Ravishing the Heiress

by Sherry Thomas

She was happily proud—of both of them. “You did very well yourself.”

  A knock came at the door. It was their butler, with the coffee service.

  “Shall we open a bottle of champagne for you?” asked Lord Fitzhugh.

  “No,” she said, “coffee is more than good enough.”

  Water would have been more than good enough.

  She poured the coffee. He raised his in a toast. “To a future of our own making.”

  They clinked their cups. “A future of our own making,” she echoed.

  And wished fervently that it would be so.

  CHAPTER 10

  1896

  The invitation—summons, rather—came at the last minute, on the morning of the ball.

  Millie was about to look in on Helena’s final fitting when a footman presented a silver salver. She recognized the envelope by its embossed stem of a rose at the lower right-hand corner: Mrs. Englewood.

  She ducked into an empty room to read.

  Dear Lady Fitzhugh,

  Let me be the first one to admit that it is terrible form to request a meeting, given that we have never been introduced. But as we are well aware of each other’s existence, let us dispense with needless formalities, shall we?

  Please let me know if I may wait on you this afternoon at two.

  Yours,

  Mrs. John Englewood

  This was not entirely unexpected. She and Mrs. Englewood were not two bitches tussling over a bone. At some point it behooved them to sit down and hold a civilized conversation concerning the Arrangement. But for Millie that point hadn’t come yet and shouldn’t come for at least another five months.

  Mrs. Englewood obviously believed otherwise.

  Millie had the perfect excuse in the ball of course—she was much too busy—but she would not decline the meeting. She’d learned her lesson about putting off till eight years later what she should do today. If the meeting must happen at some point, then let it happen today.

  Even if today was the day Fitz became her husband in truth.

  Especially if.

  Were Mrs. Englewood and Fitz a pair of bookends, they could not be better matched physically. Like him, her build was tall, slender, and tight. Like him, she had dark hair and blue eyes. And like him, she moved with a nonchalant grace.

  Millie was neither overly short nor overly pudgy. Before Mrs. Englewood’s stately figure, however, it was difficult not to feel squat—even a little dumpy. But it was not as if she was ever going to feel anything but inferior before Isabelle Englewood.

  “You are different from how I remember you,” said Mrs. Englewood, sipping her tea. “Taller and prettier.”

  Just like that, no other preliminaries.

  Millie took a deep breath. “It’s nice to know that I look better now than I did at my wedding.”

  “The dress swallowed you.”

  Millie had to agree. “Yes, in hindsight the dress was quite atrocious. Instead of the best money could buy, we went for the most money could buy.”

  Her acknowledgment of the parvenu tastes of her wedding gown garnered her a surprised glance from Mrs. Englewood.

  “All the same,” she said, her voice turning wistful, “I’d have gladly worn that gown—or one ten times as hideous—if I could have walked down the aisle to him.”

  Millie ate her biscuit and said nothing.

  “I loved him. I’d planned my entire future around becoming Mrs. Fitzhugh. And when he married you, all my hopes and dreams collapsed. For two months, all I did was sit on my bed, dawn till dusk, dusk till dawn. I barely ate. Slept maybe once every three days. I’ve never looked the same since.”

  She did look different, like a broken vase that had been put back together: still beautiful, all the pieces accounted for, but the damage showed. Millie’s heart flinched, as if someone had brought a burning match too near.

  “My mother and my sister eventually coaxed me out of my exile. They convinced me that it was better for me to go to London and find a husband, instead of fade away at home. So that was what I did the next Season.”

  “He was there that day at your wedding. He said you looked beautiful—and happy,” Millie said, in a futile attempt to remind Mrs. Englewood that not all had gone awry in her life.

  “I suppose I was happy enough. But it was not the same—an imitation. Nothing could approach that perfect, unmarred happiness I’d once known.”

  Every breath Millie drew scalded her lungs, but Mrs. Englewood went on inexorably.

  “All I want is to regain what I once lost, to live the life I was meant to live. It’s not too much to ask, is it?”

  Millie forced out her answer. “No.”

  “Fitz is a lovely man—and I’m not just talking about his looks. You know he is stalwart and honorable. You know he will sacrifice himself to the call of duty. And—” Mrs. Englewood’s voice faltered. “And you are now part of his duty.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He cares deeply for your well-being. He views you as the blameless party and he does not want any action on his part to injure your future happiness.”

  Millie began to understand. “You are worried that I won’t let him go—that I will resort to tears to keep him with me.”

  “I am not saying you would,” said Mrs. Englewood. “But in your place I might have. It is so easy to fall in love with him and so difficult to let go.”

  “It is a good thing for everyone, then, I am not bound up in him.”

  Mrs. Englewood stared at Millie, her gaze as heavy as a boulder. “Do you not love him?”

  No one had ever asked her a direct question on this matter—and therefore she’d been spared the lying.

  “Lord Fitzhugh and I married because he needed my family’s fortune and my father wanted a titled son-in-law,” Millie said carefully. “That we get along as well as we do is odds defying enough. Love would have taken it into the realm of fiction.”

  “You don’t find his person appealing?” Mrs. Englewood sounded incredulous.

  “He is very agreeable.”

  “I mean, do you not think he is extraordinarily handsome?”

  “He is handsome. But so are a number of his classmates and his new brother-in-law, the Duke of Lexington. If I fell in love with every toothsome fellow I came across, I’d be frequently and needlessly in love.”

  “But he is also kind. Considerate. Willing to shoulder all burdens. Being married to him all these years, you’ve never wished that he would have eyes only for you?”

  Millie forced herself to hold Isabelle Englewood’s eyes. “Not everyone is meant to fall in love. Lord Fitzhugh and I are good friends and nothing more.”

  “Then, you will let him go?”

  “I have never restricted the freedom of his movement, not once in our married life.”

  “Even though the two of you will have six months of intimacy? That changes things, you know.”

  “If that alone were enough to make people fall in love, all the wives in this country would be in love with their husbands—and vice versa.”

  Mrs. Englewood set down her teacup and rose. She walked to the open window and looked out to the street beyond. It was a quiet street, no hawkers, street musicians, or the constant hoof clacks of hansom cabs looking for custom. Fitz had clearly put a great deal of thought in the house he’d selected for her.

  She turned around. “I am afraid, Lady Fitzhugh. I’ve been at the receiving end of life’s caprices and it’s not a kind place to be. But I have no choice, do I? I must trust that you are a woman of your word.”

  Millie had not given her word to Mrs. Englewood. She had not yet conceded Fitz. Did a faithful wife of almost eight years not have some claims to her husband? She deserved a level playing field, at least.

  “So he was there at my wedding…” whispered Mrs. Englewood, as if to herself. She blinked, her eyes brilliant with unshed tears. “I knew I sensed his presence.”

  How foolish Millie was: There was no such thing as a level
playing field. She would always be the usurper, the spoiler of dreams, the one who caused such grief on Mrs. Englewood’s part that to this day it was writ large in the very alignment of her features.

  “You are the one he has loved all along,” she heard herself say. “There has never been anyone but you.”

  Helena gazed at the adorable ducklings a minute longer—Miss Evangeline South was a talented artist—before rising from her seat, her notes in hand. She opened the door of her office and handed the notes to her secretary.

  “I need these typed, Miss Boyle.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  Susie was in her spot—Helena could swear the woman never needed to use the water closet. She retreated back into her office and shut the door.

  She didn’t know why it should be so, after a day and a half with the ducklings and turtles and fish of Miss South’s pond, but her hands reached on their own toward the drawer into which she’d stuffed Hastings’s manuscript.

  And when she had the manuscript before her, she did not begin from where she’d stopped, but opened to a random page.

  Her skin is dusky in the candlelight. I trace my fingers up the side of her ribcage, over her shoulder, then along the length of her arm to her wrist, fastened to a slat in the headboard with a silk scarf.

  “Aren’t you weary of looking at me like this, tied up always?” she murmurs.

  “No,” I answer. “Never.”

  “Don’t you want to be touched?”

  “I do. But I don’t want to be scratched.”

  She licks her lips, her tongue pink, moist. “What is a good time in the marital bed without a few scratches on your back, darling?”

  Helena’s pulse accelerated. She’d read some erotica here and there. Always the stories seemed to be aimed at titillating male readers, with the female characters completely interchangeable, mere objects to be spanked and poked.

  But this was different. The nameless bride of Larkspear was a person in her own right, neither afraid nor given to senseless worship of a man’s cock.

  “If only I could be sure that a few scratches will satisfy you.”

  I bend my head and bite her lip. Her breaths caress my chin. Her gaze slides down my body. “Ready again, I see.”

  “Ravenous.”

  “Such interesting nights you give me, Larkspear.”

  “Do you think of me during the day, Lady Larkspear?”

  She smiles. “Never, my dear.”

  “Liar.”

  “Prove it.”

  I thrust deep inside her. Her lips part. Her eyes close briefly, but the next moment they are wide open again. She likes to look at me in my animal rut, to witness my weakness for her and taunt me with the unattainability of her heart.

  Helena turned the manuscript facedown. It made her uncomfortable, as if he’d pulled a fantasy out of the deepest recesses of her mind, a fantasy she never knew about until he’d set it down in writing. A fantasy about power, her power, and a man who pushed back without being fearful of it.

  A knock came at her door. She hastily locked the manuscript away. “Come in.”

  Susie poked in her head. “Miss, the ball is tonight. Lady Fitzhugh asked me to remind you to leave earlier than usual.”

  Of course, the ball in honor of Venetia and the duke—with Hastings certain to be there.

  “Yes, I will leave earlier,” she said. “Or Lady Fitzhugh will fret.”

  The train bellowed. The platform fogged with steam from the engines. A fading swirl of it passed between Fitz and Isabelle.

  Her children were already aboard with their governess. Through the windows they waved at him, excited at the prospect of visiting their cousins. He waved back.

  “They like you,” she said.

  “I like them. They are good children.” He changed his walking stick—the one with the blue porcelain handle—from one hand to the other. She’d admired it earlier; he did not tell her it had been a present from Millie. “You should probably board. Your train will leave any minute now.”

  “I’m loath to leave you,” she said. “I wish I hadn’t agreed to this visit.”

  “You will enjoy it—you haven’t seen your sister in years. Besides, you’ll only be gone a week.”

  “A week is a long time. Everything can change.”

  Any other day he’d have scoffed at her fear. But tonight something would change.

  On the face of it, a roll in the hay ought not to matter. He’d sauntered through quite a few beds in his time. Sometimes he grew more fond of a woman, sometimes less. But the change was predicated upon their personal qualities, not because he slept with them.

  He already respected and admired Millie. He’d like her even more tomorrow morning, but the fundamental nature of their firmly established friendship should remain the same.

  More or less.

  “A week is only seven days,” he said.

  He noticed he did not reassure Isabelle that nothing would change. Her lips tightened: She’d noticed, too.

  The steam whistle blew, a sharp-pitched warning, followed by a deep rumble that rattled the tracks.

  “Hurry,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her on her cheek. “Or your children will be in Aberdeen without you.”

  She gripped his hand. “Think of me.”

  “I will.”

  She turned toward the train, then turned back again. “You once told me that no matter what happened, you’d always, always love me. Is that still the case?”

  “Of course,” he said, perhaps a little too fast.

  “I’ll hold on to that, then.”

  “I’ll be here waiting, when you come back.”

  She threw her arms about him. “I love you. I will love you till my last breath.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The Bench

  1890

  Millie knocked on the door of her husband’s study and pushed it open. “You wish to see me, sir?”

  “Yes. Come in, please.”

  She took her usual chair across the table from his, but he was not in his chair. Instead, he was before the mantel, a poker in hand, prodding at the coals in the grate. Something in the set of his jaw alarmed her.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He shrugged.

  “Tell me.”

  He dropped the poker into its holder. “I opened a letter from Gerry Pelham just now. He informs me he has become the proud uncle of a baby niece.”

  Gerry Pelham, Isabelle Pelham’s brother. It had been little more than a year since Miss Pelham became Mrs. Englewood—and now she had a child. A familiar pain gnawed at Millie’s chest—Fitz had been once again reminded of what he’d lost.

  He sat down in his chair. “I’m sorry. I was surprised by the news, that’s all.”

  Ambushed by the news, more like it. “Would you prefer that I came another time?”

  “No, I’m glad you are here. Help me take my mind off it.”

  He used to want to be away from her when he had such news from his beloved. The pain in Millie’s heart was now mixed with a slow, bittersweet pleasure. “Anything,” she said.

  He opened a dossier on the desk. “Your father advertised very little. He believed that the quality of Cresswell & Graves products spoke for themselves. When we first began to expand into bottled beverages, my instinct was to advertise, but Mr. Hawkes felt otherwise. He was more concerned with wooing the retailers to stock these new products. Once the products were in view, he believed they’d fly off the shelves.

  “I gave him one quarter to prove himself right. When he did not, and our new beverages collected dust in shops, I commissioned an advertising campaign. Since women are responsible for the majority of the household expenditures on food and drink, I thought I’d ask your opinion on these placards.”

  She was immensely flattered—and almost as nervous. “I’d be honored to help, if I can.”

  He passed the drawings to her. She spread them before her. The designs were black and white. “Are these the finish
ed designs?”

  “Yes.”

  She hesitated. “You know I have no particular artistic eye.”

  He smiled slightly. “In other words, you don’t find them appealing?”

  “Not particularly,” she said slowly. She’d hoped to tell him otherwise.

  “Don’t look so apologetic. If I thought you’d say yes to everything I wouldn’t ask your opinion. Now tell me why you don’t find them appealing.”

  Encouraged, she said, “Well, raspberry soda water, orange soda water, and strawberry lemonade are pretty and vibrant in person. A black-and-white placard does not convey their attractiveness. And the image of a bottle surrounded by words extolling its virtues is too matter-of-fact, almost as if we are selling a tonic when we are doing nothing of the sort.”

  “What would you do, then?”

  “We want young people to take these bottled drinks on picnics and to the seaside on holidays, don’t we?” she said tentatively. “Then, why not let us suggest that in the advertising itself? Young ladies sitting under the shade of a tree, a nice spread of a picnic, raising our bottles in toast. Or young ladies at the beach, blue sky, blue sea, everyone in white dresses, holding our bottles.”

  He jotted down a several lines of notes. “All right. I’ll recommission the artworks.”

  “On my words alone?”

  He looked up. “Of everyone involved with Cresswell & Graves, you are the one I trust the most. And if I’ve learned anything since we married, it’s that you have good instincts. So yes, Lady Fitzhugh, on your words alone.”

  She scarcely knew what to do. It was difficult to remain seated, yet a lady simply couldn’t leap wildly about the room, even if her husband had just told her that yes, indeed, she was his closest advisor.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Thank you. Do you need me to look at anything else?”