Sherry Thomas - Ravishing the Heiress

He gazed at her, his eyes like the dawn sky, full of the heat and promise of a new day. Her heart ached with this wordless communion of hope and desire. He didn’t need to say anything. A kiss would be enough.

But he didn’t. He left her and walked to the window, his fingers on his temples. “You should have told me,” he said. “Years ago.”

“Had Mother lived, perhaps she’d have advised me differently.” She bit her lip. “I’m sure you see now that it will be impossible for me to remain married to you after you set up your arrangement with Mrs. Englewood.”

He turned around. “Millie—”

There came a knock at the door. It was a footman, come to inform Millie that her carriage awaited.

After the door closed again behind the footman, she approached the window. “You’ve spoken much of fairness of late. I think it is only fair that if you choose Mrs. Englewood, you let me go so that I have a chance for a true marriage, and perhaps, someday, a family.”

“Millie—”

“I have said everything there is to say on the subject. Now I must catch my train.” She kissed him on his cheek. “You know where to find me.”

Fitz couldn’t stop looking at the photographs.

It was night, only hours to go before he and Isabelle visited Doyle’s Grange, the house in the country that she wanted for the two of them. Millie had been gone for more than a day, and her absence was a sharp emptiness in his heart.

Except for her sojourn in America at the beginning of the year, as co-chaperone to Helena, they had not been apart in years. During her absence, he’d written almost daily, skipping a few days here and there not because he wanted to, but because it seemed embarrassing to be constantly pelting one’s wife with letters.

And now he was in her rooms, missing her, missing the part of himself that had left with her.

He lifted his favorite photograph from the mantel and brought it closer. It was from the previous summer. Likely the photographer had intended only to capture Hastings, who sat at one end of a chaise longue, looking rather serious. But just beyond the other end of the chaise stood Fitz and Millie.

He’d bet good money they were discussing nothing more significant than the evening’s entertainment for their guests, but it felt far more intimate. Their heads were bent toward each other, their expressions intent. And the way he’d positioned himself, with his hand on the back of the chaise, from the angle of the camera it looked almost as if he had his arm around her waist.

She loved him. She’d loved him all along.

What a fool he’d been, to not have realized it sooner.

Had he a better understanding of his own heart, when Isabelle asked whether it was too late to reclaim some of what they could have had, he’d have answered differently. She’d have been disappointed, but not overcome. Now, after he’d raised her hopes with his pledge for a future together, she would be furious—and heartbroken.

He could not bear to break her heart again.

He could not bear to lose Millie.

Millie had said that he always did the right thing. He clung to that praise like a poor fisherman to his tattered net. But was there a right thing to do here? And if there was, how would he know it?

Doyle’s Grange was a pleasant surprise from the first sight: The property was separated from the country lane that passed before it by a hedge of rhododendron, in raucous, purple bloom.

The gate was whimsical and charming: finials in the shape of grape leaves; wrought iron vines meandering across the pickets. Pines lined the gravel drive. Somewhere in the distance, a stream babbled.

The house was constructed of brick, with large bay windows and gabled dormer windows. Ivy climbed over the portico. The interior, full of books and low furniture upholstered in creams and yellows, was bright and comfortable.

Isabelle was clearly enchanted. But in every room, she’d cast an uncertain glance at him, gauging his reactions. After they’d inspected the interior, they went out to the gardens. The roses had faded but the pinks and the delphiniums were going strong. Bees buzzed. The air was English summer at its finest, a dash of warmth, a hint of hay, and a garden in bloom.

“Can you picture yourself here?” she asked.

Suddenly the right thing to do was there in front of him. To keep Isabelle happy, he would have to lie, and that was no way to begin a life together. She deserved better. She deserved a man who was thrilled to share her house and her life, a man in whose heart she would always be first and foremost.

He was not that man. And he hadn’t been for a very, very long time.

“I’m sorry, Isabelle, but I picture myself elsewhere,” he said.

The corners of her lips quivered. “You mean you’d like to look at a different house?”

There was such fear in her eyes he almost could not continue. “No, I picture myself at Henley Park.”

Some of her old fire came back. “That hovel? I never told you but I went to see it before you married. It was a horrible place.”

“It was. But it isn’t anymore.”

Her face took on an obdurate set. “I don’t believe you.”

“Then come with me,” he said gently. “And see it for yourself.”

When had Fitz fallen in love with his house? A long time ago, most likely. But he’d realized it only the year before, coming back after a London Season.

They’d never stopped working on Henley—decades of accumulated neglect could not be reversed by any single bout of renovation. The renewal of the estate was steady and ongoing.

Perhaps because there were always works in progress, something else in need of attention, perhaps because the two previous years his return to Henley Park had taken place at night, but it was not until that particular day that Fitz had a long, continual view of Henley Park, as if he were a tourist, seeing it for the first time.

Double rows of hazel trees hugged the drive. Through their canopy fell a light almost as green as the leaves, a clear, cool light with flecks of gold that shook with the rustling of the branches.

There, at the turn of the drive, he’d come across the eyesore that was the dilapidated Grecian folly—and not fallen into ruins in a rustic, isn’t-it-quaint manner, but dumpy and ugly, promising to reek of things one couldn’t mention in mixed company.

But no, the restoration was at last complete. Gleaming white and slender columned, the folly seemed not to touch the grassy slope on which it had been built, but float above it, its reflection rippling in the man-made lake below.

And the lake, once reed choked, was now clear as a mirror. The jetty, so long falling into the water, had been rehabilitated. Tied to the jetty was a rowboat painted a brilliant blue, a pair of oars laid across the bow.

The road rose, dipped, and rose again. And spread before him were the lavender fields, a sea of purple spikes swaying in the breeze.

“My God,” he murmured.

“I know,” said Millie, in the carriage with him. “I love coming back to it.”

He was struck by a fierce gladness. This beautiful place belonged to him and he belonged to this beautiful place. He would never again think of it merely as the estate he’d inherited. It was home now—and would be till his dying day.

Henley Park was as lovely as Fitz had ever seen it. The drive, the lake and the folly, the lavender fields, and at last coming into view, the house he shared with Millie, a trim, compact Georgian, its walls faintly lavender from the fading of the bricks, asymmetrical from the demolishing of the north wing, and yet, harmonious in every aspect.

“This is where I picture myself,” he said to Isabelle, “my favorite place on Earth.”

He’d come to it by fate; but now he held it by love.

He signaled the driver to stop. They alit and walked in silence, arm in arm, until they came to the new bridge crossing the trout stream: a Japanese bridge made of stone, perfectly arched.

A pair of swans glided past the bridge.

“I should have realized it sooner, but I’ve been a fool. We have built this place together, my wife and I. And we have built a life together. She is a part of me now, the greater part of me, the better part of me.”

Isabelle turned away. He caught her by the shoulders. “Isabelle.”

“I understand now—and it is not as if I haven’t felt the future I’d imagined for us slipping away these past weeks,” said Isabelle, her voice breaking. “It’s just that I—”

“You will not be alone, Isabelle. I cannot be your lover, but I am your friend. And I am far from your only friend.”

She had tears in her eyes. “I hope you are right, Fitz. I wish you all the joy in the world.”

He enfolded her in his arms. “And I wish the same for you. I love you and I always will.”

But the love of his life was the one with whom he’d built his life.

Millie walked, hoping to find solace, but what solace she found was lanced through with a painful longing, for imprinted on every square foot of Henley Park was their collaboration: She and Fitz had massaged every last nook and cranny of this land, to soothe the tantrums of an estate made temperamental by neglect.

They’d once stood not fifty feet from this path, discussing what to do with a vast quantity of cleared underbrush—eventually discarding a bonfire in favor of making mulch. At the next bend she’d come upon Fitz a good many years ago, tossing small bulbs out of his pocket—she’d bought too many for her garden and he’d wanted to see whether some of them might naturalize in the woods. Some of them had, piercing the soil every spring to bloom afresh, dots of yellow and purple and white against the previous year’s fallen leaves. And of course, farther ahead was the spot where the trout stream had overflowed on the eve of their Italian holiday, flooding the old bridge and a greenhouse in the process. They’d spent the days before their departure trudging up and down the banks, debating the merits of widening versus straightening.