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.
CHAPTER 14
1896
Fitz had not been in the mistress’s rooms since he walked through the town house upon inheriting it. A great many renovations had taken place since then, to turn the house from a near hovel to an airy, comfortable home. Their marriage, in fact, could be traced plank by plank, brick by brick.
Even now the enhancements continued: The draining of the lavender fields had been improved in the spring; a second beehive had been commissioned for the kitchen garden—it was to be a scale replica of the manor at Henley Park; and, the servants’ quarters, which had been overhauled once four years ago, were being worked on again.
Her room was light and pretty, with wallpaper the summery, crisp green of a sliced cucumber. Potted topiaries stood guard at either side of the fireplace. Above the fireplace hung a painted landscape that looked rather familiar—not the painting, but the landscape.
She stood in the center of the room, still in her full evening regalia, her fan held before her like a plumed breastplate. She glanced at him, but did not otherwise acknowledge his presence.
He did not want to make her more nervous than she must be. Instead of approaching her, he crossed the room to take a better look at the painting. “Is this Lake Como?”
“Yes.”
His gaze dipped to the mantel. Upon it were a row of framed photographs that had been taken in summers past, at their country house parties. Each photograph contained the two of them, though never alone; sometimes they were in a large group, sometimes with only her mother or his sisters.
At the edge of the mantel, another familiar object. “Is this the music box I gave you for your seventeenth birthday? Looks much better than I remember.”
He lifted the lid of the music box. It emitted the same thin, slightly discordant notes. Still worked. Who would have thought?
She watched him. But when he looked at her, she glanced away immediately.
“Where is your maid?”
“I told her not to wait up for me.”
She dropped her fan onto the seat of a nearby chair. The gesture was determinedly casual. Yet as she stood next to the padded armrest, her throat wobbled with a swallow. The sight of it—the implication of it—made his blood hot.
“It won’t be disagreeable,” he said. “It can be made quite enjoyable.”
“Oh, it had better be,” she said tartly. “I’ve heard plenty over the years on your amatory prowess. If I’m not on the roof crowing, I will consider myself disappointed.”
He smiled and put the music box back on the mantel. “Into the bedchamber with you then, lady.”
For a few seconds she stared at her dropped fan without moving. Then she went for the switch and turned off the electric sconce on the wall. The lamp in the bedroom had been left on, illuminating the path. She walked past him and disappeared inside.
So, we come to it at last.
A mundane marital task, was this not? An obligation he’d put off for too long. Why then, as he advanced toward the bedroom, did he feel as if he were being swept out to sea? That the tides and currents would be unlike anything he’d ever known in the calm estuary that had been his marriage?
She turned off the light the moment he’d closed the door behind him. He supposed he shouldn’t be too surprised—he was dealing with a virgin after all. But they knew each other so well it seemed she shouldn’t be shy at all.
“Wouldn’t you want me to see what I’m doing?”
“No.”
He smiled. “Not even when I have to wrestle with tricky bits of your gown?”
“There is nothing here you haven’t encountered enough times elsewhere.”
The darkness was impenetrable: Her windows had been shut and shuttered, the double curtains tightly drawn.
“This will be a first for me,” he murmured. “Fumbling about in the dark. I ought to have you sing a hymn so I can find you.”
She snorted. “A hymn?”
“The heavenly host rejoice tonight: At last I am doing something ordained by God and immortalized by Christ’s love for his Church—et cetera, et cetera.”
“What should I sing? ‘Hosanna in the highest’? Or maybe we ought to really make our rector proud and recite the Lord’s Prayer, too.”
He knew where she was now: by her vanity table. She jumped as his hand settled on her shoulder. Had she not heard his approach in the dark?
“All right, so you found me. Your turn to hide now and mine to seek,” she said, her voice just a bit squeaky.
“Some other day. We’ve business to attend to, Lady Fitzhugh.”
She wore long kidskin gloves that extended well past her elbows. They were fastened at the top with three ivory buttons each. He popped the buttons—one, two, three—pushed one glove down and pulled it off.
“I forgot to say so earlier, but you looked quite lovely tonight,” he
said. He slid his palm along her now-exposed arm. So much of her was a mystery to him.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice barely audible.
He removed her other glove. “Did I ever tell you, when we first married, I never quite knew what you looked like? Your face changed every time I saw you. And when you came back from America, I had to look twice to make sure it was you.”
Ruffles on her gown brushed the back of his hand.
“So…if I’d been away for a little longer, I’d have been able to walk past you without you recognizing me?”
“I quite doubt it. Your eyes do not change. Your gait does not change. And your footsteps—I can always tell when you pass by my door.”
She let out a breath.
He touched her hair, the careful crown of it her maid had constructed earlier in the evening, pulled out two of the amethyst pins, and tossed them aside. They landed with small, muffled thuds against the carpet and the lace cloth spread upon her vanity table.
How long had he been curious about this day, this hour?
Since the Italian trip, certainly. Though if he had to be precise, he would guess it to have been that crucial meeting during which they wrested control of Cresswell & Graves from Mr. Graves’s subordinates.
He’d firmly buried that curiosity: A pact was a pact. They’d shaken hands on eight years and eight years he intended to keep his hands to himself.
But buried things had a funny way of sprouting roots and feelers just beneath the consciousness. So that when he did at last acknowledge it, he found himself facing not the same small seed of desire, but a jungle of lust.
And she, who felt as deeply and relentlessly as any other mortal, but kept such a serene facade, had she, too, hidden nuggets of yearning in the least frequented corners of her mind?
She kept a decided silence, but beneath his fingers there were tremors: She, with her ladylike, tightly laced ways, did not want to give in to something as common and vulgar as lust.
But he wanted her to. He wanted to break apart her facade piece by piece.
The very thought of it took his breath away. Eight years of platonic friendship, of keeping to affable yet firm limits of conduct, of not thinking about how it would be when they at last came together—
A subtle perfume rose from her skin, rich, golden, and mouthwatering. Lavender honey, that must be it: Their soap was made with not only distilled lavender essence, but also the lavender honey from their fields.
He inhaled her. It was only natural that next he bent his head and kissed her on her bare shoulder.
A white-hot heat pulsed from her shoulder to her fingertips. The intensity of it stunned Millie. Had he wrought permanent damage to her nerve endings? Would she wake up in the morning with no sensation at all in her extremities?
But no, he kissed her again, at the base of her neck, and liquid fire scorched her once more.
Faintly she became aware that he was still extracting her jeweled hairpins. They fell soundlessly upon the carpet. Equally faintly she saw the need to ask him not to do that. Or she’d have to remember to gather them up before Bridget came in the morning with her cocoa.
It would be too embarrassing for Bridget to know what had taken place during the night, especially as in six months’ time he would be doing exactly this with Mrs. Englewood, touching her arm, kissing her shoulder, taking down her dark, glossy hair.
Except he’d be at it with much greater fervor and impatience, wouldn’t he, driven by a desire that had smoldered for more than a decade? None of this courtly consideration, these deliberate little touches that annihilated her but affected him not at all.
She was thankful for the dark. He might yet feel the tremors beneath her skin, but at least he would not glimpse the parting of her lips, or the closing of her eyes—involuntary reactions that she could not quite control, which would completely give away her pretense of amiable indifference.
He kissed her on her ear, a kiss with the barest hint of moisture to it. She could not breath for the electricity of it, a violent spark of pleasure that shook and scarred. His fingers caressed her shoulders. His lips pressed into her exposed nape. Dark, hot sensations spiked into her.
She clenched her teeth tight. Make no sounds. Do not, under any circumstances, make any sounds. If she remained as silent as the night, he would not know how she felt. He would not.
The buttons on her back gave away as if before a Mongol horde. The small cap sleeves at her shoulders sagged. He pushed them down, his hands lingering on the inside of her elbows.
The skirt of the ball gown was a monument of ruching and pleating. It contained so much understructure that even with the bodice of the gown hanging limply in defeat, it still stood upright on its own, stalwartly defending her virtue with silk ramparts and chiffon moats.
He simply lifted her bodily and—good Lord—did he kick her magnificent and costly ball gown out of the way?
Now he turned her around to face him. “Should be easy from here on,” he said.
She shuddered. Indeed, it was easy for him. Her corset cover evaporated. Her stockings melted away. He passed his hands down the front of her corset; the steel busk fasteners split apart as if he’d said “Open sesame.”
“Stop,” she said, as he undid the first button on her combination. “I would like to keep it on.”
And not just for modesty, but for pretense. There was too much honesty in nakedness. Skin heated, heart pounded, and God knew what other reaction he’d provoke from her. Best keep a layer of deniability between them, however thin.
He paused, as if considering. “Certainly.”
She was struck dumb. By relief, of course. And perhaps, a bit of chagrin that he did not even want her naked.
“You may keep your combination,” he continued. “And in exchange I will turn on the lights.”
“No! No lights.” No lights under any circumstances.
He undid another button on her combination. His thumb traced a line down the center of her cleavage, his knuckles brushing against the side of one breast, his signet ring coming dangerously close to her nipple.
A kiss landed lightly on her jaw, just below her ear. Then he bit her on her earlobe; the pressure of his teeth singeing her. She clamped down on her lower lip and barely managed to swallow her gasp.
He dropped kisses on her cheeks, her chin, and at the corners of her lips. She could scarcely breathe, but with each breath she inhaled his scent of open fields and wide skies. He went on unbuttoning her, his finger trailing down her torso. Dear God, he dipped one fingertip into her navel—she was practically naked.
Ten seconds later she was naked, the combination pooled at her feet. Darkness was the only thing that separated them. A moment of hush descended; neither of them moved—or breathed, it seemed.
Then his palm slid across her nipple.
Make no sounds. Do not, under any circumstances, make any sounds.
She faltered. A whimper of unutterable pleasure escaped her tightly clenched teeth.
Deep inside her, a dam that had been ceaselessly reinforced crumbled. Years upon years of pent-up desires flooded her. Suddenly she couldn’t care less that she must remain quiet and pliant.
She wanted. She wanted. She wanted.
She gripped him by the lapel and yanked him to her.
But he kissed her before she could kiss him—hard, the way he’d kissed her in his long-ago hallucination, when he’d thought her his Isabelle. She whimpered with pleasure and gratification. She wanted this ferocity, this vehemence.
His hands cupped either side of her head, holding her in place for the onslaught of his lips and tongue. She thrilled to it: It was exactly how she wanted to be secured. And the kiss, God, wild, unrefined, full of raw, barely leashed needs.
She did not know until she heard the pinging of buttons flying everywhere that she was ripping off his waistcoat, tearing apart everything that separated them. He pulled away from the kiss to help her. She slapped his hands away: She would do it.<
br />
He tumbled them both into bed.
His rasping breaths aroused her. His ungoverned hands aroused her. And his erection, pressing insistently into her thigh—oh, yes. She’d thought she’d be afraid of it. Or at least wary. But she only gloried in its dimensions and its hammer-hard rigidity. This was how it ought to be. He ought to want her this much. He ought to swell and extend to the limits of his endurance.
She pushed off his braces and yanked his shirt overhead. And then she went for his trousers.
“My God, Millie.”
Yes, every utterance of her name should be preceded with such an imprecation, an uttering of the Lord’s name in vain.
He certainly did not slap her hands away, but helped her to release the fastenings and get rid of both his trousers and his linens. Immediately she set her hand on his cock. It pulsed in her grip. He sucked in a breath.
“Take me,” she ordered, impatient, imperious.
He touched his hand to the seam between her legs. She was utterly sleek.
“Take me now.”
“Shut up, Millie.”
“But I want—”
He silenced her with a harsh kiss. “Shut up or I’ll make you wait longer.”
She shut up.
He stroked, teased, and plucked her. Every touch was unbearable pleasure. She wanted more. She wanted him. She wanted this emptiness inside her pounded to oblivion.
She kissed every part of him she could reach. She bit his shoulders and his neck. She plunged her hands down the length of his back and grabbed his firm buttocks.
He retaliated by licking her nipple. She moaned, a long, keening admission of enjoyment. He rolled her nipple around his tongue, grazed his teeth across it, and pulled it deep into his mouth. Her cries of pleasure ricocheted about the room.
His fingers, which had not been idle a moment since they descended between her legs, chose this moment to flick a most gloriously sensitive spot. Her breath hitched, snagged, and disappeared altogether. He flicked the spot again and she convulsed involuntarily, a fast, juddering slide of pleasure.
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