Were his blue eyes laughing at her? “Forgive me for cropping your horse. It was unpardonable.”

  “But too tempting. I shall have to return the favor one day when you’re not looking, Count, and make a fool of you in Hyde Park.”

  “Will you ride with me, then, in London?”

  “If you happen to ask,” she said equably. “I try to get out every day, regardless of weather.”

  “And rarely alone. You’re very much in request, Lady Randolph.”

  “Which is why you find me bewitching.” She glanced at him knowingly. “Confess! If I were not in fashion, Count, we shouldn’t be ambling through the woods together. Isn’t notoriety its own reward?”

  “Nonsense. I’ve admired you for years. I looked for you everywhere after that ball in Ireland, but you were not to be found.”

  Had he? Surprising.

  “That’s because the Government fell,” Jennie explained, “and my father-in-law, the Duke of Marlborough, was no longer Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. We returned to England three years ago.”

  Kinsky urged The Scot into a walk to cool him. Jennie kept Candida at a slight distance; she did not want the little mare nipped or kicked.

  “Three years, Lady Randolph. But only just invited to Sandringham. Why?”

  “You’re curious about our exile?” Jennie managed an easy laugh. “How vulgar of you!” She could treat her humiliation as an absurdity now, but for months—years, even—Bertie’s rejection had stung. She had been very young when social disaster broke over her head. Proud enough, however, to show the world a smiling face.

  “Exile is a harsh word.”

  “An exaggeration, too. I shouldn’t complain about my time in Ireland—the countryside is lovely, and the hunting like nothing on this earth—as you know, of course, having been in the field with Sisi.” Jennie paused for an instant, weighing how much to tell him. “There are benefits to losing the Prince of Wales’s favor, Count. We lived very quietly. I hardly taxed my dress allowance, and my husband was much less idle than he might have preferred.” Jennie glanced at Kinsky in amusement. “Lord Randolph threw himself into politics and made a name for himself. Something Bertie never expected.”

  “And you?”

  “Supported my husband, naturally.” She must not betray the slightest chink in her armor. “We have new friends to replace the old. And some people, like Connie Mandeville, never deserted us.”

  “Why should she? I refuse to believe you could possibly offend anyone.”

  “I never said I did.” Jennie flashed Kinsky a smile, took up Candida’s reins, and urged the mare forward. “Come, Count. It’s too glorious a morning for gossip.”

  She broke into a canter beneath the canopy of trees, the mare’s hooves muffled by springy turf. This part of Norfolk was not far from the coast, and the ground underfoot was sandy in places and covered in others with dense falls of conifer needles. Jennie felt as though the tight band constricting her chest was finally loosening. She had been cooped up indoors too long; now she could breathe again. Bluebells were awakening everywhere in the wood—great drifts of vibrant color unfurling with the wet spring. It was enough for her to feel a kind of communion with Charles Kinsky that had everything to do with the horses surging beneath them and the morning slipping by in splotches of branch-riven sunlight. She had completely forgotten the young princesses she’d left behind.

  She reined in at the edge of the wood, overlooking broad pastureland and rising downs. Kinsky clattered to a halt beside her, his mount blowing.

  “You’ve finally tired The Scot,” she remarked. “Throw him over a few hedges, and he’ll be tame as a lamb all the way back to the stables.”

  “I’m not simply prying, you know.” Kinsky studied her profile. “I’m asking about your past out of self-preservation. Last night in Bertie’s card room, I mentioned our meeting in Ireland, and the most appalling silence fell. No one would look at me.”

  “Poor Count,” Jennie murmured. “It is hard to be a stranger among friends.”
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  “As you know too well, Lady Randolph. You’re no more English than I am.”

  Bastard. He pulled no punches.

  “Ah, but I have my compensations,” she returned mildly. “A remarkable degree of freedom is accorded American women in this country. More, perhaps, than in our own. And Bertie loves us so!”

  “Is that why you’re staying with the Prince—and your husband is not? Because you’re an American? Or is there some deeper mystery I’ve blundered into?”

  Jennie’s eyes narrowed. Kinsky was asking if she was Bertie’s mistress. Perhaps his desire to know had been the point of this conversation all along. The Prince of Wales collected around him the women he hoped to bed—and he’d spurred that odd ritual the previous evening, drawing lots for Jennie’s favor.

  Kinsky waited for her answer, his hand smoothing his horse’s black mane. His fingers were long and unexpectedly sensitive. Jennie could let him think she was spoken for. Or she could tell him the truth. Watching his hand on the horse’s neck, she felt a faint shudder at the base of her spine; to hide it, she rushed into speech. “The bad blood between the Prince and my husband is ridiculous, really. Lord Randolph’s older brother George—”

  “The Marquess of Blandford. We’ve met.”

  “—had a tawdry little affair with the Countess of Aylesford, while her husband was away in India with the Prince of Wales some years ago.”

  “Tawdry because the Countess was married?”

  “Tawdry because, instead of conducting his amours in private, my brother-in-law chose to throw them in the world’s face. He eloped with Edith to Paris,” Jennie returned impatiently. “She was delivered of a child there. Lord Aylesford obtained a legal separation, and Goosie—George’s wife—is divorcing him, to compound the scandal. But George can’t marry Edith until her husband dies. Which is just as George likes it. He says Edith’s good enough for a mistress, but not for a future Duchess of Marlborough.”

  “So your brother-in-law is a scrub and a cad.” Kinsky frowned. “Why should that affect your place in Society?”

  “Because Edith Aylesford was Bertie’s mistress before she was George’s.”

  He whistled softly under his breath. “The Prince punished the entire Churchill family out of jealousy over a woman?”

  “Oh, no. HRH never cared that much for Edith. No one can, poor thing.” Jennie slackened her reins and let Candida’s head drop so the mare could tear at the spring grass. “Bertie punished us because Randolph made Princess Alix cry.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My husband chose to take up his brother’s cause, you see. Which was extremely foolish.” How to explain that Randolph could be suicidally impulsive? “Edith Aylesford had a packet of love letters. Randolph thought he could use them.”

  “Letters from Blandford?”

  “From Bertie. Randolph carried the Prince’s letters straight to Alix at Buckingham Palace. He threatened to publish them—expose her husband as an adulterer—if HRH did not order Aylesford to take Edith back.”

  “Poor Alix,” Kinsky said softly. “Your husband is ruthless, Lady Randolph.”

  “When it suits his ends. Yes.”

  “But why in God’s name should Aylesford kill the rumors? He seems to me the only honorable person in the entire affair!”

  “No, no,” Jennie protested, amused. Fresh color rose in her cheeks. This was no gossip; Kinsky was trying sincerely to understand. “By separating from Edith, Aylesford brought scandal on everyone involved.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Not at all. Had he behaved like a gentleman and settled his differences with his wife in private, so much misery might have been avoided! But he refused. He left Edith no choice. She had to throw herself under Blandford’s protection and live notoriously in Paris.”

  Kinsky threw back his head and laughed.

  “Aylesford was the scrub and the cad, Count,” Jennie concluded furiously.

  “When I thought he was simply a cuckold, poor fellow. And Lord Randolph? What happened to him?”

  Disaster.

  Jennie flinched, recalling those months. The uncertainty of whether they’d receive an invitation; the suspense when they accepted, only to be hustled through their hosts’ back service entrance when the Prince unexpectedly arrived…

  “You know how priggish the Public is. Publishing Bertie’s love letters would have disgraced the monarchy. So Alix went to the Queen. Her Majesty has never approved of her son, but to avoid a scandal for the Crown…”

  “Victoria supported Bertie.”

  “Naturally. She summoned Randolph’s parents. She told them how he’d blackmailed the Princess. The Duke of Marlborough was mortified, of course. He offered to take us all out of England. The post of Lord Lieutenant in Dublin was open, so that’s where we fled.”

  To a house called White’s Lodge, in Phoenix Park, down the carriage sweep from the Viceroy’s residence. Jennie found the house comforting, a refuge after all the anxiety and distress of that hideous long winter. The Duke appointed Randolph his secretary to secure him a salary. A few of their friends crossed the North Sea from time to time. And Kinsky himself had come, to dance with her at Summerhill….

  “My poor father-in-law ordered my husband to write a letter of apology to Bertie,” Jennie added, “which Lord Randolph did. Bertie challenged him to a duel anyway.”

  “Good God,” Kinsky muttered. “They can’t have met at dawn.”

  “No,” she agreed. “To point a pistol at the Prince of Wales’s heart is high treason. Randolph refused the challenge, of course. And that actually made Bertie feel better—as though he’d proved Randy a coward without firing a shot! Banishing us from Society after that was just so much cream on his royal whiskers.”

  “And yet, here you are at Sandringham, Lady Randolph.” His gaze was disturbingly warm.

  “Here I am.” She inclined her head. “From persona non grata to valued guest. My style is too good and my husband too much of a political star for either of us to be ignored. Bertie has made peace. Randy remains in London, but he sends me as hostage.”

  “Farcical,” Kinsky snorted. “And the source of all the trouble, your brother-in-law Lord Blandford…”

  “Carries on happily to this day. George never quarreled with the Prince, you see.” Jennie gripped the reins. “There you have it, Count. The chief rule of British Society: Sleep where you like, but be in your own bed by morning.”

  The air between them was suddenly charged. Jennie felt her heart thud erratically.

  “If that’s an invitation,” Kinsky muttered, his eyes darkening, “I’ll have to call you Jennie.”

  Reckless, to reach for her with The Scot snorting beneath him. He ought to have been thrown from the saddle and taken Jennie with him. But the kiss flared in her like a match and she leaned in, wanting more, her hand on his coat collar. Charles groaned deep in his throat and his fingers tightened on her chin, her hair. For an instant the world swung dizzyingly—then she broke away.

  “I prefer Lady Randolph to Jennie,” she said breathlessly. “I worked too hard for my courtesy title, Count, to abandon it for you.”

  “As you like. My lady.” He was staring at her, deadly serious. “It won’t change this bond between us. I’ve felt it ever since Ireland.”

  Jennie caught the raw throb in his voice and wondered, Was he simply aroused? Or…oddly moved? She refused to ask that question of herself. Instead, she wheeled the mare and broke into a trot. It was pleasant enough to dally in the woods, but not when her response to Kinsky was so uncontrolled. She could not give him power over her. She gave no man that.

  “I don’t deal in bonds, sir,” she called back over her shoulder as she fled for the stables. “They’re too much like chains.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The young princesses, Maud and L
ouise, greeted Jennie with frantic relief when she clopped into Sandringham’s stable yard half an hour later. They were sure she had been thrown, and were only waiting for the mare to return without a rider before sending out a search party.

  “But of course, you were with the Count,” Louise sighed as Kinsky appeared in the arched gateway behind Jennie. “And with such an escort—so capable in the saddle—you must always have been safe.”

  “Goose! If I could not manage your mamma’s precious mare, I deserved to walk home! Never mount an animal you can’t handle.”

  If her words had a deeper meaning, only Kinsky caught it. His lips twitched as Jennie shooed the chattering princesses toward the castle, but he was enough of a gentleman not to laugh in her face.

  Jennie changed her forest-green riding habit for a suitable day dress of mushroom-colored silk, picked out with ravishing copper fringe. When she glimpsed her face in her bedroom mirror, she was startled by the feral light in her eyes, the high color in her cheeks. That could be due to the gallop through the awakening woods, but Jennie knew it was Charles Kinsky’s fault. His boldness intrigued her. And excited her. And, damn him, he would know that now—having felt her desire in his kiss. Jennie felt a flicker of annoyance and turned away from the mirror. Kinsky thought he could seduce her! When it was always she who determined the pace of her affairs, she who snapped her fingers for the next suitor! I shall have to punish him, she thought. Disappear for the rest of the day—but charm every other man within reach.

  Had he been aroused? Or moved?

  Aroused, she decided dismissively. Nothing but vanity really moved a man.

  “All by your lonesome, Jennie?” Minnie Paget inquired as Jennie stepped into the passage and pulled her bedchamber door closed behind her. “How singular! I cannot remember when I last saw you without some fellow on your arm.”

  Minnie was wearing last year’s gown this morning, blatantly dressed up with this year’s lace.