Ravishing the Heiress

CHAPTER 2

Eight years later, 1896

I hear Mrs. Englewood has arrived in London,” said Millicent, Lady Fitzhugh, at breakfast.

Fitz looked up from his paper. The strangest thing: His wife never gossiped, yet she seemed to know everything the moment it happened.

She wore a morning gown of cornflower blue. The morning gown, worn strictly indoors among intimates, was looser of form and construction than its more tightly corseted cousins the promenade gown and the visiting gown. But there was something about his wife that was highly—almost excessively—neat, so that even the slouchier morning gown looked prim and precise on her.

Her light brown hair was pulled back into a tight bun, not a strand loose—never a strand loose, except when she’d smashed a brick fireplace wielding a sledgehammer. Her eyes, a similar shade to her hair, busily scanned one invitation after another. Sweet eyes—she never looked upon anyone in anger, seldom even in displeasure.

Sometimes it surprised him how young she still looked. How young she still was. They’d been married almost eight years and she was not even twenty-five.

“Yes,” he answered, “your information is correct, as usual.”

She reached for the salt cellar. “When did you learn?”

“Yesterday evening,” he said, his heart skipping a beat with anticipation.

Isabelle. Seven years it had been since his last glimpse of her on her wedding day. Eight, since they last spoke.

And now she was coming back into his life, a free woman.

Lady Fitz sliced open another envelope and glanced at its content. “She will be eager to see you, I’m sure.”

He had known, since he first met the former Millicent Graves, that she was unusually self-possessed. Still, sometimes her even-keeledness surprised him. He knew of no other wife who combined this sincere interest in a husband’s welfare with such a lack of possessiveness—at least none who didn’t have a lover of her own.

“One hopes,” he said.

“Would you like me to rearrange your schedule in any way?” she asked without looking at him. “If I’m not mistaken, we are expected tomorrow at the bottling plant to taste the champagne cider and the new lemon-flavor soda water. And the day after tomorrow, the biscuit factory for cream wafers and chocolate croquette.”

Isabelle’s return had coincided with the semiannual taste test of new product ideas at Cresswell & Graves.

“Thank you, but it won’t be necessary: I am invited to call on her today itself.”

“Oh,” said his wife.

Her countenance often reminded him of blancmange, smooth, mild, and perfectly set. But this moment, an unnamed emotion flickered across her features. And suddenly she resembled not so much a bland dish of pudding as the surface of a well-known, yet never explored lake, and he, standing on the banks, had just seen a movement underwater, an enigmatic shadow that disappeared so quickly he wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined the whole thing.

“Then you must convey my regards,” she said, reaching again for the salt cellar.

“I shall.”

She inspected the rest of the post in her pile, finished her tea, and rose—she always arrived to and left from breakfast before he did. “Don’t forget we are expected to dinner at the Queensberrys’.”

“I won’t.”

“Good day, then, sir.”

“Good day, Lady Fitz.”

Her gait was as neat as her person, her blue skirts barely swishing as she turned down the corridor. By habit he listened as her footsteps receded, the cadence and lightness of her footfalls almost as familiar to him as the rhythm of his own breaths.

When he could hear her no more, he pulled Isabelle’s note out of the inside pocket of his day coat and read it again.

My Dearest Fitz,

(Am I too forward in the salutation itself? No matter, I have never been the least reticent and I certainly won’t change now.)

Thank you for the lovely house you have arranged for myself and the children. They adore the garden, tucked away from sight. I am particularly fond of the bright, cheerful parlor, which overlooks the green square just across the street.

Such a long time it has been since I last saw you, a few more days ought not to matter very much. Yet I find myself extraordinarily impatient to meet again, even though the house is clearly not yet ready to receive callers. Will you come tomorrow?

Yours,

Isabelle

The letter was most cordial, and her signature the warmest element of all. He had thought of her as Isabelle for many years, but had only ever addressed her as Miss Pelham or—in his recent correspondence—Mrs. Englewood. For her to close her letter with her given name was an unmistakable invitation to further intimacy.

Isabelle. The first girl he’d kissed. The only one he’d ever loved.

He tucked away the note and opened his newspaper again. A maid came to take away Lady Fitz’s plate.

A thought occurred to him. “Bring me the plate.”

The maid looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“The plate in your hand.”

His wife had left behind some scrambled eggs, which was most unlike her: One served oneself at breakfast and she never took more than she could eat. To the maid’s surprise, he picked up a piece of the scrambled eggs with his fork.

And would not have been able to swallow it without the help of his coffee. He knew she liked her eggs salted, but this was less scrambled egg than scrambled salt. He’d have to speak to her about it next time he saw her: This much salt in the diet must be injurious to the health.

As unthinkable as it had been eight years ago, they’d become good friends. And friends watched out for one another.

Millie met Helena, Fitz’s twin, as the latter came out of her room. The twins did not look alike. Fitz, with his black hair and blue eyes, bore a much greater resemblance to their elder sister Venetia. Helena, on the other hand, had inherited their maternal grandmother’s auburn hair and green eyes.

This morning Helena was in a hunter green velvet jacket and a matching skirt. Between the lapels of the jacket, the front pleats of her white shirtwaist were as crisp as morning air. A cameo brooch at her throat, featuring not a woman’s profile in ivory, but an onyx Roman eagle, completed her ensemble.

Venetia was considered the great beauty of the family, but Helena was lovely in her own right, not to mention confident, capable—and more devious than any of them had suspected.

At the beginning of the year, Fitz’s best friend, Lord Hastings, had found out that Helena was having a clandestine affair with Mr. Andrew Martin. Mr. Martin was a nice young man and Millie did not doubt he adored Helena as much as she adored him. The problem was that he’d adored Helena since they first met years ago, but never had the courage to defy his mother and the long-standing family expectation to marry his third cousin.

Millie understood the force of first love—she herself firmly remained in the grip of her own. But Mr. Martin was a married man and Helena, by taking up with him, had placed her reputation in grave peril. Millie and Venetia had whisked Helena to the other side of the Atlantic as soon as they could, in the hope that by distancing Helena from Mr. Martin, she might come to her senses.

The American trip had not been entirely wasted—a series of events begun there had culminated in Venetia’s unexpected but deliriously happy marriage to the Duke of Lexington. But unfortunately, in Helena’s case, absence only made her heart grow fonder of Mr. Martin.

Helena was both of age and financially independent; her family could not coerce her to give up Mr. Martin. But since January, they’d kept a constant eye on her. Helena never went anywhere without either Venetia, Millie, or her new maid Susie, hired expressly for this purpose, keeping her company.

Susie had already left earlier, so that when the Fitzhugh carriage dropped off Helena at her small publishing firm on Fleet Street, she’d be there, waiting. Then she would sit outside the door of Helena’s office, to make sure Helena did not slip out in the middle of the day for an illicit rendezvous with Mr. Martin.

This incessant surveillance was taking a toll on Helena. She looked restless and just shy of miserable. Millie hated having to be one of her jailors, but she had no choice. If Helena wouldn’t think of her future, then her family must do the thinking for her.

“Helena, just the person I want to see,” she said brightly. “Remember you are to attend Lady Margaret Dearborn’s at-home tea this afternoon.”

An affair was no reason to stop appearing at functions designed to introduce her to eligible young men—or it would look like her family had given up all hopes of marrying her off. And that would never do.

Helena was not pleased at the prospect of the at-home tea. “Lady Margaret Dearborn runs with the horse-and-hound set. Her guests never talk about anything but the fox hunt.”

“You’ve published a memoir on fox hunting, if I recall.”

“Published on commission at no risk to me, or I’d never have taken it on.”

“Still, that gives you something to talk about with the horse-and-hound set.” Millie raised herself to her toes and kissed Helena on her cheek. “Your carriage awaits, my love. I will see you in the afternoon.”

“Wait,” said Helena. “Is it true what I hear? That Mrs. Englewood is back in England?”

Mille ignored the pang in her chest and nodded. “Fitz will be calling on her this afternoon. Quite a momentous day for them, isn’t it?”

“I imagine.” The question in Helena’s eyes, however, was not about Fitz, but about Millie.

Millie was never possessive, never effusive, and never demonstrative. Her even-tempered approach to her marriage should have been enough to convince everyone that she admired, but did not love, her husband. Yet for years now, his sisters had suspected something else.

Perhaps unrequited love was like a specter in the house, a presence that brushed at the edge of senses, a heat in the dark, a shadow under the sun.

She patted Helena on the arm and walked away.

The garden had come to life.

The grass was as green as a river bank, the trees tall and shady. Birds sang in the branches; the fountain trickled and murmured. In a corner of the garden, purple hydrangeas were in bloom, each flower head as big and bright as a nosegay.

Have a garden, Mrs. Graves had counseled Millie on her wedding. A garden and a bench.

Millie spread her fingers on the slats of the bench. It was simple but handsome, made of oak and varnished a light, warm brown. The bench did not belong to her; it had been here for as long as she’d been Fitz’s wife. But at Henley Park, there was an almost exact replica, which Fitz had given her a few years ago, as a token of his regard.

And she’d seen it as such a sign of hope—more fool she.

“I thought you might be here,” said her husband.

Surprised, she looked over her shoulder. He stood behind the bench, his hands lightly resting on its back—the same elegant hands that had turned music for her while his words had turned her inside out.

Now on his right index finger, he wore a signet ring the crest of which bore an intaglio engraving of the Fitzhugh coat of arms. The ring had been a present from her. The sight of it on his hand had stirred her then and stirred her still.

She wanted to touch it. Lick it. Feel its metallic caress everywhere on her body.

“I thought you’d already left.”

From her perch upstairs, she’d watched him stroll away. It was early yet, hours from his meeting with Mrs. Englewood. But as he’d turned the corner, he’d swung his walking stick a full circle in the air. That, coming from him, was the equivalent of another man dancing in the streets.

“I realized I will be going past Hatchard’s today,” he said. “Would you like me to check whether your order of books has come in?”

“That’s very kind of you, but surely, you have a busy day ahead and—”

“It’s settled, then: I’ll have a quick word with the bookseller.”

“Thank you,” she murmured.

He smiled. “My pleasure.”

She’d mentioned the special order she’d put in at Hatchard’s once, days ago. That he’d remembered and offered to check for her would have thrilled her another time—she’d have taken it as yet another sign that they were growing ever closer.

Today his consideration only signified that he himself was gloriously happy at the prospect of seeing his beloved. He was summertime itself, young, luminous, lit from within by rekindled hopes and reawakened dreams. And every beggar along his path—herself included—could expect redoubled generosity and kindness.

He turned to leave but stopped. “I almost forgot, you ought to be more mindful of your intake of salt—you put enough into your scrambled eggs to preserve them for the next decade.”

And then he was gone, leaving her alone in the garden.

Fitz stood outside Isabelle’s house.

He thought he’d learned to be levelheaded, but every emotion that tumbled through him was unrestrained, heart-stopping. Second chances—not many received such graces, and even fewer were in a position to seize them with both hands.

Dread and hope pulsed in his blood with equal intensity. So many years had passed. He’d changed. She, too, must have changed. Would they even have anything to say to each other when they came face-to-face?

He rang the bell. A maid in a large white cap and a long white bib opened the door, took his card, and asked him to follow her into the house. He stopped, however, in the vestibule, empty except for a rectangular mirror and a narrow console table underneath. A silver tray for calling cards sat on the table. Beside it, an instantly recognizable photograph.

He had a copy of the same photograph somewhere in the depths of his dressing room. It had been taken near the end of his first stay at the Pelham house, the ladies in their Sunday finery seated in the front row, the gentlemen, a solemn-looking lot, standing behind them. He himself looked impossibly young; Isabelle was uncharacteristically demure, her hands folded chastely in her lap.

But those hands concealed a secret. Directly after the photographer pronounced himself satisfied, she’d pulled Fitz aside and given him what she’d been stowing in her pocket: a tiny dormouse she’d named Alice. Alice had been the perfect pet for a busy student: She hibernated for much of Michaelmas Half and all of Lent Half, emerging only in April to live in his pocket on a delicate diet of berries, nuts, and an occasional caterpillar.

“I always keep that photograph close to me,” said a familiar voice. “It’s the only one I have of you.”

He set down the photograph and carefully, slowly, turned toward her.

Isabelle.

She was both taller and leaner than he remembered—and not eighteen anymore. Her face had settled into a somewhat harsher shape. There was tension to the contour of her jaw. Her skin seemed to require a greater effort to stretch over her features.

But those features were as chiseled and proud as ever. Her hair was the same blue black. The fire in her eyes remained undiminished. And in the intensity of her gaze he recognized the Isabelle Pelham of yesteryear.

And at the sight of her, long-lost memories, recollections that had become as faded as pages in an ancient manuscript, suddenly reacquired color, brightness, and focus. Isabelle in spring, holding an armful of hyacinths. Isabelle in her white tennis dress, waving her racquet at him, her smile brighter than the sun shining on the deep green lawn. Isabelle crunching fallen leaves underfoot, turning occasionally to say something to her governess, who trailed several steps behind them, and whom he barely noticed, because he had eyes only for his girl.

“Mrs. Englewood,” he said. “How do you do?”

“Fitz, my goodness,” she murmured. “You are exactly as I remember you. Exactly.”

He smiled. “I still look nineteen?”

“No, of course not. You are a man full grown. But the essence of you has not changed at all.” She shook her head slightly, as if in wonder. “Come, we can’t hold a conversation in a passage. Let’s sit down.”

The tea things had already been laid out in readiness. Isabelle poured for them both.

“Tell me everything,” she said.

“Tell me about India,” he said at the same time.

They both smiled. He insisted that she regale him first with her stories, so she did. Delhi was unbearably hot in the month of April. Kashmir was very likely the most beautiful place on earth, especially Srinagar on the shores of Dal Lake. And she enjoyed the food of Hyderabad the best. He, in turn, gave her the latest on their mutual friends and acquaintances: courtships, marriages, children, and scandals minor and major.

An hour flew by.

Eventually she lifted her teacup and looked at him. “You haven’t said a thing about yourself, Fitz. How have you been?”

How had he been? “I can’t complain,” he said.

Isabelle’s gaze was fluid and just slight mocking. A smile played at the corners of her lips. How well he recalled this particular expression on her—she was about to say something naughty. “I hear you have been very successful with the ladies.”

He lowered his gaze. Between the two of them, he’d always been the shyer one. “It’s a way to pass time.”

A way to cope—and to forget.

“Lady Fitzhugh is very understanding, then.”

“She’s always been very sensible.”

“When I was still in India I’d heard it said that the two of you got on very well. I hadn’t quite believed it—but I guess it’s true.”

At last they came to it, the subject of his marriage. Her face turned somber, her gaze that of one regarding a friend’s tombstone.

“For someone who had no say in the matter,” he said, “I’ve been fortunate in the wife I’ve been allotted.”

“So…you are glad you married her?”

He did not look away this time. “I didn’t say that. You know I’d have crawled over broken glass to marry you, had the circumstances been different.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice unsteady. “Yes, I know that.”

The front door of the house opened and in wafted the sounds of children at lively chatter, followed by a quick “shhh” from their minder.

“Excuse me a moment,” said Isabelle. She left the parlor and came back with a boy and a girl. “May I present Hyacinth and Alexander Englewood. Children, this is Lord Fitzhugh, an old friend of Uncle Pelly’s and Mama’s.”

Hyacinth was six, Alexander a year younger, both beautiful, both with their mother’s coloring. Suddenly, Fitz couldn’t speak. Had things been different, they would have been his children, and would not regard him with solemn, curious wariness, but run to him with open arms and wide grins.

They stayed only a minute before leaving for the recesses of the house with their governess. Isabelle lingered a moment at the door, her eyes following them. “They grow up so fast.”

Fitz swallowed a lump in his throat. “You always did like the names Hyacinth and Alexander.”

“I did. Hyacinth and Alexander Fitzhugh,” she murmured, a sheen of tears in her eyes.

She retook her seat. The sun streaming in from the open curtains sparkled on the gold trim of the saucers. She turned her cup round and round on its saucer—she was never one for staying still.

And then she looked at him, bold, resolute, Isabelle as he’d always remembered. “Is it too late to reclaim some of what we could have had?”

As if she had to ask. As if he hadn’t been thinking of the very same in the weeks since her first letter arrived. As if he wouldn’t hold on to this rare, priceless second chance with both arms and never again let go.

“No,” he said. “It’s not too late.”