Ravishing the Heiress

by Sherry Thomas

  “Helena didn’t give the cause of death, only that Venetia is devastated. We must go back and help with the arrange-ments.”

  We. It was the first time he’d referred to the two of them as one unit. She couldn’t help a leap of her heart. “Of course. I’ll start packing right now.”

  Twenty minutes later, they were on their way. The lurching and swaying of the cart couldn’t be easy on his still fragile person, but he endured the discomforts without complaint.

  In some ways, they were not too unalike. They both put duty first. They were both reserved by nature. And they both had a greater capacity to bear private pain than either had suspected.

  “Thank you,” he said when they were still a mile from the village. “If you hadn’t disposed of the whisky when you did, I’d be in no shape to be of any use to my sister. I’m glad you had the resolve and the fortitude.”

  The pleasure she derived at his compliment was frightful. She looked down at her hands, so as to not betray her emotions. “I was afraid you might do mortal harm to yourself.”

  “That would probably need more than a few weeks of drinking.”

  She almost could not bring herself to speak of it. “I was talking about the rifle.”

  He looked genuinely puzzled. “What rifle?”

  “You were staring into the barrel of a shotgun.”

  “You mean the dummy rifle I found in the shed?”

  Her jaw dropped. “It was a dummy?”

  “Very much. A child’s toy.” He laughed. “Perhaps we should introduce you to some proper firearms, so you can tell the difference next time.”

  Her face heated. “This is terribly embarrassing, isn’t it?”

  Now that he was sober, his eyes were an unearthly blue. “It is, for me: that I should have behaved in such a way as to cause anyone to doubt my will to live.”

  “You’d endured a terrible loss.”

  “Nothing others—including yourself—haven’t endured.”

  He was inclined to gloss over heartbreak and affliction—again, like her.

  The road turned. A gorgeous vista opened before them: a wide, oval lake, as green as the emerald peaks that framed it. All along the banks, late summer flowers bloomed, their reflections, white and mauve, like a string of pearls around the lake. On the distant shore stood a pretty village with ivy-covered cottages, their window boxes still aflame with geraniums and cyclamens.

  “Well,” she said, “at least the honeymoon is over.”

  “Yes.” He tilted his face to the sky, as if marveling at the sensation of sunlight on his skin. “Thank God.”

  CHAPTER 6

  1896

  Fitz stood outside Isabelle’s house.

  The day before, he’d hesitated in front of her door because he’d needed to cope with both an exorbitant hope and an equally strong fear of disappointment. But that was yesterday, before they’d committed themselves to a future together, a future once thought to be lost. Today he should enter her home with a spring in his step and no uncertainties whatsoever.

  But last night he had discussed the matter with Millie. And sixteen hours later, he remained unsettled by her burst of panic, her horror at what he’d proposed. She’d agreed in the end, but the sense of rejection had lingered, as if all their years of mutual affection and common purpose counted for nothing.

  He rang the bell and was duly admitted. In Isabelle’s sunny parlor, they embraced a long time before taking their seats. She was well; the children were well. She’d taken them for a tour of the British Museum in the morning. Alexander couldn’t get enough of the suits of armor. Hyacinth had been fascinated by the mummies, especially those of animals—and was already plotting to preserve General, their elderly cat, for all eternity, when the latter gave up the ghost.

  “I can guess where she might have come by her mischief,” said Fitz.

  Isabelle chortled. “I dare say she will quite surpass me as a miscreant.”

  The tea tray was brought in. She rose and went to a side cabinet. “Tea is such a silly drink for a man. Can I offer you something stronger?”

  He had not touched a drop of “something stronger” since the Lake District. “No, thank you. Tea is fine.”

  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 e
yes 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.”

  Helena 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 pseudonym, 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.

  You 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.