That Churchill Woman Page 5

  “Now that you mention it,” Jennie returned thoughtfully, “neither can I! Particularly when leaving my bedroom. How are you enjoying your stay at Sandringham, Minnie? We’ve barely had a moment to talk.”

  She smiled pleasantly, aware of the hardness in her old friend’s eyes. Minnie surveyed Jennie’s mushroom silk, and her thin lips compressed. Arthur Paget was known to have married her in expectation of a staggering fortune—ten million dollars was bequeathed Minnie in her father’s will—but the estate was hopelessly tangled in litigation in the New York courts. Minnie viewed the world solely in terms of gains and losses. If Jennie gained—in happiness, influence, or social esteem—Minnie somehow lost. Although she would proclaim the depth of their attachment and mutual devotion to anyone who’d listen, Minnie would only be truly satisfied when Jennie was ruined, or died. And they both knew it.

  “Is it possible you made only a slight impression on Count Kinsky?” Minnie marveled. “Though I must suppose he is accustomed to the very best circles in Europe. Dallying with the mother of two schoolboys can hardly be to such a man’s taste—he is barely out of the schoolroom himself.”

  “We didn’t talk of my boys when we rode this morning.” Jennie slipped her arm through Minnie’s with a roguish smile. “Count Kinsky is a bruising enough rider, of course, but found it hard to keep up with me. I daresay he saved his breath for the chase, Minnie.”

  * * *

  —

  Jennie practiced duets with Princess Alix in the comfortable sitting room Her Royal Highness kept for the purpose, filled with pale Swedish chairs and a vicious gray parrot who ruled everyone in Alix’s orbit. It was a sign of Jennie’s intimacy that she was admitted to the secret of the Princess’s deafness, a progressive condition Alix fought with increasing despair. There were matching pianos, side by side, so that Alix could feel the percussive beat of the keys and attempt to keep time. Jennie found it restful to spend a few hours this way, freed of the necessity of social chatter, in the presence of a woman who felt Chopin in her veins. When they played the last trilling notes, Alix sighed deeply, and kissed Jennie on the cheek.

  “I shall rest now,” she murmured, as Jennie went in search of Consuelo Mandeville.

  She found Connie in the billiards room. It was a dusky and intimate space overlooking the garden, lined with gingerbread carstone that gave it warmth on wet days. Bertie had built a bowling alley next door in the same style—for the amusement of my American guests, he said. Minnie played at ninepins occasionally to gratify the Prince, but Jennie and Consuelo preferred pool.

  The Viscountess liked to sharpen her game while the men were out shooting. Her mother-in-law, Louise, Duchess of Manchester, sat perched on the edge of a deep leather chesterfield that ran along one wall. Hunting prints were framed on the wall above the sofa, and higher still was a row of antlered heads, shot by Bertie and his guests.

  The Marquess of Hartington lounged next to Louise, whom everyone called Lottie; he’d been in love with her for years, although she was another man’s duchess. Like Consuelo, Louise and Hart were smoking cigars.

  “Take a cue, Jennie,” Connie suggested.

  They had learned to shoot pool together in Jennie’s vast home on Madison Square during the winter of 1866, when both girls were twelve. Jennie’s father had challenged them to penny points while the snow fell outside the windows and cigar smoke curled above his head. Afterward Leonard Jerome had driven the two giddy girls in his horse-drawn sleigh to a confectioner’s and allowed them to spend their winnings. Whenever she smelled tobacco smoke, Jennie remembered the firelight in that beloved room and her father’s voice.

  “Stripes or solids, Connie?”

  “You’re stripes.”

  Jennie surveyed the table. Called her pocket and ball. It dropped with a satisfying sound.

  “We missed you at breakfast, Jane,” Hart remarked. “Where have you been?”

  “Out in the fresh air and mud. As you suggested.”

  “That explains Kinsky’s absence from breakfast, too,” Connie murmured. “Did he show you his paces?”

  Jennie ignored her and dropped a second striped ball.

  “He is a distant cousin of mine,” Lottie observed. She had been born in Hanover, a Countess von Alten. “As no doubt you discerned from his remarkable good looks.”

  “Fellow making a nuisance of himself?” Hart asked.

  Jennie smiled. “Not yet, thank you.”

  “But she has hopes,” Connie added.

  “You wretch.” Jennie missed the third pocket and rested her cue. “When I’ve hidden myself away on purpose!”

  “Hiding has never been one of your talents.” Connie bent low over the green baize surface. A tall figure had appeared in the doorway, leaning against the lintel, blue eyes intent and focused. Following the players and the game.

  Jennie kept her back to the door, cue upright, as she waited on Connie’s shot. But her heart caught in her throat and she knew that it would be like this now, from this day forward. She would sense instinctively whenever Kinsky breathed her air.

  * * *

  —

  By the time she had exchanged the mushroom silk for a tea dress the color of wood violets, and still later for a silver evening gown and high-heeled slippers, Jennie was forced to admit that the only thing more frustrating than being alone with Charles Kinsky was to be separated from him by a crowd. Dinner, usually so swift at Sandringham, was endless torment. She was seated near the Prince of Wales, at the head of the table. Despite her drollest attempts at conversation, Bertie’s heavy-lidded gaze never lifted from her heart-shaped neckline and the seven-pointed diamond star she’d set tonight in her cleavage. The length of the table separated her from Kinsky, at Princess Alix’s left hand. Alix was prim perfection in lavender silk overlaid with Nottingham lace. An opulent five-stranded dog collar of pearls circled her neck. It hid a disfiguring burn or scar; nobody but Bertie knew which. The Princess’s wide and lovely eyes were trained on Kinsky’s mouth; he leaned close when he spoke to her, intimate as a lover. Jennie guessed this was nothing more than the Count’s accommodation of Alix’s deafness and her attempt to lip-read. But Jennie’s distracted gaze strayed far too often to the foot of the table.

  Minnie Paget was seated at Kinsky’s left, waiting impatiently for the change in courses, when she might claim him from the Princess.

  George Curzon, the MP who’d clamored for her arm the previous evening, sat beside Jennie. He idolized her husband, Randolph; the two men had Eton and Oxford in common, but George was barely down from school, ivory-skinned and blond-haired, with cheeks that burned bright red when he argued.

  “Randy must be in the Cabinet when Gladstone falls,” he assured Jennie rather too loudly. “The party leadership owe him that! He’s the reason we’ll be swept into power. The common man loves Randy.”

  She sensed the genteel conversations all around them falter. Minnie Paget’s head turned sharply, her red lips parted on a suspended word. Even Kinsky had torn his attention away from Princess Alix. Jennie could feel the weight of his stare, like a warm hand on her neck. She continued to smile faintly, as though Curzon had not just suggested her black sheep of a husband was likely to overthrow Bertie’s favorite Prime Minister.

  Hartington, the most senior Cabinet member at Sandringham, shifted in his chair directly across from Jennie, dark head lifted to the elaborate plasterwork ceiling. “Gladstone is as safe as houses,” he muttered, with undisguised contempt. “Particularly from Little Lord Random.”

  Curzon, too junior to challenge the Minister for War, flushed scarlet.

  “Gladstone may be safe tonight,” Jennie murmured. Was it a spark of loyalty to her outrageous husband—or because Kinsky was watching her? “But next week, my dear Marquess? Next month? Who can say? Lord Randolph always confounds expectation.”

  “Just as you defy it, my
dear,” Hart retorted dryly.

  “Hear, hear,” Curzon said in Jennie’s ear. And drained his claret glass.

  * * *

  —

  After dinner, Princess Alix begged Jennie to play Chopin. Her heart surged toward the Princess, who asked so little of her guests and whose kindness never permitted her to gossip or misjudge. Alix was one of the few transparently good people Jennie knew, utterly free of guile or malice. “I should be delighted,” she replied. “In the privacy of your rooms, Your Highness?”

  “No, no,” Alix rejoined. “I could not be so selfish. A talent such as yours, dear Lady Randolph, was meant to be shared.”

  In groups of twos and threes the house party drifted toward the music room, a high-ceilinged space lined in pale gold damask. The piano was set at one end, the only dark piece in the room; a perfect foil for Jennie’s black hair and silver gown. She would scintillate over the keys like a flash of moonlight. As she arranged her skirts, three men hurried to turn the sheet music for her. But Kinsky reached the piano first.

  “Normally I play from memory.” She kept her eyes serenely on the music, avoiding the clean line of his jaw. He had shaved again before dinner; the dark bloom on chin and cheekbone she’d glimpsed during tea in the Small Drawing Room was gone. What would it feel like, to sweep the back of her hand along that curve of bone? “This particular piece is a favorite of the Princess’s, but I haven’t mastered it yet.”

  It was no. 19, in E-flat Major, one of the most difficult of Chopin’s twenty-four preludes. The tempo was vivace, with continuous, triplet-quaver movements in both hands, spanning at times fourteen notes. A joyous and yet yearning piece—exactly the romantic mood Alix preferred. The Princess had placed her chair quite near the piano to catch as much of the music as her deafness allowed.

  Jennie glanced sidelong at Kinsky, her fingers poised over the keys, and nodded her head to begin.

  He was silent and concentrated as he followed her glinting progress through the piece. The Count could read music, Jennie realized; he turned the pages with precision. She made two errors in fingering and noted them in a corner of her disciplined mind. No one but Kinsky would notice. Still, she must practice the prelude again in the morning.

  “Brava,” he said as she struck the final chords, and applause rippled across the room. “I had no idea you were so accomplished.”

  Jennie wrinkled her nose at him. She loathed the word. Accomplished was for women who netted purses and embroidered screens. Not for virtuosos impassioned with music.

  “Indeed, and I’m not,” she retorted.

  “Indeed, and she is,” Consuelo interjected as she joined them. She had traded her emerald combs for rubies this evening. They flashed from platinum branches woven through her hair. Connie’s velvet gown was a deep claret, Jennie noticed, molded to her body. Exquisitely touchable. “Lady Randolph studied with one of Chopin’s disciples, Count, when we were girls together in Paris. Four hours a day. We trot her out whenever there’s a charity concert, as our particular trained bear.”

  “Panther,” Jennie murmured wickedly.

  “Beast,” Consuelo retorted, smiling.

  Princess Alix bid her friends good night, releasing them all. The gentlemen quitted the music room for cards. But Charles Kinsky lingered.

  He took Jennie’s place at the piano, hands raised.

  “Do you play?” she asked, surprised. Few gentlemen did.

  By way of answer, he launched into his own bit of Chopin, from memory.

  It was no. 8, the prelude in F-sharp Minor. Another difficult piece, but one that tore at Jennie’s soul. One of Chopin’s admirers had called it “Desperation.” To Jennie it sounded like a woman racing headlong down a flight of stairs—a terrified woman, fleeing what she most feared. Only to come face-to-face with it on the final step.

  What do I fear? Jennie demanded of herself.

  The loss of self-control. The loss of my freedom, to live as I choose. Live as I must.

  Kinsky played the prelude unerringly. His dark head was bent to the keys, oblivious of his audience; his torso swayed with the swell of sound.

  Emotion so deep and wide it drowns me.

  She would always be terrified of that.

  Jennie sank onto a settee beside Consuelo and closed her eyes. The notes multiplied around them, heartrending and unconsoled. As they rippled over her, Jennie could almost feel Kinsky’s fingers on her skin. She ought to leave the room, she knew—walk out alone into the dark April night—but she stayed where she was. Her hands balled into fists in her lap.

  Charles Kinsky was determined to seduce her. He could not be ignored; he would have to be beaten. Jennie knew suddenly how to shatter his particular power. Make it commonplace. She would treat him like any other man who had ever wanted her.

  Just snap her fingers. And be the one to choose.

  The last phrase of music died away. Kinsky’s hands drifted to his thighs and rested there an instant, as though he were gathering himself. Then he rose from the bench and bent over Jennie’s palm.

  “Come to me tonight,” she whispered, low enough that Consuelo could not hear. “Or never come to me again.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  That was how it began: with a battle royal in the wee hours of an April morning, Jennie lying on her chaise longue in the Prince of Wales’s country house by a dying fire, no other light in the room. Her body free of its stays and confining layers beneath a peignoir of silk chiffon and lace. Her thick black hair unbound. Her maid asleep. Her thoughts fixed firmly on the man who was about to enter her room in a fever of desire.

  She had taken lovers for years with Randolph’s indifferent blessing. Pleasure was too great a game not to play. As long as the rules were observed, it was completely safe. Only once had she made a mistake—years ago, in Ireland—and her younger son, Jack, was the result. Randolph claimed both boys without hesitation. He preferred Jack to Winston, his own child.

  It was vital to teach Kinsky her one rule: Pleasure was delightful, but love was never allowed. Love was misery. Love destroyed lives. The value of an affaire was that both parties were free—neither could trap or ruin the other. They could part ways at any moment without hard words or hurt feelings. Charles was young; he had a brilliant career ahead of him. She was the consort of a powerful man. Neither of them needed more than this.

  She was thinking these things as the handle of her door turned. Every hinge at Sandringham was well oiled; Bertie made sure of it. She stared at the shadow that gradually became Charles, standing potently in her doorway.

  Somewhere, a clock struck the hour.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Big Ben tolled out the strokes of nine o’clock.

  Randolph Churchill was bent over his desk in the library of the Connaught Place house, his pen scratching at one of his speeches. His private secretary, Alasdair Gordon, lounged with legs crossed in a club chair nearby. He was a beautiful Etonian youth of twenty-one with porcelain skin, golden hair, a poet’s full lips. Alasdair couldn’t write worth a damn, but he answered letters efficiently and the perfection of his Greek profile made Randolph’s throat ache. His father was an impoverished clergyman in Sussex; Alasdair hoped for political advancement and a steady salary. In return, Randolph asked for nothing more than to look at Alasdair from time to time, as he might a rare object of art.

  The press called Churchill Little Lord Random—he was admittedly rather short and his outbursts in Parliament were often startling—and Dandy Randy. At thirty-four he was thin to the point of gauntness; the caricatures in Punch showed him stoop-shouldered and bandy-legged, all head and no body. His enormous mustache emphasized the absurdity of his brown spaniel eyes. Randolph embraced and even exaggerated his physical oddities—flaunting foppish clothes and jewelry—just like his political idol, the late Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Not long after they married, Jennie had given h
im a diamond ring in the shape of a cross. He wore it carelessly on his right hand. It flashed now in the electric lamplight as he offered Alasdair the pages of his speech.

  “What do you think?”

  Alasdair scanned the lines. One forefinger rested against his temple as he read. Randolph’s gaze fixed on the pure lines of skull and bone until Alasdair’s green eyes lifted from the page. “It seems rather intemperate to call the Government whore-mongers, my lord. The press is sure to seize on the vulgarity.”

  “For what else do we live, Gordon?” Randolph sighed. “But you’re right; perhaps implication is preferable to insult.”

  Alasdair was gazing beyond him. A bustle from the hall informed them both that Lady Randolph had come home.

  * * *

  —

  Jennie stopped short in the pool of light at the library threshold, allowing her eyes to adjust. She had insisted on electrifying the house when they bought it the previous year. Nobody in London trusted the violent new form of power. During her last visit to New York, however, she had seen how brilliantly lit the private homes and streets of lower Manhattan were. Papa had assured her electricity was perfectly safe, and paid for the generator she installed in her cellar. It made considerable noise but they had all grown used to the steady growl in the bowels of the house, as though it were the pulse of a living beast. And Randolph, whose eyes were frequently tired, had come to rely upon the light.

  He and his secretary rose to their feet when she appeared.

  “Hullo, Jennie. Had a good time in the country?”

  “Yes, thank you. I’m a little weary from the journey.” Several hours by rail, chilled with persistent rain and the tedium of having only her maid, Gentry, in the compartment to amuse her. A few periodicals. Bars of music and nagging, vivid memories of Charles skimming across her mind. “You’ve both dined?”