Seven Minutes in Heaven

by Eloisa James

  Eugenia shrugged. “You forget that my father is Lord Strange, or he was before being made the Marquis of Broadham. He certainly lived up to his original title.”

  “Well, you and I are friends, and that gives us the right to tell each other home truths, because that’s what friends do.”

  “I’m not interested in hearing any,” Eugenia said instantly. Nor did she need to hear any. Everyone told her one truth over and over. Likely Susan had moved into the enemy camp.

  They all wanted her to forget her husband, to forget Andrew.

  “Let him go,” her stepmother, Harriet, had said when she’d last visited London, as if Andrew were waiting around the corner, and it was up to Eugenia to send him off to a warmer climate on holiday.

  “You needn’t waste your breath,” Eugenia added. “I know what you’re going to say. My father and stepmother have done nothing but throw men at me for the last six years. Sometimes I think Harriet opens their house in London for one reason only: to introduce me to a new flock of prospective husbands.”

  “She means well. Surely you don’t want to live alone for the rest of your life?” Susan sipped her sherry. “Is this the bottle that Mrs. Selfridge sent us? The touch of apple is lovely.”

  “Quite likely,” Eugenia said, uninterested. Happy clients were always sending them tokens of their appreciation. “I enjoy living alone.”

  “It’s lonely.”

  “As a matter of fact, it’s not.”

  Susan gave her a squinty look. “Don’t try to tell me that you have a lover of whom I’m unaware, because I happen to know that you are in this office every moment that you’re not in bed.”

  “Perhaps I have a companion in my bed,” Eugenia said daringly. The wine had gone to her head and she felt pleasantly giddy.

  Susan snorted. “I won’t even dignify that with a reply. You’ve attended only two or three events this season.”

  “Everyone I dance with grumbles about their children,” Eugenia admitted. “The only man I could fancy is the Duke of Villiers, and he’s my father’s age. Not to mention happily married.”

  “His Grace is enormously fanciable,” Susan agreed. “Every time I dance with him, I almost dissolve into a puddle on the ballroom floor.”

  “Now I think on it,” Eugenia said, “Villiers must be glad that Sally fell in love with the vicar. He complained that his daughters were so spoiled that they’d need a ride on a flying pig to get to the stables to exercise their ponies.”

  “Nonsense,” Susan said. “His Grace affects that sardonic look and can’t bring himself to say that he’s wildly grateful to Sally. I wish I could meet a man like Villiers, but one who was twenty years younger.”

  “Find someone more cheerful,” Eugenia suggested. “Andrew used to make me laugh, but I cannot imagine Villiers telling his wife a bawdy joke, can you?”

  “Absolutely not. But who would care, if he looked at her the way Villiers looks at his duchess, as if he’d lay down his life for her?”

  Eugenia sighed. “Andrew used to look at me that way.” And he laid down his life for mine, she added silently.

  “I am sorry he died, Eugenia, but do you really mean to be alone for the rest of your life in memory of your husband’s soulful glances and his facility with rude puns?”

  “It is taking me a long time to get over Andrew’s death.” Every other widow mourned for a year, perhaps two. But here she was, seven years on, still dreaming about her dead husband.

  Except for last night, when she’d had a most improper dream about Mr. Reeve, which had nothing to do with anything, and which she meant to forget immediately.

  “You are a loyal person,” Susan said. “Mr. Snowe was lucky to have married you. But would he have wanted you to mourn him your entire life?”

  “Who knows that?” Eugenia asked helplessly. “You make it sound easy, Susan. You and Harriet, and even Papa. I thought—when Andrew first died, I thought terrible thoughts.”

  Susan wiggled her toes. “It would have been extremely foolish to end your life for love. I always thought that Juliet was absurd.”

  “I disagree. She was very young, and that sort of grief”—Eugenia kept her voice matter-of-fact—“is like being in a storm that’s ripping everything away from you: all your wishes and dreams, your clothes, your hopes, your future. Gone.”

  “I am sorry that happened to you,” Susan said. “But it didn’t rip you away. You weren’t swept away, you didn’t fall off the cliff. You were older than Juliet’s thirteen, as well. You have a good fifty years, if not more, left to live.

  “Fifty,” she repeated, giving Eugenia a pointed glance. “Alone.”

  “You’re as old as I am, and you’ve never given your heart even once, let alone twice!”

  Susan turned her head and met Eugenia’s eyes. “How do you know that?”

  Just because a woman has never married doesn’t mean she hasn’t been in love. Eugenia knew that.

  For goodness’ sake, she’d grown up in a house notorious for parties welcoming actresses of the most dubious reputation, as well as opera dancers and courtesans. The ladies—to use the term loosely—were always in love with someone, and marriage was rarely a consideration.

  “It’s time you thought about finding a second husband,” Susan stated.

  “Do you know what would happen if I married again?” Eugenia asked, taking another healthy swallow of sherry. It burnt its way down her throat.

  “You’d come to work with a smile and circles under your eyes?”

  “Susan!”

  Susan shrugged, unrepentant.

  “The moment I turned from the altar, my husband would own Snowe’s. He would own my inheritance from my mother, the dowry my father gave me, and Andrew’s settlement. He would own the house that Andrew bought for our marriage.”

  “Well, but—”

  “There are no ‘buts.’ A woman has no legal rights to her own property. I’ll be damned if I’ve built this company up to be the very best of its kind in all England, only to hand it over to a man as his plaything, to sell if he wishes.” Eugenia discovered that her voice had risen to a fierce pitch.

  Susan finished her glass and set it down. “Right.”

  “‘Right,’ what?”

  “You don’t want to marry again.”

  “For good reason, you must admit.”

  “I certainly don’t like the idea of a man in charge of Snowe’s. But does that mean you’re going to live alone forever? Be alone forever?”

  “I gather you’re not talking about our friendship,” Eugenia said dryly.

  “I am not.”

  “What about you?” Eugenia demanded. “You haven’t had even one husband. Any number of men would love to marry you, and don’t tell me that you haven’t a dowry. I pay your wages, and you’ve worked with me for years. Your dowry must be larger than many men’s estates.”

  Susan shook her head. “I’ve never met anyone remotely like the Duke of Villiers and even if I did, I’m too fat for the current styles.”

  “You are not; you’re delicious and the right man will adore every curve.”

  Her assistant just waved her hand dismissively at that idea. “So, you don’t want to get married. But you do know what that means, don’t you?”

  “No,” Eugenia said cautiously.

  “You must take a lover,” Susan announced. “Discreetly, as not to tarnish the reputation of Snowe’s. You cannot go on like this, Eugenia, working day and night. It’s no way to live.”

  “Why am I being singled out?” Eugenia protested. “You work as hard as I, and don’t tell me there’s a man in your bed, because I’d never believe it!”

  “I can’t,” Susan said with a sigh. “Vicar’s daughter and virginity . . . those two impediments hang like millstones around my neck, even if I did want to fall into bed with a handsome man. But you are free, Eugenia.”

  “Free?” She’d never thought of it that way.

  “No husband and no children, and a
n impeccable reputation. You can please yourself.”

  “I suppose . . .” Eugenia began.

  “It’s that, or wither into a dull woman who never takes pleasure for herself,” Susan said.

  “I will consider it,” Eugenia said, surprising herself. But inside, she knew that something had to change. The challenge of making Snowe’s a success had been remarkably diverting.

  But now that her agency was the best in all London.

  She needed a new challenge.

  All the same, she had the distinct sense that she could walk into a ballroom and have her pick of unattached men.

  What kind of challenge was that?

  Chapter Five

  Later the same night

  Fawkes House

  Wheatley, near Oxford

  Ward put down his quill and yawned. He’d been working all day and half the night on incorporating a steam engine into the continuous paper-roller that had made his first fortune.

  He heard a creak from deep in the house as it shrugged off the heat of an unusually warm spring day.

  A different creak sent him to the door of the library. “Are you on your way to the kitchens?” he asked the thin white ghost coming down the stairs.

  “No,” his sister Lizzie said, with the patient air of a person explaining the obvious. “I’m not on the backstairs, am I?”

  Ward pushed the door further open and stood aside.

  As a child, he’d spent a good many sleepless nights wandering his father’s mansion; it seemed his siblings possessed the same tendency. They went to bed at the appropriate time and fell sound asleep—for a while. He hadn’t seen Otis, but the night before his brother had spent several hours in the library working on a mousetrap he was building.

  “I came to speak to you,” Lizzie said serenely, walking past him into the library.

  “May I say how pleased I am to see you without your veil?”

  Sans veil, Lizzie promised to grow up to be as beautiful as their mother, Lady Lisette. Of course, that did not necessarily indicate that his sister would end up mad as a hatter. As their mother had.

  “Mother always said that it’s inappropriate to mention a lady’s sartorial choices, particularly if they are somewhat original.”

  “You wouldn’t wear it if you didn’t want attention,” Ward said, following her to the sofa.

  “I wear it because I see no reason to show my face to the world. Nuns feel the same way.”

  “I think their veil has to do with being a bride of Christ.”

  “A veil is useful,” Lizzie persisted. “What if I wish to keep bees, for instance? At any rate, I need to talk to you about something important.”

  “Yes?”

  “I have decided that you ought to marry,” Lizzie announced.

  “I’d prefer not,” Ward told her. He had decided to be honest in dealing with the children, or at least not to lie to them outright. To his memory, Lady Lisette had an extraordinary ability to bend the truth. He had the idea that Otis and Lizzie would benefit from a different model.

  “Otis needs a mother.”

  Otis wasn’t the only person who would benefit from a woman’s presence; Lizzie was only a year older than her brother. He thought of mentioning his stepmother, but what if his sister thought he meant to drop them on his father’s doorstep?

  Dump them like unwanted puppies.

  It wouldn’t be like that.

  “I don’t believe people should marry for practical reasons,” he said, instead.

  “What’s an impractical reason?”

  “Love.”

  “I can understand,” Lizzie said after a moment. “It is easy to make a mistake. One of the stable boys told Otis that your fiancée gave you a kick in the goolies. That wasn’t very pleasant.”

  “It isn’t precisely true,” Ward said, adding, “Ladies don’t mention goolies.”

  Lizzie shrugged. “It is tasteless to have recourse to violence. It’s a good thing you didn’t marry her.”

  “I agree,” Ward said, wondering if it would set a bad example if he got up and swigged brandy straight from the decanter.

  “I hope she gets crump foot,” Lizzie said. “I could help you.”

  “With crump foot?”

  “No, with finding a wife.”

  “I appreciate that,” Ward said gravely. “However, I’m hoping that we can get along by ourselves—with a governess’s help, of course.”

  “A wife would convince Otis that you won’t die alone. You’re the only one left, you see. No family.”

  They were back to death. Somehow they always arrived at the subject of death; last night they’d had a long discussion about whether tigers had a separate heaven where gazelles were provided for breakfast, or whether a tiger would have to fast in heaven.

  Lizzie had expressed the view that if tigers weren’t allowed to eat, the place wouldn’t be heavenly. It was a tricky subject about which Ward had no particular insight. More troublingly, it was clear to him that she was not thinking exclusively about a heaven for tigers.

  But now she had a clearer point.

  “I am not alone,” he promised. “Remember that I told you about my stepmother and father, and my other half-siblings? I’ll introduce you as soon as they return from Sweden. Of course, we have a grandmother as well.”

  “I don’t like our grandmother,” she said flatly.

  “My family will return to London in three months.” Not that he was counting. “Didn’t we make a rule last night that you wouldn’t discuss death for at least a week?”

  “I don’t consider it a rule,” Lizzie said. “More of a suggestion.”

  That was the problem, right there. Something ran through his family bloodline that converted rules into mere suggestions.

  “I hope to return tomorrow with a new governess.”

  “Lumpy was good-hearted,” Lizzie said, as if she were discussing a newly deceased acquaintance. “It’s just that she had a tendency to overlook the big things for the small ones.”

  Ward had the unnerving conviction that the world had gone awry; before Lizzie came along, he’d always understood grammatical English sentences. “What big things?” he asked.

  “She was very upset by Otis’s betting scheme, whereas she might have seen it as an example of ingenuity, or even resourcefulness.”

  “Miss Lumley considered it an ethical lapse.”

  “That’s the small thing. She could have looked at the bigger part of it, and seen that Otis is afraid and that’s why he is hoarding money under his mattress.”

  Ward was silent.

  Because he didn’t often have instincts, he tried to obey the rare ones he had. He reached out and pulled his sister across the sofa and wrapped an arm around her. She was stiff for a moment, and then her thin, knobby body leaned against him.

  “Do you suppose that you could tell your brother that as big parts go, my fortune is a very big one indeed? And that I already changed my will and the two of you will inherit the whole thing?”

  The room went very, very quiet while Lizzie thought about it.

  After a while, Ward looked down and found that she had fallen asleep. Dark eyelashes lay on pale skin. He took a moment to look, because he rarely saw her without that blighted veil.

  She had the promise of great beauty. Right now, she was too thin, and her face was too strained, even in sleep.

  Anger is a reasonable response to having a mother like theirs, a terrible mother in anyone’s judgment. It’s just that there’s nowhere for that anger to go when the lady is dead.

  Ward picked up Lizzie and carried her upstairs to bed.

  Otis had crawled into Lizzie’s bed. Ward carefully laid her next to him and watched as they adjusted themselves on the narrow bed as if they’d been sleeping together their whole lives.

  There couldn’t have been much room in a traveling theater caravan.

  He pulled up the blanket to their chins. A mother—a real mother—would give them each a kiss. He kn
ew that to be true because the moment his father married his stepmother, Roberta started popping into his room at bedtime to kiss him.

  He had disliked it, as he recalled. Or at least, he had complained at the time.

  He bent down and gave Otis and Lizzie kisses.

  Chapter Six

  Monday, April 20

  Snowe’s Registry

  Ward arrived at Cavendish Square a good half-hour early, only to have the housemaid at the registry inform him that he’d have to wait, as Mrs. Snowe was busy.

  Within ten minutes, he felt like a wild animal trapped in a china shop. He’d just spent five hours cooped up in a coach; the last thing he wanted to do was sit. He prowled restlessly around the room, spindly gold-and-pink furniture seeming to edge closer, like yapping dogs aiming to take a leak on his boots.

  He set his jaw. He’d be damned if he’d quit the place simply because the room was stifling and close. The sensation was merely an odious consequence of the time he spent in Britain’s worst prison.

  He’d go mad living in the midst of all this ladylike clutter. A good reason to be happy his betrothal had died on the vine. It was a hell of a lot easier to find a new governess than to find a wife.

  All he’d had to do was persuade Mrs. Snowe to give him a replacement. Whereas a replacement for his fiancée? Who was, by the way, blissfully married to a duke?

  Not so easy.

  More to the point, the debacle of his engagement had clarified how little he understood women. He had truly believed he and Mia were in love.

  In retrospect, it was more accurate to say that he’d deluded himself into believing it. His jaw still clenched involuntarily when he thought about the months he’d wooed Mia, gently coaxing her to kiss him, never touching her improperly, curbing his impatience to make her his.

  Only to be thrown into prison by one of Mia’s relatives the night before his wedding. He’d escaped two weeks later, but his fiancée had already married the Duke of Pindar.

  Whom—as it turned out—Mia had loved since she was a girl.

  Hurrah for His Grace.

  Ward had talked himself into believing sugary twaddle about their feelings for each other, when in reality Mia had been hankering after another man.