Ravishing the Heiress (18 page)

Helena would have demanded whether the man had heard of Queen Elizabeth, who ran the business of England better than any man before or since. But Fitz’s wife only nodded timidly.

“Indeed you have read my heart, sir. It is a difficult task, the direction of an enterprise such as ours, requiring much perspicacity and expertise. I would have dearly loved to remain in the comfort and insularity of my home. Alas, I am the last of the Graves, and as such, it would be a complete dereliction of duty were I to turn my back on Cresswell & Graves.”

She said it with a steely resignation, a young martyr
facing her doom with serenity and courage, because she knew she was doing the right thing.

From their weeks of practice Fitz already knew her to be a good actress. However, not all actors excelled as much onstage as they did in rehearsal—he’d witnessed classmates seize with stage fright during school performances, sweating and butchering their lines. But he need not have worried. She was outdoing herself.

Mr. Hawkes looked taken aback. It was all very well for him to put a woman in her place, but before such dutiful femininity he certainly could not suggest her father had made a mistake by bequeathing the firm to his only child.

Mr. Hawkes’s former protégé and current rival for influence Mr. Mortimer, a balding, thickening man in his late forties, said, “I do believe, Lady Fitzhugh, that the best manner going forward would be for you to continue to devote yourself to your home and your charitable work. And we will keep you informed of our decisions—say, annually.”

“It is most kind of you, Mr. Mortimer. I always knew I could rely on the gentlemen in this room to watch out for my best interest. Since you are so generous, there is no reason I cannot find a few days every quarter to dedicate to the business of Cresswell & Graves. I am slightly ashamed, however, of the inadequacy of my dedication—I’m sure my father would have wanted me to keep an even closer eye on things. Monthly briefings, perhaps.”

“Oh, I dare say quarterly briefings would stand you in good stead,” Mr. Mortimer hastened to say.

The other men around the table echoed his sentiment.
Fitz suppressed a smile. From annual to quarterly, with no resistance whatsoever. His wife was slowly and gently sliding them into her pocket—without giving the least indication what she was up to.

“I am so grateful for your reassurance, gentlemen. You make me feel very well taken care of and I thank you. However, there is one thing that is still on my mind and that is the matter of choosing a first among equals. When my father was alive, he was that person. Now we have a dozen colleagues, but no leader. I have led a sheltered life, but even I know that an unled group, no matter how individually brilliant the members, would disintegrate into factions along lines of disagreement.”

The men around the table look at one another, some at their allies, some at their rivals. Fitz had informed her closely of his observations. Her father’s lieutenants were split between those who were content to do Mr. Graves’s bidding, and those who itched to branch out and grow.

“And yet we face challenging times ahead and it is important that we preserve comity and unity. Whomever we choose to head the enterprise should be someone fair and honest, with both the stature and the experience to lead us across troubled waters.”

Fitz’s pulse picked up. This was where they’d find out whether his strategy would work. By forcing them to choose a leader before her, without time for behind-closed-doors deal-making and compromises, he hoped that they would select the most neutral person in the room, someone whom both sides had good reason to believe they could influence.

Him.

So far she had performed beautifully, but one could
never account for all the variables that might come into play. It was always possible that the men had met beforehand and already decided on the one they’d choose to lead them. And if that were the case, it was more likely than not one of the old guards.

And that would make his intended course of action incalculably more arduous. Rightful owners they might be, but they would have a difficult time getting their ideas implemented, let alone implemented well.

“Perhaps I could invite some names to be put forward?” she prompted them. “Perhaps this is the time to look around the room and see if there is a man acceptable to everyone?”

He’d written most of the script for her speech. But the last question was her own. As if on cue, the men seated in the first row of seats, the leaders of the two factions, turned around. And whom should they see but the untried youth loitering at the back of the room.

Eaglelike eyes assessed him. He did his very best to appear a blank canvas for other men’s ideas, or perhaps a clump of clay for someone else to shape.

“I’d have liked to volunteer myself for the honor—were I thirty years younger,” said Mr. Hawkes. “But now that I am an old fuddy-duddy, let it not be said that I do not value the valor and enthusiasm of youth. I move that we invite Lord Fitzhugh to lead us.”

Fitz did not need to pretend. He
was
as astonished as the other men in the room. The best-case scenario—the one for which they’d schemed, plotted, strategized—had come to pass.

“Me? But—but I haven’t the faintest idea what to do with a passel of tinneries.”

Lady Fitzhugh also protested. “I thought we needed a man of experience. I’m sure Lord Fitzhugh is full of fine qualities but his only experience is in cricket.”

“And did not the Duke of Wellington himself say that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton?”

Now Mr. Hawkes was going all out, pushing Fitz’s candidacy, no doubt believing he’d enjoy a particular influence over Fitz should he succeed.

The men of the reforming faction looked at one another. Mr. Mortimer, realizing that he would not be elected to lead the company, hastened to put in his own approval of Fitz’s fitness for the office. “Experience can be earned. Lord Fitzhugh is a bright, winsome young man and I am sure he will lead us most capably.”

“Hear, hear,” somebody said.

M
illie excused herself once her husband had been installed at the head of the company. But the rest of the day she could do nothing except anxiously pace about the house, waiting for him to come back.

He did, late in the afternoon. As soon as they’d closed the study door behind themselves, he enfolded her in a bear hug.

She had not expected it at all—or the swift current of warmth that instantly surged through her. God, he smelled wonderful. And his body was lean and angular—and strong, for presently he lifted her and spun her around.

“Well done, old gal. Well done!”

She squealed with laughter and banged at his shoulders
to be put down. “What happened after I left? Tell me. I’m dying to know.”

“The meeting was adjourned an hour after you left. Mr. Hawkes pulled me aside to give me a word of caution on making too many changes too fast. But even men who don’t want to make too many changes too fast have an occasional idea or two. So I told him about his bottling plant.”

“What bottling plant?”

“Twelve years ago, he had wanted your father to expand to bottled beverages and had prepared a thorough dossier for the construction of a new manufacturing plant dedicated to these bottled beverages. The site, the blueprint for the building, the designs for the machinery were all there. He even had a book of recipes and several prototype designs of the bottles that would be used.

“One could only imagine how disappointed he was to have his proposal rejected. So I told him that with me in charge, he will have his bottling plant—and soon. Norwich & Sons went belly-up during the construction of a bottling plant. I let him know that I’d be quite happy to buy it with my own funds and sign the deed over to the company—a coming-aboard present, so to speak.”

“He didn’t become suspicious, did he?”

“No, he looked at me as if I were an old friend—the only one in the world who understood him. He was quite helpful the rest of the day and now we’ve a list of ideas as long as I’m tall to consider. And there will be a number of new products to be taste tested the next time you meet with them.”

He hugged her again. “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am
that everything went off so well. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

She was happily proud—of both of them. “You did very well yourself.”

A knock came at the door. It was their butler, with the coffee service.

“Shall we open a bottle of champagne for you?” asked Lord Fitzhugh.

“No,” she said, “coffee is more than good enough.”

Water would have been more than good enough.

She poured the coffee. He raised his in a toast. “To a future of our own making.”

They clinked their cups. “A future of our own making,” she echoed.

And wished fervently that it would be so.

1896

T
he invitation—summons, rather—came at the last minute, on the morning of the ball.

Millie was about to look in on Helena’s final fitting when a footman presented a silver salver. She recognized the envelope by its embossed stem of a rose at the lower right-hand corner: Mrs. Englewood.

She ducked into an empty room to read.

This was not entirely unexpected. She and Mrs. Englewood were not two bitches tussling over a bone. At some point it behooved them to sit down and hold a civilized conversation concerning the Arrangement. But for Millie that point hadn’t come yet and shouldn’t come for at least another five months.

Mrs. Englewood obviously believed otherwise.

Millie had the perfect excuse in the ball of course—she was much too busy—but she would not decline the meeting. She’d learned her lesson about putting off till eight years later what she should do today. If the meeting must happen at some point, then let it happen today.

Even if today was the day Fitz became her husband in truth.

Especially if.

W
ere Mrs. Englewood and Fitz a pair of bookends, they could not be better matched physically. Like him, her build was tall, slender, and tight. Like him, she had dark hair and blue eyes. And like him, she moved with a nonchalant grace.

Millie was neither overly short nor overly pudgy. Before Mrs. Englewood’s stately figure, however, it was difficult not to feel squat—even a little dumpy. But it was not as if
she was ever going to feel anything but inferior before Isabelle Englewood.

“You are different from how I remember you,” said Mrs. Englewood, sipping her tea. “Taller and prettier.”

Just like that, no other preliminaries.

Millie took a deep breath. “It’s nice to know that I look better now than I did at my wedding.”

“The dress swallowed you.”

Millie had to agree. “Yes, in hindsight the dress was quite atrocious. Instead of the best money could buy, we went for the most money could buy.”

Her acknowledgment of the parvenu tastes of her wedding gown garnered her a surprised glance from Mrs. Englewood.

“All the same,” she said, her voice turning wistful, “I’d have gladly worn that gown—or one ten times as hideous—if I could have walked down the aisle to him.”

Millie ate her biscuit and said nothing.

“I loved him. I’d planned my entire future around becoming Mrs. Fitzhugh. And when he married you, all my hopes and dreams collapsed. For two months, all I did was sit on my bed, dawn till dusk, dusk till dawn. I barely ate. Slept maybe once every three days. I’ve never looked the same since.”

She did look different, like a broken vase that had been put back together: still beautiful, all the pieces accounted for, but the damage showed. Millie’s heart flinched, as if someone had brought a burning match too near.

“My mother and my sister eventually coaxed me out of my exile. They convinced me that it was better for me to go to London and find a husband, instead of fade away at home. So that was what I did the next Season.”

“He was there that day at your wedding. He said you looked beautiful—and happy,” Millie said, in a futile attempt to remind Mrs. Englewood that not all had gone awry in her life.

“I suppose I was happy enough. But it was not the same—an imitation. Nothing could approach that perfect, unmarred happiness I’d once known.”

Every breath Millie drew scalded her lungs, but Mrs. Englewood went on inexorably.

“All I want is to regain what I once lost, to live the life I was meant to live. It’s not too much to ask, is it?”

Millie forced out her answer. “No.”

“Fitz is a lovely man—and I’m not just talking about his looks. You know he is stalwart and honorable. You know he will sacrifice himself to the call of duty. And—” Mrs. Englewood’s voice faltered. “And you are now part of his duty.”

“What do you mean?”

“He cares deeply for your well-being. He views you as the blameless party and he does not want any action on his part to injure your future happiness.”

Millie began to understand. “You are worried that I won’t let him go—that I will resort to tears to keep him with me.”

“I am not saying you would,” said Mrs. Englewood. “But in your place I might have. It is so easy to fall in love with him and so difficult to let go.”

“It is a good thing for everyone, then, I am not bound up in him.”

Mrs. Englewood stared at Millie, her gaze as heavy as a boulder. “Do you not love him?”

No one had ever asked her a direct question on this matter—and therefore she’d been spared the lying.

“Lord Fitzhugh and I married because he needed my family’s fortune and my father wanted a titled son-in-law,” Millie said carefully. “That we get along as well as we do is odds defying enough. Love would have taken it into the realm of fiction.”