Charles Finch - A Stranger in Mayfair

(Frabbs was delighted. He had a grand table to himself and plenty of time to draw, and the dogs were constantly whining at his heel for him to get on the floor and roll about with them-which, it should be said, he very conscientiously did only after he had copied out a page and locked the door.)

The other presence in the house was Edmund. Though he was a necessity to his party, he resisted every appeal and skipped two straight days of Parliament in order to sit with his brother, converse when Charles felt he was stuck, and mull over ideas with him. They decided together, after a long conversation, that he shouldn’t mention cholera-that he should save it. There would be time to come back to it. They took their meals together, down to the chocolate and brandy they each had at two in the morning the day before the speech.

The day.

It arrived far, far sooner than Lenox would have liked. He had committed his speech, which would take twenty minutes or thereabouts, to memory, and as he and Edmund walked down Whitehall he muttered the difficult bits of it to himself over and over, occasionally checking his notes-so that he looked very much like an aristocratic madman, roaming the streets of Mayfair with his minder.

“Have you any advice?” he asked Edmund as they came to the Members’ Entrance.

“I’ve given you nothing but advice for these last two days, Charles. I should have thought you had far too much of it from me.”

“No, no-that was for the speech itself. I mean any advice about delivering the stupid thing.”

“Ah-I see. You remember my maiden speech?”

“Oh, yes. I was in the spectators’ gallery.”

“I had this counsel from a sage old head, Wilson Randolph-been dead for fifteen years-and it worked well enough for me. He said that ten minutes before my speech I should have a glass of wine and a crust of bread to fortify me.”

“Fair enough.”

Edmund laughed. “After that, I’m afraid you’re on your own.”

The chamber seemed ten times more imposing than it ever had before, ten times more crowded, its range of faces ten times more judgmental, the Speaker of the House ten times more momentous, the gallery of reporters and spectators ten times more eager for a failure.

His heart in his stomach, Lenox sat through half a dozen parries back and forth, hearing not a word of them, going over in his head each line of his speech. There was the astute slash at the other party’s policies on India, the witticism about the daily papers, the stirring (he hoped) final argument about colonial obligation. When it was ten to four he sneaked out of a side door, where Graham was waiting with a glass of wine and a piece of brown bread.

“Good luck, sir,” said Graham, who looked as if he were bursting with pride.

“Thank you-the credit is yours. Unless I make a mess of it, of course, in which case you may blame me.”

Lenox laughed, Graham frowned, and soon he had drunk off the wine and eaten the bread. He slipped back into the House.

A speech was concluding, and after it was done Lenox raised his leaden arm, his heart beating rapidly, as he knew he must.

“The Right Honorable Gentleman from Stirrington!” cried the Speaker.

Lenox rose, his legs insensate. For strength he chanced a look at his brother.

Edmund returned the gaze. He was a man with a pure, tender heart-less doubtful than his brother’s, more open-and as Charles rose to speak, he felt conflicted. He knew that the excitement of the past two days was what his brother really loved, what he thrived on, and he was happy. In another part of his heart, however, he worried that Charles would never again be a detective-that he would live in this less happy profession he had found out of a sense of duty, occasionally excited as he was now but more often dispirited.

And Edmund worried about Charles and Jane.

Lenox himself, who knew perhaps a bit better, shifted his gaze from Edmund to Jane herself. She was in the spectators’ gallery, a gray dress on, the knuckles of her fists white with tension. She gave him a small smile, and to his surprise he realized that it calmed him.

From her he looked out into the chamber, and with a clear, confident voice, began to speak.