Ravishing the Heiress

CHAPTER 13

The Airship

1892

Fitz was not a man who gave gifts on a set schedule. Millie was just as likely to receive something in November that counted as her Christmas present as getting something in January, for her birthday the year before. She greatly encouraged Fitz in his casualness. “Venetia always has a gift for me from you,” she told him, “because you are so careless about the exact dates. If you became more diligent, then I should have to turn down that second gift—which would quite sadden me.”

Therefore, she was not at all surprised when he announced one day at dinner, when she still had a good while of being twenty years old left, that he had a present for her twenty-first birthday.

“What is it?”

“I’d like to take you to Italy at the end of the Season.”

She was dumbstruck. Just the two of us? Alone?

Those were not acceptable questions. Yet she must say something. Peeling her hand from where it was splayed over her heart, she reached for her glass of water to moisten her suddenly dry mouth.

“Why Italy?”

“I made you come home early when you were there the last time.”

“For a matter that was of deep personal concern to me. Thinking back I’d have been insulted if you didn’t ask me to return.”

“Nevertheless, shall we?”

“But what about—ah, so that was why you said you would take care of the invitations for the shooting party. There is no shooting party.”

He grinned. “Unless you’d prefer a shooting party instead.”

She remembered a time when weeks, or even months, would pass between his smiles. He smiled much more often these days, but she could never take them for granted. Each one still surprised and delighted her anew.

“No, I dare say I’d prefer Italy.”

“Italy it is, then.”

Now the most important questions. “What about Venetia and Helena? Are they coming with us?”

It seemed unlikely, at least for Venetia, whose second husband, Mr. Easterbrook, had passed away not too long ago.

Fitz shook his head. “Venetia doesn’t want to travel while she is still in first mourning and Helena plans to keep her company.”

“Hastings?”

“He is shooting in Scotland. It will be just the two of us.”

Alone. For weeks and weeks. In scenic, romantic places.

She had to take another sip of water before she could speak. “I suppose I must tolerate it if my husband wants to drag me all over the Continent.”

He grinned again. “Oh, rest assured he does.”

And for the rest of the night, it was as if she held a sugar cube in her mouth, a slow, constant melt of sweetness.

They traveled through Switzerland, took the train through the Gotthard Tunnel, scaled the Splügen Pass in a diligence, and descended to Lake Como, their first stop.

Lake Como, with its perfumed air, its red-roofed villas, and its sweeping vista of high slopes and blue, glacier-fed lake, was surely paradise on earth. For a fortnight Millie and Fitz hiked, rowed, played occasional games of tennis, and ate themselves silly. But alas, the romance of the locale failed to spark him to kiss her—or do anything else remotely of the sort.

At their hotel in the commune of Bellagio, they kept separate rooms, just as they did at home. He was considerate and companionable, just as he was at home. And just as it was at home, his nights belonged to himself.

Millie suspected him of having a lover. Her suspicions were confirmed one night when a pretty dark-haired woman, her throat sparkling with diamonds, winked at him during dinner, which they took on the hotel’s large terrace overlooking the lake.

“You are sleeping with her,” she said.

“I am not,” he answered, smiling down at his plate. “I pay her a visit, if you must know, before I go to sleep in my own bed.”

“Is she staying at this hotel?”

“My dear, I would never be so crass as to have my mistress under the same roof as my lady wife.”

“Hmm, doesn’t the Prince of Wales always have his mistress present when he goes to a country house party, even when the princess is also in attendance?”

“I am far more respectable than the Prince of Wales, I will have you know. The House of Hanover was nothing but a gaggle of middle-class Germans before we ran out of royals to put on our throne.”

A waiter came and served their next course, filets of lake fish in sage butter.

“Tell me how it works,” she heard herself say, “finding a paramour. I’m curious.”

He shot her a look of surprise: She’d never before been so forward. There was something in his eyes—a new awareness perhaps, or an existing one that had suddenly expanded. “Every man is different. Hastings, for example, walks into a room, sees a woman he wants, and approaches her immediately.”

It was just like him to shift the discussion onto someone else. Reticent about his private life, this man. But she wasn’t about to let him off the hook so easily. “And you?”

“I am not so industrious.”

“And yet you are no less successful than Hastings.”

He shrugged good-naturedly, but the gesture also indicated that he was not about to discuss the specifics of his moves any further.

“I know how you do it,” she said.

He raised a brow.

“When you walk into a room of mixed company, you never head for the prettiest ladies right away. You will talk to the gentlemen for some time, or maybe one of the dowagers. But at the same time, you are perfectly aware of where the candidates are, and you know which ones are looking at you.”

He smiled very slightly, and took a sip of his mineral water. “Go on.”

She was abruptly aware that what he was listening for was not her analysis of the mechanics of his seduction, but an account of just how much she’d observed him, closely, while pretending not to. She could not, however, bring herself to stop.

“You are not that different from Hastings: You know exactly which woman you want. And you are no less a predator than he; but you are like the spider, content to wait for your prey to come to you.

“So the ladies take note of you, young, gleaming, and assured. With their fans, they beckon you to approach. You never oblige them immediately. You speak with the hostess. Share another joke with the gentlemen. Only then do you pretend to notice the ladies signaling you.

“You start with the one in whom you have the least interest and end the night chatting with the one you’d decided on in the first place, when you walked into the room. And then a few days later the gossip will get around to me—but I already know.”

He drank some more of his mineral water, then some more. The sun had set, the sky was indigo, the torches on the terrace cast a muted golden light upon him.

“It’s quite possible,” he said, “that you know me better than anyone else.”

She certainly paid the most minute, constant attention.

“I don’t know you half as well,” he continued.

“There is not much to know about me.”

“I beg to differ. There is not much you wish to be known about you—and that is not the same thing at all.”

Sometimes she wondered whether he studied her as she studied him. Now she had her answer: He did. And she had no idea what to do with that knowledge.

Tamping down the fluttering in her stomach, she went after the fish on her plate. “Why, this is delicious. Don’t you agree?”

They left Lake Como two days later, spent a week in Milan, then traveled east to Lombardy for more mountains and more lakes—Lake Iseo, this time, arriving at their destination late in the day.

The innkeeper was full of apologies. A large wedding party had descended and he had only one room left—a very nice room, but only one.

“We’ll take it,” said Fitz.

“Did you not hear him?” Millie said when they were out of the innkeeper’s hearing. “It’s only one room.”

“I heard him. But it’s late. We haven’t had our supper and I’d rather look for another inn tomorrow.”

“But—”

“I remember exactly what our pact entails. You are in no danger from me.”

And why, exactly, was she in no danger from him? Why didn’t he want her with the fervor of a thousand over-heating engines? She ought to be constantly ogled and groped, having to beat him off with her parasol, her fan, and maybe one of her walking boots.

“All right, I suppose,” she said reluctantly.

They were shown to the room, which was nice but small, and the bed laughably tiny.

She was speechless. He cast a glance at the bed and turned away. But he stood in front of the washstand and she saw a lopsided smile on his reflection in the mirror. Her face heated.

“It’s only for one night,” he said.

They ate a quick supper. She retired directly afterward; he did not join her until the clock had struck midnight.

The light from his hand candle preceded him. He set the hand candle on the mantel and pulled off his collar and his necktie. From beneath her lashes, she watched him. She’d seen him stripped to the waist, bathing in a stream, but she’d never seen him disrobe.

He drew out his watch and laid it on the mantel. His jacket and waistcoat he draped over the back of a chair. Then he pushed off his braces and took off his shirt. She bit on the inside of her cheek. The one time she’d seen him, he’d been skin and bones. Now he was fit and sinewy, as handsome unclothed as one of those garden statues in Versailles.

She’d laid out his nightshirt for him before she went to bed. He picked it up, put it on, then pinched out the candle flame. In the dark, she heard him remove his trousers.

The mattress dipped beneath his weight. She held herself very still and did not even breathe.

“You might as well breathe. You have to breathe at some point,” he said, a smile to his voice.

What?

“I know you are awake.”

“How do you know?”

“If I’d never had anyone in my bed before, I know I’d still be awake.”

She pulled her lips. Out of bed they were equals: She was just as well-spoken and poised as he. But in this particular arena he was vastly more experienced than she, an arena in which theoretical knowledge counted for nothing.

“When did you sleep with a woman for the first time?” she asked, her voice clipped.

“At my gentlemen’s party, supposedly.”

“Supposedly?”

“I was three sheets to the wind. Can’t remember a thing.”

“When was the first time you remember? Mrs. Bethel?”

“No, it was her sister, Mrs. Carmichael.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I can hear your disapproval.”

“I can hear your smugness.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m smug about it. Mrs. Carmichael passed me on to Mrs. Bethel because she knows Mrs. Bethel likes her men young and inexperienced—so you can also say that Mrs. Carmichael found me an inferior lover.”

“I assume you are not an inferior lover anymore since you’ve had a bit of practice since.”

“I am passably competent,” he said modestly. Then he chuckled. “I never thought I would lie in bed in the dark and discuss my competence or lack thereof in this matter with my wife.”

The bed creaked. Had he turned toward her? “I don’t wish to presume, but you sound curious.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“I don’t mean that you are curious about me or that you are itching to try something yourself, but you sound intrigued about the matter as a whole.”

She bit her lip. “Do I?”

“Nothing wrong with it. You are of an age to be curious. Do you still have news of your fellow?”

So he still remembered. “Yes.”

“Ever think of him?”

She grimaced. “From time to time.”

“Have you two ever—”

“Of course not.”

“I don’t question your virtue. But have you two ever kissed?”

“Once.”

“How was it?”

You were there. What did you think? “I’m not sure I can describe it. I was in such despair. As was he.”

“Is he married now?”

“Yes.”

“Are you ever jealous of his wife?”

And how did she answer that? “It’s late. Let’s sleep.”

The bed creaked again as he shifted and put another few inches between them. “Just make sure you don’t kick me out of bed. I don’t like sleeping on floors.”

“I’ve never kicked anyone out of bed my entire life.”

“True, but you’ve never had anyone in it either. So…watch yourself.”

He fell asleep long before she did, his back turned toward her, his breathing deep and even.

She lay in a nameless agitation until she too finally dropped off.

Only to awaken with a start as he flung his arm around her midsection. One hand over her open mouth, she tried, with her other hand, to move him. But his fingers, when she touched them, were completely slack.

He’d turned in his sleep. Nothing else.

Her hand lingered on his, coming into contact with the signet ring she’d given him, warm with the heat of his body. Someday, she thought, someday…

Suddenly he yanked her toward him. She gasped—but made barely a sound, her shock stuck in her throat. Now they touched from shoulders to thighs. He buried his face in the crook of her neck. Dear God, his lips grazed her skin. And his stubbles, the sensation of it against her skin—

Things ran riot in her. Heat, want, confusion. What was he doing? Was he even aware of what he was doing? And did she want him to stop this moment…or not to stop at all?

He certainly wanted to go on. Behind her he was now rock hard. She heard herself pant in a mixture of astonishment and desire. She wanted him. When she heard about his satisfied lovers, she’d always wanted to be one of them. To enjoy him for blind pleasures, without entertaining any other thoughts.

But she couldn’t. She could never be content just to sleep with him.

A sound of lust came from the back of his throat. His hand came up to her chest. Before she knew what was going on, he’d cupped her breast.

Her mute shock translated into a frantic thumping of the heart.

He nuzzled her neck. His fingers found her nipple. His thumb rubbed it through the linen of her nightgown.

She leaped out of the bed, knocking over the glass of water on the nightstand in her hurry. The glass fell on the rug. It didn’t break, but it did roll off the rug and make a clear clink upon coming into contact with the leg of the armoire.

“What the—” he said sleepily.

She made not a sound.

After a while, she thought he’d gone back to sleep. But he asked, “Why are you out of bed?”

“I…I can’t sleep when there’s someone right next to me.”

“Come back. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“The floor is wet now.”

He sighed. “I’ll sleep in the chair, then.”

His footsteps. She shrank back. He brushed past her and felt for the chair. “Go.”

“I think I should—”

She yelped—he’d picked her up. He crossed the few feet to the bed and deposited her squarely in it. “Sleep.”

A thin light crept past the curtains. She lay on her side, facing away from the chair where he sat—facing so much away that her face was almost nose first in the pillow.

It was cool in the mountains, but she’d kicked off the bedcover from her legs. And he had a good, if poorly lit, view of her ankles. In fact, he could see halfway up one delectable calf.

Delectable. An odd word to use on one’s wife. But everything in view was fresh and pretty. And everything not on display…

He turned his mind away from that unprofitable direction: Everything not on display would remain out of sight for years to come. Six years she’d proposed, but he had to extend it to eight. How stupid he’d been, to believe that he’d always feel the exact same way about her, about everything.

She stirred faintly, his woman of mystery.

He kept no particular secrets from her. But she, she was like a castle from another era, full of hidden passages and concealed alcoves, the full knowledge of which she revealed to no one and at which he could only guess.

Until her detailed recital the other night, he’d never given much thought to his modus operandi with regard to getting women in bed. It was true he preferred to achieve his objective discreetly, with the least amount of energy expended, but she was mistaken in comparing him to a spider.

Appearances to the contrary, he’d always been shy where women were concerned. Even with Isabelle, she’d been the one to take the initiative and tell him that he vast preferred her to every other girl on the planet—he’d only needed to agree.

Looking for a woman to gratify his lust was hardly the same thing as baring the contents of his heart. But the same reticence prevailed. He’d rather they came to him, and let “young, gleaming, and assured” be the only advertisement of his intentions.

She stirred again and turned onto her back. Her toes wiggled slightly. One foot slid up along her other leg. He watched with avid interest. He would not mind at all for her sleepy, unmindful motions to hike the hems of her nightgown farther north—a great deal farther north.

She stilled. Then, slowly, deliberately, she drew her legs up and pulled the blanket over them.

“Good morning,” he said.

She sat up, obviously about to pretend that he hadn’t seen her unclothed almost up to her knees. “Good morning.”

She glanced about the room. Even though he’d put on his trousers and his shirt and was presentable enough to his own wife, she seemed intent on not looking at him. He was not, as a rule, terribly excited by primness in a woman. But somehow, her primness seemed not so much stuffiness as avoidance. As if she herself did not want to know how she’d conduct herself in a more charged situation. And that made him curious: How would she conduct herself?

“Did you sleep well?” he asked.

“Passably. Did you?”

“Let’s see. In the middle of the night, I had to get up and go sit in a chair because my wife doesn’t like to sleep with me. How do you think I slept?”

She stared at her knees, now tented up beneath the bedcover. “I would have taken the chair.”

He scoffed. “As if I’d let you sleep in a chair while I took the bed.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Did I do something?”

Her hand had been tracing random patterns on the sheets. She stopped. “Why would you think you did something?”

“I don’t have any precise recollections. But the bed is small and a man’s impulses strong. Besides, you knocked over a glass of water while fleeing the bed. That would be a pretty good indication.”

“It was nothing particularly egregious. Probably wouldn’t have alarmed anyone but an old maid like me.”

“You were alarmed?”

“I fled, didn’t I?”

Why didn’t you give in?

And with that thought came a sudden memory, of arousal, her body pressed against his, her breast in his hand, warm and pliant, her nipple hard with excitement.

He sucked in a long breath. “You know you have nothing to fear from me.”

“Of course not,” she concurred all too readily.

He left the room for her to dress. Then he returned and banished her. “I need to sleep another hour or so.”

He locked the door and laid down on the bed. He would doze some, but not yet, not until he’d exorcised this unwanted lust that had abruptly taken hold of him.

So for now, he would allow himself not only to remember what had taken place during the night, but to imagine what would happen in slightly less than four years, when he’d have her naked and open beneath him.

Just this once.

Fitz, are you there?” Millie rapped loudly on the door. It was ten o’clock, two and a half hours since she left him. “Wake up, I need to talk to you.”

“I’m not sleeping. I’m in the bath. What is it?”

“My mother—” She swallowed. “She is not well.”

“Give me one minute.”

Millie looked down again at the telegram in her hand.

Dear Lord and Lady Fitzhugh,

I regret to inform you that Mrs. Graves has taken ill. She wishes to see you most urgently. Please make your way back to London at your earliest convenience.

Yours, etc.,

G. Goring

She could not believe it. Not her mother, too—she was far too young. But Mr. Goring, Mrs. Graves’s personal solicitor, would not have taken it upon himself to cable unless the situation was critical.

Fitz opened the door. His shirt clung to his person and he was still toweling his hair, the abandoned bathtub half visible behind a screen.

He took the cable from her hand and scanned it. Giving the cable back to her, he tossed aside the towel and pulled out a book of schedules from his satchel.

“There is a train that departs Gorlago in three hours. If we leave right away, in a fast carriage, we might make it.”

They were twenty miles out of Gorlago. The road was decent, but narrow and steep at times. Three hours seemed a very optimistic assessment.

She did not argue.

“Have Bridget pack our things but we are not taking the trunks—they will slow us. Arrange with the innkeeper to send the luggage and take only what you can carry in hand. I’ll find us that fast carriage. Be ready when I get back.”

He was back in a quarter hour with a lightly sprung calèche and a child of about eleven. Millie climbed in with a picnic basket, Bridget followed her with a satchel stuffed with a change of clothes for everyone.

“Where’s the coachman?”

He flicked the reins. The horses eased into a trot. “I’ll drive.”

“What about directions? And the changing of horses?”

“That’s what this young gentleman is for—he will tell us where to go. And when we reach Gorlago he will stay with cattle and carriage until his uncle comes for them. He is six stones lighter than his uncle, so I chose him.”

The boy’s slighter weight and their lack of luggage made the difference—as did the Italian railway’s tendency to run behind schedule. They arrived at the Gorlago station ten minutes after the published departure time for the train to Milan via Bergamo, but had just enough time to purchase tickets and catch the train—Fitz, the last one up, had to run and leap onto the steps.

By the middle of the afternoon they were in Milan. Thanks to the modern marvel that was the Mont Cenis Tunnel, twenty hours later their express train pulled into Paris.

Now they only had to hurry to Calais and cross the English Channel.

Someone gently shook Millie by the shoulder. “Hot air balloons—do you want to see?”

Millie opened her eyes—she didn’t realize she’d nodded off.

There were indeed seven or eight hot air balloons in an open field, most of the envelopes still limp tangles of bright colors, in the process of being inflated. “Is this a competition of some sort?”

“Maybe. Look, there is even an airship.”

“Where?”

“It’s behind the trees now. But I saw it, it had propellers.”

Millie rotated her neck. It rather ached from her nap. “Calèches, trains, and hot air balloons, I feel as if we are attempting Around the World in Eighty Days.”

“The current record is sixty-seven days, so you will have to do a little better.”

“How far are we from Calais?”

“Seven miles or so.”

The sky was clear, but she could not help worrying. “I hope the Channel stays clear. Last time I had to wait overnight.”

He touched her hand briefly. “You’ll see her again. I’ll get you there in time.”

The weather, however, did not wish to cooperate. A heavy fog stuffed the entire channel; all ferries remained in port.

“How long before it lifts?” Millie asked anxiously. Fitz had been talking to ferrymen and fishermen.

“Nobody thinks it will lift today. Half of them don’t expect anything to happen before tomorrow afternoon, and the rest believe it’s one of those that will stick around for at least forty-eight hours.”

Her heart sank. “But we can’t wait that long. She might not last.”

“I know,” he said.

“Why haven’t they built the tunnel under the Channel yet? They’ve only been talking about it for as long as anyone has been alive.”

He gazed back toward the direction they’d come. Then he looked at her, one thumb pressed into his chin. “If you have the stomach for it, we can go above the Channel.”

“Above?”

“Remember that airship I saw? Crossing the Channel in a balloon has been done before. But it’s a dangerous undertaking—especially going from east to west.”

She stared at him for a second. She’d never been on an aerial device before—never even read Jules Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon. The idea of being thousands of feet above the ground did not hold any particular appeal for her, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

“Well, what are we waiting for?”

The airship was very peculiar looking.

Millie was familiar with a hot air balloon’s lightbulb-like shape. But the airship’s envelope looked more like an overfilled sausage. A rectangular wicker basket was suspended beneath. And from the back of this basket, two long poles protruded, each outfitted with propellers at the end, the blades almost as long as Millie was tall.

“Yes, she is safe as can be,” said the pilot, Monsieur Duval, to Fitz, in French. “The propellers are powered by batteries, none of that gasoline engine nonsense the Germans are trying. Just you wait. They will set themselves on fire yet.”

Millie was not sure that was what she wished to hear just now, even if they didn’t have a gasoline engine. She was beginning to envy Bridget, who’d chosen to stay behind in Calais until she could cross the Channel by steamboat.

“How do you heat the air?” she asked.

“The air is not heated. That is hydrogen inside the envelope, madame.”

“Hydrogen is lighter than air, isn’t it? How will we descend?”

“Ah, very intelligent question, madame. There are two air sacks inside the hydrogen envelope and these we can fill or empty. And when they are filled, the entire weight of the airship becomes slightly larger than the lift provided by the hydrogen and we will come to a very gentle landing.”

She glanced at Fitz.

“Only if you wish to go,” he said. “But you must make up your mind soon. Or it will be dark before we reach the English coast.”

She expelled a long breath. “Let’s hurry, then.”

The moment they’d settled themselves inside the basket, which Monsieur Duval called a gondola, his assistant began tossing bags of earth overboard, while Monsieur Duval coaxed his battery-powered engine to life. The propellers rotated, at first lazily, then with vigor.

The basket lifted so gradually that Millie, absorbed with Monsieur Duval’s handling of valves and gauges, didn’t even notice they were airborne until the basket was three feet off the ground.

“Last chance to jump,” murmured Fitz.

“Same goes for you,” she said.

“I’m not afraid of falling into the English Channel.”

“Hmm, I am quite afraid of falling into the English Channel. But if I jump now”—she looked down; the ground had receded dramatically—“it is a certainty I’ll break my limbs. Whereas it is only a probability that I will need to swim.”

“Do you know how to swim?”

“No.”

“So you have entrusted your life to this mad venture.”

She exhaled. “I trust I will be all right with you by my side.”

For a moment he looked as if he didn’t quite know what to say, then he smiled. “Well, I do have a compass on my watch. Should we hit water, I’ll know which direction to push the gondola.”

The fog. She’d forgotten about the fog altogether.

Above them was a clear sky, beneath them the French countryside—dotted with sheep, cows, and hamlets. Children pointed and waved; Millie waved back. Two boys threw stones that fell far short; Fitz laughed and shouted something that sounded like French, but did not contain any French words Millie had ever been taught.

The airship kept rising. The livestock were now pinpricks; the land a parquet of tracts in varying shades of green and brown.

“How high are we?” Fitz asked.

Monsieur Duval consulted a gauge. “The barometric column has dropped almost two inches. We are about fifteen hundred feet up—half again as high as the top of the Eiffel Tower—and we are still ascending.”

After some time, Fitz shaded his eyes with his hand. “I can see the fog now. Are we approaching the coast?”

“Oui, monsieur le comte.”

The fog was the most spectacular sight Millie had ever seen, a sea of cloud upon which the airship cast its elongated shadow. The thick vapors erupted and writhed, with currents and climates of its own. And as the sun lowered toward the western horizon, the peaks and ridges turned into mountains of gold, as if they were being given a tour of heaven’s own bank vault.

Fitz draped his coat around her shoulders. “Magnificent, isn’t it?”

She stole a look at him. “Yes,” she said, “in every way.”

“I’d once hoped my marriage would be an adventure—and it has turned out to be just that.” His gaze still on the fog, he placed his arm around her shoulders. “If something should befall us this day, know that of all the heiresses I could have married four years ago, I’m glad it’s you.”

At times she’d wondered how her life might have turned out differently had she been given a choice in the matter of her marriage. Now she knew: There would have been no difference, for she’d have chosen the very path that led her to this precise moment. She gathered her courage and put her arm around his waist.

“I feel the same,” she said. “I’m glad it’s you.”

There was just enough light for Monsieur Duval to set down the airship on an empty field, causing much excitement to several Sussex villages. Millie and Fitz arrived in London by midnight.

Millie spent the next week by her mother’s bedside. At first it seemed that Mrs. Graves might make a miraculous recovery, but Millie’s hopes were dashed when her condition further deteriorated.

Mrs. Graves slipped in and out of consciousness, sometimes awake long enough to take some nourishment and exchange a greeting with Millie, sometimes falling unconscious again before she’d even quite oriented herself.

Mrs. Graves’s sisters and cousins sometimes sat with Millie during the day; Fitz was there every night, keeping her company. They did not speak much during these long nights, each dozing in a chair, but his presence was a source of immeasurable comfort.

One morning, just after he left to have his breakfast, Mrs. Graves came to.

Millie leaped up. “Mother.”

She hurriedly reached for the glass of water kept on the nightstand and fed her mother several large spoonfuls.

“Millie,” Mrs. Graves murmured weakly.

Millie had not meant to, but she found herself weeping. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

“Forgive me, for leaving you much sooner than I’d intended.”

Millie could deny it, but they both knew Mrs. Graves had not much time left. She wiped her eyes. “It’s not fair. You should be as long-lived as the queen.

“My love, I’ve lived a wonderful, enviable life. That it will be a little shorter than I’d liked is no cause for complaint.”

She coughed. Millie gave her another three spoonfuls of water. Her breathing was labored, but she waved away the tonic Millie offered. “No, my love, the only unfairness here is what your father and I asked of you—that you give up your own happiness so that we could have a grandson who would one day be an earl.”

“I am not unhappy.” Millie hesitated. She’d never spoken aloud the secrets of her heart. “I do not wish to be anyone’s wife except Fitz’s.”

Mrs. Graves smiled. “He is a lovely young man.”

“The best—like you, Mother.”

Mrs. Graves caressed Millie’s still-wet cheek. “Remember what I said years ago? No man can possibly be more fortunate than the one who has your hand. Someday he will see the light.”

“Will he?”

But Mrs. Graves’s arm slackened. She was again unconscious and passed away the same day, late in the afternoon.

Fitz was by Millie’s side. He kissed her on her forehead. “I’m so sorry.”

Her eyes welled again with tears. “It was too soon. She was the last of my family.”

He handed her his handkerchief. “Nonsense. I am your family. Now go have a lie down; you haven’t slept properly for days.”

I am your family. She stared at him, her vision blurred. “I haven’t even thanked you, have I, for giving me more time with Mother?”

“You don’t need to thank me for anything,” he said firmly. “It is my privilege to look after you.”

Her vision grew ever more watery. “Thank you.”

“Didn’t I already tell you not to thank me?”

She mustered a small smile. “I meant, for saying that.”

He returned her smile. “Go rest. I’ll take care of everything.”

He left the room to speak to Mrs. Graves’s butler. She stood against the door frame and watched him disappear down the stairs.

I’m glad it’s you.