Ravishing the Heiress ft-2

by Sherry Thomas

  “I’ve…never had sisters,” she said, afraid she sounded too gauche. “Or any siblings.”

  “Ha, lucky you. This means you never had anyone tell you that you were actually found in a bassinet under an apple tree when your parents went for a walk in the country.” Helena raised an eyebrow at Venetia. “Or that if you ate black-colored food, you’d have black hair like everyone else.”

  Venetia shook her head. “No, that was Fitz. He wanted you to eat the blackberries so he’d have more raspberries to himself. It never occurred to any of us that you’d try squid ink.”

  Millie listened with a sense of wonder at the oddity and camaraderie of children growing up in the same household. The warmth of that conversation still lingered as she and Lord Fitzhugh traveled in her parents’ private rail coach to Henley Park.

  This time it was he who read—Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume IV—and she who stared out of the window. Most of the time. The rest of the time she studied him surrepti-tiously.

  He had not regained all the weight he’d lost during his three weeks of strenuous inebriation—his clothes still hung slightly loose, his eyes were set deeper, and his cheekbones more prominent. But he no longer looked unwell, only lean and grave. His hair, cut short, lent a further austerity to his aspect, a solemnity beyond his years.

  He set down his book, dug his hand into his pocket, and pulled out a—

  “Is that a dormouse?”

  He nodded. “This is Alice.”

  Alice was tiny, with lovely golden brown fur and curious black eyes. He gave her a piece of hazelnut, which she nibbled with great enthusiasm.

  “She’s getting chubby,” he said. “Probably will start hibernating within the week.”

  “Is she yours? I haven’t seen her before.”

  “I’ve had her for three years. Hastings has been taking care of her recently. I just got her back.”

  Millie was enchanted. “Did you find her yourself?”

  “No, she was a present from Miss Pelham.”

  Isabelle Pelham. Millie’s smile froze. Fortunately he was not looking at her, his attention wholly occupied by Alice.

  No wonder he had not brought Alice on their honeymoon.

  “She looks darling,” Millie managed.

  He stroked the fur atop Alice’s head. “She’s perfect.”

  He did not offer Alice for Millie to hold. And she did not ask.

  I t was not easy, remaining sober.

  Some nights, when he could not sleep, when he missed Isabelle so much he could scarcely breathe, Fitz thought of things that might help him: whisky, laudanum, morphia. He thought especially hard of morphia, of the lovely torpor it would bring, the long forgetfulness.

  The house had such things—he’d seen them when he’d first inspected Henley Park. So he left the house, to walk and run—mostly run—until he was overcome with exhaustion.

  He also, once he put his mind to it, realized that there was an easier way of alleviating his loneliness: naked women. He took up with one of his new neighbors, a widow five or six years older than him, who was more than glad to have him service her repeatedly.

  Alice began her hibernation. He kept her in a padded, ventilated box and checked on her twice a day. Everything had changed. Alice remained the one familiar touchstone, a link to life as he’d known it.

  Two weeks after they arrived at Henley Park, his wife sent him a message, wishing to see him in the library. Except at dinner each night, he hardly saw her at all, though he knew she kept herself busy during the day, as he did, with matters concerning the house and the estate.

  The library, dour and smelly, was in the north wing, the worst part of the house. She was examining books for damage. He was surprised to see her in a day dress of russet silk. Since Mr. Townsend’s death, she’d worn mourning colors, a silent, somber ghost at the periphery of his awareness. But today the vibrant, autumnal hue of her dress made her the brightest object in the room.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  She turned around. “Good morning.”

  For a moment he was struck by how young she looked without a dark, drab garment to age her. Had he passed her on the street, he might have thought her fifteen.

  Had the Graves lied about her age? “Excuse me, but how old are you again?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Seventeen? Since when?”

  She lowered her gaze, as if embarrassed. “Since today.”

  Now he was equally embarrassed. He’d had no idea. “Happy birthday.”

  “Thank you.”

  An awkward silence fell. He cleared his throat. “I don’t have a present for you. Is there anything you’d like—and can be found in the village?”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “A birthday is just another day. I think it’s terribly silly that people make such a to-do about it. Besides, your sisters have already sent books and a pretty box of new handkerchiefs.”

  “If Venetia, with all her troubles, can remember, then I have no excuse—except that I didn’t know the date at all.”

  “Please don’t worry about it—there’s always next year. Now, would you mind looking at some of the rooms with me?”

  He’d already seen all the rooms, but since it was her birthday…“Lead the way,” he said.

  She’d obviously examined each room multiple times, and had taken copious notes of all the damages. It was a guided tour of the north wing’s failings. As they walked on, she reported an ever rising estimate of how much it would cost to repair everything.

  They were only on the third room of the next floor when he said, “We should dynamite this entire house.”

  “That would be rather an extreme course of action,” said his wife. “But I would have no objection to getting rid of this wing.”

  He stopped cold. “What did you say?”

  “According to the ledgers and the plans, this wing was an addition undertaken at the beginning of the century—the original house’s wall, if I’m not mistaken, would have been right there. From what I can tell, there was no particular reason for the addition, except that the then-earl was jealous of his cousin’s newer, better house and wished to compete.”

  And the family had been in debt ever since.

  “I know you were jesting when you said to dynamite the house, but I’d like to submit for your sober consideration the idea of not renovating the north wing. It was poorly conceived and even more poorly built. Even if we patch everything today, we’d still need to be constantly vigilant against new leaks, rots, and cracks.”

  The north wing was two-fifths of the manor. He stared at her a moment—she was perfectly serious. The girl had audacity. But of course she did: She’d singlehandedly pulled him back from the brink of a precipice.

  “All right. Let’s do it.”

  At his assent, she was the one who was taken aback. “Do you think we might need to petition parliament for something like this?”

  He thought for a moment. “One doesn’t petition parliament before an accident takes place, does one?”

  She smiled. “No, indeed one doesn’t. And our discussion never happened.”

  He smiled back.

  She dipped her head. “Now if you will excuse me, I must decide whether any of the books are worth keeping.”

  It was only later in his room, gazing at a peacefully slumbering Alice, that Fitz realized he and his wife had just made their first joint decision as a married couple.

  T hat evening Millie dined alone. Lord Fitzhugh sent a note saying he would take his supper at the village pub. Supper was probably a euphemism for a woman. Not that she begrudged him a little pleasurable distraction, but she wished—

  No, she did not wish that he’d come to her instead. She did not want to be used for only that purpose. But she could not help envying his lovers. She, too, would like to know what it was like to be touched and kissed by him—when he was sober. There was a physical grace to him, a manner of moveme
nt that was swift and easy. She could not help imagining what it would be like, someday, for him to suddenly notice her not merely as his wife, but as a woman, a desirable one.

  But she always cut those reveries short, whenever she discovered herself in the middle of one. Perhaps there was nothing she could do about hope springing eternal, but she would not water or tend it. She would prune it harshly, ruthlessly, the way she would a weed in the garden.

  After dinner, she sat in the drawing room, studying. She’d decided to take her mother’s advice and create a beautiful garden. But the pleasure garden would have to wait until she had first restored the more utilitarian kitchen garden. The estate had one such, but with the departure of the head gardener nearly a decade ago, it had grown wild.

  She pored over an old diagram for the walled garden, consulting her handbook on horticulture. Salsify she’d eaten. Celeriac she hadn’t, but had at least heard of. But what in the world was a scorzonera? Or a skirret? Or a cardoon, for that matter?

  She was searching for couve tronchuda in an encyclopedia when her husband surprised her by striding into the drawing room—she’d thought he’d remain out until long after she was abed.

  “Good evening,” she said.

  Perhaps it was the light, but he looked…strapping. Her heart stuttered.

  “Evening,” he answered, standing with his hands behind his back. “I was at the village pub tonight. We’ll have twenty able-bodied men here tomorrow to dismantle the north wing—or at least to begin the work.”

  “So soon!”

  Her father took forever on his decisions. Even when he agreed to a change in principle, he’d still dither for years over the specifics of its implementation. She had not remotely anticipated that Lord Fitzhugh would set about the overhaul of Henley Park this quickly.

  He looked about the drawing room. She’d had makeshift new curtains and carpets brought in, but it was still a dismal place—there was no point in replacing the curling, water- and soot-stained toile wallpaper until they had a new roof and better chimneys. “Not soon enough,” he said. “At least fifty years too late.”

  When they’d first arrived in the country, she’d worried that he might re-embrace whisky. But it was sobriety that he clasped tight and did not let go. During the day he, like she, threw himself into his duties. At night, instead of turning to the bottle, he turned to the outdoors. Sometimes she, waiting beside her window in the dark, would see him return, hunched over before the manor, his hands on his knees, breathing hard with exertion.

  All because of this cursed house, half of which someone should have demolished fifty years ago.

  But his voice was calm. What had been done had been done. There was no use pointing fingers at the dead or at forces beyond his control that had sent agricultural prices stumbling in their lifetime.

  “And this is for you.” He handed her a brown-paper package that he’d hid behind his person. “I stopped by the general merchandiser’s. But the selection was paltry. I chose the least terrible of the lot.”

  She was astonished. “You didn’t need to.”

  Inside the package was a rather plain music box that must have sat on the shop’s shelves for the better half of a decade. Even with the obvious signs of recent cleaning, its corners and creases were still encrusted with dust. When she opened it, it played a few tinny, scratchy bars from “Für Elise.”

  “As I said, it’s not much good.”

  “No, it’s fine. Thank you.” It took a great effort for her to not hug the music box to her chest. “I will keep it well.”

  “I’ll do better next year.” He smiled. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” she answered.

  Some hopes were weeds, easy to eradicate with a yank and a pull. Some, however, were vines, fast growing, tenacious, and impossible to clear. As she played the music box again, alone in the drawing room, she began to realize that hers were of the latter kind.

  She would never stop hoping.

  T he last thing Millie expected to see was her husband on the roof of the house, stripping the slate tiles alongside the men he’d hired. He was in old tweeds and a woolen cap. She’d nearly mistaken him for a village lad until someone addressed him as “milord.”

  “What are you doing, Lord Fitzhugh?”

  “I’m supervising the men.”

  “You seem to be working with the men, if my eyes don’t deceive me.”

  He tossed a tile at an older man, who passed it to another, who in turn slid it down a long chute set at forty-five degrees. The tile was caught on the bottom by one of two waiting men and, after passing through a few more hands, carefully placed in stacks.

  “Your eyes do deceive you!”

  “So they must,” she shouted back and left him to it.

  It was quite ungentlemanly of him to be performing manual labor. But come to think of it, his days at Eton had been heavily driven by sports—association football in the Michaelmas Half, field game during the Easter Half, and come the Summer Half, cricket. The sedentary nature of married life must contribute to the ennui of it. And the demolition of the north wing, besides the satisfaction of literally destroying the house that had derailed his life, provided an outlet for a young man’s pent-up energy.

  It also gave them something to talk about at dinner, the only time of the day they spent in each other’s company and not much time at that, as he had no use for protracted dinners—in fact he still ate like a student, with a speed she found difficult to match.

  So it was during the taking down of the north wing that she learned about the nest of bats in the attic, the mold that had been growing inside the plaster, the fact that the oldest man in the demolition party had fought in the Crimean War in his youth. She told him of her plans to build an electrical plant on-site, wire the house with electricity, and modernize the plumbing.

  “You would not believe the flush commodes that the man in London tried to sell me. They had the queen’s face painted in the bowl.”

  Lord Fitzhugh choked on his lamb. “You are making this up.”

  “I am not. I was aghast, while the man tried to reassure me that it was all perfectly proper.”

  “I hope you did not buy any. I don’t think I can—” They stared at each other for a moment and both burst out laughing.

  “No, neither can I—ever!” she declared emphatically, still laughing. “No, our new commodes will be blue enamel, with white daisies.”

  He choked again. “Daisies?”

  “Believe me, I tried to find a more masculine commode—something with maybe a hunt scene or a dragon painted inside—but such a thing apparently does not exist.”

  “Daisies,” he still sounded dazed. “My friends will never stop laughing.”

  It was the first time he ever alluded to the possible presence of his friends at his home. For a moment her imagination ran away and she saw a crowded drawing room, full of laughter and high spirits. And she saw the two of them at the center of all that cheerful goodwill, Lord and Lady Fitzhugh. And someone raising his glass, crying, “To our delightful hosts.”

  “Good thing I’m not inviting anyone here,” said the real-life Lord Fitzhugh.

  She bent her face to her plate, so he would not see her disappointment.

  She accepted this marriage for the alliance of convenience it was. But when they worked toward a common purpose, when they conspired to keep the secret of the house’s “repairs” from the rest of the world, and when he sat across from the table from her and laughed, it was nearly impossible to believe that they were not building something together.

  They were: a better house.

  And nothing else.

  L ord Fitzhugh left Henley Park frequently. Most of the time he left in the morning and returned at night—he’d stop by Oxford to see both Helena and Lord Hastings, and then call on Venetia, whose house was not too far from the university. But occasionally, he stayed away for longer.

  When he told Millie he’d be gone a week, she issued an i
nvitation to her mother to come stay with her—her father would be indignant about the north wing, but Mrs. Graves would understand their choice to not burden themselves and their heirs with a house that could never be adequately maintained.

  Mrs. Graves, when she came, was more than a little shocked at the architectural skeleton of what had once been the north wing. “Whose decision was this?” she asked, her jaw slack.

  “It was a joint decision,” answered Millie. She could not help the note of pride seeping into her voice. “Our thoughts are exactly aligned on this matter.”

  Mrs. Graves considered the remnants of the north wing for another minute. Then, she smiled and gave Millie’s hand a squeeze. “Very good, my love. Keep on making these joint decisions. They will give you a foundation upon which to build a life.”

  It was late November, the days cold and damp. Millie and Mrs. Graves spent most of their time inside, drinking hot cocoa and discussing the manor’s many pressing needs. But on the day of Mrs. Graves’s departure, the sky cleared to a glorious blue and they took a walk on the grounds of Henley Park.

  Millie showed Mrs. Graves the walled kitchen garden. She’d been busy hiring more staff for the estate. They were still shorthanded, but work had begun on clearing the kitchen garden.

  She gestured at a row of apple, pear, and quince trees espaliered to the southern wall of the garden. “Mr. Johnson, our new head gardener, believes that these fruit trees may yet be saved. He and his apprentices pruned back years of overgrowth just last week. Mrs. Gibson is waiting for them to bear fruit to make jams and preserves.”

  “Will the fruit trees be the only ones bearing fruit in Henley Park next year?” asked Mrs. Graves. “Your father is eager to know.”

  “We’ll also be putting in beds of strawberries—they will bear fruits. But if Father is referring to a grandchild, then I’m afraid he’ll have to wait quite a while longer.”

  “Does Lord Fitzhugh not visit your chamber?”

  Embarrassment singed Millie’s cheeks but she kept her voice detached. “That is another one of our joint decisions. I know Father would prefer a grandson as soon as possible, but neither Lord Fitzhugh nor I want children now and our wishes should count in this matter. More than Father’s.”