Millie did not immediately turn around. She needed a minute to pull herself together. The sight of the Fitzhugh party coming out from the rail station was still seared in her mind, Isabelle retaking her place as if the past eight years never happened. “You are back early,” she said. “I thought everyone was to take tea at the duke’s house.”

“Everyone includes you and I’ve come to get you.”

He had spoken to her of fairness when she’d have put their pact on a bonfire and burned it. No doubt he was again motivated by his need to restore her to her rightful place. But she wanted to be an inseparable part of his heart, not a consideration for his conscience. “It will be awkward with Mrs. Englewood there.”

“She won’t be there.”

He joined her at the mantel, the shoulder of his day coat speckled with drops of water—it had started to rain as she’d reached home. And then, utterly unexpected: his hand on the small of her back; his lips on her cheek.

The gesture was more familiar than intimate. Still, they did not greet each other this way: nods and smiles, perhaps, but not kisses on the cheek that left an etching of heat upon her skin.

He turned the bell jar a few degrees. “I never asked you, Millie. But why did you have Alice preserved?”

Sometimes Millie forgot that it had been her idea. No, more than her idea: She’d also been the one to engage the services of a taxidermist. “You loved her so much I couldn’t bear to put her underground.”

He was silent, his thumb rubbing against the small plaque that bore Alice’s name.

“Do you miss her still?” she asked.

“Not as much as I used to. And when I do miss her—she was a fixture of my school days, to think of her is to remember what it was like to be seventeen and without a care in the world.”

“You miss your old life.” It was a given, but still she hurt to be reminded of it.

“Doesn’t everyone, from time to time?” He replaced the bell jar and turned toward her. “Ten years from now I’m going to miss my life as it is today, simply because I will never be twenty-seven again. There is always something worth remembering in every stage of the journey.”

“Even in the year you married?”

“Yes.” His expression was—surely she deluded herself—nostalgic. “Demolishing the north wing, for one—that opportunity will not come again. Mrs. Clements telling the colonel to shut up. Our conversation about the commodes with the queen’s portrait inside—still one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.”

She didn’t know why it should be so, but her eyes tingled with tears. It had been a horrible year, but his words carried a great fondness—for this most arduous time of their life together. As if in looking back, the grief and the anguish had been sifted away, and only the gems remained—moments of camaraderie, memories that shone.

“Of course,” he said, smiling, “how can I forget, your panic over my determination to kill myself with a dummy rifle.”

Her voice caught. “You will never let me live that down, will you?”

“No. I can’t believe it: We never did give you any firearm lessons, did we?”

“There were always more pressing concerns.”

“We’ll do it this year—make you a crack shot in no time.”

“I’m sure the grouse will happily disagree as I miss every last one of them.”

“Grouse isn’t the only thing to shoot. The seasons for partridge and pheasant don’t end until first of February. And that’s plenty of t…”

His voice trailed off.

Understanding came all too swift to Millie, like a tropical sunset that abruptly turned day into night. There was no next year for them. Come January he would go to Mrs. Englewood.

“It’s all right,” she said gamely. “Not all of us are meant to be crack shots.”

He looked at her as if he hadn’t seen her in a very long time. Or perhaps, as if he might never see her again, and must memorize her features one by one.

When he finally spoke, he said, “They are still waiting for us for tea, you and me. Shall we go?”

CHAPTER 9

The Partnership

1889

Millie’s father died three weeks after Alice. But whereas Alice had given every indication that she was not long for this earth, Mr. Graves’s heart failed unexpectedly. He was forty-two.

Millie was stunned. Her mother was incoherent with shock. Thankfully, as he had done after Mr. Townsend’s passing, Lord Fitzhugh stepped in and took charge of the arrangements.

Mr. Graves’s will was simple enough. He settled a number of trusts on longtime retainers and employees, gave miscellaneous gifts to members of his extended family, provided generously for his widow, and left all of Cresswell & Graves Enterprises to Millie.

After the funeral, Mrs. Hanover, Millie’s aunt, suggested that Mrs. Graves, devastated by grief, would do well to spend some time in a bright and cheerful place. Millie and Mrs. Hanover together accompanied Mrs. Graves to Tuscany, to recuperate in a sun-drenched landscape of cypresses and vineyards.

They’d planned to stay for at least three months. But a month into their sojourn, a letter came for Millie from her husband. He dutifully wrote once a week—short missives that numbered not more than five sentences between greetings and salutations. But this letter was three pages, front and back.

He had performed an audit of the firm, from its accounts and records to its factories and other physical assets. He had also spoken with a number of retailers who sold Cresswell & Graves wares.

Mr. Graves, during his tenure, had been excessively cautious. The plum pudding and the mackerel had been the only new products added to the line during the past decade. His philosophy had been to produce few products and produce them well. With the ever expanding number of companies that daily introduced more varieties to the market, Cresswell & Graves still sold about the same number of products from year to year, but they were becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of the retailers’ stock.

Moreover, they could not even boast their wares as the best-made tinned goods anymore. Yes, their ingredients were still carefully sourced and thoroughly inspected, and the manufacturing process was clean and conscientious, but newer technologies and production methods had become available in the past ten years—means to make preserved foods taste fresher and last longer—and Cresswell & Graves had adopted none of them.

The company was stagnating. In Lord Fitzhugh’s opinion, they had not yet reached a point of crisis. But should things continue at the same sluggish pace, it might not be long before they were moribund.

Change must happen. If they didn’t initiate the change now, it would be forced upon them soon. He meant to convene a meeting of lawyers and managers and discuss a new, more energetic direction for the company. Would Lady Fitzhugh join him?

Millie was dumbfounded—almost more by his request than by the company’s declining fortunes. From birth she’d been trained to be a lady. She knew nothing about the business. She’d never set foot in one of Cresswell & Graves’s factories. And until her honeymoon, never eaten from a tin.

It seemed almost blasphemous for her to participate in the running of the business in any capacity. Her mother never had. Her father, were he still alive, would be scandalized by any involvement on Millie’s part.

“What should I do?” she asked her mother.

“What do you wish to do?” said Mrs. Graves. She still looked pale and fragile in her widow’s weeds, but her old strength of mind was returning.

“I’d like to do what I can to help Lord Fitzhugh—and myself. But I’m not sure what my presence will accomplish. I haven’t the slightest experience when it comes to matters of business.”

“But the firm belongs to you. Without your support, Lord Fitzhugh cannot take over the management of it.”

“I’m astonished he wants to.” Lordships didn’t involve themselves in the nitty-gritty details of how their money was made.

Mrs. Graves tilted her embroidery frame to better examine it in the light. “I approve. A young man should have ambitious tasks with which to occupy himself. Even with all the work that remains to be done at Henley Park, the majority of the improvements will finish sometime in the not-too-distant future. But an ongoing concern such as Cresswell & Graves will always keep the man in charge busy.”

Millie remained awake half the night, thinking. In the morning, before breakfast, she sent out her reply.

I will start by the end of the week.