Chapter 10
“I have always found it unwise to allow anyone to become indispensable.”
From the private journal of Lady Isla Scott, on recruiting a new paramour from belowstairs.
* * *
The journal was in her hands.
Millie walked with it pressed against her side, inside her cloak. She felt it with every step, thinking this moment had taken a very long time to arrive. Four years. So many changes and new responsibilities. Papa, whose mind surfaced less and less. One evening of clarity eighteen months ago.
He had taken her hand and said, “At the Camera, behind the Leland” four times in a row, slowly, the way he said details he needed her to remember.
She had written it down immediately afterward.
She had read it back to herself more times than she could count since.
In the dark of the carriage coming from Yorkshire.
In the early mornings before Papa was up.
In the long stretches of the night when the day felt impossible and she needed the fixed point of it.
And now it was here. Inside her cloak. Approximately one inch thick.
Wrapped in waxed oilcloth and tied with narrow twine.
The smell of the oilcloth reached her when she moved.
The weight of it pressed against her ribs with an emphasis she had earned from so much time waiting, and she checked for it every few steps because she had waited for it long enough that its arrival still required confirmation at regular intervals.
She led them back via the quiet streets.
She knew Oxford as she knew her own house, completely and without having to think about it, the knowledge residing in her feet rather than her mind. The back lanes behind the college walls, where the foot traffic thinned. The sound of the main streets reduced to a distant municipal murmur.
These were the streets she had walked since childhood when Papa would bring her to the Bodleian precinct.
She would wait on the steps while he entered places she was not allowed, reading whatever she had brought.
Watching the scholars come and go with a deep-seated yearning, understanding exactly what was behind those doors and not being permitted to participate.
She had never stopped feeling it. She had simply stopped permitting herself to show it. Those were not the same thing.
She could feel Nick walking beside her. The uneven rhythm of the cane on the cobbles.
The uneven cadence she had learned without intending to learn it.
The way she had learned the shape of his injury under her hands.
Distinctive and familiar. She did not look at him.
She paid mind to the street ahead and thought about the Malory manuscript and Duke Humfrey’s Library and the sequence of steps that remained.
She was grateful for the task. The task was the project she knew how to carry out when all else was less manageable.
They returned home to find a caller in the drawing room.
Pike met her at the door with a noncommittal air.
He said, in his thick South London accent, that Lord Franklin Fraser-Oxley had called and was waiting.
He offered to tell the gentleman she was unavailable.
Millie said she would see him. Pike’s expression indicated that he had expected this and was reserving his views on it for a more appropriate occasion, and he went to inform Lord Franklin.
She handed Nick the package to carry and went to the drawing room.
Lord Franklin rose when she entered.
He was mid-thirties, with thick auburn hair neatly kept and close-cropped.
His blue-green eyes were warmer than his family name suggested and sharper on close inspection than they appeared at a distance.
He had a lean, athletic build and moved through the world with a casual grace that spoke of being entirely comfortable in his own skin.
He wore fine wool across his broad shoulders, from his own mills she was certain.
Impeccably tailored. On his right hand, the signet ring with the Fraser family crest, worn with the quiet pride of a man as pleased with his maternal inheritance as his paternal one.
He had worn it long before his brother inherited a dukedom.
“Miss Metcalfe.” He inclined his head with the warmth of an old acquaintance who means it. “I hope I do not intrude. I was in Oxford on business and thought I would call to inquire after your father and discuss, if you are amenable, a matter of some financial interest.”
“Please sit down,” Millie said. “I am glad you called.”
She was. She had always found Lord Franklin refreshingly direct, a man who preferred the actual transaction of business to the performance of interest in it.
He spoke to her as a complete equal when it came to the Metcalfe family’s financial affairs, certainly not a universal attitude among the men who called to discuss such things.
She found she appreciated it every time, finding it remarkable; she supposed that revealed the measure of how low her expectations of men in commerce had become.
“The five-percent holding,” he said, clearly having decided this was the correct moment to raise it and setting his cup down with smooth ease. “Your father took it out when my grandfather was raising capital for the expansion. Thirty years ago, give or take.”
“Thirty-two,” Millie said.
He smiled. “You have read the papers.”
“I always read the papers,” she said.
“Then you will know it has expanded and produced reliably throughout.” He leaned back with relaxed poise, demonstrating his experience that a good negotiation began with establishing a good conversation.
“I am interested in discussing its future arrangements. At your convenience and entirely without pressure.”
“I will need to consult my father’s solicitors,” she said. “Before any formal discussion can proceed.”
“Which is what I anticipated,” he said. “And is only right.” He regarded her with those riveting eyes and a slight smile of appreciation as if he had just confirmed what he had suspected. “I am glad to know the Metcalfe interests are in such capable hands.”
She felt color wash up in her cheeks, which was inconvenient, and returned her gaze to her notebook.
He was a bit of a flirt. She had always known this.
There had been visits over the years, primarily at their Yorkshire house, and he had never given any clear indication of settling intentions.
That was the relevant measure by which she assessed the remark, and she returned to it now as a useful corrective to the business of her cheeks.
She must not take it too seriously. She noted it and set it aside with pragmatism because she had more important matters to attend to.
Nick, she noticed, had seated himself in the chair nearest the door with his cane and an expression of polite attention. For anyone who had learned how to read him, she could tell that there was considerably more on his mind.
* * *
Lord Franklin Fraser-Oxley was visibly interested in Millie.
Nicholas observed this from the chair by the door, startled to find himself in the position of a man who was present without being principal. The secretary’s chair, occupied by Nick Scott, who was attending because he happened to be in the house and had not been otherwise disposed of.
From it, he had an unobstructed view of the entire drawing room.
The tea table and the two chairs arranged before it.
Lord Franklin’s composed and athletic person occupying one.
Millie’s upright, fair-haired person occupying the other.
And Lord Franklin’s frank attention when Millie spoke.
The attention of a man who has found her genuinely intriguing.
Nicholas knew of the Fraser-Oxleys. The elder brother, the Duke of Oxley, who had inherited the title when their uncle died, had caused considerable talk by declining to set aside either his mother’s name or the trade association.
Styling himself Fraser-Oxley to this day was an explicit acknowledgment of their maternal grandfather who had built the mill.
The family was considered scandalous in certain quarters and admirable in others. Nicholas had always privately found the debate irrelevant. Lord Franklin was the second son who ran the Fraser & Oxley Textile Mill, renowned for its enterprise and reputed to be exceptionally good at it.
The duke’s brother was unpretentious. Nicholas had been prepared to find him otherwise and had been disappointed.
It would have been appreciably more convenient if Lord Franklin could be filed under a clear and dismissible category.
He could not. He possessed an analytical competence, a man who read ledgers and people with identical attention.
A dry wit underneath the composure. He had clearly decided, sometime before entering this room, that Millie Metcalfe’s point of view on the matter of the Fraser & Oxley shareholding was the most naturally interesting subject available to him and had presented his conversation accordingly.
He had fascinating blue-green eyes which Nicholas was finding to be a source of great irritation.
He poured the tea when it arrived, handing Lord Franklin his teacup.
Nick Scott, private secretary, in his natural habitat.
He did it with a firm hand, managing several objections simultaneously and declining to show any of them.
He made a couple of sardonic remarks at intervals when the conversation offered adequate opening.
One about the reliability of Yorkshire road conditions as a factor in the frequency of business travel.
Two about mill valuations as a category of document that improved considerably with the passage of time and the dimming of the original investor’s memory.
And Lord Franklin received both with a dry calm that suggested he recognized the tone and was genuinely unbothered by it. Which Nicholas also found irritating.