Ravishing the Heiress

CHAPTER 7

Alice

1888

The death of Fitz’s brother-in-law, Mr. Townsend, turned out to be quite a messy business.

Millie had met him only twice, at her engagement dinner and at the wedding breakfast. Both times her insides had been in turmoil and she’d gleaned only the most superficial impressions of the handsome, proud man.

It was a shock to learn of his death, but a greater one to find out the manner of it: He’d killed himself with an overdose of chloral. Even worse, unbeknownst to his wife, he had become bankrupt. It had necessitated the sale of his entire estate, along with the liquidation of a plot of land Mrs. Townsend had inherited from her parents, to appease his creditors.

Millie had believed that beauty like her sister-in-law’s must act as a powerful talisman, protecting one so blessed against storms and monsters, so that she sailed smoothly through life upon the twin currents of love and laughter. But it was not true. Misfortune hesitated for no one, not even a woman as lovely as Aphrodite herself.

As Mrs. Townsend drifted through the aftermath of her husband’s death, staggered and dazed, Millie, alongside Miss Fitzhugh, did her best to be useful. They made sure Mrs. Townsend ate enough, took her for drives so she wasn’t always sitting in a sunless parlor, and sometimes, sat in that sunless parlor with her, Miss Fitzhugh holding her sister’s hand, Millie in a nearby chair, finishing frames upon frames of embroidery.

Throughout the ordeal, Lord Fitzhugh was a rock. Gone was the disconsolate drunk. Daily he was at his sister’s side as they settled Mr. Townsend’s affairs, the epitome of consideration and sense—and forcefulness, when needed. An inquest had very nearly taken place, which would have turned a private death into a public spectacle. His uncompromising stance before a police inspector made the difference; in the end the police accepted the explanation that Mr. Townsend must have suffered from an unexpected hemorrhaging of the brain.

They stayed in London for six weeks before matters relating to Mr. Townsend’s estate were resolved. It was a largely somber time, but there were moments Millie treasured. Miss Fitzhugh imitating Lord Hastings and making her sister laugh, however briefly. Lord Fitzhugh and Mrs. Townsend sitting together, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder. Mrs. Townsend taking hold of Millie’s hand one day and telling her, “You are a wonderful girl, my dear.”

The day before they left London, the women took tea together. Miss Fitzhugh was to begin her classes at Lady Margaret Hall. Mrs. Townsend, after accompanying her sister to the women’s college at Oxford, would go to Hampton House, their childhood home in the same shire, which Lord Fitzhugh had put at her disposal.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t wish to come to Henley Park with us, Mrs. Townsend?” Millie asked one last time. She and Lord Fitzhugh had been trying to persuade Mrs. Townsend to stay with them at the estate he’d inherited alongside his title—to no avail.

“I have troubled you and Fitz enough,” said Mrs. Townsend. “But thank you, Millie—may I call you Millie?”

“Yes, of course.” Millie was aflutter that Mrs. Townsend wished to use the more familiar address of her given name.

“You will call me Venetia, won’t you?”

“And call me Helena,” said Miss Fitzhugh. “We are sisters now.”

Millie looked down at her hands to compose herself. She’d been brought up not to expect such intimacy from her in-laws, who were sure to sniff at being related to the Sardine Heiress. But Mrs. Townsend and Miss Fitzhugh—Venetia and Helena—had been helpful and accepting from the very beginning.

“I’ve…never had sisters,” she said, afraid she sounded too gauche. “Or any siblings.”

“Ha, lucky you. This means you never had anyone tell you that you were actually found in a bassinet under an apple tree when your parents went for a walk in the country.” Helena raised an eyebrow at Venetia. “Or that if you ate black-colored food, you’d have black hair like everyone else.”

Venetia shook her head. “No, that was Fitz. He wanted you to eat the blackberries so he’d have more raspberries to himself. It never occurred to any of us that you’d try squid ink.”

Millie listened with a sense of wonder at the oddity and camaraderie of children growing up in the same household. The warmth of that conversation still lingered as she and Lord Fitzhugh traveled in her parents’ private rail coach to Henley Park.

This time it was he who read—Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume IV—and she who stared out of the window. Most of the time. The rest of the time she studied him surrepti-tiously.

He had not regained all the weight he’d lost during his three weeks of strenuous inebriation—his clothes still hung slightly loose, his eyes were set deeper, and his cheekbones more prominent. But he no longer looked unwell, only lean and grave. His hair, cut short, lent a further austerity to his aspect, a solemnity beyond his years.

He set down his book, dug his hand into his pocket, and pulled out a—

“Is that a dormouse?”

He nodded. “This is Alice.”

Alice was tiny, with lovely golden brown fur and curious black eyes. He gave her a piece of hazelnut, which she nibbled with great enthusiasm.

“She’s getting chubby,” he said. “Probably will start hibernating within the week.”

“Is she yours? I haven’t seen her before.”

“I’ve had her for three years. Hastings has been taking care of her recently. I just got her back.”

Millie was enchanted. “Did you find her yourself?”

“No, she was a present from Miss Pelham.”

Isabelle Pelham. Millie’s smile froze. Fortunately he was not looking at her, his attention wholly occupied by Alice.

No wonder he had not brought Alice on their honeymoon.

“She looks darling,” Millie managed.

He stroked the fur atop Alice’s head. “She’s perfect.”

He did not offer Alice for Millie to hold. And she did not ask.

It was not easy, remaining sober.

Some nights, when he could not sleep, when he missed Isabelle so much he could scarcely breathe, Fitz thought of things that might help him: whisky, laudanum, morphia. He thought especially hard of morphia, of the lovely torpor it would bring, the long forgetfulness.

The house had such things—he’d seen them when he’d first inspected Henley Park. So he left the house, to walk and run—mostly run—until he was overcome with exhaustion.

He also, once he put his mind to it, realized that there was an easier way of alleviating his loneliness: naked women. He took up with one of his new neighbors, a widow five or six years older than him, who was more than glad to have him service her repeatedly.

Alice began her hibernation. He kept her in a padded, ventilated box and checked on her twice a day. Everything had changed. Alice remained the one familiar touchstone, a link to life as he’d known it.

Two weeks after they arrived at Henley Park, his wife sent him a message, wishing to see him in the library. Except at dinner each night, he hardly saw her at all, though he knew she kept herself busy during the day, as he did, with matters concerning the house and the estate.

The library, dour and smelly, was in the north wing, the worst part of the house. She was examining books for damage. He was surprised to see her in a day dress of russet silk. Since Mr. Townsend’s death, she’d worn mourning colors, a silent, somber ghost at the periphery of his awareness. But today the vibrant, autumnal hue of her dress made her the brightest object in the room.

“Good morning,” he said.

She turned around. “Good morning.”

For a moment he was struck by how young she looked without a dark, drab garment to age her. Had he passed her on the street, he might have thought her fifteen.

Had the Graves lied about her age? “Excuse me, but how old are you again?”

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen? Since when?”

She lowered her gaze, as if embarrassed. “Since today.”

Now he was equally embarrassed. He’d had no idea. “Happy birthday.”

“Thank you.”

An awkward silence fell. He cleared his throat. “I don’t have a present for you. Is there anything you’d like—and can be found in the village?”

She waved a dismissive hand. “A birthday is just another day. I think it’s terribly silly that people make such a to-do about it. Besides, your sisters have already sent books and a pretty box of new handkerchiefs.”

“If Venetia, with all her troubles, can remember, then I have no excuse—except that I didn’t know the date at all.”

“Please don’t worry about it—there’s always next year. Now, would you mind looking at some of the rooms with me?”

He’d already seen all the rooms, but since it was her birthday…“Lead the way,” he said.

She’d obviously examined each room multiple times, and had taken copious notes of all the damages. It was a guided tour of the north wing’s failings. As they walked on, she reported an ever rising estimate of how much it would cost to repair everything.

They were only on the third room of the next floor when he said, “We should dynamite this entire house.”

“That would be rather an extreme course of action,” said his wife. “But I would have no objection to getting rid of this wing.”

He stopped cold. “What did you say?”

“According to the ledgers and the plans, this wing was an addition undertaken at the beginning of the century—the original house’s wall, if I’m not mistaken, would have been right there. From what I can tell, there was no particular reason for the addition, except that the then-earl was jealous of his cousin’s newer, better house and wished to compete.”

And the family had been in debt ever since.

“I know you were jesting when you said to dynamite the house, but I’d like to submit for your sober consideration the idea of not renovating the north wing. It was poorly conceived and even more poorly built. Even if we patch everything today, we’d still need to be constantly vigilant against new leaks, rots, and cracks.”

The north wing was two-fifths of the manor. He stared at her a moment—she was perfectly serious. The girl had audacity. But of course she did: She’d singlehandedly pulled him back from the brink of a precipice.

“All right. Let’s do it.”

At his assent, she was the one who was taken aback. “Do you think we might need to petition parliament for something like this?”

He thought for a moment. “One doesn’t petition parliament before an accident takes place, does one?”

She smiled. “No, indeed one doesn’t. And our discussion never happened.”

He smiled back.

She dipped her head. “Now if you will excuse me, I must decide whether any of the books are worth keeping.”

It was only later in his room, gazing at a peacefully slumbering Alice, that Fitz realized he and his wife had just made their first joint decision as a married couple.

That evening Millie dined alone. Lord Fitzhugh sent a note saying he would take his supper at the village pub. Supper was probably a euphemism for a woman. Not that she begrudged him a little pleasurable distraction, but she wished—

No, she did not wish that he’d come to her instead. She did not want to be used for only that purpose. But she could not help envying his lovers. She, too, would like to know what it was like to be touched and kissed by him—when he was sober. There was a physical grace to him, a manner of movement that was swift and easy. She could not help imagining what it would be like, someday, for him to suddenly notice her not merely as his wife, but as a woman, a desirable one.

But she always cut those reveries short, whenever she discovered herself in the middle of one. Perhaps there was nothing she could do about hope springing eternal, but she would not water or tend it. She would prune it harshly, ruthlessly, the way she would a weed in the garden.

After dinner, she sat in the drawing room, studying. She’d decided to take her mother’s advice and create a beautiful garden. But the pleasure garden would have to wait until she had first restored the more utilitarian kitchen garden. The estate had one such, but with the departure of the head gardener nearly a decade ago, it had grown wild.

She pored over an old diagram for the walled garden, consulting her handbook on horticulture. Salsify she’d eaten. Celeriac she hadn’t, but had at least heard of. But what in the world was a scorzonera? Or a skirret? Or a cardoon, for that matter?

She was searching for couve tronchuda in an encyclopedia when her husband surprised her by striding into the drawing room—she’d thought he’d remain out until long after she was abed.

“Good evening,” she said.

Perhaps it was the light, but he looked…strapping. Her heart stuttered.

“Evening,” he answered, standing with his hands behind his back. “I was at the village pub tonight. We’ll have twenty able-bodied men here tomorrow to dismantle the north wing—or at least to begin the work.”

“So soon!”

Her father took forever on his decisions. Even when he agreed to a change in principle, he’d still dither for years over the specifics of its implementation. She had not remotely anticipated that Lord Fitzhugh would set about the overhaul of Henley Park this quickly.

He looked about the drawing room. She’d had makeshift new curtains and carpets brought in, but it was still a dismal place—there was no point in replacing the curling, water- and soot-stained toile wallpaper until they had a new roof and better chimneys. “Not soon enough,” he said. “At least fifty years too late.”

When they’d first arrived in the country, she’d worried that he might re-embrace whisky. But it was sobriety that he clasped tight and did not let go. During the day he, like she, threw himself into his duties. At night, instead of turning to the bottle, he turned to the outdoors. Sometimes she, waiting beside her window in the dark, would see him return, hunched over before the manor, his hands on his knees, breathing hard with exertion.

All because of this cursed house, half of which someone should have demolished fifty years ago.

But his voice was calm. What had been done had been done. There was no use pointing fingers at the dead or at forces beyond his control that had sent agricultural prices stumbling in their lifetime.

“And this is for you.” He handed her a brown-paper package that he’d hid behind his person. “I stopped by the general merchandiser’s. But the selection was paltry. I chose the least terrible of the lot.”

She was astonished. “You didn’t need to.”

Inside the package was a rather plain music box that must have sat on the shop’s shelves for the better half of a decade. Even with the obvious signs of recent cleaning, its corners and creases were still encrusted with dust. When she opened it, it played a few tinny, scratchy bars from “Für Elise.”

“As I said, it’s not much good.”

“No, it’s fine. Thank you.” It took a great effort for her to not hug the music box to her chest. “I will keep it well.”

“I’ll do better next year.” He smiled. “Good night.”

“Good night,” she answered.

Some hopes were weeds, easy to eradicate with a yank and a pull. Some, however, were vines, fast growing, tenacious, and impossible to clear. As she played the music box again, alone in the drawing room, she began to realize that hers were of the latter kind.

She would never stop hoping.

The last thing Millie expected to see was her husband on the roof of the house, stripping the slate tiles alongside the men he’d hired. He was in old tweeds and a woolen cap. She’d nearly mistaken him for a village lad until someone addressed him as “milord.”

“What are you doing, Lord Fitzhugh?”

“I’m supervising the men.”

“You seem to be working with the men, if my eyes don’t deceive me.”

He tossed a tile at an older man, who passed it to another, who in turn slid it down a long chute set at forty-five degrees. The tile was caught on the bottom by one of two waiting men and, after passing through a few more hands, carefully placed in stacks.

“Your eyes do deceive you!”

“So they must,” she shouted back and left him to it.

It was quite ungentlemanly of him to be performing manual labor. But come to think of it, his days at Eton had been heavily driven by sports—association football in the Michaelmas Half, field game during the Easter Half, and come the Summer Half, cricket. The sedentary nature of married life must contribute to the ennui of it. And the demolition of the north wing, besides the satisfaction of literally destroying the house that had derailed his life, provided an outlet for a young man’s pent-up energy.

It also gave them something to talk about at dinner, the only time of the day they spent in each other’s company and not much time at that, as he had no use for protracted dinners—in fact he still ate like a student, with a speed she found difficult to match.

So it was during the taking down of the north wing that she learned about the nest of bats in the attic, the mold that had been growing inside the plaster, the fact that the oldest man in the demolition party had fought in the Crimean War in his youth. She told him of her plans to build an electrical plant on-site, wire the house with electricity, and modernize the plumbing.

“You would not believe the flush commodes that the man in London tried to sell me. They had the queen’s face painted in the bowl.”

Lord Fitzhugh choked on his lamb. “You are making this up.”

“I am not. I was aghast, while the man tried to reassure me that it was all perfectly proper.”

“I hope you did not buy any. I don’t think I can—” They stared at each other for a moment and both burst out laughing.

“No, neither can I—ever!” she declared emphatically, still laughing. “No, our new commodes will be blue enamel, with white daisies.”

He choked again. “Daisies?”

“Believe me, I tried to find a more masculine commode—something with maybe a hunt scene or a dragon painted inside—but such a thing apparently does not exist.”

“Daisies,” he still sounded dazed. “My friends will never stop laughing.”

It was the first time he ever alluded to the possible presence of his friends at his home. For a moment her imagination ran away and she saw a crowded drawing room, full of laughter and high spirits. And she saw the two of them at the center of all that cheerful goodwill, Lord and Lady Fitzhugh. And someone raising his glass, crying, “To our delightful hosts.”

“Good thing I’m not inviting anyone here,” said the real-life Lord Fitzhugh.

She bent her face to her plate, so he would not see her disappointment.

She accepted this marriage for the alliance of convenience it was. But when they worked toward a common purpose, when they conspired to keep the secret of the house’s “repairs” from the rest of the world, and when he sat across from the table from her and laughed, it was nearly impossible to believe that they were not building something together.

They were: a better house.

And nothing else.

Lord Fitzhugh left Henley Park frequently. Most of the time he left in the morning and returned at night—he’d stop by Oxford to see both Helena and Lord Hastings, and then call on Venetia, whose house was not too far from the university. But occasionally, he stayed away for longer.

When he told Millie he’d be gone a week, she issued an invitation to her mother to come stay with her—her father would be indignant about the north wing, but Mrs. Graves would understand their choice to not burden themselves and their heirs with a house that could never be adequately maintained.

Mrs. Graves, when she came, was more than a little shocked at the architectural skeleton of what had once been the north wing. “Whose decision was this?” she asked, her jaw slack.

“It was a joint decision,” answered Millie. She could not help the note of pride seeping into her voice. “Our thoughts are exactly aligned on this matter.”

Mrs. Graves considered the remnants of the north wing for another minute. Then, she smiled and gave Millie’s hand a squeeze. “Very good, my love. Keep on making these joint decisions. They will give you a foundation upon which to build a life.”

It was late November, the days cold and damp. Millie and Mrs. Graves spent most of their time inside, drinking hot cocoa and discussing the manor’s many pressing needs. But on the day of Mrs. Graves’s departure, the sky cleared to a glorious blue and they took a walk on the grounds of Henley Park.

Millie showed Mrs. Graves the walled kitchen garden. She’d been busy hiring more staff for the estate. They were still shorthanded, but work had begun on clearing the kitchen garden.

She gestured at a row of apple, pear, and quince trees espaliered to the southern wall of the garden. “Mr. Johnson, our new head gardener, believes that these fruit trees may yet be saved. He and his apprentices pruned back years of overgrowth just last week. Mrs. Gibson is waiting for them to bear fruit to make jams and preserves.”

“Will the fruit trees be the only ones bearing fruit in Henley Park next year?” asked Mrs. Graves. “Your father is eager to know.”

“We’ll also be putting in beds of strawberries—they will bear fruits. But if Father is referring to a grandchild, then I’m afraid he’ll have to wait quite a while longer.”

“Does Lord Fitzhugh not visit your chamber?”

Embarrassment singed Millie’s cheeks but she kept her voice detached. “That is another one of our joint decisions. I know Father would prefer a grandson as soon as possible, but neither Lord Fitzhugh nor I want children now and our wishes should count in this matter. More than Father’s.”

Mrs. Graves was silent. They walked past beds of dormant weeds that had yet to be cleared and an old wooden beehive, the residents of which had long ago left for better blossoms elsewhere.

“Your own garden, my dear, have you given any thoughts to it?”

Millie exhaled in relief—and gratitude—at her mother’s acceptance. “Yes, I’ve thought about it. But I’ve yet to set anything into motion.”

Mrs. Graves twined her arm with Millie’s. “Don’t forget it come spring.”

Millie looked toward her empty house. “Will it make me happy?”

“That I cannot answer, my love. But it will give you something to do and something to look forward to—as well as a place of your own.” Mrs. Graves set her gloved hand briefly against Millie’s cheek. “It may not equal happiness, but it is not a bad place to start.”

Fitz returned on a Sunday afternoon.

The servants had the day off; the house was silent. He went through the correspondence that had accumulated for him. A letter from Colonel Clements caught his attention: The Clementses planned to visit him after Christmas.

He immediately went in search of his wife.

She was not in the house. He looked in the gardens, the stables, and near the badly choked trout stream—no sign of her. Finally, as he approached the house from the north side, he heard the sounds of demolition.

But it was Sunday. The village men were at their pub; no one worked.

He rounded a wall. His wife, hatless, in a sack of a dress and a brown cloak, stood in a room that had now become detached from the rest of the house, wielding one of the smaller sledgehammers, going after a fireplace. She’d broken through the facade of the mantel and now swung the sledgehammer at the bricks underneath.

The door was already gone. He knocked on the window frame.

She spun around. “Oh, you came back.”

“What are you doing?”

“Well, when you did it, you seemed to enjoy yourself. So I thought I’d have a go at it.”

Sometimes he forgot that he was not the only unhappy spouse in this marriage. That she too wanted to smash things.

“You are going to give yourself blisters.”

“Not yet.”

She swung the sledgehammer again and dislodged several bricks. She also managed to dislodge a lock of hair from her chignon, which was too old a style on a seventeen-year-old girl, even if she was a married ladyship.

He took off his overcoat and picked up a bigger sledgehammer. “Need some help?”

She glanced at him, surprised. “Why not?”

They settled into a steady rhythm. For a girl who’d never done anything more strenuous than lifting a teacup, she was quite handy with her sledgehammer—and strong. They each swung in turn at the fireplace, and she kept up with him strike for strike.

When all that remained of the fireplace was a pile of bricks, they were both panting. She placed her hand over her heart, her cheeks brightly flushed. “Well, that was good.”

He tossed aside his sledgehammer. “Is there anything to eat?”

“We’ve a sponge cake and a beef pie in the larder.”

They made their way together to the kitchen, where several stock pots sat simmering. He filled a pot with water, stoked the fire, and set it to boil. She, meanwhile, found some plates and silverware, and located the sponge cake and the beef pie.

“Missing your fellow?” he asked after he’d finished his portion of the beef pie.

She raised an eyebrow in question.

“That was why you were wrecking the fireplace, wasn’t it?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

He felt a pang of sympathy for her. He could always find someone willing to give him a few hours of oblivion. How did she cope?

“How was London?” she asked. “Did you enjoy it?”

He caught an undertone in her words. Goodness, she knew precisely what he’d been up to in London. The girl was not as prim as he’d made her out to be. “It was all right.”

“Good,” she said. “I’m glad.”

He caught something else to her tone. “Are you?”

She looked directly at him, all maidenly innocence again. “Why wouldn’t I want you to have a good time?”

He had no answer for that. So he gave her Colonel Clements’s letter. “The colonel is coming to visit.”

She scanned the letter. To her credit, she didn’t turn a hair. “Well, we’d better annihilate some more of the north wing after tea, ought we not?”

Ready?” Fitz asked, as the brougham carrying Colonel and Mrs. Clements pulled into view.

Lady Fitzhugh nodded. She had on her most somber dress, her hair in a chignon again—this time Fitz approved. They were two minors going up against a formidable man and this was no time for her to look her age.

“Are you ready?” she murmured.

“I must confess: I’m rather looking forward to this.”

“I came, I saw, I smashed,” she said drily.

“Precisely.”

The carriage came to a stop before the house. As the drive had been repaved after the building of the north wing to show it off during the approach, the colonel would have already seen its absence.

And indeed, before they could utter a welcome, the colonel barked, “What happened to the manor, Fitz?”

“Colonel,” said Fitz, “Mrs. Clements, so delighted you could join us.”

“What a lovely brooch, Mrs. Clements,” chirped his wife. “Please, come in.”

Colonel Clements was not so easily distracted. “You will answer my question. What happened to the manor?” he bellowed as they entered the manor.

Fitz felt himself perspiring. “We are in the midst of repairs still, sir. Please excuse the state of the house.”

“Repairs? Half of the manor is gone.”

“Sometimes repairs involve unanticipated results.”

“Such results are unacceptable. You will rebuild the north wing.”

“Of course we will put the manor to rights. But that is not what we are about to do tonight,” said Lady Fitzhugh, with a confidence and a skill that belied her years. “Tea, Mrs. Clements?”

Colonel Clements would not let the subject drop. “I cannot believe you countenanced this destruction of your home, Lady Fitzhugh.”

Fitz sucked in a breath. To pretend Colonel Clements was overreacting was one thing, to be subject to his direct ire, quite another. Lady Fitzhugh, however, was not the least bit intimidated. “Countenanced it, sir? No, I encouraged it. It was my idea.”

She didn’t just have audacity. She had enormous balls.

Colonel Clements sputtered. “Explain yourself, young lady.”

“Had the north wing been better built, Lord Fitzhugh and I would have endeavored to rehabilitate it. However, it was ill conceived and badly executed. Even if we restored it today, we still must keep restoring it forevermore, committing infinite outlays of funds so that it does not once again fall into disrepair. And since no one is possessed of infinite funds, we chose to have a more modest house that is within our means of upkeep.

“The other choice is to someday sell my future firstborn son on the marriage mart. And that I absolutely refuse to even contemplate. Lord Fitzhugh had to submit to such a fate; that was enough. It will not happen again, not while I have a breath left.”

Her tone was eminently reasonable and she maintained a friendly smile throughout. But there was no mistaking the underlying vehemence of her words. Colonel Clements was rendered momentarily speechless. And Fitz—it began to dawn on him that he had married no ordinary girl.

Tea was brought in. Lady Fitzhugh poured for everyone.

“This is excellent tea, Lady Fitzhugh,” said Mrs. Clements.

“This is utter heresy.” Colonel Clements found his voice. “The house is entailed. You cannot—”

“Colonel, you will not upset our hosts. Why don’t you have some of this lovely sandwich?” said Mrs. Clements firmly. “Now, Lady Fitzhugh, tell me how you are finding Somerset.”

And that was that.

At the end of tea, with the Clementses shown up to their room to change for dinner, Fitz approached his wife and squeezed her hand. “Well done, old girl.”

She looked at him, surprised by his gesture. Then she smiled—she was a pretty girl after all, with nice, even teeth. “You did very well yourself. Now make sure you are amenable to everything the colonel says for the rest of their visit.”

He nodded, understanding her perfectly. “I will be most abjectly agreeable.”

Not all the north wing was smashed. Much of it was carefully preserved: The glass panes of the conservatory were earmarked for the rebuilding of the greenhouses, the stones of the wall for a later restoration of the kitchen, and the roof tiles for the chicken coop, the dovecote, and the mushroom house.

More curiously, however, Lord Fitzhugh had left a fifteen-foot-long section of wall standing. When Millie asked him why the wall had not been knocked down along with everything else, he’d said lightly, “For those days when we are again in the mood to smash something.”

The first of such days came a week after the first anniversary of their marriage, which passed unremarked.

She heard the sound of the sledgehammer from her sitting room, early in the morning. The answer to her question was found in the Times. Miss Pelham’s mother had announced the betrothal of her daughter to a Captain Englewood. The name was somewhat familiar. She dug up the guest list from her wedding and there was a clan of Englewoods. Captain Englewood, it seemed, was either an Eton classmate of Lord Fitzhugh’s or the elder brother of a classmate.

At noon she took a sandwich and a flask of tea to him. In his shirtsleeves, he sat on an empty windowsill, his head resting against the frame of the wall, Alice in his hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said. It hurt her to see him in pain.

He shrugged. “It was always going to happen.”

“But you would have preferred that it happened later—or not at all.”

“I won’t deny there is a part of me that never wants to let go of her. But I don’t wish her to go through life alone; it would be far better for her to marry. If only the thought of it didn’t make me so—”

He looked up at the sky. “I haven’t kept up with her news—when we married, I resolved to remove myself from her life entirely. So I don’t know the circumstances surrounding her engagement. On the one hand, I’m worried—terrified—that she said yes to Captain Englewood simply because she could no longer stand to be alone. On the other hand, she could be in love with him and he could very well turn out to be a wonderful husband to her. And does this thought make me glad? Not at all. If she is miserable, I am miserable. If she’s happy, I’ll still be here, taking a sledgehammer to a wall.”

Millie didn’t know what to do. Or what to say. Tears welled in her eyes and she let them fall. What was the point of not crying? His pain and her own seemed one strangely whole entity: a longing for what could not be regained, or gained in the first place.

She wiped away her tears before he could see them.

“Anyway,” he said, “thank you for my lunch. I’m sure you have much to do around the house.”

In other words, he wished to be alone now.

“I can—I can do those things tomorrow,” she ventured.

He shook his head slightly. “It’s very kind of you, but it’s hot and dusty out here.”

“Right,” she said. “I’ll go back inside, then, where it’s much nicer.”

He did not look at her. He had eyes only for Alice, his beloved Alice.

When would she remember that their pain was not the same? That while she would welcome any opportunity to be close to him, even if it was to hear of his love for another woman, he, on the other hand, sometimes simply could not bear the sight of her.

That although occasionally she proved herself an ally, always she was—and always she would be—the personification of all the forces that had kept him from the happiness that should have been his.

Millie resolved to fall out of love with her husband.

She didn’t know why she didn’t think of it earlier. Somehow, when she’d fallen in love, she’d accepted it as a chronic condition, something that must be endured for as long as she lived.

Such could not be true. She must recognize this: There was nothing special about her love. She was simply an ordinary young girl, dazzled by the good looks of an equally young man. What was her love but a desire to possess him? What was his love but a similar drive to own Miss Pelham body and soul?

Some things in life were truly difficult. Finding the source of the Nile, for example. Or exploring the South Pole. But falling out of love with a man who never looked at her twice, why should that prove an insurmountable challenge?

Alice was not quite right. It was September. She should be gorging herself, putting on weight in readiness for her long hibernation, but her appetite was poor. Fitz tempted her with seeds, berries, nuts of all descriptions. He took her on long walks and searched for aphids and other small insects she might find interesting. He had the gardeners germinate various plants so she might have fresh leaf buds, a delicacy she hadn’t enjoyed since spring.

Nothing had any effect. She ate poorly and spent the rest of her waking hours in varying degrees of listlessness, her eyes dim, her breathing labored.

She was getting old. But he’d counted on her to have at least another year in her, twelve more months of gentle snoozing and happy snacking, three hundred sixty-five more days for him to grow accustomed to the fact that she could not live forever.

Not so soon, not with Isabelle’s wedding breathing down his neck. There was no long engagement, as he’d secretly hoped; the nuptials would take place before the end of Captain Englewood’s home leave. The honeymoon would be spent in France and Italy, en route to India, where Captain Englewood was posted.

Fitz would have married her when he was Captain Fitzhugh, on home leave from his regiment in India. And they would have passed through France and Italy on their way to their new life together, completely wrapped in each other, completely thrilled to be married at last.

She was doing her level best to claim the life for which they’d planned—without him.

He still had her letters, the photograph with the entire gang, and the various small presents she’d pressed into his hands over the years. But those were static things, representing only certain moments of the past, whereas Alice was a living, breathing embodiment of all that they were and all that they’d hoped to be. As long as Alice lived, a part of their connection remained unbroken, time and distance be damned.

But without Alice, beautiful Alice…

All around him, life went on. The finishing touches were being put to the restored manor: new floors laid, new wallpapers hung, and shiny, blue enamel commodes installed one by one. His wife seemed to have terribly ambitious plans for the flower garden: Thickets and brambles were cleared; Peruvian guano arrived by the railcar-ful, along with enormous sacks of bulbs, for those first splashes of color in spring.

Sometimes he’d see her in a wide-brimmed hat, conferring with the gardeners, consulting the master plan in her hand as they measured out new flower beds to be built and new paths laid.

And despite his panic, he would gather up Alice and head down to his study, to meet with his steward, his architect, and his foreman; receive his tenants and mediate their problems; and write his weekly report to Colonel Clements on the discharge of his numerous responsibilities.

He was becoming like his wife in some ways: the stoicism, the determination to carry on no matter what.

Alice, however, could no longer carry on.

“I always thought you’d pass away in your sleep,” he told her, adjusting the bed of soft cotton batting he’d made for her. “And it would be so easy you wouldn’t even know it.”

She wheezed another arduous breath. Her eyes were closed. One of her little feet twitched from time to time, but otherwise she’d become too weak to move.

“I want to have you in my pocket all of my days. And I’ll wager you want the same. I’ll wager you wish you were just having a hard time falling asleep, that when you wake up, it will be spring again and you’ll be strong and healthy and ready to eat your weight. But we can none of us have everything we want, can we?

“You are going to a beautiful place, where it is always spring. I won’t be there, but I’ll remember you from here. And I’ll think of you surrounded by fresh buds and hazelnuts—hungry again, young again.”

She stopped breathing.

He wept, tears falling unchecked. “Good-bye, Alice. Good-bye.”

An invitation to Isabelle Pelham’s wedding came for the Fitzhughs, but neither Millie nor Lord Fitzhugh attended.

Or rather, Millie assumed her husband did not attend. She was home alone in the country and he off somewhere. She had not asked about his whereabouts. In fact, she did not even keep count of how long he’d been gone—except to know that it had been more than seven days and less than ten.

He came back two days after the wedding. She expected to hear the sledgehammer again. But through her open window came only the sound of the wind, and of the grounds staff as they went about their duties.

Her curiosity outweighed her resolve not to care. She slipped into a room that overlooked the ruined wall. He stood before the wall, still in his traveling clothes, one hand braced against it. Then slowly, he began to walk, his palm sliding across the wall, as if he were a student of archaeology, examining the ruins of Pompeii for the first time.

She went on her afternoon constitutional. When she came back, he was still there, leaning against the stonework, a cigarette dangling between his fingertips.

He raised his chin in acknowledgment of her approach. Somehow the pensive, wistful expression on his face told her everything.

“You went to the wedding,” she said, without further preamble.

“No and yes,” he said. “I didn’t go inside.”

“You waited outside the church while she was inside exchanging her vows?”

Such a forlornly and stupidly romantic gesture—another reason to not love him. Yet all she felt was her heart tearing apart.

“I watched them come out from the church, get into the waiting carriage, and drive away.”

“Did she see you?”

“No, she didn’t,” he said softly. “I was but a face in the crowd.”

“She must have made a beautiful bride.”

“Yes, very beautiful. Her groom was thrilled; she looked happy.” He tilted his head up. “I’ve been dreading the day of her wedding. But now that it has come and gone, I feel almost…relieved. It has happened at last: She has become another man’s wife. I need to dread it no more.”

“So—you are actually happy for her?”

“I wish I were him: I envy him and I will never not envy him. All the same, when I saw her smile at him, it was as if a load fell from my shoulders.”

He looked at Millie. “It is good to know that I’m not as selfish as I thought I might be.”

Don’t you dare do this to me. This is no time for you to act noble and generous.

He reached into his pocket and drew out a package wrapped in silk and tied with a length of ribbon. “This is for you.”

“You already gave me a birthday present.”

“We both know that it was Venetia who remembered to give you a birthday present from me. You have been a steadfast friend. I have not expressed my appreciation very well up to this point, but please know that I am grateful to you.”

Don’t, she almost said. Don’t.

“You didn’t let me drown in whisky. You didn’t leave me to face Colonel Clements alone. And you are always, always kind. I hope I can be just as good a friend to you someday.”

She bit her lower lip. “What is in the package?”

“A lavender cutting for your garden. I asked your maid and she told me that you are very fond of lavender. After Isabelle’s wedding I went to Lady Pryor’s place and applied for a few cuttings. I understand it’s better to propagate in spring but that it’s still doable in autumn.”

She opened the package, and indeed, wrapped inside was a sprig of lavender.

“More will come tomorrow, but I thought I’d bring this one in person.”

“You shouldn’t have.” He really ought not have. Six weeks of dogged efforts to fall out of love with him—he would ruin it all with a single gesture.

“All we’ve done here is take things down and prevent further deterioration,” he said. “Let’s grow something—something new, something that is ours.”

You don’t know what you ask. You don’t know the terrible hopes this will ignite in me.

“Thank you,” she said. “It will be beautiful.”