It was as if he’d sent an automaton in his place.
Oliver made his way to his friend, almost afraid to remind him of what they had planned. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he spoke to his friend and got that same warm, generic reply.
And maybe it was just as well. Because for every man that complimented him on his work, there were three who muttered imprecations in his direction. Threats. Complaints. A woman laid a hand on him and gave him a shove.
Sebastian treated them all alike. He gave them a smile, one that looked increasingly out of place on his waxen face, a nod, and warm, effusive thanks that seemed ridiculously genuine.
Oliver almost gasped with relief when Violet caught up with them. She knew Sebastian. They’d been friends for ages. And if she cared for him…
Violet had to reach out and physically take hold of Sebastian’s sleeve before he turned to her. She smiled up at him, her face alight with a mere echo of the brilliance she’d directed at him during his talk.
“Sebastian,” Violet said.
Sebastian had been smiling at all those people, smiling with such fervor that Oliver had wondered if he was ill. He looked down at Violet, and that humor disappeared from his face, the friendliness wiping away like chalk markings on slate.
“What?” he demanded curtly.
“You were brilliant, Sebastian,” she said. “Utterly bril—”
He took a staggering step backward. “Fuck you, Violet,” he said savagely. “Fuck. You.”
He’d spoken into a momentary lull in conversation, so that everyone near could hear his words.
Violet winced.
Oliver came up beside his friend. “Sebastian,” he said quietly. He steeled himself for a similar outburst.
But when Sebastian turned to him, he merely looked tired, not savage.
“Ah, Oliver. Perhaps you can explain—”
“Excuse me,” Oliver said to the crowd around them, “he’s drunk.”
“I’m not—”
“You might as well be,” Oliver whispered, and jerked on his arm. “What the hell are you doing? You know what’s at stake here. What we have to do.”
Sebastian opened his mouth to answer, and that’s when Oliver heard it—that strangely diffident voice, the one he remembered from the walk he’d taken with Sebastian so long ago.
“Mr. Malheur? Mr. Malheur?” The voice spoke from behind them. “You wished to speak with me? That is, I had a message from you regarding a little tidbit you had to share?”
Sebastian and Oliver turned as one. Titus Fairfield stood before them, rubbing his hands together. He shifted uneasily from foot to foot.
“Is this not a good time?” he asked.
God, the man was inept. Anyone with a brain would know this was a terrible time—the worst time.
But Sebastian’s face didn’t change at all from his impassive mask.
“Mr. Fairfield,” he said in a forbidding tone, completely at odds with his words. “You are just the person I want to see.”
“I am?” Even Fairfield sounded dubious.
“You are. Unfortunately, at the moment, I am a little tipsy.”
Oliver inhaled. That had not been the plan that he’d worked out with Sebastian. He took a step forward, reached out—but his cousin was already forging on.
“Luckily, my friend Violet here will explain everything. I trust her implicitly, so…”
“What are you doing?” Oliver whispered. “That was not the plan.”
“Yes,” Sebastian said, “I imagine that Violet could say anything I could. And turnabout is always fair play.”
Oliver glanced over at Violet. He would have expected her to look hurt by Sebastian’s savage outburst. At the very least, he had thought she would be confused. Instead she simply shrugged her shoulders.
“Come on, Oliver,” Sebastian said, hooking his arm through Oliver’s. “Let’s leave Violet to it.”
“That wasn’t the plan,” Oliver said to Sebastian, as Sebastian headed out onto the street. “That’s not what we were going to do. We were going to—”
“Come on, Oliver,” Sebastian said. “If we look back now, Fairfield will think he can talk to me. And right now, I can’t bear him.”
“This isn’t about you,” Oliver fumed. It’s about—”
His cousin stopped on the street and looked about them. It was dark by now, and a little foggy; the lamps on the street had been lit, and they did their best to drive away the darkness with warmth. It wasn’t quite enough.
“It’s been a good long while since it’s been about me,” Sebastian finally said. “I think it’s my turn.”
And in that moment, Oliver looked at his friend. Sebastian looked…wrecked was the closest word that Oliver might have chosen.
“Violet will handle it,” Sebastian said. “She likes Miss Fairfield, and she’s the most frighteningly competent woman I have met. If you would pay attention, my dear cousin, you might have noticed that more than half the population of England wants me dead. I think I am allowed to crack under the strain. Once. I’m allowed.”
It seemed impossible. Sebastian always seemed so indifferent to what others thought of him. He treated his infamy like a lark. He was…
Oliver had accused Sebastian of hiding unhappiness when last he was in Cambridge. But he’d suspected a mild melancholy, not…this. Sebastian had always joked, had always laughed. How much of that had ever been real?
They walked in silence for a few blocks. “You know, Sebastian,” Oliver said quietly, “I don’t pretend to understand what is going on—but you owe Violet an apology.”
Sebastian snorted.
“I mean it. In front of an entire crowd, you—”
“You don’t know what she did.” Sebastian’s voice was shaking. “What she’s doing to me.”
“I don’t care what she’s doing. How could it justify what you just said? In front of everyone?”
Sebastian shrugged and looked away. He didn’t add anything else, which seemed uncharacteristically like him.
“Very well,” Oliver said. “What is she doing?”
“Nothing,” Sebastian said with a maddening shake of his head. “She’s not doing anything.” But his voice was a few notes higher than normal.
“Sebastian, you can’t put me off—”
“Everyone hates me.” Sebastian turned to him. “Everyone. At first it was just a few people. Now, everywhere I go, there are death threats, people wishing me ill. The papers are filled with vitriol. Everyone hates me, Oliver. Everyone.”
“Surely not everyone.”
“Enough as to make no difference,” Sebastian retorted. “Does it matter if the entirety of England wants me dismembered, or merely a half of it? Either way, it’s a bloody great lot of people howling for my blood.”
Oliver swallowed. “I thought you liked that sort of thing—tweaking people, getting under their skin.”
Sebastian threw his hands up in the air. “In all the time you have known me, Oliver,” he said, his voice shaking, “in all that time—when have I ever made a joke at anyone else’s expense?”
“Uh…”
“When have I ever done anything except make a fool of myself, expose myself to ridicule to get others to laugh?”
“Well…”
“Yes, I love tweaking noses.” His friend paced away and then turned back. “But I like to be liked, Oliver.”
How had Oliver never seen that before? Prankster Sebastian. Smiling Sebastian. But he was right; all of Sebastian’s clever tricks and pranks had been aimed at making everyone else laugh. He mocked himself with greater alacrity than anyone else, and when they’d been in school together, everyone had loved him for it.
Oliver swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I…I know that the response you’re receiving must have taken you by surprise. Still… What you said to Violet just now? That was unconscionable.”
Sebastian stiffened. “I am not talking about Violet with you.”
&n
bsp; “Well, then, I’ll be the only one talking, because I won’t let this go unsaid. Sebastian, I think Violet is in love with you.”
He’d expected Sebastian to protest, to frown. To think, perhaps, and reconsider.
Instead, Sebastian burst into laughter. “No,” he said, when he’d recovered himself. “No, she is not.”
“Give it some thought. The way she looked at you when you were talking… It was like—I don’t know, I can’t describe it—”
“I know how she looked at me,” Sebastian said, with a funny little smile on his face. “Trust me; I am quite sure Violet is not in love with me.”
“You can’t be sure. You didn’t see—”
“I can,” Sebastian said. He looked upward. “Just leave it, Oliver.” He smiled. “I’ll have to find my own way out of this morass. But never fear.” His voice gained strength. Or maybe, he was just finding his ability to lie again. “Our intrepid hero, beleaguered on all sides, may have had a moment of weakness.” His voice was deep and booming. “But so it always is. The darkest hour, indeed, is the one that comes before—”
Oliver shoved him. “Come on, Sebastian. Stop pretending. You don’t have to make me laugh.”
But Sebastian just raised an eyebrow. “I don’t have to,” he said. “But watch me do it.”
Jane waited in the little room to the side of the lecture hall for over an hour, each minute seeming longer than the last. The sounds of the crowd—never more than a dull murmur—were her only company. The rising volume of that murmur was the only indication that the event had ended and—she hoped—that her uncle would be coming soon. She waited long minutes after that, until she heard footsteps in the outside hall.
“…Not sure,” she heard her uncle say, in his sad, rumbling voice. “It seems a little improper, in fact. Are you sure that Mr. Malheur—”
“I am positive,” said a female voice. “There’s an important point to be made, namely—”
The door opened. Behind it stood a woman dressed in dark brown—the woman who had given Jane her cactus at the Botanic Gardens. For a moment, Jane blinked. She couldn’t recall the woman’s name. And then she remembered. She was a countess—the Countess of Cambury.
She was the sort of woman who would have been called “commanding” rather than pretty—and she was almost old enough to fit that look on her face. She seemed perfectly coiffed, not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle on her gown, even though she must have been sitting on the uncomfortable chairs above. It was as if even gravity didn’t dare to defy her.
She looked formidable, and Jane wanted to know how she did it.
“Well, Fairfield,” the woman said in a tone that made it clear that she had not dropped the Mr. from his name for reasons of familiarity. “What have you to say for yourself?”
“Your pardon?” Titus gave her a toad-eating little bow. “I—well—I rather thought that Mr. Malheur had something to say to me.” He bowed again; he hadn’t even looked around the room to see Jane. “Of course I understand that he is busy. Naturally so. But—”
With a sigh, the Countess of Cambury shut the door.
“This is becoming most improper.” Titus shook his head and rubbed his hands together in consternation. “In a room, alone—I could hardly think—that is to say—” A thought seemed to penetrate his head—a horrific one, by the pallor that crept over him, and the way he put his hand to his throat. “Oh, dear,” he whispered. “Mr. Malheur surely has been thinking about a breeding program, the one we had talked of earlier… He does not think to start it with me?”
Jane felt like laughing aloud. Nobody—not even somebody so depraved as to start a human breeding program—would look at her fussy, stuffy uncle and think, “There, there’s a fellow who ought to be included.”
The Countess of Cambury simply blinked at this nonsense and then shook her head. “Fairfield,” she said in cutting tones, ‘if you had been a hunter on the plains of old, the lions would have killed you while you were wandering around the savannah saying, ‘Where is everyone, and what have they done with my spears?’”
Jane did snort aloud at that.
“Your pardon?” Titus shook his head.
The countess gestured at Jane. “We are not alone.”
“We aren’t?” Titus frowned, and then slowly, he turned to see what the woman was indicating. His eyes fell on Jane.
She’d imagined that he would look embarrassed or fearful at the sight of her. She’d been blackmailing him, after all.
Instead, he turned bright red. “You!”
He pointed, took a step forward. His hands made fists at his side. “You!” he repeated. “What have you done with your sister?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
It took Jane a moment to realize what Titus had said. Her uncle advanced on her, his face blooming a brilliant crimson. “What have you done with her?” he demanded. “I’ll have the constable on you, I will. You can’t just rush in and grab her up, simply because you wish.”
It came to her in a flash: Titus hadn’t sent Emily away. And if she was gone nonetheless…
Jane couldn’t help herself. She’d been caught up with worry for the past two days. She had faked her own elopement, had been abducted, and then rescued. She had traversed half of England believing that her sister’s fate hung in the balance. She’d been as big a fool as Titus. She burst into laughter.
“Stop that,” Titus said. “And surrender your sister, or I’ll—I’ll—” Failing to come up with an adequate threat, he narrowed his eyes at her. “Or I’ll be very displeased.”
“I don’t have Emily,” Jane said. “I’m only here because I thought you had her put in an asylum.”
He blushed fiercely. “Why—uh—why would you think that? I certainly—well, I—which is to say, I was having her examined by physicians, to see if such a thing was possible. She was acting so…so differently. Less exuberantly. I was afraid that she was succumbing to melancholy, and was considering my choices.”
“Listen to you. She yells at you, and you think she’s disobedient; she stops yelling, you think she has melancholy. Can she win? No.”
He flushed. “I just wanted to make sure she didn’t go untreated. Yes, I talked to a few physicians, and yes, one of them said that he’d be willing to certify her, if I paid—” He cleared his throat loudly. “But the other two said she seemed quite in her own mind.” Perhaps Titus realized that he was telling her details of his plan that didn’t reflect highly on him. He shook his head swiftly. “Which is to say, it was all your fault. Your influence. You did it. And you have her. You can’t bluff me!”
“Emily has herself,” Jane said. “She always did. That’s what is so funny—that I came all this way to rescue her, and…”
Titus waved a hand at Jane. “You’re claiming that your sister just ran off? On her own two feet without any encouragement from you at all?” He looked dubious.
“Why not?” Jane asked. “I ran off myself, and she’s almost my age.”
“But you…”
“Yes, I have money. But last I’d heard, you hadn’t found the hundred pounds I gave her. I imagine that when she ran off, she hired a coach. Or took the train.”
He flushed. “I wasn’t going to mention funds. I was referring to the fact that you are whole.”
Jane felt her temper snap. She crossed the room to him. She was taller than him; how had she never noticed that? Probably because she had never stood this close, quivering with years of resentment. She slammed her hands into his chest.
“Emily,” she said through gritted teeth, “is whole. She has fits, that’s all. Joan of Arc had fits, and look what she managed to accomplish. The only person who is broken here is you, for being unable to see it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“When we find Emily, you’ll discover that she’s safe. That she had a plan. That she acted intelligently and rationally in the face of your stupidity.” Jane shook her head. “Good God, you were tryin
g to have her declared mentally incompetent by bribing doctors. Of all the low, dirty tricks—”
She remembered a moment too late that perhaps she could not claim the moral high ground on the bribing-of-doctors front, and so she glared at him instead.
“Rational.” Titus sighed. “She can’t be rational. I had only a note from her saying that she was going to meet her barrister. Her barrister. She doesn’t have a barrister. I would know if she had one.”
Jane felt her heart give a sudden thump, and she wanted to laugh aloud again. Trust Emily to send Jane a message out in the open, one that their uncle would never decode.
“Well,” Jane said, “then she is probably going to get one. If you were planning on having her declared mad…” She trailed off.
“It’s not rational,” Titus said. “She’d need a solicitor first, not a barrister, and he would then go and get…” He shook his head. “I suppose that’s where I should start looking, then. I’ll begin to ask around London. See if anyone has seen a young girl asking barristers for help.” He frowned glumly. “If you should happen to find her, tell her… Tell her I’m willing to reconsider.” He swallowed. “I’ll sign a paper if she wants. I just…I want her to be safe. That’s all I want. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
The sad thing was, Jane believed him. He’d wanted her safe, and safe he’d kept her. He’d kept Emily so safe that he’d shielded her from everything else, too. When she’d screamed about it, he’d accused her; when she’d stopped screaming, he’d wondering why she was so altered.
But then, Titus had only given her the things he wanted for himself. He’d stayed in Cambridge long after his university days had ended, wanting to think the same things over and over. She almost felt sorry for him.
Almost. Then she remembered Emily’s scars.
“If I find her,” Jane promised, “I’ll tell her what you said. But where to start searching?” She glanced away as she said that so that he wouldn’t see the knowledge in her eyes.
“Where indeed.” Titus nodded glumly. And then, he reached and very lightly tapped Jane’s shoulder. “I can see it now,” he said. “You do worry for your sister. Even though you do it all wrong—I can see you care for her, in your own deeply troubled manner.”
The Heiress Effect Page 28