That Churchill Woman Read online

  Charles Kinsky stood beyond the baize door, impeccable in a dark gray swallow-tailed frock coat and a silk top hat.

  “Count! How did you guess I was here?”

  He bent low over her hand. “Everyone in London knows you’re obsessed with politics, Lady Randolph.”

  “When my husband is speaking—naturally.”

  Important to remind him they were in public now. That she was off-limits. The highly visible wife of a rising political star.

  He drew out a chair for her at one of the little tables scattered about the gallery’s anteroom and waited until Jennie settled her heavy wine-colored skirts. A waiter from the Members’ Dining Room hovered, a silver tea tray in his hands. She had already had tea in Connaught Place, but after listening to Mr. Stansfield’s apoplectic phrases, Jennie felt she could do with another cup.

  “Lord Randolph is an impressive speaker,” Charles remarked as he took the chair opposite.

  “You were listening to the debate in the Diplomats’ Gallery?”

  “Following Parliament is one of my duties.”

  “Duty? A strange word in the mouth of a prince!”

  His teeth flashed. “You think I only race horses?”

  “Of course not. I…”

  Her voice trailed away. She knew a bit about Charles Kinsky’s body…but what about his heart or mind? He was attached to his embassy, a representative of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with a future in European politics. She had managed to forget all that at Sandringham. Lord help her if Charles was determined to be intelligent and complicated. She didn’t need another distraction in her life.

  “Although the Times says it’s just acting,” he persisted. “That Lord Randolph doesn’t believe twenty words of what he says. What do you think, my lady?”

  “I think the Times prefers its politicians dull. They’re easier to ignore that way. Randolph is passionate about his beliefs.”

  Charles lifted his brows. “The Spectator calls it epilepsy, not passion. An uncontrolled spasm, from a man drunk on words.”

  “The Spectator is a Liberal Party rag.”

  He laughed. “I forgot. You actually read newspapers, don’t you?”

  “What’s worse, I even understand them,” she retorted. “I was raised on newsprint, Count. When I was young, my father used a Gatling gun to defend the front entrance of The New York Times from a riot. That’s the power of the press.”

  “Tory Democracy, in fact!” He repeated Randolph’s battle cry with mock surprise. “Lord Randolph and his friends like to talk about it—but did you come up with the name, my lady? It has a peculiarly American ring.”

  “My husband has his own brilliance, Count; he has no need of mine.”

  Charles eased back in his chair. It framed the beauty of his profile beneath the top hat, the clean lines of his tailored shoulders. Jennie had a swift sense of animal power, leashed and perfectly contained. Her combative impulses amused him. But his self-control stung like a challenge. Unleash me.

  Stop it, she scolded herself.

  “Have you any notion of the fear your husband and his rabble-rousing have sent through Europe?” Charles inquired. “England sets the tone of world politics, Lady Randolph. If the common people are allowed to think they have a voice in government, we’re all doomed.”

  “You being the nobility. We Americans are absurdly proud of our common people. We even elect them.”

  “You’re not in New York anymore.” His eyes moved over her lazily. “Anyone in a position of power should be threatened by your husband’s bombast. I send reams of dispatches home about Lord Randolph. He’s stirring the mob to revolt. We’re holding our breath in Vienna to see what he does next.”

  “So you’re a spy, Count Kinsky,” Jennie marveled. “That’s why you make up to me! To learn my husband’s secrets.”

  “I make up to you,” he countered quietly, “because I’m in love with you, Jennie. You’re the most consuming woman I’ve ever met.”

  Her breath caught in her throat, painfully. “Don’t.”

  “I haven’t slept since Friday. I’ll probably never sleep again.”

  Complicated, damn him.

  “That’s not love, Count. That’s lust. Easily satisfied.”

  He removed one of his gloves, finger by finger. His sensitive hand—exquisitely expressive, crying out for touch—placed the leather deliberately across her empty teacup. A twist on the traditional gentleman’s challenge, to a liar or a cheat. He could hardly slap her cheek in the Speaker’s anteroom.

  “Go on,” he muttered. “Satisfy it, then.”

  A tremor ran through her. She leaned toward him, furious, eyes narrowed. “Would you thrust a quarrel on me?”

  “I prefer an affair of honor.”

  The air between them was singing and charged.

  How much did he want of her? How much would he try to take?

  “My father taught me never to refuse a challenge,” Jennie said.

  “I’d hoped he might.” He fingered her wrist, casual, searing. “Let me drive you home.”

  The world swung on its axis. The two of them, in a closed carriage—darkness falling outside—her fingers in his hair—

  “Jennie,” he whispered, deep in his throat.

  “Very well.” She drew back, her skin tingling. “If you promise not to talk nonsense.”

  He eased his hand into his glove.

  “Never fear, my lady. I won’t say a word.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The resolution condemning the physical examination of women under the Contagious Diseases Act went down to defeat in Commons. Enough Liberals and Conservatives agreed that the enforced medical treatment of prostitutes for syphilis was necessary to the defense of the realm.

  Jennie was privately thrilled to see that Randolph’s speech received special notice in the morning papers, particularly his exhortation that women were not cows to be penned and dosed for the bull. She had taken special pains with that line.

  He was unwell for the rest of the week. He spent most days in a peacock-blue dressing gown and slippers, talking feverishly of Tory Democracy to his secretary, Alasdair. Jennie knew that the excitement of debate worked badly upon Randolph’s nerves. He summoned his wit and will to consider a problem, compose an inflammatory speech, and deliver it with verve—only to be left depleted and low. For him, there was no moderation, no living in between. Randy was either up with the angels or down with the devil.

  He could hurt her viciously and carelessly in this mood, irritated by the slightest lapse in his routine, or Jennie’s failure to cater to his prodigious needs.

  “Mary is in tears,” she told him indignantly one morning as she brushed past the weeping housemaid in the upper hall and halted in Randolph’s doorway. “What can you have done to upset her so?”

  “Threw a slipper at her head,” he replied furiously. He was bundled in his bed, his thin cheeks livid and his eyes red. “She dropped a coal in the grate as she laid the fire. Utterly destroyed what shreds of sleep I’d managed. Give her notice.”

  “Indeed, and I will not.” Jennie folded her arms. “She’s an excellent housemaid and they’re difficult to find.”

  “She’s a barbarian from Kerry. Give her notice.”

  “I shall apologize, as I see you’re incapable of it.” Jennie turned away.

  “Do that, and you have my leave to pack up with her!” he shouted. “No mistress of breeding would take the part of a slattern against her husband. But I forgot—you were bred to spend money, not manage a genteel household.”

  As she pulled closed his door, a second slipper hurtled against the mahogany.

  Jennie avoided him the rest of the day, but ventured to the library when Arthur Balfour called to escort her to an evening concert of Liszt. Her husband was smoking by the fire with a racing form on
his lap and his feet propped on an ottoman. Arthur had been at Eton with Randy; he was immune to his insults.

  “You’ll rally, old son,” he said bracingly as he clapped Randolph’s shoulder. “What you need is something to take you out of yourself. An issue with teeth in it. Tell us what’s next!”

  “A Cabinet portfolio,” Randolph drawled around his cigar. “Or the Abbey.”

  “I hate it when you talk like that,” Jennie snorted. By Westminster Abbey, Randolph meant death. A state funeral. He was only thirty-four years old.

  “Then Cabinet post it shall be,” Balfour interposed comfortably, and carried her off to the Royal Albert Hall.

  She listened intently to the Liszt, imagining fingering, keeping time on Balfour’s sleeve. He was enough of a musician himself not to mind or notice. Jennie felt suddenly lighter, free of Connaught Place and her husband’s gloom.

  “You’re positively radiant, my dear,” Arthur told her during the interval, as they strolled arm in arm through the lobby, nodding to acquaintances and drinking champagne. He was brown-haired, tall, aloof, and indolent; a bent question mark of a figure in Punch caricatures. Landowning Scots forebears were the source of his fortune; his uncle, Robert Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, the source of his political pull. Balfour would be PM one day, so the wags said—although, of course, they said the same of Randolph. “I’ve never seen you in greater beauty. Is that a new gown, or are you in love?”

  “I never have a new gown, Arthur,” Jennie mourned. “Only old ones, made over. You saw this last season, without the beads and flounce. We’re too poor for extravagance, as you very well know. If only Papa would come about again! He used to be quite a wealthy man—but of late, he’s rather let us down. Only two thousand a year. Think what that means! Hardly enough to order a single costume.”

  “If it’s covered in diamonds!” Arthur scoffed. “Don’t let Randy’s constituents hear you pine, Jennie. Two thousand’s a fortune to a blacksmith in Woodstock. I daresay the Duke hasn’t much more.”

  “Ten times at least.”

  “Rubbish. His Grace has Blenheim to maintain. Whereas you merely keep the best cook in London. I hear the Prince of Wales means to lure Rosa away to Marlborough House.”

  “He shan’t succeed,” Jennie vowed. “We do not speak of luxuries, Arthur. Rosa is a necessity to any political hostess. I’ll pay whatever she asks to refuse Bertie.”

  “Then if it’s not the gown that’s brought up your color,” he said speculatively, “who’s the lucky fellow?”

  Jennie gave Arthur her most engaging smile. He was a dear, and had no interest in women since the cousin he’d hoped to marry had died young of typhus. Every compliment he paid her was pure. “Truly—would you guess I was a day older than twenty-four?”

  “Are you?” he inquired.

  “I’ve reached the age of danger.” She dropped her voice. “My next birthday I shall be thirty, Arthur.”

  “We can’t have known each other that long. You’re twenty-two, at the outside.”

  “Don’t shame me. Winston is nearly nine.”

  “So he is.” He looked down into her laughing eyes. “Who’s turned your head? Can’t be Freddie Burnaby. He’s well enough in an idle hour—but he’s as thick as a post. And utterly unmusical.”

  “Perhaps he’ll be posted abroad.”

  “Then it must be that Kinsky fellow—I noticed you riding with him in the park.”

  Jennie had come down to breakfast the day after Randolph’s speech to discover a new sidesaddle waiting for her, delivered with the Count’s compliments. It was a perfection of supple leather with a beautifully padded pommel; naturally, she couldn’t rest until she had thrown herself up on a horse. She had ridden with Kinsky three times that week. But Rotten Row offered no scope for a good gallop—

  “Dashing enough,” Arthur conceded, “but I daresay he’s a rake.”

  “I like rakes,” she reminded him merrily. “But you know I never play favorites, Arthur. I can hardly remember all my admirers’ names.”

  “You’re wise not to be particular. It sets the hags’ tongues wagging.”

  “Lord knows there are enough of them in London.” She inclined her head toward Eliza Brand, the Speaker’s wife, who glanced aside without a smile, as though absorbed in her partner Lord Rosebery’s conversation. “I have Randolph’s career to consider.”

  “As do we all.” Arthur took her champagne from her hand. “He’ll either sweep the Conservatives into power with his calculated abuse—or bring us to the gates of Hell.”

  “Which do you think it shall be?” Jennie asked lightly.

  Arthur’s gaze met hers, suddenly serious. “Even odds, my dear. But the race is bound to entertain, however it ends.”

  * * *

  —

  Randolph was persistently depressed through the early weeks of May. He slept badly, ran low fevers, and his delicate skin erupted in hives. The clamor of London, he complained petulantly, made thought and work impossible. He needed the complete rest only the country could provide. He packed up Alasdair and Walden, his valet, and went to his mother at Blenheim Palace, the vast treasure house of stone west of Oxford. He did not invite Jennie to join him, and she was relieved to be spared the ordeal; Blenheim was magnificent, of course—but primitive and cold. She had never been anything but miserable there. She could wave with real enthusiasm as Randolph’s hansom pulled away for Paddington.

  Randolph’s mamma, Duchess Fanny, had borne the Duke eleven children, six of them girls. Three of her sons had died in boyhood. The two who remained were often a test to her Christian faith and principles. The Duchess abhorred the wild behavior of Blandford, heir to the dukedom, and mourned Randolph’s marriage to an American of no family. She never bothered to hide her dislike of Jennie, whom she judged to be too showy, too opinionated, and far too much in the public eye. Worse, Jennie had nowhere near the fortune Randolph had hoped. The Duchess’s greatest joy was when her son came back to Blenheim alone.

  “Is it possible that your wife has still no notion of how to care for you?” she asked the evening he arrived, as he lounged in a chair by the Long Library fire. It was an enormous white tunnel of a room, 180 feet long and three stories high, designed by Christopher Wren. A gallery, really, meant to display ancestral Marlborough portraits and massive scenes of Marlborough exploits. There was not much art and few books, however; Randolph’s father had been forced to sell them to make ends meet. The Sunderland Library, as the collection was called, had fetched nearly sixty thousand pounds on the auction block.

  “No one cares for me as you do, Mamma,” Randolph replied, amused.

  “If Jeanette were not so restless…I am sure she is never at home two nights together!”

  “If it comes to that, neither am I.”

  “Rosamund informs me that one may meet with her in four different drawing rooms of a single evening.”

  Randolph’s sister Rosamund was a year older and utterly devoted to her little brother. She was married to William Fellowes, a Conservative MP. “Rosie is in all the same drawing rooms,” Randolph said. “That’s a life in politics for you.”

  “Impossible. Rosamund was confined barely three months since.”

  “And couldn’t fight her way free of the nursery soon enough.” He knocked his pipe tobacco onto the coals, then pressed his fingers irritably against his eyes. “I’m afraid I’m rather fagged, Mamma. Have I time to lie down before dinner?”

  “Poor boy,” Fanny murmured, stroking his hair. His forehead was clammy, although the library was riven with drafts. “The Commons have worn you out. I shall have Benson bring up a tray to your room.”

  * * *

  —

  Jennie went down to Sandringham again in Randolph’s absence and galloped every day with Charles Kinsky, through woods brimming with bluebells. There was a high glow
to her skin and her amber eyes sparkled brilliantly in the Princess’s candlelit dining room. By day, Jennie played the piano with Alix and bowled with the Prince and his friends. She laughed often and her conversation was exuberantly witty. Harry Cust persuaded them all to write riddles and charades in the evening. This was how, on one occasion, Jennie was discovered by a scandalized footman with her right foot kicked high above her head, revealing—as he later told a shocked royal servants’ hall—a most dreadful display. All the gentlemen were circled around her, crowing and clapping as though she were on a Parisian stage; the footman swore he had not known where to look. Jennie’s charade was can-can, and she could find no other way to demonstrate it; but even Consuelo Mandeville felt she might have gone too far.

  “Upon my word,” Minnie murmured to Connie one evening as Kinsky played Beethoven in the Princess’s music room. Jennie was turning the pages for him, absorbed in her task, her white neck arched over the Count’s shoulder. “I do think Lady Randolph might practice a bit of discretion! Never mind the rest of the men she delights in leading by the nose—the way she looks at Kinsky is a scandal! Bertie will have the poor man recalled to Vienna. It never pays to hunt in a monarch’s preserve.”

  “You think the Prince is jealous?” Consuelo Mandeville frowned.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Not at all,” Connie replied smoothly. “But I know who is.”

  Minnie forced a brittle smile and moved away in search of coffee. Her husband, Arthur Paget, was a soldier currently posted abroad; Minnie survived her straitened financial situation by spending months at a time in the houses of friends. She repaid them with gossip. When there was no scandal to feed on, she did her best to create one. Not everyone believed what Minnie Paget said, but her whispers could be damaging.

  “Jennie,” Connie murmured as she paused in the dark-paneled passage outside her friend’s bedroom that night, the drafts twisting shadows from their twin candles, “you must have a care. The Paget has her knives out.”