“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.