The Heiress Effect

by Courtney Milan

  “This is unacceptable,” her aunt said, cutting through Jane’s amusement. “My brother has everything in readiness. He can’t act until you take care of the girl.”

  Jane’s breath caught. Whatever could she mean, her uncle had everything in readiness? That Jane needed to be taken care of?

  “I will,” Dorling said, “just as soon—”

  “There is no time,” her aunt scolded. “He’s more and more worried about her sister. She’s been acting oddly.”

  Unhappy was the word Jane would have used. Emily wasn’t allowed out, and her uncle exercised more care now in making sure she did not slip away. It was small wonder that her sister wasn’t her normal self.

  But Aunt Lily wasn’t finished. “If the doctors corroborate his fears, he’ll have her sent to the Northampton Lunatic Asylum by June. It’ll be the best thing for her, poor girl. You need to act now.”

  Jane couldn’t help herself. She gasped aloud—and then, when she realized what she’d done, she clapped her hands over her mouth. Sent to an asylum? Emily was angry, not mad.

  And yet the last time Jane had visited, Emily had mentioned doctors who had come only to ask her questions. Odd questions. They’d shrugged it off, thinking nothing of it. But if Titus were thinking of lunacy, those physicians had been examining her mind, not her body.

  It was a warm, sunny day, but Jane suddenly felt cold all over. If Titus had Emily declared mentally unfit… It would be awful.

  She’d made a mistake. She’d simply accepted the legalities of the situation. She should have absconded with her sister months ago, and never mind the fact that it would have been a crime.

  The chill that traveled through her had nothing to do with the weather.

  “Don’t worry,” Dorling said. “Once she’s mine, she won’t have any way to kick up a fuss.”

  The cold that had worked its way into Jane’s fingers seemed numbing. She had thought that her aunt only wanted her married off. But the truth was far worse than that. Now she could see the plan. If Jane married, she would no longer control her fortune. All those threats she’d made to Titus were worth nothing if she could not act. They meant to make her helpless, to strip her of all support. She would be alone.

  “We could end this tonight,” Dorling said, “after the assembly, if you’d just let me into her room like we talked about before.”

  Jane had been cold before. She was ice now. She couldn’t move. She didn’t want to believe her ears.

  “And I told you,” her aunt snapped with some asperity, “I refuse to feel dirtier about this than I must. It’s a filthy business as it is. I won’t countenance rape, not for any purpose.” There was a pause. “Besides, I doubt she cares for her reputation that much.”

  Jane clutched the trunk of the tree and silently thanked her aunt. She was rude and awful, yes, and she was conspiring against her. But for that, Jane could have kissed her.

  “I won’t need that,” Dorling said. “I can be very persuasive. Trust me on this.”

  No. Don’t trust him with anything. But Jane didn’t get a vote.

  “I…well…” There was a long silence.

  No, Jane wanted to scream. Don’t hesitate, not on that front either.

  “I’d need your promise,” her aunt said slowly. “Your promise that you’ll persuade only.”

  Jane couldn’t bear to listen to the details. She didn’t want to know what they would plan. Slowly, as quietly as she could, she backed away from the clearing.

  Every snap of a twig, every rustle of leaves, made her imagine enemies coming for her. By the time she reached the city streets, her hands were shaking.

  She had to get out of this place, had to go find her sister. Damn Titus’s guardianship—she should never have respected it. He couldn’t put Emily away if Jane made off with her first.

  They could be on a ship by…

  No. If she disappeared without explanation, her uncle would have a telegram on his desk before Jane could arrive in Cambridge. He would never let Emily out of his sight.

  Sometimes, it felt impossible to get ahead. She’d come to know Oliver Marshall and he’d left. She’d made friends with Genevieve and Geraldine, but she’d been sent away and they’d gone on to London. Now she was just beginning to make friends with a few ladies here, but she was being ripped away from them… And Emily, the one person she’d believed she could count on, was in danger.

  Companionship was an illusion, one that could be snatched away at any moment. She’d been fooling herself. She stopped in the street, her hands shaking.

  She was alone, all alone.

  No. The thought came to her on a whisper of warmth. You aren’t.

  That thought brought back a rush of memory—of Oliver’s hands, his eyes. Of the heat of his mouth. She’d tried—and failed—not to think of him in the months that had passed. It wouldn’t do any good, she’d told herself. She would never see him again. Thinking of him was a weakness.

  So why, now, did thoughts of him make her feel strong?

  For one glorious moment, her heart skipped a beat. The cold extremities of her fingers tingled with new life. You’re not alone.

  It wasn’t rational thought that brought her down the street to her bank. It was a warm well of certainty. She wasn’t alone. She didn’t have to be. She smiled at the clerk, who knew her well. When she wrote out the amount she wanted withdrawn, his eyes widened. But he didn’t argue. He simply counted the bills.

  Maybe it was foolish. She surely didn’t need him. Still, her next stop was the telegraph office. It was not far from the bank. It shared space with a confectioner, in fact, since neither were terribly busy, and the same round, jovial woman ran them both.

  She didn’t need him. But she wanted, oh, she desperately wanted, to believe she wasn’t alone.

  Jane was filling out the form, dreaming foolish, ridiculous dreams of Oliver Marshall thundering in on a white horse—what the horse had to do with anything, she didn’t know—and sweeping her away.

  The store bell rang; the door opened. And Dorling walked in.

  Her dreams vanished like popped soap bubbles. Her palms went cold. The little pencil she’d been holding fell to the floor, her nerveless fingers no longer able to grasp it. He looked about with purpose; when his eyes lit on her, he smiled quizzically as if surprised to see her.

  Of course he had come here. He’d come to send the telegram she had feared—the one to her uncle, the one letting him know that Jane had fled and that he needed to keep watch on Emily.

  “Miss Fairfield,” he said, coming to stand beside her. “Whatever are you doing here?”

  Jane set her hand over the paper she had been filling out and nudged the pencil under the display with her foot.

  He rubbed at his sideburns. “I, uh, I encountered your aunt this morning. She said you had gone missing.”

  Jane looked George Dorling in the eyes. She imagined that he was Oliver Marshall. That was the only way she managed to manufacture a smile for him.

  “I had need of a few things,” she said airily. She turned back to the woman in front of her. “Two shillings of peppermint, please.”

  So saying, she shoved the scarcely filled-out paper and a heavy coin at the woman.

  She turned back to Dorling. Behind her, she heard the mechanical gears of the register whir and click, the rustle of a bag as the woman started filling it with candy.

  Pretending was so easy.

  “My aunt,” Jane said, “is the most tiresome woman. She was driving me mad with her complaints this morning. ‘No, Jane, don’t wear those gloves.’ ‘No, Jane, stop talking so much. Nobody wants to hear about coal aniline dyes again.’” Jane heaved a put-upon sigh and looked down. She’d tasted something sour when she’d said those words, driving me mad.

  “How untoward of her,” Dorling said softly. “Putting off a woman as sweet as you? She must be unbearable.”

  Across the counter, the woman slid a bag of peppermints to Jane and a handful of small co
ins.

  Would she even send the telegram, incomplete as it was? Would it even matter?

  It didn’t, actually. The paper had done its job. Whether he got it, whether he came… Jane didn’t feel as if she were alone any longer. That left her with a renewed sense of purpose. She wasn’t going to let anyone steal her sister away.

  She looked over at Dorling, who smiled warmly. Even though her skin crawled, even though she wanted to go home and scrub herself all over to rid herself of the thought of his persuading her, she gave him a saucy wink.

  “My aunt,” she repeated, “is driving me mad. I can’t spend another night in the same house as her.”

  “Can’t you?” He smiled back. It wasn’t affection in his grin or even pleasure. It was, she imagined, the smirk of a cat facing a mouse in a corner.

  “I can’t,” Jane confirmed.

  Luckily for her, she wasn’t a mouse. She was an heiress, and good mousers could be bought for a few shillings.

  “You,” Jane said, “are just the man I was looking for. You are going to help me.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Oliver had lost something in the time between his mother’s telegram and the time when he escorted his sister home. He felt as if he were constantly checking his pockets; when they turned up the usual contents, he’d glance at his watch.

  But it wasn’t a forgotten appointment or a mislaid coin purse that plagued him during the days that followed. It was something deeper and more fundamental.

  After a few morning meetings on one bright day in May, he went back to Clermont House and retreated to his chambers.

  It was the same room that he’d been assigned when he was twenty-one—when his brother had come of age and had first invited him to London. Robert had said that Oliver should treat Clermont House as his own.

  “You understand,” the young duke had said when Oliver had demurred, “that I don’t intend that to be an analogy. I do not want you to treat this house as if it were yours. It is yours. If matters had been different, you would have grown up here. You are my brother, and I won’t hear any argument to the contrary.”

  After the first few months, Oliver had stopped feeling like an interloper and started believing that he belonged. He’d stopped apologizing when he rang the bell. He’d started acting as if he had a place in this world.

  But now… Now he saw his surroundings through doubled vision.

  He wandered to his window. It overlooked a square below, a well-trimmed affair equipped with a few trees, a bit of a shrubbery, and a bench on either side.

  His mother had sat on that bench when Oliver had been nothing but a bulge in her belly. She’d been denied entry to Clermont House, had gone unacknowledged by the old duke. Hugo Marshall—Oliver’s real father, the man who had raised him—had worked here, but he’d come and gone by the servants’ entrance.

  It was all well and good for Robert to say that Oliver had a place here, but nothing that either of them said or wanted could alter the history that was woven into this home.

  He felt like a pretender.

  His sisters had no place in this massive edifice. Oh, when Free had stayed the night, she’d been welcomed politely. She and the duchess got on famously, in fact. But Free had been a guest, and this was not her home.

  She had laughed when Oliver had rung for food. “Can’t you get it yourself?” she’d asked. “Does being a lord make you lazy?”

  “I’m not a lord,” he’d informed her.

  She’d raised an eyebrow at him. “Not legally, I suppose. But you’re rescuing young maidens” —a roll of her eye had shown what she thought of that—“and hobnobbing about in Parliament. There’s little enough difference that I can see.”

  “They see the difference,” Oliver had said shortly, thinking of Bradenton.

  But she’d shrugged. “You’re turning into one of them.”

  Was he?

  “Why couldn’t you have needed a proper rescuing anyway?” he’d teased her. “I’m your elder brother. You have to make me feel useful.”

  “No, I don’t,” she’d contradicted. “You’re a grown man. Find a use for yourself.” But she’d smiled as she’d said it, snuggling into his side as she had when she was young.

  Decades had passed since his mother had sat in that square, insisting on recognition.

  Still, the sight of her bench shouted out to him. Your place isn’t here.

  Oliver sighed, looked upward, and then left his room and its unsettling view.

  His brother’s suite of rooms was in the other wing of the house, separated from his by a wide staircase. He made his way there, held his breath and contemplated the door to Robert’s chambers.

  Behind the thick wooden planks, he could hear Minnie laughing. “No,” she was saying, her voice an indistinct murmur, “not like that. I—”

  There was nothing for it. He would be interrupting no matter what he did. He knocked.

  All of Minnie’s bright laughter disappeared. There was a pause, then, “Come.”

  Oliver opened the door.

  His brother and his wife were sitting on a sofa together, looking as if they’d put inches between them just a few seconds before. Minnie’s hand was curled in Robert’s, and her cheeks were flushed. Oliver was clearly interrupting.

  Oliver had grown up knowing he had a brother, but the discovery of Robert Blaisdell, the Duke of Clermont, in the flesh had been something of a revelation. Robert had been like a baby bird that left its nest too early. Nobody had ever taught him anything important. He didn’t know how to make a fist or duck a blow, how to tie a lure or where to cast his line so that the fish might choose to nibble.

  He hadn’t known how to write a proper letter, either. He was technically three months older than Oliver, but Oliver had always felt like the elder.

  Look, Robert, this is how you do it. This is how you behave like a proper human being.

  In turn, Oliver knew how important he was to Robert. Oliver had sisters and a father and a mother. Robert had…well, he had Oliver and Minnie.

  Oliver was an ass for thinking that he should lay something as foolish as his inchoate feelings before his brother. Robert had other things to worry about.

  “Oliver,” Robert said. He paused and tilted his head. “What is it?”

  Robert had an uncanny ability to figure out when someone was upset. He was terrible at guessing why someone was upset, as a general rule—but he could tell when something was wrong. It was an extremely annoying skill.

  “Robert, I…”

  He didn’t know how to have this conversation. He only knew that he had to say something. He paced across the room and then turned to face the couple.

  “I don’t feel like I belong here,” Oliver finally said.

  If his brother was excellent at knowing when others were upset, it was almost impossible to tell when he was hurt. Oliver had learned to look for those tiny signs—the slight tensing of his muscles, the way Robert drew himself back. The way his wife’s hand curled around his.

  “I don’t want you to feel that way,” Robert finally said. “What can I do?”

  Oliver shook his head. “It’s not anything that you’re doing or not doing. I don’t know why things have changed. I just… I need to be…” If he knew how to complete that sentence, he wouldn’t even be here. He wanted to go back to a time when he’d belonged. Back to the time when he still had Jane ahead of him. “I don’t feel like I belong anywhere.”

  Robert nodded and took a deep breath. “How long have you been feeling this way? Maybe we can determine the cause of it.”

  Since January, he wanted to say. But then he remembered Jane. That late, fateful night, when he’d convinced her to trust him by spilling out his own wants and ambitions. He’d tasted bitterness, knowing what he didn’t have, and had recognized in her a kindred spirit.

  Oliver looked away. “I think I have always felt this way.”

  This time, he didn’t have to try to see his brother’s flinch. He kne
w, damn it, he knew what Robert was like. So hesitant, so careful, always afraid that someone was going to walk away from him.

  “It’s not you,” Oliver told him. “You’ve always made me feel welcome. Whatever you think, don’t doubt that. You’re my brother and you always will be. I just… I just don’t know. And I hate not knowing.”

  “Is there something that precipitated this?” Minnie looked at him. “You’ve seemed…distant since you returned from Cambridge.”

  Cambridge. That word tightened around him like a fist clenching, gripping him with a bitter nostalgia. Cambridge. There was a word that whispered of walks along a green in the day and in a park at night. Of a woman who didn’t flinch at anyone’s proclamations.

  Jane was the most fearless woman Oliver had ever met. Sometimes, Oliver thought that society was like an infant trying to shove a square, colored block through a round hole. When it didn’t go, the child pounded harder. Oliver had been shoved through round holes so often that he’d scarcely even noticed that his edges had become rounded. But Jane…Jane persisted in being angular and square. The harder she was pushed, the more square—and the more colorful—she became.

  It was a good thing Oliver wasn’t in love with her. If he had been so foolish as to admire her that much, he wasn’t sure how he could ever find his way out.

  “Did something happen with Sebastian?” Robert asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “But…not what you think.” He sat down on a chair across from them. “I don’t know what it is,” he finally said. “You always know who you are and what you want. And right now, I’m a total muddle.”

  Robert stood up and crossed to him. “Muddles,” he said, “I understand.” He put his hand on Oliver’s shoulder. “If you’re feeling muddled, I don’t know what I can say. Except…don’t question whether you have a place here.”

  Oliver shook his head.

  “You’re my brother.” Robert hesitated, and then, just a little more quietly, said, “I love you. I will always love you. You have a place here. You just don’t have to use it.”