Everyone else was cordial in their manners, but their smiles reminded Fitz of those one put on when faced with an overly chatty vicar.
“Yes,” said Isabelle, as they walked toward the exit and the carriages that awaited beyond. “I do enjoy it. And did Fitz tell you? He was the one who arranged for the house.”
Swift, inscrutable glances darted Fitz’s way.
“Fitz is terribly modest,” said Venetia. “Not for him to boast what he has done for his friends.”
Isabelle laughed. “Modest, Fitz? When did you become modest? I remember you bragging with the best of them.”
He had, hadn’t he? He’d strutted, too, as young, athletic boys so often did. One could say having his dreams executed before his eyes killed his swagger outright. But the truth was, he’d always admired quiet confidence better than braggadocio and would have moderated his bluster at some point, even if life hadn’t beat him to it.
“Modesty is a more appealing quality in an older gentleman such as myself.”
Isabelle laughed. “Oh, how funny.”
He had meant to poke fun at himself but what he said was not a joke.
“So, my dear Mrs. Englewood, what are your plans now that you are back?” asked Hastings.
“Oh, so many of them.” Isabelle turned her face toward Fitz, her look of anticipation unmistakable.
Hastings tapped his fingers against the handle of his walking stick. Venetia adjusted the angle of her hat. Helena tugged at the brooch at her throat. Isabelle might not recognize the signs but they were uncomfortable, especially his sisters.
“Mrs. Englewood is going to visit her sister in Aberdeen in a day or two,” Fitz said.
“Oh, how delightful,” said Venetia. “Will you stay for a while? Scotland is lovely this time of the year.”
There was hope in her voice.
“No, a week at most. I will visit her for a longer time after the end of the Season but for now I shall miss London too much.” She gazed again at Fitz, not caring that she was essentially flirting—possibly even thrilling to it.
Perhaps Fitz had shot well past modesty into outright prudery. But Isabelle had children and he a wife. They ought to be more circumspect in their public conduct, even if they were only before his family and his most trusted friend.
Then he saw her, Millie, descending from her brougham, looking right and left preparing to cross the street. Her eyes landed on him at the same moment. But the pleasure on her face faded away as she took in the sight of Isabelle walking next to him, comfortably ensconced among members of his family.
In her place.
She blinked a few times, her sweet, delicate face straining for composure. Lowering her head, she turned around and climbed back into the brougham.
It drove away, inconspicuous, one vehicle in a sea of carriages.
Alice was in her usual place on the mantel of Fitz’s study, her eyes closed, her tail curled around her plump little body. The clear glass bell jar that protected her from dust and moisture provided a clue that she’d long ago departed for the hereafter, but she remained so lifelike Millie still expected her to stir and wake up.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere in the house,” came her husband’s voice behind her. “Why didn’t you join us?”
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.”