The Heiress Effect (47 page)

“Shut up,” Bradenton said again. But his
hands shook and his voice was weak.

“No,” Oliver said. “That’s the whole point.
You have had all this time to shut me up. To make me follow your
rules. I am done with shutting up. It’s your turn.”

“I want something big.” Jane was seated on the
sofa in the front parlor of the rooms she’d leased in London with
Genevieve Johnson seated next to her. “Something utterly
huge
. Something as loud and as impossible to ignore as my
gowns are. But this time, I want it to have purpose.”

“Do you have something in mind?” Genevieve
asked. “And what has this to do with me?”

Jane swallowed. “You told me once you wished
you had a husband only for the reason that you would take great
pleasure in spending your husband’s money on charitable works. How
do you feel about taking mine?”

Genevieve blinked. “Oh, my goodness,” she
said, leaning forward. “Tell me more.”

“I’m offering you a position,” Jane said. “A
paid position on the Board of Advisers for the Fairfield Charitable
Trusts.”

Genevieve’s eyes grew round.

“It doesn’t exist yet,” Jane told her, “but
it will. I don’t want to economize. I want to
act.
To do
things.”

“What kind of things?”

Jane shrugged. “I’ve always wanted a
hospital. Or a school. Or maybe a hospital and a school in one, one
that sets standards for the rest of the country. So we can stop
charlatans from conducting medical experiments on the unsuspecting,
for one.”

Genevieve’s eyes were shining. “A charity
hospital,” she said, “one with a reputation for major advancements.
One that people will fight to sponsor, to be a part of. Oh, I’m
going to have to take notes.”

“I’ll call for paper.” But as soon as Jane
picked up the bell—it had scarcely even made a noise—the door
opened.

“Miss Fairfield,” the footman said, “you have
a visitor.”

“Who is it?” she asked.

But suddenly she knew. Behind the footman,
she saw a form. Her heart stopped and then started once more,
beating with a ponderous weight that seemed to tear her equanimity
to pieces. Jane stood, clutching her hands together, as Oliver came
out of the shadowed hall. His spectacles gleamed in the late
afternoon sun. His hair seemed to be made of fire. But it wasn’t
his face that riveted her attention, nor even the direct, demanding
look in his eyes.

He walked in and suddenly—suddenly—she
couldn’t breathe.

“Oliver.” She managed that word, and that
word alone.

“Jane.”

“What…” She swallowed, smoothing out her
skirts, and shook her head. “Oliver,” she finally choked out, “What
in God’s name is the color of your waistcoat?”

He smiled. No, it was too little to say that
he
smiled.
The expression on his face was like sunlight
after a dark cave—utterly blinding.

“Would you know,” he said, “that on my way
here, I was stopped by three men of my acquaintance, all of whom
asked me the same question?”

She shook her head helplessly. “What did you
tell them?”

“What do you think?” He gave her a smile. “I
told them it was fuchsine.”

“And? What did they say?” Her voice was low,
her heart beating rapidly.

“And I found it strangely liberating,” he
said. “As if I’d just made a declaration.” He was looking into her
eyes, focused entirely on her.

“Precisely how liberated were you?” She could
scarcely recognize her own voice.

“Jane, you are not a blight. You are not a
disease. You are not a pestilence or a poison. You’re a beautiful,
brilliant, bold woman, the best I have ever met. I should never
have implied that you were lacking. The fault was in me. I didn’t
think I was strong enough to stand at your side.”

She was not going to cry. She wasn’t going to
hold him or allow him back in her life without question simply
because he realized he had missed her. He’d hurt her too badly for
that.

He took another step forward, and then bent
to one knee. “Jane,” he said, “would you do me the honor of being
my wife?”

She didn’t know what to think. Everything was
all muddled. She shook her head, reached for the one thing she
understood.

“Your career,” she said. “What about your
career?”

“I want a career.” He swallowed. “But not
that one. Not the career where I hold my tongue as other men berate
women for wearing too much lace. Not one where I keep quiet while
my youngest sister appears before a magistrate for the crime of
speaking too loudly. Not one where the price of my power is silence
about the things I most hold dear.” He bowed his head. “I don’t
want you to compromise yourself. To be any less than you are. I
won’t ask you to change for me because I’ve realized that I need
you precisely as you are.”

Jane brought her hand to her mouth.

“I don’t need that quiet wife. I need you.
Someone bold. Someone who won’t let me stand back from myself, and
who will tell me in no uncertain terms when I’ve erred.”

She didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve needed you to shock me out of the
biggest mistake of my life. To make me recognize my fears and to
reach into the fire and grab hold of the coals.”

His voice was rough.

“I need you, Jane. And I love you more dearly
than I can say.”

Behind her, Genevieve made a noise. “I think
I should absent myself,” she said.

Oliver blinked. “Oh, good God. Miss Johnson.
I didn’t even see you there.”

Genevieve smiled. “It’s Miss Genevieve. And I
had noticed.” She waved at Jane. “I’ll be back later. With paper
and ideas.” So saying, she slipped out.

Oliver looked at Jane. He shifted
uncomfortably on his knee and then sat on the floor. “There’s
something else I have to tell you.”

She nodded.

“You were right about my courage. I know
precisely where I mislaid it.” He let out a deep breath. “I was
seventeen years of age. My brother was a year ahead of me; he had
gone on to Cambridge, and I’d been left alone at Eton for one final
year. It didn’t matter, I thought. I was wrong.”

He shut his eyes.

“There was an instructor. He taught Greek,
and he took it upon himself to teach me a little more than that.
Every time he heard that I’d spoken up, he would take me to task in
class. He would call on me to translate in front of everyone—texts
that none of us had seen before. And when I stumbled he’d tell
everyone how dull I was. How stupid. How dreadfully wrong.”

He wrapped his arms around himself. “I could
fight other boys, but an instructor, acting within his power? There
was nothing to do. As the term went on, it grew worse. My
punishments stopped being simple embarrassment. I was hardly the
only boy to experience corporal punishment at Eton, and he never
went beyond the line. But when it was happening every day, every
time I spoke…”

Jane came to stand by him, and then slowly
lowered herself to the floor next to him.

“Anything is bearable if you can fight it,
but if you must sit back and take it… That breaks you in a way I
can’t explain.” He took a deep breath. “I made excuse after excuse
for myself as I grew more quiet. I was being pushed. Forced into
it. It was temporary; I’d stop once I got out of there. But deep
down, I’ve always known the truth: I wasn’t brave enough to keep
talking. I learned to shut up so loudly that I never managed to
unlearn it afterward.”

“God. Oliver.”

“It doesn’t sound like much. But it trains
you, an experience like that. To feel sick when you open your
mouth. To hold back.”

She put her arm on his shoulder and he turned
to her.

“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me,” he
said. “I want you to know how much I love and admire you. Because
they tried to do it to you, too, and it didn’t take.”

She smiled. “They didn’t get to me until I
was nineteen. I had a little longer to become set in my ways.”

“Last time I asked you to marry you, I asked
you to change.” He took a deep breath. “This time, I can do better.
Let me be the one who supports you. Who believes that you must not
be any less. Who adds to your magnificence instead of asking you to
make yourself less.”

Jane ran her hand down his back. “I think you
owe me a better apology.”

He looked over at her. “I’m sorry. I was an
ass. I—”

She set her fingers over his mouth. “I didn’t
mean that you should use words, Oliver.”

It took him a moment to understand. A long,
slow smile spread over his face. He put his arm around her and then
slowly, ever so slowly, he reached out and touched her cheek.

“Jane,” he said softly. “I love you.” He
tilted her chin up. “I love you.” He leaned down, his lips so close
to hers that if he spoke again, their mouths would touch. “And I am
never going to fail you again.”

That whisper brought their lips together. And
then he did it again. And again. And again, a sweet kiss that she
never wanted to end.

“Very well,” she whispered.

“What’s well?”

“This,” Jane said, sliding closer to him.
“Forgiving you. Loving you.” She leaned into him and tilted her
head up for another kiss. “Marrying you.”

He wrapped his arms around her. “Good.”

Six years later.

Oliver stood against a wall, watching the
room around him. There was quite a crowd in his main salon tonight;
he’d given up the count at several hundreds.

Sometimes, it seemed odd to remember that he
had
a main salon. He and Jane had purchased the house on the
event of their marriage, and sometimes, even now, it felt strange
to have a room large enough to fit the home where he’d grown up.
This one was beautifully appointed: large plate windows at the
front looked out over a park. The twinkle of lamplight in other
windows was dimly visible across the square.

The window, indeed, was the most beautiful
part of the room. Jane stood framed in it, after all, the center of
attention.

This gown was an extraordinary one.
Purple-and-green striped silk. Gold brocade, perhaps overdone by
fashionable tastes. Heavy rubies at her throat.

Everyone had gone beyond wincing at her. They
were used to her now; her garb was nothing more than an idle
curiosity. She was too important to cut.

After all, at this event, a charity musicale
for the Youth Hospital,
he
was the gracious, smiling
spouse.

Over by the window, Jane was talking with
animation to a baron, introducing him to the bearded man at her
side—one of her sober young protégés, a fellow who—if Oliver
recalled—she had sponsored through medical school. He was writing
on medical ethics.

“Marshall,” a voice said.

Oliver turned. It was the Right Honorable
Bertie Pages, one of Oliver’s colleagues in Parliament.

“Pages,” Oliver said, with a nod of his
head.

“Good speech today,” the man said.

Oliver smiled.

“A bit forceful for my tastes, but
effective.”

“You always seem to say that,” Oliver said.
“If it’s intended as a gentle rebuke, it has long since ceased to
work.”

“No… No.” The other man turned and swept his
arm out. “When you announced that you were marrying her, I thought
you’d made a mistake. A grave mistake. She was…”

“She
is,”
Oliver corrected.

“Too loud,” Pages said. “Too bright. That
gown she’s wearing—it’s got no subtlety at all. There’s never been
anything of subtlety to her. And yet…”

“That’s precisely why I married her. You’d
best get to the
and yet
swiftly, because she
is
my
wife.”

“And yet her hospital has already attracted
some of the brightest minds in the nation. The symposium she
sponsored on medical ethics has had an extraordinary effect on the
world. People pay attention to her.”