Ravishing the Heiress (6 page)

Millie turned around and beheld the most beautiful woman on God’s green earth. A mythological creature, surely, Helen of Troy reincarnated or Aphrodite herself, down from Mount Olympus to rendezvous with her Adonis.

She probably did not walk, but glided over the ground. Her cream lace parasol shielded a face that was at once flawless in its symmetry and unsettling in some indescribable way that separated the beautiful from the merely pretty. Millie could swear that the clouds, which had shielded the crowd from the sun for the past half hour, allowed one brilliant ray to fall on the woman, to illuminate her singular beauty, because it would have been a discourtesy for such loveliness to not also be perfectly lit.

Impossibly enough, she approached the Graves carriage.

“Miss Graves, is it not?” she asked, smiling.

Her smile was so stunning that Millie nearly tumbled backward. She had to fish around for her voice. And was she Miss Graves?

“Ah…yes?”

“I know it is rude to introduce oneself, but seeing as we are going to be family soon, I hoped you wouldn’t mind terribly.”

Millie had no idea what the stranger was talking about. In fact, she barely heard any words, her attention entirely taken by the movements of the woman’s lips. But she was sure of one thing: No matter what the woman wanted, no one would ever, ever mind.

“No, no, of course not.”

“I am Mrs. Townsend. And this lovely young lady is my sister, Miss Fitzhugh.”

Until Mrs. Townsend introduced her companion, Millie hadn’t even noticed that there was anyone with her. Indeed there was, a tall, slender redhead who was quite pretty in her own right.

“Very pleased to meet you both, I’m sure,” said Millie, still agog at Mrs. Townsend’s beauty.

“You are engaged to marry my twin,” said Miss Fitzhugh, who had noticed that Millie had lost all powers of reasoning.

“Oh, of course.”

He had sisters. Millie knew that. And now that she’d been jolted out of her daze, she even remembered that the sisters had been abroad, Miss Fitzhugh at school in Switzerland, and the incomparable Mrs. Townsend in the Himalayas, on safari with her husband.

“Mr. Townsend and I started back as soon as we learned of the previous earl’s passing. We traveled as fast as we
could, but we crossed the channel only yesterday,” explained Mrs. Townsend, “after retrieving Miss Fitzhugh from Geneva.”

At first Millie had thought Mrs. Townsend as ageless as a goddess, but the latter was actually quite young, barely over the cusp of twenty.

“And I am glad we hurried,” continued Mrs. Townsend. “It was not until we landed that we learned the date of the wedding had already been set.”

Mr. Graves, not wanting to lose another potential son-in-law to the vagaries of fortune, had demanded that the wedding take place as soon as the financial agreements had been reached. But Lord Fitzhugh refused absolutely: He would not marry while he was still at school. The ceremony had therefore been scheduled the day after the end of summer term, a little more than two weeks away.

“Our brother is a very fine young man—the finest there is,” Mrs. Townsend went on. “But he
is
a man and as such can be relied upon to know nothing of what needs to be done in case of an engagement and a wedding. Besides, he can’t orchestrate anything from Eton. But now that I am back, we shall proceed apace, beginning with a garden party to introduce you to our friends, a dinner to celebrate the engagement, and of course, when you have returned from your honeymoon, a ball in your honor—a country ball, that is, since London will have emptied by then.”

Millie had thought herself completely disillusioned. It was not true; there had been one last barrier of hope around her heart: A belief that at least some of Lord Fitzhugh’s disdain had not been his own, but a reflection of his family’s aversion at the kind of marriage he must contract to keep their fortunes afloat.

Now that his sisters had shown themselves to be kind and helpful, Mrs. Townsend offering to throw her weight behind Millie’s entry into Society, Millie had no more excuses to turn to.

This marriage would crush her.

She could not run. She could not hide. And the wedding was in two weeks.

W
hen the idea came, it was as fully formed as Athena, leaping out of Zeus’s forehead. Millie only wondered that she hadn’t thought of it earlier.

Or perhaps she had, in all the days and nights since it became clear that she was going to become Lord Fitzhugh’s wife. Beneath her trying not to imagine the worst, perhaps she had been planning for just that.

Mrs. Graves woke up shortly after Mrs. Townsend announced her plans for the party, the dinner, and the ball. Millie’s participation was no longer needed, leaving her free to examine and refine her plan, while pretending to listen to the discussion.

At teatime, the walk to the Eton players’ pavilion was very long—and all too short.

The introductions to Lord Fitzhugh’s friends were a blur. Millie was grateful for Mrs. Townsend, in whose presence the young men could barely form coherent sentences, let alone remember that Lord Fitzhugh did not want to marry this mousy girl to whom they were being presented.

Then, quietly, she made the request to Lord Fitzhugh for a word. Thanks to the magnetic pull of Mrs. Townsend, all Lord Fitzhugh had to do was lead Millie a few paces
away from the eager cricket players trying to impress his sister. The noise of the crowd milling about gave Millie and her fiancé all the privacy they needed.

He was leaner than she remembered, warier, his tone quiet. “What may I do for you, Miss Graves?”

Was this how he would always speak to her, with this meticulous, distant politeness? “I have been thinking about what you said the other day. You made me realize that yes, I
have
been forced into this. I was never given any other choice, never told that there was any other way to justify my existence on this earth but to be the conduit that united the Graves name with a lineage nobler and more ancient.

“It is a stupid goal. But such are the circumstances of our lives that we must hold our noses and proceed, or we shall both be far worse off. With your predecessor, there was no question that I would be expected to produce an heir as soon as possible. But—dare I assume you are not in as much of a hurry to rush headlong into fatherhood?”

He glanced to his left. She did not follow the direction of his gaze but she had no doubt that if she did, she would find the young lady he loved. “You would be correct,” he said. “I have no desire to fill nurseries anytime soon.”

“Neither do I. I do not want to become a mother in the immediate future. And perhaps not even in the intermediate future.”

“So what do you propose? A nonprocreation covenant?” There was a grim humor to his voice, but none in his eyes.

“Something a little more comprehensive: a covenant of freedom.”

He tilted his head; for the first time he appeared interested in the conversation. “What is it?”

“We say our vows and then, until the time comes for the matter of heirs, we live unencumbered—as if we’d never married. Notice I do not say as if you’d never been left the title. I cannot help you there: Unless you find a general willing to tolerate a lord in his ranks, you will not have a career in the army. But in everything else you should do as you wish: travel, enjoy your friends, woo all the ladies you care to. Go to university if it’s what you’d like. There will be no nagging wife to answer to when you come home. No responsibilities; no consequences.”

“And you? What will you do?”

“The same, except for the obvious differences, of course: There are certain things an unmarried girl does not do and I will hold myself to that standard. That aside, I will enjoy being the mistress of my own household. And I will not have to worry about how I will get on with my husband—at least for some years.”

He was silent. In the afternoon sun, his cricket kit was brilliantly white, his person sensationally beautiful.

“Well, what do you think?”

“Sounds tempting. Any catches?”

“None whatsoever.”

“All good things come to an end.” He didn’t sound as if he believed her entirely. “When does this covenant expire?”

She hadn’t thought of a specific time limit, except that it should be long. “How about in six years?”

Six years was outrageous. Even if he halved the length, she should still have enough time to put herself back together again.

“Eight,” said her fiancé.

He’d never touch you if he had the choice.

By now she should have become numb to the humiliation of this marriage, but her heart choked with pain. She squared her shoulders and offered him her hand to shake. “We are agreed, then.”

He glanced down at her outstretched hand. For a moment his impassiveness foundered. His expression turned harsh with rebellion—but only for a moment. The deal was done, the contract signed. He had no choice; what he wanted was besides the point.

When his eyes met hers again, they were quite blank—the gaze of the dead.

“Agreed,” he said, shaking her hand. His voice was equally blank, a wall that concealed his fury. “Thank you.”

She trembled inside. “No need to thank me: I did it for myself.”

A truer word she never spoke.

1896

T
hanks to a traffic logjam, by the time Helena and Millie returned from Lady Margaret Dearborn’s at-home tea, there was barely enough time to change before heading out for dinner.

Fitz was waiting for them as they came down the stairs. “You both look lovely.”

Helena could not see anything immediately different about her twin, who must have spoken to his Isabelle for the first time in eight years, but his gaze did linger on his wife longer than usual.

“Thank you, sir,” said Millie. “We must hurry or we will surely be late.”

Her tone was that of an ordinary wife in an ordinary marriage on an ordinary day. Strange that Fitz never seemed to notice how odd it was. Such perpetually neutral responses were unnatural—at least to Helena.

The conversation in the brougham on the way to the Queensberrys’ was also largely ordinary: Society was still curious about their sister Venetia’s elopement with the Duke of Lexington; people bought tinned goods in ever greater quantities; Helena reached an agreement with Miss Evangeline South, whose charming picture books she’d sought hard to publish.

It was only as they turned onto the Queensberrys’ street that Millie asked, as if it were an afterthought, “And how is Mrs. Englewood?”

“She seems well—glad to be back,” said Fitz. Then, after a small pause, “She introduced me to her children.”

At last Helena detected a catch in his voice. Her chest constricted. She remembered his numb despair when he’d given them the news of his imminent wedding. She remembered the tears rolling down Venetia’s cheeks—and her own. She remembered how difficult it had been not to cry in public the next time she’d run into Isabelle.

“They must be good-looking children,” murmured Millie.

Fitz looked out the window. “Yes, they are. Exceptionally so.”

Millie had timed her question perfectly: That precise moment, the brougham stopped before the Queensberry residence and no more was said of Isabelle Pelham Englewood or her children, as they entered the house and greeted the gathered friends and acquaintances.

Much to Helena’s displeasure, Viscount Hastings was also present. Hastings was Fitz’s best friend and the one who had informed her family of Helena’s affair—
after
he’d swindled a kiss from Helena on the pretense of keeping her secret. His cheeky rationale was that he’d only
promised to conceal the identity of her lover, not to hold silent on the affair itself.

Fortunately he had not been seated next to her at dinner—she was not to be trusted with implements that could stab him in the eye when she was exposed to his presence for more than a quarter hour at a time. But after dinner, when the gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing room, he did not wait long before approaching her.

She’d been sharing a chaise longue with Millie and Mrs. Queensberry, who greeted Hastings with great cordiality, then, as if by conspiracy, both rose to mingle elsewhere in the room.

Hastings sat down and braced his arm along the back of the chaise, quite effectively letting it be known he did not want anyone else to join them.

“You look frustrated, Miss Fitzhugh.” He lowered his voice. “Has your bed been empty of late?”

He knew very well she’d been watched more closely than prices on the stock exchange. She couldn’t smuggle a hamster into her bed, let alone a man.

“You look anemic, Hastings,” she said. “Have you been leaving the belles of England breathlessly unsatisfied again?”

He grinned. “Ah, so you know what it is like to be breathlessly unsatisfied. I expected as little from Andrew Martin.”

Her tone was pointed. “As little as you expect from yourself, no doubt.”

He sighed exaggeratedly. “Miss Fitzhugh, you disparage me so, when I’ve only ever sung your praises.”

“Well, we all do what we must,” she said with sweet venom.

He didn’t reply—not in words, at least.

The vast majority of the time, she dismissed him without a second thought. But then he’d gaze upon her with that slight smile about his lips and a hundred dirty thoughts on his mind, and she’d find herself fighting something that came close to being butterflies in her stomach.

He’d rowed for Eton and Oxford and still possessed that powerful rower’s physique. The night he’d confronted her about her affair, when she’d allowed him to press her into a wall and kiss her, she’d felt his strength and muscularity all too clearly.

“I’m looking for a publisher,” he said abruptly.

She had to yank herself out of the memory of their midnight kiss. “I didn’t know you were literate.”

He
tsked
. “My dear Miss Fitzhugh, were Byron to come back to life today, he’d take a club to his good foot, out of jealousy of my brilliance.”