The second warning gong rang, louder and more strident. And with it came the police, ready to enforce the resumption of the game, if need be. But of course the elegant crowd who attended the Eton and Harrow game would never be mixed up with the police. Ladies and gentlemen melted from the playing ground, back to the stands, the benches, and the carriages.
Mrs. Graves’s visiting, however, continued for another hour. Millie was glad for the excuse to turn her back on the game. But everywhere they went, there seemed to be a young boy nearby, a cricket fanatic who pestered his mother and sisters to watch the goings-on. The earl’s name came up all too often.
Did you see that? Fitzhugh just sent one clear over the boundary. That’s six runs! shouted an Eton enthu-siast.
No, not another one out of bounds! At least it touched ground, so only four runs, grumbled a Harrow supporter. Fitzhugh already scored ninety. When is he going to be dismissed?
At last they returned to their landau and ate their picnic luncheon.
“Shall we go now?” Millie asked Mrs. Graves.
“Of course not,” answered Mrs. Graves. “When the match breaks for tea, we will go to the Eton pavilion and have your fiancé present his friends to you.”
His mates had to know how he truly felt. They’d probably already commiserated with him. Should Mrs. Graves begin to express her great delight, oblivious to the earl’s distaste for his imminent trip to the altar—Millie could well imagine the snickering.
“But we have not been invited to approach the Eton pavilion and we—”
Mrs. Graves placed her gloved hand over Millie’s. “My dear, you must not feel apologetic about this marriage. Never forget all that you are bringing to the marriage and never consider yourself inferior simply because he is young and handsome. He is getting the better bargain here. Do you understand?”
The real question was, did he understand?
He did not. And he would not.
Mrs. Graves touched Millie’s cheek. “I love your father dearly, but how I wish he were not so needlessly stubborn on the matter of your marriage. You should have a husband who treasures you, for no man can possibly be more fortunate than the one who has your hand.
“But reality being what it is, I have brought you here today. Do not hide, my love. And do not retreat. I know it will not be easy for you. But it will only be worse if you lock yourself in a cupboard. Hold your head high. Stake out your ground. So he hasn’t invited us when he should have. That means it is up to you to make your presence felt, to compel him to publicly acknowledge your position in his life.”
She couldn’t. She had nothing in her to compel anyone. She only wanted to disappear.
“Yes, Mother,” she said.
“Good.” Mrs. Graves patted Millie on her shoulder. “Now let me close my eyes for a moment. Then we will show our magnificent selves to Lord Fitzhugh. And he’d better be properly awed and pleased.”
Mrs. Graves napped. Millie wrestled with her handkerchief. The boy in the next-over carriage narrated the general goings-on, thankfully not bothering with the names of the individual players.
Abruptly the boy fell silent—midsentence. Millie glanced his way, wondering whether he’d choked on something he was eating. But the boy only stared ahead, his jaw halfway to the ground.
He was not alone. The other occupants of his carriage—parents, a sister, and a brother—wore similar expressions of frozen astonishment. Around them, other people in other carriages also stopped what they were doing to stare in the same general direction.
Millie turned around and beheld the most beautiful woman on God’s green earth. A mythological creature, surely, Helen of Troy reincarnated or Aphrodite herself, down from Mount Olympus to rendezvous with her Adonis.
She probably did not walk, but glided over the ground. Her cream lace parasol shielded a face that was at once flawless in its symmetry and unsettling in some indescribable way that separated the beautiful from the merely pretty. Millie could swear that the clouds, which had shielded the crowd from the sun for the past half hour, allowed one brilliant ray to fall on the woman, to illuminate her singular beauty, because it would have been a discourtesy for such loveliness to not also be perfectly lit.
Impossibly enough, she approached the Graves carriage.
“Miss Graves, is it not?” she asked, smiling.
Her smile was so stunning that Millie nearly tumbled backward. She had to fish around for her voice. And was she Miss Graves?
“Ah…yes?”
“I know it is rude to introduce oneself, but seeing as we are going to be family soon, I hoped you wouldn’t mind terribly.”
Millie had no idea what the stranger was talking about. In fact, she barely heard any words, her attention entirely taken by the movements of the woman’s lips. But she was sure of one thing: No matter what the woman wanted, no one would ever, ever mind.
“No, no, of course not.”
“I am Mrs. Townsend. And this lovely young lady is my sister, Miss Fitzhugh.”
Until Mrs. Townsend introduced her companion, Millie hadn’t even noticed that there was anyone with her. Indeed there was, a tall, slender redhead who was quite pretty in her own right.