Ravishing the Heiress ft-2

by Sherry Thomas

  Venetia’s train pulled into the station. She and her husband, the Duke of Lexington, stepped down from the duke’s private rail coach. The two had supplied the bulk of the gossip for the early part of the Season, culminating in an elopement that had shocked everyone, members of their families included. Fitz had guessed more of the reasons behind their sudden marriage than most, but still he’d worried, until the couple had come for a quick visit to London not long ago and he’d seen for himself how happy and relaxed Venetia was in her new marriage. They had then returned to the duke’s estate in the country for the rest of their honeymoon and were only now rejoining Society, beginning with the ball in their honor, hosted by Fitz and Millie—the same night they would consummate their marriage.

  Only two days away now.

  Helena waved. Venetia waved back, all smiles. The crowd hushed—Venetia was the great beauty of their generation and her appearance often caused awed silences. But as she walked arm in arm with her husband toward her family, the gawkers gradually returned to their own concerns.

  Her smile faltered as she saw Isabelle. Perhaps her hand tightened on her husband’s arm also, for the duke bent his head toward her. Fitz could not tell what question he asked, but her answer, judging by the movement of her lips, seemed to be, Everything is fine. I’ll tell you more later.

  She was warm and gracious as she greeted Isabelle and introduced her husband. They were all old friends. Isabelle and Hastings had pulled many a prank together when the boys visited the Pelham house. She and Helena had always got on well. And Fitz had learned, from a remark Helena let stray years ago, that in the days leading up to his wedding, Venetia had spent many hours holding Isabelle’s hand as the latter wept and raged against the cruelty of fate.

  This, then, should have been a more buoyant reunion. But Isabelle alone brought the delight and the vivacity. She was thrilled for Venetia’s match with the duke. She made hearty digs at Hastings for Helena’s continued scorn of him. She could not wait to be more settled so that she could throw a dinner for the old gang.

  Everyone else was cordial in their manners, but their smiles reminded Fitz of those one put on when faced with an overly chatty vicar.

  “Yes,” said Isabelle, as they walked toward the exit and the carriages that awaited beyond. “I do enjoy it. And did Fitz tell you? He was the one who arranged for the house.”

  Swift, inscrutable glances darted Fitz’s way.

  “Fitz is terribly modest,” said Venetia. “Not for him to boast what he has done for his friends.”

  Isabelle laughed. “Modest, Fitz? When did you become modest? I remember you bragging with the best of them.”

  He had, hadn’t he? He’d strutted, too, as young, athletic boys so often did. One could say having his dreams executed before his eyes killed his swagger outright. But the truth was, he’d always admired quiet confidence better than braggadocio and would have moderated his bluster at some point, even if life hadn’t beat him to it.

  “Modesty is a more appealing quality in an older gentleman such as myself.”

  Isabelle laughed. “Oh, how funny.”

  He had meant to poke fun at himself but what he said was not a joke.

  “So, my dear Mrs. Englewood, what are your plans now that you are back?” asked Hastings.

  “Oh, so many of them.” Isabelle turned her face toward Fitz, her look of anticipation unmistakable.

  Hastings tapped his fingers against the handle of his walking stick. Venetia adjusted the angle of her hat. Helena tugged at the brooch at her throat. Isabelle might not recognize the signs but they were uncomfortable, especially his sisters.

  “Mrs. Englewood is going to visit her sister in Aberdeen in a day or two,” Fitz said.

  “Oh, how delightful,” said Venetia. “Will you stay for a while? Scotland is lovely this time of the year.”

  There was hope in her voice.

  “No, a week at most. I will visit her for a longer time after the end of the Season but for now I shall miss London too much.” She gazed again at Fitz, not caring that she was essentially flirting—possibly even thrilling to it.

  Perhaps Fitz had shot well past modesty into outright prudery. But Isabelle had children and he a wife. They ought to be more circumspect in their public conduct, even if they were only before his family and his most trusted friend.

  Then he saw her, Millie, descending from her brougham, looking right and left preparing to cross the street. Her eyes landed on him at the same moment. But the pleasure on her face faded away as she took in the sight of Isabelle walking next to him, comfortably ensconced among members of his family.

  In her place.

  She blinked a few times, her sweet, delicate face straining for composure. Lowering her head, she turned around and climbed back into the brougham.

  It drove away, inconspicuous, one vehicle in a sea of carriages.

  A lice was in her usual place on the mantel of Fitz’s study, her eyes closed, her tail curled around her plump little body. The clear glass bell jar that protected her from dust and moisture provided a clue that she’d long ago departed for the hereafter, but she remained so lifelike Millie still expected her to stir and wake up.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere in the house,” came her husband’s voice behind her. “Why didn’t you join us?”

  Millie did not immediately turn around. She needed a minute to pull herself together. The sight of the Fitzhugh party coming out from the rail station was still seared in her mind, Isabelle retaking her place as if the past eight years never happened. “You are back early,” she said. “I thought everyone was to take tea at the duke’s house.”

  “Everyone includes you and I’ve come to get you.”

  He had spoken to her of fairness when she’d have put their pact on a bonfire and burned it. No doubt he was again motivated by his need to restore her to her rightful place. But she wanted to be an inseparable part of his heart, not a consideration for his conscience. “It will be awkward with Mrs. Englewood there.”

  “She won’t be there.”

  He joined her at the mantel, the shoulder of his day coat speckled with drops of water—it had started to rain as she’d reached home. And then, utterly unexpected: his hand on the small of her back; his lips on her cheek.

  The gesture was more familiar than intimate. Still, they did not greet each other this way: nods and smiles, perhaps, but not kisses on the cheek that left an etching of heat upon her skin.

  He turned the bell jar a few degrees. “I never asked you, Millie. But why did you have Alice preserved?”

  Sometimes Millie forgot that it had been her idea. No, more than her idea: She’d also been the one to engage the services of a taxidermist. “You loved her so much I couldn’t bear to put her underground.”

  He was silent, his thumb rubbing against the small plaque that bore Alice’s name.

  “Do you miss her still?” she asked.

  “Not as much as I used to. And when I do miss her—she was a fixture of my school days, to think of her is to remember what it was like to be seventeen and without a care in the world.”

  “You miss your old life.” It was a given, but still she hurt to be reminded of it.

  “Doesn’t everyone, from time to time?” He replaced the bell jar and turned toward her. “Ten years from now I’m going to miss my life as it is today, simply because I will never be twenty-seven again. There is always something worth remembering in every stage of the journey.”

  “Even in the year you married?”

  “Yes.” His expression was—surely she deluded herself—nostalgic. “Demolishing the north wing, for one—that opportunity will not come again. Mrs. Clements telling the colonel to shut up. Our conversation about the commodes with the queen’s portrait inside—still one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.”

  She didn’t know why it should be so, but her eyes tingled with tears. It had been a horrible year, but his words carried a great fondness—for this most ar
duous time of their life together. As if in looking back, the grief and the anguish had been sifted away, and only the gems remained—moments of camaraderie, memories that shone.

  “Of course,” he said, smiling, “how can I forget, your panic over my determination to kill myself with a dummy rifle.”

  Her voice caught. “You will never let me live that down, will you?”

  “No. I can’t believe it: We never did give you any firearm lessons, did we?”

  “There were always more pressing concerns.”

  “We’ll do it this year—make you a crack shot in no time.”

  “I’m sure the grouse will happily disagree as I miss every last one of them.”

  “Grouse isn’t the only thing to shoot. The seasons for partridge and pheasant don’t end until first of February. And that’s plenty of t…”

  His voice trailed off.

  Understanding came all too swift to Millie, like a tropical sunset that abruptly turned day into night. There was no next year for them. Come January he would go to Mrs. Englewood.

  “It’s all right,” she said gamely. “Not all of us are meant to be crack shots.”

  He looked at her as if he hadn’t seen her in a very long time. Or perhaps, as if he might never see her again, and must memorize her features one by one.

  When he finally spoke, he said, “They are still waiting for us for tea, you and me. Shall we go?”

  CHAPTER 9

  The Partnership

  1889

  M illie’s father died three weeks after Alice. But whereas Alice had given every indication that she was not long for this earth, Mr. Graves’s heart failed unexpectedly. He was forty-two.

  Millie was stunned. Her mother was incoherent with shock. Thankfully, as he had done after Mr. Townsend’s passing, Lord Fitzhugh stepped in and took charge of the arrangements.

  Mr. Graves’s will was simple enough. He settled a number of trusts on longtime retainers and employees, gave miscellaneous gifts to members of his extended family, provided generously for his widow, and left all of Cresswell & Graves Enterprises to Millie.

  After the funeral, Mrs. Hanover, Millie’s aunt, suggested that Mrs. Graves, devastated by grief, would do well to spend some time in a bright and cheerful place. Millie and Mrs. Hanover together accompanied Mrs. Graves to Tuscany, to recuperate in a sun-drenched landscape of cypresses and vineyards.

  They’d planned to stay for at least three months. But a month into their sojourn, a letter came for Millie from her husband. He dutifully wrote once a week—short missives that numbered not more than five sentences between greetings and salutations. But this letter was three pages, front and back.

  He had performed an audit of the firm, from its accounts and records to its factories and other physical assets. He had also spoken with a number of retailers who sold Cresswell & Graves wares.

  Mr. Graves, during his tenure, had been excessively cautious. The plum pudding and the mackerel had been the only new products added to the line during the past decade. His philosophy had been to produce few products and produce them well. With the ever expanding number of companies that daily introduced more varieties to the market, Cresswell & Graves still sold about the same number of products from year to year, but they were becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of the retailers’ stock.

  Moreover, they could not even boast their wares as the best-made tinned goods anymore. Yes, their ingredients were still carefully sourced and thoroughly inspected, and the manufacturing process was clean and conscientious, but newer technologies and production methods had become available in the past ten years—means to make preserved foods taste fresher and last longer—and Cresswell & Graves had adopted none of them.

  The company was stagnating. In Lord Fitzhugh’s opinion, they had not yet reached a point of crisis. But should things continue at the same sluggish pace, it might not be long before they were moribund.

  Change must happen. If they didn’t initiate the change now, it would be forced upon them soon. He meant to convene a meeting of lawyers and managers and discuss a new, more energetic direction for the company. Would Lady Fitzhugh join him?

  Millie was dumbfounded—almost more by his request than by the company’s declining fortunes. From birth she’d been trained to be a lady. She knew nothing about the business. She’d never set foot in one of Cresswell & Graves’s factories. And until her honeymoon, never eaten from a tin.

  It seemed almost blasphemous for her to participate in the running of the business in any capacity. Her mother never had. Her father, were he still alive, would be scandalized by any involvement on Millie’s part.

  “What should I do?” she asked her mother.

  “What do you wish to do?” said Mrs. Graves. She still looked pale and fragile in her widow’s weeds, but her old strength of mind was returning.

  “I’d like to do what I can to help Lord Fitzhugh—and myself. But I’m not sure what my presence will accomplish. I haven’t the slightest experience when it comes to matters of business.”

  “But the firm belongs to you. Without your support, Lord Fitzhugh cannot take over the management of it.”

  “I’m astonished he wants to.” Lordships didn’t involve themselves in the nitty-gritty details of how their money was made.

  Mrs. Graves tilted her embroidery frame to better examine it in the light. “I approve. A young man should have ambitious tasks with which to occupy himself. Even with all the work that remains to be done at Henley Park, the majority of the improvements will finish sometime in the not-too-distant future. But an ongoing concern such as Cresswell & Graves will always keep the man in charge busy.”

  Millie remained awake half the night, thinking. In the morning, before breakfast, she sent out her reply.

  I will start by the end of the week.

  L ord Fitzhugh was on the platform, waiting, as Millie’s train reached London. She had not expected his presence. When she arrived at a destination behind him, she could always expect that he’d have dispatched a carriage for her, but he’d never before come to collect her in person.

  He nodded when he spotted her, her face very nearly pressed to the window. Ever so beautiful, her husband, but there was something different in his aspect today. He was dressed rather formally, gleaming top hat, a black frock coat, a mourning band on his arm—but that was not it.

  Then she realized that for the very first time since she’d met him, he looked genuinely excited. Unlike the earldom, which he took on most reluctantly, he relished the prospect of remaking Cresswell & Graves.

  He offered her his arm as she disembarked. “How was your trip, Lady Fitzhugh?”

  “It was fine. I had to wait overnight in Calais—too much fog on the channel—but other than that, quite smooth.”

  “And how is Mrs. Graves?”

  “Much better. She sends her regards—and she approves of your ambitions.”

  “Your mother, without a doubt, is the most forward-looking person I’ve ever met.”

  “She would have been very gratified to hear of it.”

  “Then, I will be sure to tell her in person next time we meet. What of you, Lady Fitzhugh, do you also approve of my ambitions?”

  She was speaking to a different person. Lord Fitzhugh as she’d known him had been a stoic who carried out his duties because it was expected of him. But this young man next to her had something he wanted to accomplish.

  Mrs. Graves had called their joint decisions the foundation upon which to build a life. But after the foundation they’d need a framework. And Cresswell & Graves just might prove to be that framework.

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “I think taking over the company is exactly what you should do.”

  He handed her into their waiting carriage and climbed in after her, taking the backward-facing seat. “Thank goodness—I was afraid you’d consider it too distasteful.”

  “The thought of you managing the tinneries, I’ll owe, is a bit shocking. But commerce and manufac
turing is where the money is nowadays. Since I am not too ashamed to spend that money, I ought not be too ashamed to make it.”

  “Excellent.” He tapped his walking stick against the top of the carriage. It pulled away from the curb. “When you’ve had a chance to rest, would you like to look at the summary I’ve made of the accounts and ledgers?”

  “Yes, alongside those accounts and ledgers themselves.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Not trusting my mathematical abilities?”

  “Far from it. But since our goal is to have you installed at the head of Cresswell & Graves, it is better for me to be as fluent in the condition of the company as you. If I am an ignoramus, then my word will carry very little weight.”

  He tented his fingers before him. “On the other hand, if you are astonishingly well versed, they might find you too intimidating, and close ranks against us.”

  “A fine line to walk, isn’t it?”

  “Moreover, installing me at the head of the company is only a short-term victory. I need the longtime managers to come to my point of view, so I must make them think that my ideas are their own.”

  “Another tall order.”

  “We have much work to do, Lady Fitzhugh.”

  His tone was serious, yet at the same time full of anticipation. She found herself both daunted by what he wanted and fiercely determined to rise to the challenge. Perhaps a garden was not the only thing they’d grow together. Perhaps they could also nurture a successful partnership.

  “I’m not afraid of work,” she said. “Give me a goal and point me to it.”

  Y ou really aren’t afraid of work,” Fitz marveled a few days later.

  “I used to practice the piano five hours a day,” she said. “I hated it. Compared to that, this is nothing.”

  She might have smiled—her eyes crinkled, but he couldn’t see the rest of her face, which was concealed by a black scarf. She was nearly entirely swamped in black, a dress of black silk trimmed with crape, a thick black mantle, a sable muff for her hands. Fitz was dressed just as heavily, three pairs of stockings inside his boots, gloves, two woolen mufflers. A fire burned in the grate and still he was cold.