Ravishing the Heiress

CHAPTER 12

1896

Christian de Montfort, the Duke of Lexington, enjoyed watching his wife when she was less than perfectly illuminated. The room was thick with the blue shadows of twilight.

She slipped into her combination, then came back to bed and looped an arm about his shoulders. “You are not getting ready?”

“My dear Venetia, it doesn’t take as much time for me.”

“All right, I see diplomacy is of no use. What I mean to say is that if you don’t decamp, sir, I cannot summon my maid.”

“In other words, I can profitably leverage my presence here.” He caressed her still-bare arm. “How about this? I will remain, duchess, unless you favor me again.”

She laughed and slipped away from his grasp. “Later. After the ball—maybe.”

A sense of déjà vu came over him. “My God, I’d dreamed of this.”

She waggled one brow. “Of being a squatter in my bed?”

“Of this whole tableau. You dressing, me ogling, a salacious invitation from me, and this exact reply from you. Later. After the ball—maybe.”

“When did you dream it?”

“The night before my Harvard lecture, which quite upset my apple cart.”

The lecture had been several months earlier. Unbeknownst to him, she’d been in the audience. And the things he’d said from the podium had led their lives to collide in a way he’d never expected.

“And sent you down a path that led directly into my evil clutches,” she teased.

“Which is not a terrible place to be at all—juicy, snug, h—”

She threw a small jar of something at him. He ducked hastily. “What have we come to? A man can’t pay his wife a compliment anymore?”

She winked. “Not when he is no longer in said evil clutches. Now off with you. I must bathe and dress.”

He hopped off her bed and pulled on his trousers. “You’ll pay for that summary dismissal after the ball, mein Liebling.”

“Maybe,” she said saucily.

He ran his hand through her unbound hair—which fell to the small of her back, as he’d dreamed. “We were meant to be, weren’t we?”

She pressed a kiss upon the palm of his hand. “Yes, darling, we were.”

The giving of a ball was an art rarely mastered by the average London hostess. She invited too many guests to fit into a space that was hardly bigger than a drawing room. She covered the windows and alcoves so that her three hundred sweltering guests asphyxiated inside an airless prison. Then, to add insult to injury, she stinted on the musicians and the refreshments.

Fitz’s wife did not make such mistakes. Her guest list was always capped at precisely one hundred and seventy-five. Her ballroom remained properly ventilated from beginning to end. And she never pinched pennies at the expense of her guests’ comfort or enjoyment.

Tonight the Fitzhugh ballroom bloomed with monuments of roses and lilies. Between the flower arrangements stood ice sculptures in the shape of Corinthian columns, faintly iridescent under the light of the electric chandeliers—electric light gave off less heat than flames and the ice sculptures would keep the ballroom cool when it brimmed with vigorously dancing guests.

Lemonade and chilled punch had been laid out. Tiered platters bore small iced cakes, piped with buttercream roses and lilies to match the flowers. And unique to the Fitzhugh balls, pyramids of Cresswell & Graves chocolate bars, cut to precisely bite size, in the brand’s most popular as well as newest flavors.

Millie stood before the punch bowl, in a plum-colored ball gown, lavishly studded with crystal drops. The amethyst-and-diamond pins he’d bought her twinkled in her hair. Her bare shoulders gleamed.

Tonight. After all these years.

But it must not change anything. His future lay with Isabelle. This was only his duty, to the title and to Millie.

She turned around at the sound of his approach.

“Everything is ready,” he said.

She smiled but did not meet his eyes. “Yes, I believe so. But it is always nerve-racking, giving a ball.”

“You’ll do just fine. What time is carriages?”

On the cards she sent out for her balls, she always specified the hour at which carriages would be ordered for the guests—when she didn’t, their guests, having such a good time, stayed till dawn, something she did not entirely approve.

And before a ball started, he always inquired after the time for carriages, so he had an idea how long he needed to man the fort. But tonight, after the carriages left…

He ought to be thinking of Isabelle’s ardent declaration of love. Of the past, the future, anything but the present. But tonight, after the carriages left, there would be Millie, her scent like a breeze from their lavender field at the height of summer, her skin as smooth as the finest velvet.

Their eyes met. She flushed. Desire tumbled through him.

“That’s—that’s the first carriage arriving.” She picked up her skirts, already walking away. “I’d best take up my position at the head of the stairs.”

He watched her—and tried to think of Isabelle.

Unlike Fitz, who rarely danced when he didn’t need to, Hastings enjoyed a ball and took part in every set. And Helena had to credit him: He always remembered the wallflowers, girls who waited, hope mixed with embarrassment, for a partner.

A dance request from him gave the wallflowers much pleasure. Even with an illegitimate child under his roof, he remained highly eligible—he had inherited from his uncle not only a title, but a substantial industrial fortune. Helena wondered what the wallflowers would think if they knew he wrote erotica—with a female character who would send their mothers into fainting spells. Who made love with her eyes open.

Strangely enough, for all the kisses Hastings had attempted to steal from Helena over the years, he had never claimed a waltz. This ball was no exception. Instead of a waltz, he was her partner in a lancers set, which involved three other couples.

Still, the dance offered enough privacy for him to bend his head to her ear. “Mrs. Monteth is on the warpath, I hear. I would be careful if I were you.”

“Mrs. Monteth is always on the warpath.”

It was not an exaggeration. Mrs. Monteth, Andrew’s wife’s sister, was not so much a gossip as a self-appointed guardian of virtue and righteousness. She spied on the servants, opened random doors at country house parties—for which reason she was seldom invited to any these days—and did just about everything in her power to expose and punish the private moral failings of those around her.

“Should Mrs. Martin discover a stray love letter from you to her husband, who would she go to first?”

They joined hands with the two dancers to either side and advanced toward an opposing line of dancers. The gentlemen bowed; the ladies curtsied. The lines drew apart and formed again into four couples.

“Mrs. Monteth will be wasting her time. I am constantly watched.”

“I don’t trust you, Miss Fitzhugh. You will somehow create a path to trouble.”

“And drop myself into Mrs. Monteth’s lap at the same time? I think not.”

“You look at the situation and consider only your part in it, Miss Fitzhugh. But there are other players involved. You cannot predict what they will do.”

“As long as I am all but a prisoner, they can do whatever they like.”

Hastings made an exasperated sound. It was rare that he allowed a show of frustration, this man who was always smooth and slippery. The demands of the dance interrupted their conversation. When they’d put some distance between themselves and the rest of the couples again, he said, “I am beginning to think you are hoping to be caught.”

She snorted. “And why would I do that?”

“So I’d have no choice but to be your knight in shining armor.”

“You are not a knight in any kind of armor if you prefer your women always tied up, Hastings.”

He tsked. “Fiction, my dear. Know the difference between the author and a first-person narrator.

She glanced up. It still felt odd to have to tilt her head back to look him in the eye—she’d towered above him during their adolescence. “Is there a difference in this case?”

“I’d say there is. I haven’t fettered my wife yet—in fact, I don’t even have a wife yet. But if you get caught, I’d have to marry you out of obligation to Fitz, and then maybe truth will come closer to fiction.”

Heat pooled in her. “It won’t happen.”

“Not if you watch yourself.” His voice was velvety. “But if you continue to be reckless, who knows what will happen?”

Fitz opened the ball dancing with Venetia, the guest of honor, and he closed the ball dancing with her. Now, arm in arm, he walked her to her waiting carriage.

“Am I not to have my wife back, Fitzhugh?” said Lexington, smiling.

“Seniority, sir. When you’ve been her husband as long as I’ve been her brother, you may claim her more readily.”

Venetia laughed heartily. Fitz loved seeing her delighted. She deserved every good thing in life.

“Come to Algernon House in August,” Lexington proposed. “I have been abroad a great deal and my grouse population has exploded. I’ll need all the help I can get.”

“Excellent idea,” enthused Venetia. “Fitz is a marvelous shot. As is Helena, by the way. And we really ought to teach Millie to shoot.”

Fitz’s throat tightened. There was hardly time.

A footman held the carriage door open. Fitz shook hands with Lexington. Venetia kissed Fitz on the cheek.

He didn’t let her go immediately. “I’m happy for you,” he whispered.

“And I hope to be just as happy for you, my love,” she whispered back. “Choose carefully.”

Millie gazed at Fitz. He was so beautiful, a protective hand around his sister’s waist, then handing her into the carriage himself.

The Lexington brougham pulled away, but De Courcy and Kingsland, a pair of his school friends, wanted a word. De Courcy, who’d played cricket with Fitz at Eton, had become engaged not too long ago. He probably wished Fitz to take part in his wedding. Fitz was wildly popular for such endeavors; every man who’d gone to Eton during remotely the same era considered him a chum.

“You look at him as if you are a baker and he the last sack of flour in the world,” said a voice behind Millie.

Hastings. They’d never spoken openly of her unrequited love for Fitz—or his for Helena. “You mean, the way you look at my sister-in-law—the unmarried one?”

“Tragic, isn’t it? The pair of us.”

Sometimes she thought so, but never enough to quit altogether. “I noticed an animated conversation between the two of you during the lancers set.”

“I’m worried about her.”

“Me, too. But we are keeping a close eye on her.” So close that she felt rather awful for Helena. “Has this been a trying time for you?”

“No worse than what you’ve had to endure of late, I imagine.” Hastings took her gloved hand in his. “But don’t worry, Fitz will see the light.”

“Will he?” It was what her mother had said, too.

“Like Paul on the way to Damascus.” Hastings lifted her hand and kissed it. “You’ll see.”

Fitz, who’d dispatched De Courcy and Kingsland, came and slung an arm about his friend. “It’s three in the morning, David. Stop flirting with my wife. She’s had a long day—and she won’t touch you with a ten-foot pole in any case.”

Hastings winked at Millie. “We’ll let Fitz think such comforting thoughts, won’t we, Lady Fitz? I’ll see myself out.”

Now Millie and her husband were alone in the ballroom. Her knees grew weak. She couldn’t quite look at him.

“Are you tired?” he asked solicitously, standing all too close.

Her fear and her imagination both ran amok—it seemed as if she could already feel his touch upon her. She shook her head slowly.

“Shall we go up then?”

She inhaled—the deep breath before the plunge. “Yes, of course. Do let us.”