A Stranger in Mayfair - Charles Finch [72]
Chapter Thirty-Six
A whole cloud of associations and small incidents had sent forth this lightning bolt. They were separately inconclusive but together powerful. Foremost in Lenox’s mind was the ring.
It was exactly the kind of ring that Lenox’s father had given Edmund long ago, when he turned twenty-one. Each ring had an element of its family’s crest embossed on it—a griffin for the Starlings, and for the Lenoxes a lion. Each was meant to be worn on the smallest finger of the left hand, but rarely came out of a locked case. Engraved inside Lenox’s father’s ring had been his initials, and now there were Edmund’s opposite it; inside Starling’s old ring were LS and FC, for Ludovic Starling and Frederick Clarke. Father and son.
That wasn’t all, though; something ineffable in Mrs. Clarke’s tone told Lenox he was right. Pacing for some time along the length of his library, the din of the party for background noise, he at last stood still and then threw himself onto the sofa. What had it been? A sense of betrayal, perhaps, or anger at Ludo. She didn’t suspect Ludo—he was an old love—but she blamed him.
And she had called him Ludovic! She had quickly checked herself, but she had unmistakably mentioned him by his first name.
Then, in the dark workings of his mind, he remembered another fact. She had come from Cambridge, and Ludo had once lived in Cambridge—at Downing, where Alfred was a student now. They were roughly the same age, Mrs. Clarke and Ludo Starling, and she—she was still quite striking. Not beautiful or soft or even very feminine, like Elizabeth Starling, but a woman with whom a gentleman of a certain kind could undoubtedly fall in love.
She still had no husband, Clarke being perhaps a fiction invented as she went off and had the child on her own somewhere private, with Ludo’s money. What had she done? Sent her fictional husband off with the army and had him fictionally killed?
Lenox smacked his head—Ludo’s money. “Of course,” he muttered.
There hadn’t been any uncle’s inheritance. What kind of London housemaid had an uncle rich enough to see her retire upon his death? She had bought her pub with Starling money, and raised Clarke with Starling money, too. It all made so much sense.
Dallington was due to come to the party but hadn’t arrived yet when Lenox retreated to his library. Now he went down the hallway, back toward the lively noise, to see if he could find his apprentice.
“There you are,” said Lady Jane, face smiling but voice steely. “Where have you been?”
“I’m sorry—truly I’m sorry. I lost track of time. Is Dallington here?”
“You’re not leaving, are you? You can’t, Charles.”
“No—no, I shan’t. There he is. I see him. His mother is wiping something from his chin and he’s pushing her hand away—look.”
His mind racing with possibilities, Lenox went over and coughed softly behind Dallington’s back.
“Oh! There you are,” said the young man. Dressed as discriminatingly as ever, a fragrant white carnation pinned in his buttonhole, he turned to face Lenox and smiled. “It’s the worst party I ever went to, if I can be candid.”
Lenox forgot the case for a moment and frowned. “Oh?”
“Too many people I want to speak to, and I can’t imagine it will run into breakfast; I’ll be sorely disappointed when I leave that I didn’t get to speak to this one or that. There’s an art to parties—there must be boring people, too, so we don’t feel too regretful when we leave.”
Lenox laughed. “A finely paid compliment. Listen, though—about the case.”
Dallington’s eyes narrowed with interest. “Yes? Shall we go somewhere quieter?”
“We can’t, sadly—Jane—well, we can’t. But I’ve figured something strange, I think. Freddie Clarke was Ludo Starling’s natural son.”
“He was a bastard!” whispered Dallington, deeply moved. The look of astonishment on his face was gratifying. “How on earth do you reckon that?”
Lenox told Dallington quickly how this epiphany had come about. “I don’t swear by it,” he said last of all, “but I feel in my mind that it must be right. It would explain so much.”
Dallington, lost in thought, had stopped