Ravishing the Heiress (17 page)

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 manufacturing 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.

Since their marriage, most of their energies had been concentrated on Henley Park, not the town residence, which remained dank and drafty. In summer, it was bearable. But now, late in the year, he fancied himself growing arthritic in the frigid temperatures.

At night it was so frosty in his room that he’d given serious consideration to knocking on her door and asking to climb in bed with her—not to break their pact, but for warmth.

“You play beautifully.” Sometimes, when his sisters or Hastings visited Henley Park, they asked her to play for them.

“I play well.
Beautifully
is another matter altogether. You need musicality to play beautifully. I can only press the keys and make sounds.”

“I can’t tell the difference.”

“Many people can’t—all those hours of practice.”

“Good. By the time we are done here with all
our
hours of practice, your father’s managers won’t be able to tell that we’ve maneuvered them.”

“You really think so?”

“I do,” he said. “You are very convincing. And surprisingly wily. You’ll have them eating out of your hand.”

Her eyes crinkled again. He wondered once more whether she’d let him hold her at night—just for warmth. But of course he’d never ask. A pact was a pact.

She pulled her scarf more snug around her face. “Should we practice some more with you as Mr. Hawkes?”

“No, I think I’ll be Mr. Mortimer this time.”

“Oh, good, you do a very fine Mr. Mortimer.” She looked at him, her eyes bright and clear. “I know the stakes are terribly high, but this is actually fun.”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed. “It is.”

T
he meeting was set to take place in January, a day after Lord Fitzhugh’s twenty-first birthday. It was important that he come into his majority, so that they no longer needed Colonel Clements’s permission—or forgiveness—for any decisions. And so that they were not two children dealing with men who’d been in business for decades.

The night before, after dinner, she’d given him his birthday present, a signet ring with the Fitzhugh coat of arms. And inscribed inside, the family motto,
Audentes fortuna iuvat
.

“
Fortune favors the bold
,” he translated. “Highly applicable to the occasion. I will wear it tomorrow.”

“Oh, good,” she said, trying not to sound breathlessly gratified—which she was.

He gauged the size of the ring and put it on the index finger of his right hand. “A perfect fit.”

Now she was only breathless. His hand looked different with the square, heavy ring upon it. Or perhaps the ring only emphasized the qualities he’d acquired since their wedding, the cool dedication and the calm authority.

She wanted him to touch her with the ring on his hand. Badly.

“I hope it will bring us good luck,” she said.

“I hope so, too. But should things go ill, at least we will know it is only because of the capriciousness of luck, that we have done everything in our power to seize the opportunity.” He placed his hand on her arm. “And whatever the outcome tomorrow, I couldn’t have asked for a better partner in this endeavor—or any other, for that matter.”

It was not a declaration of love, but one of friendship. Her heart ached—yet at the same time, filled with sweetness. She closed her hand over his, the one bearing the ring.

“It will happen,” she said. “If not tomorrow, then another day. Sooner or later the prize will be ours.”

T
he meeting was a theatrical production.

In the five weeks leading up to it, they had discussed and prepared for every last aspect of the encounter, including their personal appearances. Her mourning dress, especially commissioned, was cut large to make her look smaller and younger in it. He’d let his hair grow long in order to look less serious. They both shook hands rather limply.

Once inside her father’s old office, he did not take one of the chairs arranged in two semicircles before Mr. Grave’s desk, but stood in a corner at the back of the room, looking slightly bored, to give the impression he’d come solely to accompany his wife and was little interested in the goings-on himself.

Lady Fitzhugh, she of the most impeccable posture, hunched forward in her chair and looked as if she had trouble raising her eyes to the assembly, let alone addressing them.

Her voice quivered slightly. “Gentlemen, thank you for coming this morning. It is a pleasure to have all of you in the same room. I am sure you are as grieved as I am that it is no longer my father occupying this chair, but such is the will of God and we must cope as best as we can.

“He has, as you know, left Cresswell & Graves to me as a going concern. I am young and inexperienced, therefore I have called you together and hope you may advise and guide me as to how I may best proceed.”

It was vitally important that she, though the rightful owner, did not appear to be a usurper, given that she was a woman and her husband a toff who presumably knew nothing beyond polo and shooting.

Mr. Hawkes, a wizened old man who had been a trusted lieutenant to the senior Mr. Graves, Lady Fitzhugh’s grandfather, and who no longer participated in the day-to-day operation of the business, said, “Perhaps it would be best, Lady Fitzhugh, for you to remain removed from the running of the business. A woman’s place is at home.”