A Stranger in Mayfair - Charles Finch [98]
“Could I ask you another question?” asked Lenox at length.
“Oh? What’s that?” asked Ludo, startled from a reverie. “Of course.”
“The title—was that only important to Elizabeth? That Alfred should inherit? Or that there should be a title at all?”
“You’re a mind reader, I sometimes think. It was the subject that was just in my head.” He settled back in his chair, a pensive look on his face. “You’ve heard of old Cheshire Starling, I assume?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You’ve no idea what it’s like to have as your first landed ancestor a common man—a blacksmith, no less. We could have owned three-quarters of Wiltshire and none of the families there would have cared about us. Oh, there were the merchants. To be sure we were above them, or the new generations. We had some status. We built churches.
“But a blacksmith! My father brooded about it every day of his life. When I did something wrong I was the son of a whore and a smith to him. When we were snubbed by the Duke of Argyllshire it was ‘Back to the hammer and tongs.’ It was the worst terror to be taken out to the smithy and beaten by the blacksmith there.”
Lenox didn’t speak; Ludo, lost in reminiscence, didn’t seem to mind.
“Elizabeth made it worse. Her father was a lord, yes, but only an Irish lord…I think we—what is it called when two people live inside the same dream together, Lenox?”
“I don’t know.”
“There must be a word for it.” He waved a dismissive hand and stood up. “It’s all history now, anyway. I’m taking Marie, too, with me. To the Hall. Marie Clarke. Perhaps she’ll forgive me one day.”
“I hope so.”
Ludo gathered his cloak and hat. “There are second chances in life, after all. Aren’t there?”
It had indeed been in the papers, and inevitably Lenox’s name had, too. Elizabeth Starling likely wouldn’t hang, but she would certainly be in prison for the rest of her life. Lenox had debated in his own mind whether to go visit her, and seek out more explanation, but in the end he decided that there wasn’t anything else. He knew what there was to know.
Although there was a sour postscript from Percy Field, in the hallway.
“Tell me,” Lenox said, “was Ludo close to receiving a title? In the New Year’s Honors?”
Titles were in the hands of the Queen, of course, but more and more often she received recommendations from Field’s superior, the Prime Minister. Field would almost certainly have seen the list.
He snorted. “Mr. Lenox, have you heard of a man of Ludovic Starling’s age and position becoming a baron out of the blue? It was the purest fantasy. He agitated, to be sure, for it, but even to be knighted! Why—it was impossible.”
“If you’ll allow me to ask something rude, Mr. Field: Are you only saying so now, because of what happened last week?”
Field laughed. “I would tell you the truth if it were so, Mr. Lenox. You’re a man who can keep his lips sealed. It was a fantasy, nothing more and nothing less.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
That was a heavy-hearted fall for Charles Lenox. As September passed into October and October into November, he felt weighed down by both the needless misery of the case and the slight, constant disappointment of Parliament not being the paradise he had wished it. This he came to terms with slowly, but surely; it was his duty. He referred two cases that came his way to Dallington, who solved the first and botched the second terribly. They were no longer daily companions, but they had taken to dining together two or three times a week. What they did during these meals was go over old cases, teasing through the clues, Lenox pushing his apprentice gently in the right direction, teaching him to think like a detective. Gradually Lenox discovered that they were the best parts of his week, these dinners—a visit to his old life. Still, when the third case came in early December, he turned it toward Dallington and, after the entreating visitor had