“And yet we face challenging times ahead and it is important that we preserve comity and unity. Whomever we choose to head the enterprise should be someone fair and honest, with both the stature and the experience to lead us across troubled waters.”
Fitz’s pulse picked up. This was where they’d find out whether his strategy would work. By forcing them to choose a leader before her, without time for behind-closed-doors deal-making and compromises, he hoped that they would select the most neutral person in the room, someone whom both sides had good reason to believe they could influence.
Him.
So far she had performed beautifully, but one could never account for all the variables that might come into play. It was always possible that the men had met beforehand and already decided on the one they’d choose to lead them. And if that were the case, it was more likely than not one of the old guards.
And that would make his intended course of action incalculably more arduous. Rightful owners they might be, but they would have a difficult time getting their ideas implemented, let alone implemented well.
“Perhaps I could invite some names to be put forward?” she prompted them. “Perhaps this is the time to look around the room and see if there is a man acceptable to everyone?”
He’d written most of the script for her speech. But the last question was her own. As if on cue, the men seated in the first row of seats, the leaders of the two factions, turned around. And whom should they see but the untried youth loitering at the back of the room.
Eaglelike eyes assessed him. He did his very best to appear a blank canvas for other men’s ideas, or perhaps a clump of clay for someone else to shape.
“I’d have liked to volunteer myself for the honor—were I thirty years younger,” said Mr. Hawkes. “But now that I am an old fuddy-duddy, let it not be said that I do not value the valor and enthusiasm of youth. I move that we invite Lord Fitzhugh to lead us.”
Fitz did not need to pretend. He was as astonished as the other men in the room. The best-case scenario—the one for which they’d schemed, plotted, strategized—had come to pass.
“Me? But—but I haven’t the faintest idea what to do with a passel of tinneries.”
Lady Fitzhugh also protested. “I thought we needed a man of experience. I’m sure Lord Fitzhugh is full of fine qualities but his only experience is in cricket.”
“And did not the Duke of Wellington himself say that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton?”
Now Mr. Hawkes was going all out, pushing Fitz’s candidacy, no doubt believing he’d enjoy a particular influence over Fitz should he succeed.
The men of the reforming faction looked at one another. Mr. Mortimer, realizing that he would not be elected to lead the company, hastened to put in his own approval of Fitz’s fitness for the office. “Experience can be earned. Lord Fitzhugh is a bright, winsome young man and I am sure he will lead us most capably.”
“Hear, hear,” somebody said.
Millie excused herself once her husband had been installed at the head of the company. But the rest of the day she could do nothing except anxiously pace about the house, waiting for him to come back.
He did, late in the afternoon. As soon as they’d closed the study door behind themselves, he enfolded her in a bear hug.
She had not expected it at all—or the swift current of warmth that instantly surged through her. God, he smelled wonderful. And his body was lean and angular—and strong, for presently he lifted her and spun her around.
“Well done, old gal. Well done!”
She squealed with laughter and banged at his shoulders to be put down. “What happened after I left? Tell me. I’m dying to know.”
“The meeting was adjourned an hour after you left. Mr. Hawkes pulled me aside to give me a word of caution on making too many changes too fast. But even men who don’t want to make too many changes too fast have an occasional idea or two. So I told him about his bottling plant.”
“What bottling plant?”
“Twelve years ago, he had wanted your father to expand to bottled beverages and had prepared a thorough dossier for the construction of a new manufacturing plant dedicated to these bottled beverages. The site, the blueprint for the building, the designs for the machinery were all there. He even had a book of recipes and several prototype designs of the bottles that would be used.
“One could only imagine how disappointed he was to have his proposal rejected. So I told him that with me in charge, he will have his bottling plant—and soon. Norwich & Sons went belly-up during the construction of a bottling plant. I let him know that I’d be quite happy to buy it with my own funds and sign the deed over to the company—a coming-aboard present, so to speak.”
“He didn’t become suspicious, did he?”