The Heiress Effect (33 page)

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 coins.

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.”

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 knew, 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.”

Oliver looked up.