Sherry Thomas - Ravishing the Heiress

Millie bit the inside of her cheek. “Is there ever such a thing as a wise choice in love?”

“Yes, I’m sure of it. I refuse to believe that every happy marriage under the sun is simply a matter of luck. At some point someone must have weighed the choices and chosen well, whether it is a choice of mate or a choice of conduct within the marriage.”

“He loves Mrs. Englewood.”

“I used to believe so—not anymore. He loved her, many years ago, when they were children. Had they married then, they’d probably have suited each other well. But they didn’t and their paths diverged. And I’m not sure whether what he believes to be love isn’t simply the throb and echo of cherished memories, of nostalgia masquerading as a blueprint for the future. But with you, he has built such a strong foundation of affection, of common interest and common purpose. I cannot believe he’d cast it all aside for something almost entirely illusory.”

Millie was beyond grateful for Venetia’s support. But in such matters the opinion of a sister, however beloved, counted for little. She raised her head. “We’ve only ever been friends. Friendship is love without the wings and who would ever choose something without wings?”

There, she’d done it. She’d let her bitterness and discontent leach through to her words. Even her skin must be green with bile.

Venetia gazed at Millie, her beautiful face saddened but no less radiant. “No, my dear Millie, you are wrong. Love without friendship is like a kite, aloft only when the winds are favorable. Friendship is what gives love its wings.”

Fitz found Millie in her sitting room, fiddling with her supper plate.

He dropped into the chair opposite hers, stretched out his legs, and tilted his head back. Her ceiling came into view. A pretty ceiling, papered with a design of—his eyes widened—hot air balloons and airships.

He smiled at the memories—what a grand adventure that had been.

She didn’t say anything. It was a comfortable silence. He had his eyes half closed. Her silverware clinked gently against her plate.

“So what’s the matter?” she asked after a few minutes.

He realized he’d been waiting for her to ask just that question, even if she were the last person to whom he should unburden himself—on this matter at least. “I’m at a loss.”

“About?”

He sighed. “Mrs. Englewood.”

“I’m listening.”

“She’s had a difficult time of it—upheavals of all sorts. She now looks to me as an antidote to change, a known, fixed entity. I cannot help but think she will be dreadfully disappointed. I am not my nineteen-year-old self and I can never be again.”

“Is that what she wants, the you she once knew?”

“I want her to be happy. But I don’t know how to give her what she wants. Worse, I don’t know what she truly needs, whether it’s a hothouse to protect her for the rest of her days or simply a hand to help her over a rough patch.”

She had spoiled him, his Millie. He was used to a self-sufficient woman now, not one who depended on him to ensure her happiness.

“I want to do the right thing by her,” he said. “If I only knew what that was.”

As his lover, she did not want to hear about his concern for another woman. But as his friend, she was not offended that he’d come to her with his worries.

Far from it. She was glad.

“You will,” she said. “You might make a mistake or two along the way. But I know you. In the end you always do the right thing.”

He smiled, a tired smile, rose from his chair, and kissed her on her forehead. “What would I do without you?”

Her gaze followed him as he left, closing the door softly behind himself. Perhaps friendship was what gave love its wings, perhaps not. But she understood now that she’d been wrong earlier: There was nothing the least sham about their friendship.

It was true—and it had wings of its own.

I am going to see a place in the country day after tomorrow, will you come with me?” asked Isabelle. “Doyle’s Grange. It’s not far from Henley Park, from what I understand.”

Doyle’s Grange was only twenty miles—three stops on a branch line—from Henley Park. “Doyle’s Grange is for let?”

“It is and it sounds rather perfect for our purposes. Not too big, not too small, close enough to Henley Park for you to keep an eye on things. And a shorter trip to London than from Henley Park, for when you must see to business matters and such.”

This was her way of conceding that his involvement with Cresswell & Graves would not cease—or even be curtailed—as a result of his involvement with her.

She bent her head to the map and he spied a single white hair on her otherwise raven head. Long ago she’d told him that because her mother had needed to dye her hair from her midthirties, she, too, expected to be prematurely grey. They’d joked that when it happened, he’d call her Gran and she’d call him Sonny.

His heart filled with a painful tenderness. He wanted so much for her to be happy, to be once again fearless and vibrant, not this shadow of her former self, this adrift vessel desperately in search of an anchor.

But was a man who thought far more often of another woman the right one to accompany her on the path back to confidence and joy?

Outside her house, he sent away his carriage and walked. There was no doubt which choice he wanted to make—every fiber of his being yearned toward Millie. But that would be putting his own happiness above Isabelle’s.

As much as she had suffered eight years ago, she had not blamed him. This time there were no external forces acting against her desires, only the changes that had taken place in the intervening years.

Only the man he’d become and the wife he’d come to cherish.

But was it too selfish to want to hold on to what he had when Isabelle needed him so? Could he possibly derail her dreams again?

He was no closer to an answer when he arrived at his own house. Cobble informed him that a report he’d been waiting for had been delivered from Cresswell & Graves. He sat down in his study, opened the report, but could not understand a single sentence therein. After a quarter hour he tossed aside the report and crossed the room to the mantel.

Alice was in her spot. He gazed upon her as if she might have the answer, she who’d been with him through some of the most difficult months of his life. But she, in her eternal rest, could not help him. He sighed, lifted the bell jar that covered her, and stroked her along her back.

“Does she feel soft?” Millie asked from behind him.

He stilled—he almost did not trust himself to turn around. But he did. She stood at the exact spot where he’d ravished her. Heat rose in great coils from his soles to the back of his neck. “You’ve never felt her?”

Millie shook her head. Of course, he’d never offered her Alice to hold while Alice yet lived and Millie was not the sort to take the liberty just because now Alice was dead.

He picked up the hazel-wood base on which Alice rested and extended it to her. “Go ahead.”

She came forward. He could not take his eyes off her: her hair, pulled back ever so neatly; her neck, slender and elegant; her simple tea gown, small roses printed on white silk, that had been a part of her wardrobe for years, He’d never told her the dress was one of his favorites.

She extended her fingers tentatively toward Alice—and drew back, surprised, when she came into contact with the dormouse: Although Alice gave the impression of being warm and pliant, in fact she was quite rigid, her body the same temperature as the room.

“She’s gone,” he said, “as dead as the pharaohs.”

And would that he’d understood it sooner. What he’d felt for Isabelle, in those first moments of seeing her again, had been as lifelike as Alice. But like Alice, they, too, were but a preserved relic of an earlier age.

He replaced the bell jar and put Alice back on the mantel. “And how are you, my dear Millie? Were you looking for me?”

He looked weary. She knew he hadn’t been sleeping well. In the week since he stopped coming to her bed, nightly he would leave his own bed for his study, return some time later, then repeat the same excursion again.

She, too, had been lying awake, staring into the dark. But unlike him, she had come to a decision.

This impasse could not be blamed entirely—or even largely—on him. Nor on Mrs. Englewood. If anyone should have acted different, it was Millie. Sometimes changes happened imperceptibly; he could be excused for not quite realizing that he had fallen in love with someone he’d considered only a very good friend. But she, she’d known from the very beginning that she loved him.

She should have done something about it years ago. Instead, she’d been too proud and too afraid to let him know how she felt, for fear that should things not go well, she would be left without even her hope, her mainstay all these years.

No more. No more cowardice. No more holding back. No more hanging on to a hope without ever putting it into action.

“Everything still proceeding as you’d planned?” she asked.

He looked at her and did not answer.

“I am going to Henley Park for a few days,” she said. “And when I come back, we should give serious consideration to going our separate ways.”

He blenched with shock. “What do you mean?” His voice rose; he almost never raised his voice. “We are not about to go our separate ways, Millie. We—”

She put her hands on his arms, the wool of his jacket warm beneath her palms. “Listen to me, Fitz. Listen to me. Think of Mrs. Englewood’s children. How will you explain your arrangement to them? What will other people say?”

He opened his mouth but made no response.

“At least they are legitimate children, their parents properly wed. What if Mrs. Englewood should conceive by you? What will happen to those children?” She took a deep breath. “If you want to spend the rest of your days with her, you must marry her.”

His face was obdurate. “I can’t marry her. I’m already married.”

“We’ll obtain an annulment.”

“Absolutely not. You might be with child.”

“I’m not.” The beginning of her menses, six days ago, had dithered and fudged, dragging out a thin, frayed hope, before snapping it altogether. “Are you going to sleep with me again?”

“I…”

“Then, I won’t be with child and we can safely proceed to the annulment. The Leo Marsdens did it: They put their marriage behind them. There is no reason we cannot.”

“I don’t care what the Marsdens did. We are not getting an annulment.”

“If you are concerned about the maintenance of Henley Park, I will gladly sign over half of the shares of Cresswell & Graves. The firm is four times the size it was when we married, so it’s still a good bargain for me.”

He stared at her as if he couldn’t even recognize her. “I will burn down Henley Park before I’ll let you think I’m keeping you for your money.”

“Then, why are you keeping me?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Your fellow already has a wife. What purpose does an annulment serve for you, when you cannot marry him in any case?”

She dropped her hands from his person and took a step back—she was still afraid of the consequences of speaking the truth at last. But she would no longer delay it. “There is no one else. There never was.”

He looked disoriented. “But you said you were in love with him. You said you had to give up your chances with him when we married. You—”

“I know what I’ve said over the years. But the truth remains: There was never anyone else—never anyone other than you.” She stared down at her hands. “I fell in love with you the moment I saw you. When you were angriest at Fate, so was I, because it made me the last girl you’d ever love.”

A long, long moment of silence passed. He gripped her arms. “My God, Millie! Why did you never tell me?”

She raised her face and met his eyes. “I should have, shouldn’t I? I’m sorry I didn’t make my confession sooner, but now you know.”

If he loved her, this was the time to reciprocate her declaration. And he did love her, of course. It was only a matter of how much.

He gazed at her, his eyes like the dawn sky, full of the heat and promise of a new day. Her heart ached with this wordless communion of hope and desire. He didn’t need to say anything. A kiss would be enough.