“Half past nine.”
She bolted straight, barely remembering to hang on to her blanket. “What? But Bridget was supposed to wake me up at eight.”
“She came by at eight. But you were still fast asleep so I dismissed her.”
She blinked. “You still were here at eight?”
“Yes, sleeping.”
“Bridget saw the two of us together?”
He tapped his riding crop against the top of the footboard, his tone mock patient. “It’s quite forgivable these days, you know, to be found in bed with one’s spouse. I’m sure Bridget would find the strength to accept it.”
She only heated more, feeling flustered and gauche.
At least she didn’t need to hide the hairpins or the buttons from Bridget anymore, as the latter had already seen what all that pin-tossing and button-ripping had led to.
“Well,” she said—and didn’t know what else to say.
Tongue-tied, too.
Fitz tilted his head. “Are you quite all right?”
Would he be, if he knew he had only six months with Mrs. Englewood?
And what did she have to say for herself, going after him like a pack of wolves?
“I—” She looked down to see strands of her hair tumbling over her shoulders. Such a strange sight: She never had her hair loose except for drying it after a bath. “You were right all those years ago, when you suggested that I was curious about the act itself. I guess it was past time for me to have a go at it.”
“Sore?”
“Negligibly so. You?”
She realized the stupidity of the last word the moment it was uttered, but it was too late.
He tried not to smile and didn’t quite succeed. “Not at all. I’m perfectly well.”
The playful curve of his lips, the teasing light in his eyes—she’d always wanted him to look at her like that. She didn’t know whether the pain in her chest was the anticipation of losing him or the expansion of new hope cracking through the barricades.
She cleared her throat. “I was just asking since you didn’t seem to have left for your ride yet.”
“I was waiting for you to wake up. Didn’t seem right to go anywhere before I’d spoken to you.”
He rounded the corner post of the bed and came toward her. She hiked the blanket up to her nose. He pushed it down, but only so that he could take her chin between his fingers and turn her face.
“Best choose something with a high collar today,” he said.
She did not understand him until she was alone again, sitting before her vanity. She examined her reflection in the mirror for any outward differences, something that might cause pedestrians to stop on the sidewalk and whisper to each other, Look, there goes a woman freshly plucked.
And that was when she saw the lover’s mark on her neck.
Look, there goes a woman laid something proper.
M any newlyweds’ first dinners were disasters. But Venetia was an old hand at managing a household and the Duke and Duchess of Lexington’s first dinner, a small, intimate affair for family and select friends, proceeded without a single snag.
Venetia and her husband had invited Helena to stay with them, starting this very night. Helena had accepted, her mind already busy, trying to think of a way to take advantage of the change.
“You are scheming something,” said Hastings.
The man was beginning to read her all too easily, as if she were a children’s alphabet primer. She looked longingly toward the other occupants of the drawing room, hoping someone would saunter by. But as was usually the case, once Hastings had cornered her, no one else came.
“I don’t advise you on how to live your life, Hastings. You should return the same courtesy.”
“I would. Except if I were to set off a scandal, you wouldn’t need to marry me. If you did, however, I wouldn’t get off the hook so easily. I’m practically part of the family and people will look at me and wonder why I didn’t step in and save you.” He paused dramatically. “But I’d rather not marry you.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t?”
“I’m an old-fashioned man, Miss Fitzhugh. The little woman ought to be, well, little, to start. She ought to agree with everything I say. And she ought to look at me with stars in her eyes.”
“And yet your fictional bride would have had you for breakfast.”
His gaze raked her. “That’s why I keep her hands bound,” he said slowly. “And her person fictional.”
Her breaths came in shallowly. “Then don’t marry me. I won’t cry my little heart out.”
“But I will, when it comes to that. I won’t have any choice. So don’t push matters to their logical end, I beg you, Miss Fitzhugh. You are the only one who can stop our marriage from taking place.”
And with that, he rose to accost the dowager duchess at the other end of the room.
F itz had never thought his wife beautiful—pretty, yes; lovely, at times; but not beautiful. How blind he’d been, like a novice gardener who only understood the gaudy spectacle of roses and dahlias.
The light lingering on her smooth, fine-grained skin. The way she held her head, her throat, slender and elegant. The courtesy and interest in her eyes, as she listened to her neighbor.
He couldn’t look away from her.
She was not a showy blossom, good for a few days—or at most a few weeks. She was more like the hazel tree beloved by Alice: In summer one found shelter and peace under the green shade; in winter the bare limbs were still shapely and durable. A woman for all seasons.
Their eyes met. She colored and looked away, the very model of decorum. When she’d been anything but in the dark, when she’d been all indecent touches, hot kisses, and rapturous whimpers.
Her ear, exposed by her upswept hair, was delicate and comely. Her profile was as exquisite as any he’d seen on an ivory cameo. And her eyelashes, had they always been so long, curved as dramatically as scimitars?
At the end of the evening, with Helena staying behind at the Lexington town house, Fitz and Millie traveled home alone.
They were silent inside the carriage. He didn’t know what to make of his reticence to speak to her. He certainly didn’t feel physically bashful—he’d disrobe this minute if his nudity in a moving carriage with all its windows open wouldn’t offend her. But it was shyness all the same, a shyness of the mind, perhaps. He was not yet accustomed to the reality of their marriage, not yet accustomed to going home with a woman he held in such high esteem—and making love to her, too.
Her maid took an eternity to get her ready for bed—the queen did not need this much time before her coronation. The moment she left, Fitz opened the connecting door.
Millie sat before her vanity, in her dressing gown, turning her hairbrush in her hand. At his entry, she glanced up at the mirror and watched as he approached her.
Could she see his hunger in his eyes? The entire day he’d thought of nothing but the untrammeled creature she became when all her clothes had been stripped away.
He lifted the end of her pleat and loosened the ribbon that kept the strands tied together. How small such things usually were: the restraints and fastenings that held together order and modesty. Without the ribbon, he easily unraveled the braid.
Unbound, her hair was still neat—it dropped in a straight-edged cascade down her back—but it was far from the simple light brown he’d always assumed it to be, instead full of nuances and variations, with threads of gold, bronze, and even coppery red.
“Will you turn off the light?” she murmured.
“Eventually.”
Now he wanted to see her, her hair, her skin, her intricate, interesting face.
He parted her hair at the nape, traced her vertebrae one by one, and watched her reflection in the mirror. Five years ago, perhaps even three, he’d have thought she reacted not at all. But now he’d become much more fluent in the language that was her expressions. He perceived the minute fluttering of her eyelids. He also caught the fact that she
was biting the inside of her lip, because her lower lip pulled ever so slightly toward the seam of her mouth.
He undid the sash of her dressing robe. Her fingers tightened around the handle of her hairbrush. He lifted her out of the chair and flicked the dressing robe from her shoulders.
He’d never paid much mind to women’s nightgowns, except to know that they were made to make any woman appear twice her girth. Hers was no exception, pleated and puffed with all the trickery known to garment-making.
He gathered fistfuls of the nightgown’s skirt. Her lips parted, as if about to protest. But she said nothing, emitting only a breath of air.
“Arms up.”
She obeyed. He pulled the nightgown over her head and cast it aside. For a moment, it seemed as if she wanted to shrink, to hunch down. But all those years of walking with books on her head prevented her from doing anything, anything at all, to sabotage her posture. She stood very straight, her breasts high and pink-tipped, her hips full and round.
“Please, turn off the light.”
He looked at her for another minute, mainly her face, the caught breaths, the licked lips—the interplay of shyness and abandon.
And then he turned off the light, found her in the darkness, and kissed her.
T heir third night together he did not turn off the light when he had her naked. Instead, he laid her on the bed, parted her legs slightly, and touched her in that hidden place and watched her face.
This should have mortified her, to be so intensely observed when she was so entirely exposed—and at his mercy. But it only made her pleasure more searing.
He did not extinguish the light until after she’d come to a shaking climax. Then he made love to her not only as if he had never experienced lovemaking before, but no one had.
CHAPTER 16
T he next afternoon Fitz and his wife had to sit down together and review a batch of advertising prints.
Ever since the success with the soda waters, he’d charged Millie with formulating and improving the messages, visual and verbal, that the company conveyed to the public. And she had proved to be an enormous asset. He kept the factories and the chains of supply shipshape and efficient. But without her golden touch, Cresswell & Graves would be nowhere as successful as it was.
Today’s tête-à-tête was but a routine meeting between two partners, discussing business matters. Why then did he again feel overwhelmingly bashful, as if he’d never been alone in a room with a girl?
“These are for the autumn campaign for preserved vegetables and fruits, no?” she asked.
“They are.”
She pulled her chair closer to the desk and bent over the prints. Her afternoon calls over, she’d changed into a powder blue tea gown. He’d peeled away any number of tea gowns in his time—ladies often devoted the hour between four and five in the afternoon to entertaining their lovers. Hers was rather ordinary, made of a sturdy broadcloth, with none of the seductive drapes and shimmers he’d seen on some of his former paramours. Yet he itched to undo the buttons and expose her beautiful body. He knew what she looked like now, every inch of her skin. And if he closed his eyes, he’d see her head thrown back, her eyes shut tight, her lips parted, as he brought her to pleasure.
He forced his gaze away from her face, onto something safer: the advertising prints spread before her, which they’d already assessed once before.
The first, done in the style of a Punch’s cartoon, depicted a hostess in pearls and plumes instructing her daughter, “Now, when our guests compliment us on the crisp asparagus and the beautiful strawberries, under no circumstances will you reveal that they come courtesy of Cresswell & Graves. No, they arrived fresh this morning from our estate in the country.”
The second, aiming not so much to amuse as to reassure, showed a woman dressed simply but respectably, gazing with both contentment and relief upon her children, who tucked enthusiastically into a dessert dish of pears. The caption on top read: This winter, let Cresswell & Graves, always top quality, always affordable, be your greengrocer. The bottom caption stated: All fruits vacuum processed and solid packed.
“What do you think?” he asked, unscrewing the cap of his fountain pen.
She did not like for their secretary to be taking notes during these discussions, as she did not want her participation in the business to become public knowledge.
“The wording is fine on both,” she said slowly. “But the ladies’ gowns”—she pointed at the first print—“we last saw the artwork in April, before it had become quite obvious that sleeves would collapse this Season. They must be reduced. I’ll send along a fashion plate so that the artist will know what they ought to look like: with only very small puffs at the shoulders, none of that leg-of-lamb ballooning.”
She examined the print further. “And their hair needs to be dressed higher. There is no such thing as a coiffure that’s too high these days.”
He jotted down her instructions. Strange, he never quite thought of it this way before, but these private meetings of theirs were his favorite part of his involvement with Cresswell & Graves. He relished listening to her talk about how she wished their products to be perceived. She became impassioned—and wickedly shrewd.
They moved on to a color lithograph advertising poster for preserved cream, fresh cream being a luxury out of the reach of a large swath of the population. This one was straightforward, showing simply a crystal dish of strawberries drenched under lovely, thick cream.
Summer is more summery with Cresswell & Graves Potted Cream.
“They finally have the color right,” he said.
First the cream had been the white of leaded paint, then it had been almost currylike. But now it was a pale yellow, full-throttled richness.
She regarded the poster with a critical eye. “I suppose I’d better let it go. Or we won’t be able to use it until next summer.”
They dispatched several other posters—for jams and jellies, ox tongues, and curried chicken—and now it was time to discuss ideas for advertising the new chocolate bars, several of which sat on a plate on his desk.
He handed her an orange crème, her favorite, and chose a raspberry delight for himself. They sat in silence for a minute, busy eating.
“We could do something like this,” he said, the tart sweetness of the raspberry delight lingering on his tongue. “A man and a woman, sharing chocolate.”
Immediately he regretted the suggestion. Of course she’d guess what he really wanted was to kiss her with the chocolate still melting in her mouth.
Her brow knitted and unknitted. “We could, starting with the gentleman offering the lady a chocolate.”
She rose and began pacing. This meant a Tremendous Idea had struck—she would not even realize until a few minutes later that she’d left her seat in the excitement. His true intentions remained safe for now.
She stopped midstride. “The gentleman should offer the lady chocolate on a number of occasions, at a tea, at a picnic, on a rowing excursion—fewer and fewer people around them as their acquaintance deepens.
“We should intimate the first time he offers her a chocolate to be the occasion of their first meeting. They will both be a little shy and the chocolate offers a good excuse to exchange a few words. At the picnic they will know each other better. Their postures will be less stiff, they will lean into each other without quite noticing that they are doing so. By the third image—on a rowing boat—they know each other even better, but they have never been in such close proximity for so much time. It is as exciting as it is taxing: They’d like to be closer, but of course they must restrain themselves.”
He wondered now how he’d ever thought of her as bland and bloodless, when she was both quick-witted and inventive. “We can run these first three images together—in the same magazine issue, for example, separated by a few pages of text each. We should make it clear, by the end of the third image, that we intend to tell a story, this couple’s story. And that it will continue in future installments.
”
Her eyes sparkled. “Yes, you read my mind: I did intend it as an ongoing story. But your idea is marvelous; a quick succession of vignettes would achieve greater interest faster. After that, we will present new developments in the courtship at regular, but not too close, intervals. And of course our young lovers must overcome a gauntlet of challenges on their way to happiness. But at each step along the way, our chocolates are there to help cement their attraction, comfort their heartbreak, and eventually, celebrate their happiness.”
“We will introduce new varieties when our couple’s children arrive one by one,” said Fitz. He was invariably swept away by her enthusiasm and her barrage of interesting ideas. “And should our chocolates be a success, they will also accompany those children through the ups and downs of childhood and adolescence.”
“Not to mention each milestone anniversary of our couple.” She smiled. “Chocolate is such fun. Would that asparagus were half as enjoyable to think about.”
“The last asparagus advert was quite genius, if you ask me.”
The advert had shown individual asparagus spears in tartans and plaids, in a good-natured parody of the images of the Highland regiments famously used to advertise Huntley & Palmers biscuits. People had chuckled all over Britain and the sales of preserved asparagus had jumped sky-high.
“You’ve always been very uncritical of me,” she murmured.
“The very thought of those bagpipe-playing, bearskin-wearing asparagus still makes me snort.”
She blushed and bent her neck, a gesture of immense modesty. If he hadn’t experienced it, he’d never be able to imagine her thrashing beneath him, her hand between his legs. But it was all he thought of these days, her heat, her temerity, her abandon.
“I think we did well today,” she said. “You can pass on the ideas to Mr. Gideon and I’ll be glad to look at the first sketches when you have them.”
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