Ravishing the Heiress

by Sherry Thomas

  Her ideas were exactly right. Introduced the next spring, the advertising placards, with their lush, striking contrasts of colors and idyllic images, were so wildly popular that they were stolen wherever they were put up. Fitz, encouraged, sent shopkeepers posters to display inside their stores and ordered tens of thousands of handbills to be passed out by sandwich-board men. The bottled beverages sold and sold.

  Fitz, not one to let such excellence go unremarked, bought a set of jeweled hairpins for his wife. He’d taken both of his sisters with him to the jeweler’s, but he’d known, the moment he’d seen the amethyst-and-diamond pins, that they were what he wanted. They reminded him of the lavender at Henley Park, an apt symbol for his wife—handsome, adaptable, and endlessly beneficial.

  The first time he saw his gift on Lady Fitzhugh was on the occasional of Lady Knightbridge’s ball.

  He attended very few balls. For one thing, his presence was beside the point. The function of a ball was to put into proximity young men and women who might someday forge matrimonial alliances. He, a married man, would waste the young ladies’ time. Also, a man at a ball was expected to dance, as there were always ladies in want of a partner. And he didn’t exactly fancy dancing as the night was long.

  But he was at Lady Knightbridge’s ball for a purpose. Venetia, now in a platonic marriage with Mr. Easterbrook, an old family friend, and very much back in Society, wished to present Helena to the elusive Duke of Lexington, whispered to be expected. Fitz, who’d played cricket against Lexington when he was at Eton and Lexington at Harrow, was to make the introductions, as he was the only one in their party already acquainted with their quarry.

  Venetia was disappointed: The duke did not attend after all. But the ball did have the piquancy of having in attendance Fitz’s current mistress.

  Mrs. Dorchester wanted to dance; Fitz obliged with a schottische. Mrs. Dorchester would have preferred a waltz, but Fitz felt strongly that for a man and a woman already conducting an affair, there was no need to further broadcast the relationship by engaging in any activity that would have them pressed together in public.

  The dance done, he walked Mrs. Dorchester back to her friends, and returned to his wife and sisters. Not five minutes later, Mrs. Dorchester sauntered past their group, smiled at him, then shot an utterly superior look at Lady Fitzhugh.

  Fitz turned toward his wife. “Did she do what I think she did? On the occasion of your return to Society no less.”

  Her year of mourning for her father had excluded her from all the goings-on of the previous Season. It was the first time in nearly two years that she’d attended a London festivity.

  “Anne Dorchester knows she has something I don’t. And she has always enjoyed lording over the less blessed of us.”

  “I did not know that about her.”

  “Some women are very nice to men but not so much to other women.”

  “Well, she picked the wrong woman to not be nice to. No one is allowed to disrespect my wife, least of all some woman with whom I am temporarily keeping company.”

  His wife shrugged. “What are you going to do? Make her come here and apologize to me for looking at me the wrong way?”

  “I will no longer keep company with her.”

  She angled an eyebrow. “You cannot do that. It would be kinder to take her out back and shoot her.”

  He laughed. She had the driest sense of humor. “Moreover, I am going to dance with you.”

  “You can’t dance with your own wife at a ball.”

  “Let them arrest me for it, then. Come, the next dance is starting—and Mrs. Dorchester is watching.”

  She studied him. Her eyes were a light brown, the color of the hazelnuts beloved by his Alice. And then she smiled—she had a nice smile. “They will call me bourgeois for it, but I have always been proudly bourgeois.”

  He led her onto the floor. She promptly stepped on his toe on the first turn. “Sorry!”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry. I just might return the favor—I’m completely out of practice. And I can’t remember any of the fancier steps.”

  “Better not. Or I might find myself facedown on the floor.”

  Beyond this initial mishap, however, they danced quite well together. His more cautious quarter turns and half turns gave away to ebullient full revolutions. They spun around the ballroom, everything at the edge of his vision streaks of color and light.

  “Wait. Dance slower,” she suddenly said.

  “Are you dizzy?”

  “Not in the least. I just realized you are right: Mrs. Dorchester is watching. I want to enjoy the sight of her fuming.”

  “And I, of course, will very pointedly not look her way.”

  “She is fanning herself hard,” reported Lady Fitzhugh, delighted. “Now she just snapped at someone.”

  “Excellent, I say we keep dancing until she pulls out her hair.”

  “No, she loves her hair too much. We’d be here all night.”

  “Until she pulls out someone else’s hair, then.”

  Not that his motives were entirely altruistic. He enjoyed dancing with his wife: They moved well together, their sense of rhythm in perfect unison. And she smelled good, the scent light yet distinct.

  “What perfume are you wearing? I like it.”

  “I don’t wear perfume, but my soap is made with extract from our own lavender.”

  As it had turned out, the soil and climate of Somerset were perfect for the propagation of lavender. A few cuttings had grown to over two acres of lavender and she planned to keep expanding. Not long ago they’d discussed acquiring a hive of bees to make lavender honey. And perhaps even purchasing an apparatus to steam distill essence of lavender on site.

  Henley Park, once a wasteland, was now a thriving estate. According to his housekeeper, tourists applied regularly to see the interior of the house and to picnic at the edge of the lavender fields.

  He looked down at the amethyst-and-diamond pins sparkling in her hair. “Why don’t we plan a house party for August?”

  She missed a step. He had to tighten his grip on her so that she didn’t stumble. “Careful now.”

  “I’m sorry. Did you say you want us to host your friends at Henley Park?”

  “For a bit of shooting and fishing, yes. And invite plenty of eligible men for Helena, even though she’ll most probably turn up her nose at all of them.”

  She said nothing.

  “You don’t like the idea?”

  “No, no, I adore it. Just that—I wasn’t sure this day would ever come.”

  “At some point I have to give up sulking.”

  She raised her face, her eyes shining. “And now they can at last snicker at your blue daisy commodes.”

  He chortled. “Don’t mention them. You’ll make me reconsider.”

  “Sorry. What was I saying? We only have strapping, manly commodes. They gurgle if you look at them wrong.”

  They were still laughing when the music stopped.

  “Mrs. Dorchester looks like she is about to break the slats on her fan,” she observed gleefully.

  “Let’s see if she’ll do it.”

  They danced a second waltz. Then a third waltz.

  “Oh, my, she is leaving,” Lady Fitzhugh murmured halfway through the third waltz. “And…she has left.”

  “We’ll dance one more just so that somebody doesn’t run to her and say we pulled apart the moment we drove her away.”

  “Four waltzes. Shocking, Lord Fitzhugh.”

  “My pleasure. And please, call me Fitz—all my friends do. And we’ve been friends for a while, haven’t we?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  He raised a brow. “You don’t know for certain, Lady Fitz? Has anyone else ever insulted you? Tell me and I’ll bring down my wrath upon them to prove my devoted friendship.”

  Her cheeks turned pink. “You don’t need to prove anything. I know we are friends.”

  “Good,” he said. “I don’t want you to think of me as
just the man you had to marry to please your parents.”

  “No, not that,” she said softly. “Not a chance.”

  Sometimes dreams did come true.

  The country house party was a roaring success. The grouse was plentiful, the trout endlessly abundant. They organized a cricket match, a cycling competition, and an excursion to the spectacular Somerset coast. Millie, in a moment of inspiration, hired a photographer and gifted each guest with a sitting and a handsome portrait.

  On the last night of the party, in a crowded drawing room, full of laughter and high spirits, Lord Hastings raised his glass and cried, “To our delightful hosts!”

  His toast was taken up by all the guests. Millie, at the center of all the cheer and goodwill, her husband by her side, did her level best to commit every last detail of the moment to memory. The kiss Venetia blew toward her, Helena’s arm around her shoulders, her mother’s proud smile, all under the golden light from the new chandelier which had been hoisted into place only two days before the house party began.

  The next morning, however, she learned that Mrs. Englewood had given birth to another child, a boy this time. And if she knew, Fitz must also know. As they waved good-bye to their departing guests, she observed him rather nervously.

  He turned to her and smiled. “Would you like a similar party for Christmas as well?”

  He was genuinely pleased. It was as if the increasing size of Mrs. Englewood’s family now had very little—if anything at all—to do with him.

  “Yes, absolutely,” she said, her tone fervent.

  “You are sure? You look a little tired.”

  She had been feeling bleary-eyed, but not anymore. “I can climb the Matterhorn with nothing more than a stick and a canteen.”

  “Then, come with me. You’ve had your fun and games, Lady Fitz. Time to get back to work.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain!”

  They traipsed all over the estate. Now that the house had been largely taken care of, their attention turned to the grounds. The kitchen garden’s west wall needed to be rebuilt—its big gap let in too much cold air and some of the fruit trees had not survived the winter. The man-made lake not far from the entrance of the estate was a great big bruise on the land. Next to it, the Greek folly that must have once been someone’s pride and joy had become what the French might call a pissoir.

  Always so much to do.

  After a whole morning of planning and note-taking, they shared a sandwich next to the lavender fields, listening to the buzz of the bees and talking about a new bridge across the trout stream to replace the old one, which had become too rotted to use.

  Millie would not have minded if the day had gone on forever. But eventually, they walked back toward the manor. Once they crossed its threshold, he would seek his own rooms and expect her to do the same.

  But before they returned to the house, he guided her toward the gardens. She’d been extravagant with the lavender, but she had not neglected the rest of her gardens. The roses were past their best, but the honeysuckles and hydrangeas were still in fine fettle. And now, in her favorite corner of the garden, just past a bed of chamomiles and a laburnum avenue that had been restored in the spring, was something that had not been there before: a garden bench.

  “I know you’ve always liked the bench behind our town house. Consider this one a slightly early birthday present.”

  “It’s…” Her voice caught. “It’s very fine.”

  It was a near exact replica of the one in the garden behind their town house, large, sturdy, sun warmed.

  “I’ll leave you to enjoy,” he said, and walked away with a wave.

  She sat down and enjoyed indeed. A garden and a bench—and a hope that ever bloomed.

  CHAPTER 12

  1896

  Christian de Montfort, the Duke of Lexington, enjoyed watching his wife when she was less than perfectly illuminated. The room was thick with the blue shadows of twilight.

  She slipped into her combination, then came back to bed and looped an arm about his shoulders. “You are not getting ready?”

  “My dear Venetia, it doesn’t take as much time for me.”

  “All right, I see diplomacy is of no use. What I mean to say is that if you don’t decamp, sir, I cannot summon my maid.”

  “In other words, I can profitably leverage my presence here.” He caressed her still-bare arm. “How about this? I will remain, duchess, unless you favor me again.”

  She laughed and slipped away from his grasp. “Later. After the ball—maybe.”

  A sense of déjà vu came over him. “My God, I’d dreamed of this.”

  She waggled one brow. “Of being a squatter in my bed?”

  “Of this whole tableau. You dressing, me ogling, a salacious invitation from me, and this exact reply from you. Later. After the ball—maybe.”

  “When did you dream it?”

  “The night before my Harvard lecture, which quite upset my apple cart.”

  The lecture had been several months earlier. Unbeknownst to him, she’d been in the audience. And the things he’d said from the podium had led their lives to collide in a way he’d never expected.

  “And sent you down a path that led directly into my evil clutches,” she teased.

  “Which is not a terrible place to be at all—juicy, snug, h—”

  She threw a small jar of something at him. He ducked hastily. “What have we come to? A man can’t pay his wife a compliment anymore?”

  She winked. “Not when he is no longer in said evil clutches. Now off with you. I must bathe and dress.”

  He hopped off her bed and pulled on his trousers. “You’ll pay for that summary dismissal after the ball, mein Liebling.”

  “Maybe,” she said saucily.

  He ran his hand through her unbound hair—which fell to the small of her back, as he’d dreamed. “We were meant to be, weren’t we?”

  She pressed a kiss upon the palm of his hand. “Yes, darling, we were.”

  The giving of a ball was an art rarely mastered by the average London hostess. She invited too many guests to fit into a space that was hardly bigger than a drawing room. She covered the windows and alcoves so that her three hundred sweltering guests asphyxiated inside an airless prison. Then, to add insult to injury, she stinted on the musicians and the refreshments.

  Fitz’s wife did not make such mistakes. Her guest list was always capped at precisely one hundred and seventy-five. Her ballroom remained properly ventilated from beginning to end. And she never pinched pennies at the expense of her guests’ comfort or enjoyment.

  Tonight the Fitzhugh ballroom bloomed with monuments of roses and lilies. Between the flower arrangements stood ice sculptures in the shape of Corinthian columns, faintly iridescent under the light of the electric chandeliers—electric light gave off less heat than flames and the ice sculptures would keep the ballroom cool when it brimmed with vigorously dancing guests.

  Lemonade and chilled punch had been laid out. Tiered platters bore small iced cakes, piped with buttercream roses and lilies to match the flowers. And unique to the Fitzhugh balls, pyramids of Cresswell & Graves chocolate bars, cut to precisely bite size, in the brand’s most popular as well as newest flavors.

  Millie stood before the punch bowl, in a plum-colored ball gown, lavishly studded with crystal drops. The amethyst-and-diamond pins he’d bought her twinkled in her hair. Her bare shoulders gleamed.

  Tonight. After all these years.

  But it must not change anything. His future lay with Isabelle. This was only his duty, to the title and to Millie.

  She turned around at the sound of his approach.

  “Everything is ready,” he said.

  She smiled but did not meet his eyes. “Yes, I believe so. But it is always nerve-racking, giving a ball.”

  “You’ll do just fine. What time is carriages?”

  On the cards she sent out for her balls, she always specified the hour at which carriages would be ordered for the guests—w
hen she didn’t, their guests, having such a good time, stayed till dawn, something she did not entirely approve.

  And before a ball started, he always inquired after the time for carriages, so he had an idea how long he needed to man the fort. But tonight, after the carriages left…

  He ought to be thinking of Isabelle’s ardent declaration of love. Of the past, the future, anything but the present. But tonight, after the carriages left, there would be Millie, her scent like a breeze from their lavender field at the height of summer, her skin as smooth as the finest velvet.

  Their eyes met. She flushed. Desire tumbled through him.

  “That’s—that’s the first carriage arriving.” She picked up her skirts, already walking away. “I’d best take up my position at the head of the stairs.”

  He watched her—and tried to think of Isabelle.

  Unlike Fitz, who rarely danced when he didn’t need to, Hastings enjoyed a ball and took part in every set. And Helena had to credit him: He always remembered the wallflowers, girls who waited, hope mixed with embarrassment, for a partner.

  A dance request from him gave the wallflowers much pleasure. Even with an illegitimate child under his roof, he remained highly eligible—he had inherited from his uncle not only a title, but a substantial industrial fortune. Helena wondered what the wallflowers would think if they knew he wrote erotica—with a female character who would send their mothers into fainting spells. Who made love with her eyes open.

  Strangely enough, for all the kisses Hastings had attempted to steal from Helena over the years, he had never claimed a waltz. This ball was no exception. Instead of a waltz, he was her partner in a lancers set, which involved three other couples.

  Still, the dance offered enough privacy for him to bend his head to her ear. “Mrs. Monteth is on the warpath, I hear. I would be careful if I were you.”

  “Mrs. Monteth is always on the warpath.”

  It was not an exaggeration. Mrs. Monteth, Andrew’s wife’s sister, was not so much a gossip as a self-appointed guardian of virtue and righteousness. She spied on the servants, opened random doors at country house parties—for which reason she was seldom invited to any these days—and did just about everything in her power to expose and punish the private moral failings of those around her.