“Very pleased to meet you both, I’m sure,” said Millie, still agog at Mrs. Townsend’s beauty.
“You are engaged to marry my twin,” said Miss Fitzhugh, who had noticed that Millie had lost all powers of reasoning.
“Oh, of course.”
He had sisters. Millie knew that. And now that she’d been jolted out of her daze, she even remembered that the sisters had been abroad, Miss Fitzhugh at school in Switzerland, and the incomparable Mrs. Townsend in the Himalayas, on safari with her husband.
“Mr. Townsend and I started back as soon as we learned of the previous earl’s passing. We traveled as fast as we could, but we crossed the channel only yesterday,” explained Mrs. Townsend, “after retrieving Miss Fitzhugh from Geneva.”
At first Millie had thought Mrs. Townsend as ageless as a goddess, but the latter was actually quite young, barely over the cusp of twenty.
“And I am glad we hurried,” continued Mrs. Townsend. “It was not until we landed that we learned the date of the wedding had already been set.”
Mr. Graves, not wanting to lose another potential son-in-law to the vagaries of fortune, had demanded that the wedding take place as soon as the financial agreements had been reached. But Lord Fitzhugh refused absolutely: He would not marry while he was still at school. The ceremony had therefore been scheduled the day after the end of summer term, a little more than two weeks away.
“Our brother is a very fine young man—the finest there is,” Mrs. Townsend went on. “But he is a man and as such can be relied upon to know nothing of what needs to be done in case of an engagement and a wedding. Besides, he can’t orchestrate anything from Eton. But now that I am back, we shall proceed apace, beginning with a garden party to introduce you to our friends, a dinner to celebrate the engagement, and of course, when you have returned from your honeymoon, a ball in your honor—a country ball, that is, since London will have emptied by then.”
Millie had thought herself completely disillusioned. It was not true; there had been one last barrier of hope around her heart: A belief that at least some of Lord Fitzhugh’s disdain had not been his own, but a reflection of his family’s aversion at the kind of marriage he must contract to keep their fortunes afloat.
Now that his sisters had shown themselves to be kind and helpful, Mrs. Townsend offering to throw her weight behind Millie’s entry into Society, Millie had no more excuses to turn to.
This marriage would crush her.
She could not run. She could not hide. And the wedding was in two weeks.
When the idea came, it was as fully formed as Athena, leaping out of Zeus’s forehead. Millie only wondered that she hadn’t thought of it earlier.
Or perhaps she had, in all the days and nights since it became clear that she was going to become Lord Fitzhugh’s wife. Beneath her trying not to imagine the worst, perhaps she had been planning for just that.
Mrs. Graves woke up shortly after Mrs. Townsend announced her plans for the party, the dinner, and the ball. Millie’s participation was no longer needed, leaving her free to examine and refine her plan, while pretending to listen to the discussion.
At teatime, the walk to the Eton players’ pavilion was very long—and all too short.
The introductions to Lord Fitzhugh’s friends were a blur. Millie was grateful for Mrs. Townsend, in whose presence the young men could barely form coherent sentences, let alone remember that Lord Fitzhugh did not want to marry this mousy girl to whom they were being presented.
Then, quietly, she made the request to Lord Fitzhugh for a word. Thanks to the magnetic pull of Mrs. Townsend, all Lord Fitzhugh had to do was lead Millie a few paces away from the eager cricket players trying to impress his sister. The noise of the crowd milling about gave Millie and her fiancé all the privacy they needed.
He was leaner than she remembered, warier, his tone quiet. “What may I do for you, Miss Graves?”
Was this how he would always speak to her, with this meticulous, distant politeness? “I have been thinking about what you said the other day. You made me realize that yes, I have been forced into this. I was never given any other choice, never told that there was any other way to justify my existence on this earth but to be the conduit that united the Graves name with a lineage nobler and more ancient.
“It is a stupid goal. But such are the circumstances of our lives that we must hold our noses and proceed, or we shall both be far worse off. With your predecessor, there was no question that I would be expected to produce an heir as soon as possible. But—dare I assume you are not in as much of a hurry to rush headlong into fatherhood?”
He glanced to his left. She did not follow the direction of his gaze but she had no doubt that if she did, she would find the young lady he loved. “You would be correct,” he said. “I have no desire to fill nurseries anytime soon.”