Read An Old Betrayal: A Charles Lenox Mystery (Charles Lenox Mysteries) for Free Online

will pass. I told her that it seemed more serious than usual to me.”
    They chatted on for a few moments, a husband and wife fluent with each other’s minor concerns and minor errands, and then Lenox pressed her hand and said he had better do a bit of work. She said she would go make sure that there was something for him to eat.
    “I’ll be in my study,” he said, kissing her on the cheek before heading up the hallway toward the front of the house. His study was the closest room to the front door. Before he entered, he paused and called out, “Will you have a cup of tea with me before I begin work?” He leaned back to see her reaction.
    For an instant her face darkened, and she seemed about to curse him—but then she smiled, realizing that it was a joke, and rolled her eyes.
    A few minutes later, as he was shuffling through the papers on his desk, Jane knocked on the door and came in without waiting for a response. “Your lunch will be up soon.”
    “Thank you,” he said.
    She hesitated in the doorway. “I’ve just had a letter from Sylvia Humphrey. Word has spread all over London about Thomas and Polly Buchanan, it would appear. She writes to warn me on Toto’s behalf.”
    Lenox looked up, eyes wide, the papers in his hands momentarily forgotten. “No, has it really?”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    “I had thought of trying to see him this afternoon, if for no other reason than to push him around to Dallington’s for a look-in.”
    “Is John that poorly?”
    “He’ll live. What are they saying about McConnell?”
    “Oh, you can imagine. Leave it, for now.” She came farther into the room, near his desk. “Speaking of Dallington—how was your meeting at Charing Cross?”
    Lenox told her about it, attending again to his papers as he did. She made sympathetic noises at the right moments. In due course a footman arrived with Lenox’s food—he often took meals at his desk—and Jane kept him company as he ate, stealing a green pea with her fingers now and again.
    “Is Sophia asleep?” he asked when he had finished eating.
    Lady Jane glanced at the clock on the mantel. “She ought to be awake. It is nearly two, after all. Shall I fetch her down?”
    Lenox looked up at the clock. “I ought to leave soon, but if she’s awake I could visit her in the nursery.”
    Sophia was awake, in fact, and entertaining herself as the house’s cook, Ellie, sat in the corner knitting. The child turned, face open with expectation, when they came through the door, and then beamed and clapped her fat hands together with surprised delight at the sight of both of her parents in her nursery. She toddled toward them happily, cooing half phrases, a small bundle of person in a pink dress with a white pinafore and navy woolen stockings.
    Lenox lifted her high up into the air, kissed her, and then set her down again. She patted her cheek where his bristles had scratched her. “Where is Miss Emanuel?” Lenox asked Ellie, who was long-enough tenured in Hampden Lane—and cross-grained enough—that she had remained seated after they arrived, though she did pay them the deference of lowering her knitting needles to her lap.
    “She is downstairs fetching the little miss a snack, sir.”
    “You can’t say fairer than that,” said Lenox.
    Lady Jane, who was more at home in the room than her husband, began to tidy, as he stood rather awkwardly near the doorway. Few men could love their child more than he did; yet he saw less of her than he would have wished, because it was not quite right that he should moon around her nursery. It irritated him, to contemplate this stubborn adherence to propriety, and as Sophia crowded his legs, examining his bootlaces, he decided he ought to come upstairs more.
    After a few moments Miss Emanuel appeared, greeting them sunnily. This was Sophia’s new nurse, a sweet, fair-complexioned young woman with straight black hair, a product of the very fine free Jewish schools in the eastern part of the city.