“Good evening,” said Lenox with a nod.
Lady Jane came back to Lenox. “Are you almost ready to leave?” she asked.
“Lord, yes,” he said.
They returned to Lenox’s house after circulating to say good-bye. Though he was troubled both by Exeter’s visit and by seeing Barnard, Lenox threw off his cares long enough to have a late snack-milk and cake-with his betrothed, and an hour’s conversation with her put him in a better mood. Walking back up her stoop, she permitted him a short kiss before going inside with a cheerful laugh. Well, he thought; all will be well in the end. This time next year perhaps I’ll be in Parliament.
CHAPTER FOUR
The next morning, Lenox was scheduled to visit his friend Thomas McConnell, a doctor who often helped on Lenox’s cases, and McConnell’s wife, Toto, a young, vivacious woman, with an endearingly cheerful way about her; the most scurrilous gossip, on her lips, seemed little more than innocent chatter. She was a beauty, too, and had married the handsome, athletic Scot though she was some twelve years his junior.
Yet their marriage had been troubled-had even at times seemed doomed-and while Toto’s personality had remained essentially the same throughout the couple’s troubles, his had not. Once bluff and hale, an outdoorsman with gentle manners, he had begun to drink, and his face now, though still handsome, had a sallow, sunken look to it.
However, things had for a year or so been better, more loving, and it appeared that now the couple had passed the rocky shoals of their first years and settled into a contented marriage on both sides, with more maturity and tenderness, more selflessness, after all of their early turmoil. The apotheosis of this newfound happiness was a pregnancy: In six months Toto would give birth. It had been to check on her that Lenox was going to visit the McConnells’ vast house.