Ravishing the Heiress

CHAPTER 9

The Partnership

1889

Millie’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.

Lord 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.”

You 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.”

The 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.”

The 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.”

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.

Millie 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.