Sherry Thomas - Ravishing the Heiress

Since Helena was under Venetia’s chaperonage, Millie had the evening free. She quite looked forward to a nice dinner at home with Fitz, an interlude to let their desires build to a new ascendancy. And tonight she would not ask him to turn off the light. She liked the undisguised covetousness in his eyes when he looked at her naked form. He could look as much as he wanted.

For dining at home, she could have worn her tea gown. But it was a bit too brazen to wear the same dress in which he’d ravished her, so she changed into a pretty marigold dinner gown. No sounds came from his room, but she was not particularly concerned. She’d heard him in his bath earlier; he’d probably already changed and was again in his study.

But when she arrived at the drawing room, a few minutes late, he was not there.

“Is Lord Fitzhugh still in his study?”

“No, ma’am,” said Cobble, the butler. “Lord Fitzhugh has gone to his club. He said not to expect him for dinner.”

She blinked. That he’d have gone out in the evening was not so strange. He enjoyed seeing his friends at his club and occasionally dined there. But why tonight? He’d given no indication in the afternoon that he was headed anywhere.

“Shall I serve dinner?” asked Cobble.

“Yes, of course.”

A minute ago she was walking on clouds, now she was in a dungeon, with screws in her thumbs. She forced herself to eat normally. She must keep a sense of calm and proportion. Chances were she had overreacted both in her earlier euphoria and her current despair. The truth was probably somewhere in the middle: Their lovemaking in his study was not as significant as she’d made it out to be; and neither was his absence this evening.

He would be back at night. And he’d come for her again.

Eleven o’clock. Twelve o’clock. One o’clock.

He was having fun with his friends. She was glad.

No, she was not glad in the least. His friends were not going anywhere. They’d still be his friends when he was old and grey. She had less than six months and he chose to spend his time elsewhere.

Six months, dear God, not those words again. Just hours earlier she’d thought it would be a lifetime.

How quickly happiness shrinks to nothing.

He entered his room at a quarter past one. His lights turned off at half past one and he went directly to bed.

She shouldn’t be too greedy. It already happened once this day. She ought not expect more.

But she wanted more. More of the incandescent pleasures, more of the stark hunger in his eyes, more of this connection, this intimacy unlike any she’d ever experienced.

They were good friends, weren’t they? The best of friends. She ought to be able to walk into his room and ask him the reason for his absence this evening—and the reason for his absence from her bed.

But she couldn’t, because it was all a sham, their friendship, at least on her part, a disguise for her true feelings, an awful solace for not being his one and only.

A thing without wings.

After eight years, how did a woman take over a man’s life overnight?

And why couldn’t it be a simple case of lust, an itch that could have been scratched on any post?

Instead Fitz felt split in two, his other half on the far side of the door. But he couldn’t open that door, walk inside, and make himself whole again. He could only wait for the end of the night.

In the morning he rode and took his time bathing and changing. She should have already left the breakfast parlor when he descended at last, but she was very much there, in her customary spot, a stack of letters and a cup of still-steaming tea before her.

Once upon a time he’d dreaded it, the prospect of sitting across from her at ten thousand breakfasts. Today he could not think of anything more felicitous. She was daily sustenance, like bread, water, and light.

“Good morning.”

She looked up and did not smile. “Good morning.”

She thought he’d rejected her. But it was not true. He’d stepped back because he could not in good conscience continue to mislead her—or himself.

“You’ve a letter from Mrs. Englewood,” she said.

It was to be expected. He pulled out the letter and sliced it open. “She is back in town.”

A few days ahead of schedule. This, too, was not entirely unexpected.

“She will want to see you,” said his wife.

“She does. I will call on her in the afternoon.” He took a sip of his coffee. “And what do you have planned for the day?”

“Nothing much. A call on Venetia in the afternoon.”

How he envied Venetia. “I’m sure she will be delighted to have your company.”

“As I’m sure Mrs. Englewood will yours.” She rose. “Good day.”

Isabelle’s parlor suffocated.

It shouldn’t be the case at all—Fitz had made sure that the house was well ventilated. And it had rained midmorning. The sky was clear, the window was open, the white dimity summer curtain danced in the light breeze.

Yet he felt as if he’d been locked into a cupboard.

She talked about her sister, her niece, her children, gesticulating with great animation—as if by the motions of her arms and hands she could stir the air enough to save him from asphyxiation. As if she knew her house was choking the air from his lungs.

“From everything you say, you enjoyed Aberdeen very well,” he said. “You should have stayed longer.”

Why must you return so soon?

“I missed you.”

She waited a beat, waiting for him to echo her statement. When he didn’t, for a brief moment, it seemed as if she’d ask outright whether he shared her sentiment. And what would he do if she did? He could not lie. He’d tried; but in the end he’d thought only of Millie.

Millie, his mainstay, his solace, his coveted companion of the night.

His lack of a response was a void, an absence, an empty chair at dinner that everyone tried not to notice.

Isabelle broke off a piece of cake. “So…what did you do while I was away?”

A less awkward question, but not by much. Slept with my wife. Which I’ve given up.

“I’ve kept busy.”

“Well, tell me more. I want to know how you spend your days in the course of an ordinary week.”

But this had been no ordinary week, had it?

“It will bore you.”

“It won’t.”

“Well, yesterday I looked at some advertising prints for Cresswell & Graves.”

Of all the things he could mention, why must he bring up this particular episode? Why did he keep remembering Millie’s quick kiss on his cheek? How happy she’d seemed.

Isabelle glanced at him with some astonishment. “You have hirelings to do that sort of thing for you, surely? You don’t need to get your hands dirty.”

He understood her reaction: It was not good form to be actively involved in business. But he could not quite put out his irritation. “I’m not exactly working in the factories.”

“But advertising is”—she grimaced—“vulgar.”

“It makes a significant difference in profits.”

“Profits are vulgar, too. Profits are what shopkeepers and merchants think about.”

He understood that a preoccupation with wealth and its generation coarsened the soul. It was the reason that landed gentry had always held such sway in this country: For a long time they’d made a convincing argument that gentlemen who did not need to muddy their thoughts with the provenance of their next sou were better suited to loftier things like justice and governance.

But it never felt vulgar when he discussed matters of business with Millie. It felt—intricate, like tinkering with the inner workings of a fine watch. And a hefty percentage of their profits went into schools, parks, and hospitals. He’d be a far richer man if he believed in improving only his own lot.

“Then I must admit to being vulgar.”

She turned her face one way, then the other, agitated. “Don’t be like that.”

“I cannot pretend my land is enough for my upkeep. My houses, my dinners, the shirt on my back—everything I have is thanks to profits from tinned goods.”

She looked pained. “Must we introduce tinned goods into our conversation? They are so déclassé.”

He could not blame her. Once upon a time, he’d held exactly the same views. The gentry was ever dismissive of those who made their fortunes in commerce and manufacturing. And Cresswell & Graves didn’t even have the cachet of grandeur or luxury. He’d had plenty of potted chicken for his afternoon tea when he’d been a student and bottled beverages had made good inroads among the young, but there was no denying the fact that enormous quantities of tinned goods were consumed by those who could not always afford greengrocery and freshly butchered meat: the poor and the working class.

And therefore, déclassé.

“I oversee the management of the firm on my wife’s behalf,” he said. “By my own choice. And I quite enjoy it, advertising component included.”

“This is so unlike you.” Her eyes pleaded with him to change his mind. “I can’t imagine the old you would ever take up something like this. It isn’t gentlemanly.”

Gentlemanly it might not be, but it was fascinating, an ever shifting challenge. From the sourcing of the ingredients to the manufacturing processes to the allocation of capital, a hundred variables must be considered, a thousand decisions made—many of which he delegated to his lieutenants but for all of which he remained ultimately responsible.

“It is my life now.”

Her chair scraped and wobbled as she shot out of it. Her momentum carried her to the window, where she had no choice but to stop and turn around. “I can’t imagine life with someone who is involved in the making of canned sardines.”

A cleverer, more opportunistic man would have seized on the opportunity to tell her good luck and farewell. But he was not that man. Her expression had a measure of her old impetuosity, but so much of it was ravage and anxiety. How could he run out on her at a moment like this?

He rose, went to the window, and placed his arm about her shoulders.

“What’s the matter, Isabelle? You’ve known about the sardines. It’s not about the sardines.”

She turned her face into his sleeve, but it was less a gesture of affection than one of desolation. “You’ve changed, Fitz.”

“It’s been eight years. Everyone changes.”

“I haven’t changed.”

The insight came to him like a match flaring. “I can see how you’ve tried to remain the same. But no, you have changed, too. Once you thrilled to new horizons. Now all you want is to live in a monument to the way things might have been.”

She jerked, as if he’d handed her a live wire.

“Is that what I am doing?” she asked, a question for herself. “You think there is something wrong with it? Is that why you aren’t the least bit interested in returning things to the way they might have—should have—been?”

“You cannot go back in time, Isabelle. You cannot re-create a past that never happened. You—all of us—must move forward.”

She clutched his lapel, her voice muffled. “The future terrifies me. All the best years of my life are behind me. Now I’m just a widow with two children and no idea what to do with myself.”

He lifted her face. “You must not think like this. You still have all your life ahead of you.”

“But I do think like this. I’ve thought like this for a while now.” She touched his cheek, her hand cold as fear. “Don’t let me be alone, Fitz. Don’t let me be alone.”

Venetia had such a glow to her, whereas if Millie were to look into the mirror, she’d see a face from which the light had gone out, except for perhaps one or two sputtering flickers.

“I was hoping Fitz would come with you,” said Venetia.

Millie steeled herself. “He is calling on Mrs. Englewood this afternoon.”

“She’s already back from Scotland? I thought she was staying an entire week.”

“So did I.”

“I hate to pry—well, actually, that’s not true. I would pry with a crowbar if I could—I’m terribly concerned that Fitz may not be thinking quite right just now.”

Millie poured tea for them, glad for a legitimate excuse not to meet Venetia’s eyes. “He has made up his mind to take up with Mrs. Englewood.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I don’t consider Fitz a foolish man but this is a foolish choice indeed.”