She looked a little disappointed. There was much she did not know about him—or he her. But they had time for catching up on the past later.
She sat down again and poured tea. “Yesterday you said you needed to speak to your wife. Did the conversation go well?”
If the conversation had gone well, then he ought not feel this strange hollowness inside. Yet he could not report that it had gone ill, since he did obtain what he wanted.
“Well enough,” he said, and gave Isabelle a highly abbreviated version of what he and Millie had agreed between them.
“Six months!” Isabelle exclaimed. “I thought speaking to your wife would be a mere formality.”
“It’s never quite so simple when you are married.” Or so he’d begun to realize.
“But you’ve been married almost eight years. If you haven’t managed to procreate in that much time, how will six more months help?”
He’d anticipated this question. “We have seldom attempted to procreate. I had my needs met elsewhere and Lady Fitzhugh, as far as I could tell, was pleased to be left alone.”
“How seldom?”
“We spent a few nights together during the honeymoon.”
Technically, he was not lying, but he was deliberately creating the wrong impression. He did not want anyone, especially Isabelle, to think that there was anything irregular or incomplete about his marriage. Millie would be mortified.
It surprised him how easily he thought of her as Millie—perhaps he’d done so for a while now, without quite realizing it.
Isabelle’s reaction was ambiguous: Disappointment dragged across her face, followed by a flitter of relief. For him to have never bedded his wife would have been a terrific statement of faithfulness to her; but it would also mean that in trying for an heir, he’d be taking on a new lover, which Isabelle could not possibly want.
“I know you don’t care for the arrangement, Isabelle, but you understand that Lady Fitzhugh and I must do our duty at some point. I believe you’d prefer to have this out of the way, rather than for me to go back to her periodically, once we are together.”
“This is mind-boggling,” said Isabelle unhappily. “You should have taken care of the matter of your heirs much sooner. It was a complete dereliction of duty on your part.”
“It was,” he admitted. “But then I never imagined you’d come back into my life and change everything.”
“I don’t like this.”
He took hold of her hand. “We must still be fair. Lady Fitzhugh deserves the same freedom that she has given me. However, without an heir, she will never pursue that freedom. It will bother me to think of her alone and untended—and it will taint our happiness.”
“But six months is such a long time. Anything could happen.”
“Six months is not so long compared to how much time we’ve spent apart, or the number of years that await us.”
Isabelle gripped his fingers. “Remember what I’d told you in my letter? Captain Englewood and I caught the same fever. He was as hardy as a mountain goat. Yet in the end, I lived and he did not.
Her eyes dimmed. “You should not be so trusting of fate, Fitz. Life turned against you before and it could turn against you again. Don’t wait. Seize the moment. Live as if there is no tomorrow.”
He’d already tried that, in the Lake District. But tomorrows had an inexorable persistence about them: They always arrived. “I’d dearly love to, but I’m not temperamentally suited to living that way.”
Isabelle sighed. “Now I remember: I could never change your mind once you’d made it up, especially when you are set on being dreadfully responsible.”
“I apologize for being such a stick-in-the-mud.”
“Don’t,” said Isabelle. She pressed his hand into her cheek, her eyes tender again. “It’s what I’ve always liked about you—that you can be counted upon to do the right thing. Now enough of this high-mindedness. Let’s talk about the future.”
He was relieved. “Yes, let’s.”
She rose and retrieved a folded newspaper from a writing desk. “I’ve been looking at advertisements of properties for let—a home in the country for us. At the moment, they all sound terribly idyllic. Let me read you a few that I find particularly enticing.”
Her animation was remarkable. When her face lit with excitement, the entire room grew incandescent. Her zest, her keenness, her appetite for life—all the qualities that had once dazzled him had remained amazingly intact. To listen to her was to be transported to a different age altogether, a time before life first humbled them.
But part of him could not help feeling uneasy. His situation was complicated, but hers was no less so with young children under her roof. It would be years before Alexander was old enough to be sent to school. And Hyacinth was not going anywhere until the day she married.
Their cohabitation must be conducted with care and a great deal of decorum, so that they neither gave the children the wrong impression of acceptable conduct, nor mortified them before their peers.
That would have been the first hurdle Fitz chose to tackle, not houses, which were easy to come by. But after Isabelle had run down the list of properties that had caught her interest, she launched into a discussion of ponies instead. For Christmas she wished to present her children each with a pony, what did Fitz think of the different breeds?
It was still early, he reasoned with himself. And hadn’t they dealt with enough of reality for a while? Let her dream unimpeded for a little longer. There was time later to consider the practical ramifications of their new life together.
“I had a Welsh pony when I was a child,” he said. “I liked it very well.”
H elena paced in her office. She had to find a way to see Andrew. But Susie, her new maid, adhered to her like flypaper. Come Susie’s half days, Millie always managed to fill the afternoons with engagements for Helena, so there was no opportunity to slip away.
She might be less agitated if she could catch a glimpse of Andrew at some of the functions she was obliged to attend—it was how they’d maintained their friendship over the years, via running into each other regularly. Or if he would resume writing to her. But neither happened.
A knock came at her door. “Miss Fitzhugh,” said her secretary, “there is a courier for you.”
“You may take the delivery.”
“He insists that he must hand his parcel to you in person.”
Authors and their precious manuscripts. Helena opened her door and took the sizable package. “Who is the sender?”
“Lord Hastings, mum,” said the courier.
Good gracious. As satisfying as it had been to knock him off his perch, had she somehow given him permission to send her items from his no doubt vast collection of smut?
She returned to her desk and tossed the package in a corner. But five minutes later, she found herself opening it, out of a frankly prurient curiosity. And he certainly knew how to keep her in suspense—the package was like a Russian babushka doll, one layer of wrapping after another.
A fabric outer cover, a pasteboard box, an oilcloth, and at last, a large envelope. She tilted the contents of the envelope onto her desk: a stack of papers wrapped with twine, with a handwritten note on top.
My Dear Miss Fitzhugh,
What a delightful chat we enjoyed last night at the Queensberrys’. I am gratified by your overwhelming interest in reading my novel—or memoir, as it may be—on the human condition in its most sensual manifestations.
Your servant in all things, particularly those of the flesh,
Hastings
She snorted. Degenerates would be degenerates.
However, Hastings degeneracy didn’t affect only himself. He had a natural daughter who lived with him in the country. He’d already inflicted the stigma of illegitimacy upon the poor child, and now he’d further shame her by becoming a pornographer?
Beneath the letter, the first page of the manuscript gave its title, The Bride of Larkspear, and Hastings’s pse
udonym, A Gentleman of Indiscretion—at least he had that correct. The dedication on the next page was to “The pleasure seekers of the world, for they shall inherit the earth.”
The man’s cheekiness knew no bounds.
She turned the page.
Chapter 1
I shall begin with a description of my bed, for one must make the setting of a book clear from the first line. It is a bed with a pedigree. Kings have slept on it, noblemen have gone to their deaths, and brides beyond count have learned, at last, why their mothers ask them to “Think of England.”
The bedstead is of oak, heavy, stout, almost indestructible. Pillars rise from the four corners to support a frame on which hang heavy curtains in winter. But it is not winter; the heavy beddings remain in their cedar chests. Upon the feather mattresses are spread only sheets of French linen, as decadent as Baudelaire’s verses.
But fine French linen is not so difficult to come by these days. And beds with pedigrees are still only furniture. What distinguishes this bed is the woman attached to it—her wrists tied behind her to one of the excessively sturdy bedposts.
And this being a work of Eros, she is, of course, naked.
My bride does not look at me. She is determined, as ever, to shunt me to the periphery of her existence, even on this, our wedding night.
I touch her. Her skin is as cool as marble, the flesh beneath firm and young. I turn her face to look into her eyes, haughty eyes that have scorned me for as long as I remember.
“Why are my hands tied?” she murmurs. “Are you afraid of them?”
“Of course,” I reply. “A man who stalks a lioness should ever be wary.”
On the next page was a charcoal illustration of a nude woman, her body lanky rather than lush, her breasts thrust high thanks to the position of her arms. Her face was turned to the side and hidden by her long, loose hair, but there was nothing retiring or fearful in her stance. The way she stood, it was as if she wanted to be seen precisely so, her charms displayed to taunt the man who beheld them.
Helena was breathing fast—and it irked her. So Hastings could string a few words together and draw an obscene picture. That he put his talents to such ignoble purposes was no cause to revise any of her prior opinions and certainly no cause for her to feel…
Naked herself.
She slammed the pages she’d moved aside back on top of the manuscript and shoved the entire thing back into its envelope. The envelope she pushed deep into a drawer and locked it.
Only after she’d left her office for the day did she realize that she’d put Hastings’s smutty novel on top of Andrew’s love letters.
Y ou had some tough questions for poor Mr. Cochran today, Millie,” said Fitz.
His comment broke the silence inside the brougham. They were on their way home from a tasting at Cresswell & Graves’s offices. Or rather, Millie would go home when the carriage stopped before their town house, but he would go on elsewhere, no doubt to call on Mrs. Englewood again.
“I asked very few questions. You, on the other hand, were much too undemanding today.” Her voice was testy. She was testy—eight years and still a distant second best. “Usually you do not approve of a product until you’ve sent it back to be refined and improved upon three times. The new champagne cider has never undergone such rigors and yet you approved it right away.”
“It tasted charming. Effervescent without being too gushy. Sweet with just the right amount of tartness.”
He could have been speaking of Isabelle Englewood.
“I thought it was passable, nothing to be excited about.”
“That’s odd,” he said quietly. “Our tastes tend to converge, not diverge.”
She’d been looking stubbornly out of the window. Now she glanced at him. A mistake—he gave the impression of a man deeply content with his lot.
The signet ring she’d given him glistened on his hand. She wanted to rip it off and throw it out of the carriage. But then she’d also need to throw away his gold-and-onyx watch fob and his walking stick, the porcelain handle of which was glazed a deep, luminous blue. Like his eyes.
So many Christmas and birthday presents. So many practically transparent attempts to stake her claim on his person, as if pieces of metal or ceramic could somehow change a man’s heart.
“I trust your judgment more when you aren’t so—buoyant,” she said.
“Buoyant, that’s a weighty charge.” He smiled. “No one has accused me of being buoyant in years.”
His smiles—she used to think them signposts pointing the way to a hidden paradise, when all along they were but notices that said, “Property of Isabelle Pelham Englewood. Trespassers will have their hearts broken.”
“Well, things have changed recently.”
“Yes, they have.”
“I’m sure you’ve been to see Mrs. Englewood again. What does she think of the six-month wait? I dare say she hates being made to wait.”
“You are my wife, Millie, and you step aside for no one. Mrs. Englewood understands this.”
Something in his tone made her heart skip two beats. She looked away. “I will gladly step aside for her.”
He rose from the opposite seat and sat down next to her. As spouses, it was perfectly proper for them to share a carriage seat. But when they were alone in a conveyance, he always took the backward-facing seat, an acknowledgment that he was not truly her husband.
He draped an arm over her shoulder. His nearness, which she had never become accustomed to, was now almost impossible to endure. She wanted to throw open the door of the carriage and leap out. Her agreeing to honor their pact did not give him the right to touch her before it was time.
“Don’t look so put out, Millie. Something wonderful might come of this: We can have a child.” His other hand settled on her arm, the warmth of his palm branding her across the thin fabric of her sleeve. “I’ve never asked you, would you like a boy or a girl?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’d make a wonderful mother, kind but firm, attentive but not smothering. Any child of yours would be a fortunate child indeed.”
There had been a part of her, however small, however circumspect, that had always hoped perhaps when they at last consummated their marriage, their lovemaking would be the final alchemical ingredient to give wings to their friendship. But now it would serve only a biological function. Their friendship would remain earthbound—never to take flight.
The carriage came to a stop before the Fitzhugh town house. She pushed him away and leaped out.
CHAPTER 7
Alice
1888
T he death of Fitz’s brother-in-law, Mr. Townsend, turned out to be quite a messy business.
Millie had met him only twice, at her engagement dinner and at the wedding breakfast. Both times her insides had been in turmoil and she’d gleaned only the most superficial impressions of the handsome, proud man.
It was a shock to learn of his death, but a greater one to find out the manner of it: He’d killed himself with an overdose of chloral. Even worse, unbeknownst to his wife, he had become bankrupt. It had necessitated the sale of his entire estate, along with the liquidation of a plot of land Mrs. Townsend had inherited from her parents, to appease his creditors.
Millie had believed that beauty like her sister-in-law’s must act as a powerful talisman, protecting one so blessed against storms and monsters, so that she sailed smoothly through life upon the twin currents of love and laughter. But it was not true. Misfortune hesitated for no one, not even a woman as lovely as Aphrodite herself.
As Mrs. Townsend drifted through the aftermath of her husband’s death, staggered and dazed, Millie, alongside Miss Fitzhugh, did her best to be useful. They made sure Mrs. Townsend ate enough, took her for drives so she wasn’t always sitting in a sunless parlor, and sometimes, sat in that sunless parlor with her, Miss Fitzhugh holding her sister’s hand, Millie in a nearby chair, finishing frames upon frames of embroidery.
Througho
ut the ordeal, Lord Fitzhugh was a rock. Gone was the disconsolate drunk. Daily he was at his sister’s side as they settled Mr. Townsend’s affairs, the epitome of consideration and sense—and forcefulness, when needed. An inquest had very nearly taken place, which would have turned a private death into a public spectacle. His uncompromising stance before a police inspector made the difference; in the end the police accepted the explanation that Mr. Townsend must have suffered from an unexpected hemorrhaging of the brain.
They stayed in London for six weeks before matters relating to Mr. Townsend’s estate were resolved. It was a largely somber time, but there were moments Millie treasured. Miss Fitzhugh imitating Lord Hastings and making her sister laugh, however briefly. Lord Fitzhugh and Mrs. Townsend sitting together, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder. Mrs. Townsend taking hold of Millie’s hand one day and telling her, “You are a wonderful girl, my dear.”
The day before they left London, the women took tea together. Miss Fitzhugh was to begin her classes at Lady Margaret Hall. Mrs. Townsend, after accompanying her sister to the women’s college at Oxford, would go to Hampton House, their childhood home in the same shire, which Lord Fitzhugh had put at her disposal.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t wish to come to Henley Park with us, Mrs. Townsend?” Millie asked one last time. She and Lord Fitzhugh had been trying to persuade Mrs. Townsend to stay with them at the estate he’d inherited alongside his title—to no avail.
“I have troubled you and Fitz enough,” said Mrs. Townsend. “But thank you, Millie—may I call you Millie?”
“Yes, of course.” Millie was aflutter that Mrs. Townsend wished to use the more familiar address of her given name.
“You will call me Venetia, won’t you?”
“And call me Helena,” said Miss Fitzhugh. “We are sisters now.”
Millie looked down at her hands to compose herself. She’d been brought up not to expect such intimacy from her in-laws, who were sure to sniff at being related to the Sardine Heiress. But Mrs. Townsend and Miss Fitzhugh—Venetia and Helena—had been helpful and accepting from the very beginning.
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