The Heiress Effect (2 page)

Four hundred and eighty days until her sister
attained her majority. In four hundred and eighty days, her sister
could leave their guardian, and Jane—Jane who was allowed to stay
in the household on the condition that she marry the first eligible
man who offered—would be able to dispense with all this pretending.
She and Emily would finally be free.

Jane would smile, wear ells of lace, and call
Napoleon Bonaparte himself her sister if it would keep Emily
safe.

Instead, all she had to do for the next four
hundred and eighty days was to look for a husband—to look
assiduously, and not marry.

Four hundred and eighty days in which she
dared not marry, and one hundred thousand pounds to the man who
would marry her.

Those two numbers described the dimensions of
her prison.

And so Jane smiled at Geraldine once again,
grateful for her advice, grateful to be steered wrong once again.
She smiled, and she even meant it.

A few days later

Mr. Oliver Marshall was almost loathe to
relinquish his coat when first he entered the Marquess of
Bradenton’s home. He could feel the chill biting through his
gloves, the draft of a winter wind rattling the windowpanes. The
wire frame of his spectacles felt like ice against his ears. But it
was too late.

Bradenton, his host, stepped forward.
“Marshall,” he said pleasantly. “How good to see you again.”

Oliver handed off his own gloves and heavy
greatcoat and shook the marquess’s extended hand.

“Good to see you as well, my lord. It’s been
too long.”

Bradenton’s hands were cold, too. He’d grown
paunchier these last years, and his thin, dark hair had receded up
his forehead, but the smile he gave Oliver was still the same:
friendly and yet cold.

Oliver suppressed a shiver. It didn’t matter
how high the servants piled the coal, how merry the blaze they set.
These fine, old houses always seemed to be inhabited by a wintry
chill. The ceilings stretched too high; the marble on the floors
seemed icy even through the soles of his shoes. Everywhere Oliver
looked he saw mirror-glass and metal and stone—cold surfaces made
colder still by the vast, empty expanses that surrounded them.

It would warm up when they moved out of the
entry, Oliver told himself. When more people arrived. For now, it
was just Bradenton, Oliver, and two younger men. Bradenton motioned
them forward.

“Hapford, Whitting, this is Oliver Marshall.
An old school friend. Marshall, this is my nephew, John Bloom,
newly the Earl of Hapford.” The Marquess of Bradenton gestured to a
man at his side, earnest and pale. “And Mr. George Whitting, my
other nephew.” He indicated a fellow with a shock of sandy hair and
matching, untamed sideburns. “Gentlemen, this is Oliver Marshall.
I’ve invited him to assist in completing your education, as it
were.”

Oliver inclined his head in greeting.

“I’ve been tasked with seeing to Hapford’s
introduction,” Bradenton explained. “He’ll be sitting with the
Lords next month, and none of us were expecting that.”

Hapford had a black band around his arm; his
clothing was dark. Maybe there was a reason the house seemed cold
and somber after all.

“I’m sorry to hear of it,” Oliver said.

The new earl straightened and glanced over at
Bradenton before responding. “Thank you. I intend to do my
best.”

That glance, that deference paid to the other
man…
That
was why Oliver was here. Not to recall school-era
friendships that had gone tepid over the years. Bradenton was the
sort of man who nurtured new entrants to Parliament. Nurtured them,
and then did his best to keep them as part of his coterie. He had
quite a collection now.

“I’d wish for a little more time to prepare
you, but you’re coming along.” Bradenton gave his nephew an
approving clout on the shoulder. “And Cambridge isn’t a bad place
to conduct the exercise. It’s a microcosm of the world out there.
You’ll see; Parliament is not so different.”

“A microcosm of the world?” Oliver was
dubious. He’d never met a coal miner at Cambridge.

But Bradenton didn’t take his meaning. “Yes,
there is rather a bit of the riffraff here.” He glanced over at
Oliver.

Oliver didn’t say anything. To a man like
Bradenton, he
was
riffraff.

“But the riffraff usually manage themselves,”
Bradenton continued. “That’s the point of an institution like
Cambridge.
Anyone
can aspire to a Cambridge education, so
everyone who aspires chooses to start here. If you do it right, by
the time they’ve finished their degrees, the most ambitious ones
have become just like us. Or at least, they want to enter our ranks
so badly that the next thing you know, all their ambition has been
subsumed into the greater glory.”

He gave Oliver a pointed nod.

Once, Oliver would have been annoyed by such
a speech. The sly implication that Oliver didn’t belong, the even
slyer one that he’d been
subsumed
into Bradenton’s goals
instead of being a person in his own right…

When he was thirteen, he’d knocked Bradenton
down for committing precisely that sin. But now he understood.
Bradenton reminded him of an old farmer, walking the perimeter of
his property every day, testing the fences and peering suspiciously
at his neighbors, making sure that
his side
and
their
side
were clearly delineated.

It had taken Oliver years to learn his
lesson: keep quiet and let men like Bradenton test the fences. It
wouldn’t do them any good, and if you were careful, one day you’d
be in a position to buy their whole damned farm.

And so Oliver held his tongue and smiled.

“The ladies will be arriving shortly,”
Bradenton said, “so if you’d like to start with a brandy…” He
gestured off the entryway.

“Brandy,” Whitting said decisively, and the
party moved to a side room.

Bradenton had an entire room reserved for
nothing more than this—a sideboard with glasses, a decanter of
amber liquid. But at least the chamber was smaller and therefore
warmer. The marquess poured generous splashes into tumblers.
“You’ll need this,” he said, passing glasses to his nephews first
and then to Oliver.

Oliver took the spirits. “Many thanks,
Bradenton. Speaking of this coming February. There is something I
wanted to talk to you about. The voting reform act, in this coming
parliamentary session—”

Bradenton laughed and tipped up his glass.
“No, no,” he said. “We are
not
going to discuss politics
yet, Marshall.”

“Well, then. If not now, perhaps we might
speak later. Tomorrow, or—”

“Or the next day or the one after that,”
Bradenton finished with a gleam in his eye. “We have to teach
Hapford
how
to get on before we teach him what to get on
about. Now is not the time.”

That, apparently, was not an attitude shared
by all. Hapford had looked up with interest when Oliver started
speaking; at this, he frowned and turned away.

Oliver could have argued. But then…

“As you say,” he said mildly. “Later.”

A man like Bradenton needed to receive
deference. He needed a neighbor who stopped five feet from the
fence instead of challenging the property lines. Oliver had swayed
the man before, and he knew how it was done. Bradenton could be
directed, so long as nobody penetrated the illusion that he was in
charge.

Instead, Oliver let the conversation meander
to the subject of mutual friends, the health of Oliver’s brother
and his wife. For a few moments, they could pretend there was
nothing to this but a cozy, intimate environment. But then
Bradenton, who stood by the window, raised his hand once more.

“Drink up,” he said. “The first lady has
arrived.”

Whitting looked out the window and let out a
whimper. “Oh, God, please no. Never tell me you invited the Feather
Heiress.”

“Blame your cousin.” Bradenton lifted an
eyebrow. “Hapford wants a few minutes in the corner with his
fiancée. And for whatever reason, Miss Johnson insists on having
her invited.”

“Speaking of whom,” Hapford said, with a
quiet dignity that looked out of place on his boyish features, “I
would prefer that we not slander my fiancée’s friends.”

Whitting let out a puff of air. By the grim
look on his face, Oliver would have imagined that he had just been
sentenced to three years of hard labor. “Spoilsport,” he muttered,
and then edged up to Oliver. “Someone should warn you,” he
muttered.

“Warn me about what?”

The man leaned forward and whispered
dramatically. “The Feather Heiress.”

“Her wealth comes from…goose down?”

“No.” Whitting didn’t look at him. “It’s
originally from transcontinental steamers, if you must know. She’s
called the Feather Heiress because being around her is like being
beaten to death by feathers.”

He looked utterly serious. Oliver shook his
head in exasperation. “You can’t beat someone to death with a
feather.”

“You’re an expert on it, are you?” Whitting
raised his chin. “Shows how much you know. Imagine someone starts
beating you with a feather. Imagine that they never stop, until one
day, the constant annoyance of goose feathers pushes you over the
edge. In a fury you strangle the person who has been beating you.”
He demonstrated this with a wrench of his hands. “Then you hang for
murder. You, my friend, have been beaten to death by feathers.”

Oliver snorted. “Nobody is that bad.”

Whitting put his hand to his head and rubbed
at the furrows on his brow. “She’s worse.”

“Ah, ah,” Bradenton said, lifting a finger.
“She’s almost here. That’s not how it’s done,
gentlemen.”
He
emphasized the last word and then set down his glass. A gesture,
and his young nephews followed him back to the entry. Oliver
trailed after.

Yes, Oliver knew how it was done. He’d been
on the receiving end of those almost-insults all too often.
Upper-class politeness counted off cruelty not by the words that
were spoken, but by the length of the silence that passed.

A servant opened the door and two women
passed into the entry. One, swathed in folds of dark wool dotted
with snow, was clearly a chaperone. She took down the heavy hood
from her face, revealing gray, curling hair and a pinched
mouth.

The other…

If ever a woman had wanted to announce that
she was an heiress, this one did. She had made every effort to
flaunt her wealth. She wore a fur-lined cloak, white and soft, and
kid gloves with ermine showing at the cuffs. She gave a shake of
her head and then undid the clasp at her neck—a clasp that shone
with a golden gleam. As she moved, Oliver caught a sparkle at her
ears, the glitter of diamonds and silver.

As one, the men stepped forward to greet
her.

“Miss Fairfield,” the Marquess of Bradenton
said. He had a pleasant tone in his voice, a convivial friendliness
as he dipped his head to her.

“My lord,” she responded.

Oliver moved closer with the rest of the
group, but stopped in his tracks when she took off her cloak. She
was…

He stared and shook his head. She
should
have been pretty. Her eyes were dark and shiny; her
hair was up, with a glossy riot of curls pulled out and artfully
arranged about her shoulders. Her lips were pink and full, poised
in a demure half smile, and her figure—what he could see of it—was
precisely the sort he liked, soft and full, made up of curves that
even the most determined corset could not hide. Under any other
circumstances, he’d have found himself stealing glances all
evening.

But looking at her was like picking up a
luxurious peach and discovering it half-taken over by mold.

Her gown was ghastly. There was no other word
for it, and even that one scarcely did justice to the thrill of
helpless horror that traveled through him.

A little lace was in fashion. Falls at the
cuffs, perhaps, or a few inches at the hem. But Miss Fairfield’s
gown was lace all over—layer upon layer of the most intricate
hand-knit stuff available. Black lace. Blue lace. Gold lace trim.
It was as if someone had swept into a store, ordered three hundred
yards of each of the most expensive kinds of lace, and then crammed
every ell on one dress

This wasn’t a case of gilding the lily. If
there was a lily underneath all that, it had long since been
crushed to a pulp.

The party stopped in its tracks as she took
off her cloak, frozen in wordless contemplation of a wardrobe that
made the word “gaudy” sound sweet and demure by contrast.

Bradenton recovered first. “Miss Fairfield,”
he repeated.

“Yes, you did already greet me.” She had a
very pretty voice. If Oliver could shut his eyes—or perhaps look at
her from above the neck—

She swept forward, too far forward, advancing
on Bradenton until he actually took two steps back. This brought
her earrings—heavy diamond stones clasped in silver—to dangle a few
feet from Oliver’s eyes.