He could have been speaking of Isabelle Englewood.

“I thought it was passable, nothing to be excited about.”

“That’s odd,” he said quietly. “Our tastes tend to converge, not diverge.”

She’d been looking stubbornly out of the window. Now she glanced at him. A mistake—he gave the impression of a man deeply content with his lot.

The signet ring she’d given him glistened on his hand. She wanted to rip it off and throw it out of the carriage. But then she’d also need to throw away his gold-and-onyx watch fob and his walking stick, the porcelain handle of which was glazed a deep, luminous blue. Like his eyes.

So many Christmas and birthday presents. So many practically transparent attempts to stake her claim on his person, as if pieces of metal or ceramic could somehow change a man’s heart.

“I trust your judgment more when you aren’t so—buoyant,” she said.

“Buoyant, that’s a weighty charge.” He smiled. “No one has accused me of being buoyant in years.”

His smiles—she used to think them signposts pointing the way to a hidden paradise, when all along they were but notices that said, “Property of Isabelle Pelham Englewood. Trespassers will have their hearts broken.”

“Well, things have changed recently.”

“Yes, they have.”

“I’m sure you’ve been to see Mrs. Englewood again. What does she think of the six-month wait? I dare say she hates being made to wait.”

“You are my wife, Millie, and you step aside for no one. Mrs. Englewood understands this.”

Something in his tone made her heart skip two beats. She looked away. “I will gladly step aside for her.”

He rose from the opposite seat and sat down next to her. As spouses, it was perfectly proper for them to share a carriage seat. But when they were alone in a conveyance, he always took the backward-facing seat, an acknowledgment that he was not truly her husband.

He draped an arm over her shoulder. His nearness, which she had never become accustomed to, was now almost impossible to endure. She wanted to throw open the door of the carriage and leap out. Her agreeing to honor their pact did not give him the right to touch her before it was time.

“Don’t look so put out, Millie. Something wonderful might come of this: We can have a child.” His other hand settled on her arm, the warmth of his palm branding her across the thin fabric of her sleeve. “I’ve never asked you, would you like a boy or a girl?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’d make a wonderful mother, kind but firm, attentive but not smothering. Any child of yours would be a fortunate child indeed.”

There had been a part of her, however small, however circumspect, that had always hoped perhaps when they at last consummated their marriage, their lovemaking would be the final alchemical ingredient to give wings to their friendship. But now it would serve only a biological function. Their friendship would remain earthbound—never to take flight.

The carriage came to a stop before the Fitzhugh town house. She pushed him away and leaped out.

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.”