The Heiress Effect

She held out Mrs. Larriger Leaves Home and waited to see what he would do with it.

He took it without hesitation and opened it up. “Nice frontispiece,” he commented. “Do you think the author is really named Mrs. Larriger?”

“No,” Jane said baldly. “I do not. The first book was printed two and a half years ago, and since that time, there have been twenty-two more published, practically a book every month. I think Mrs. Larriger is composed by committee. No one person could write so swiftly—not unless she had nothing else to do.”

“Mmm, that does seem unlikely.” Mr. Marshall turned to the first page. “‘For the first fifty-eight years of her life, Mrs. Laura Larriger lived in Portsmouth in sight of the harbor. She never wondered where the ships went, and cared about their return only when one of them happened to bring her husband home from one of his trading voyages. There was never any reason to care. Her house was comfortable, her husband brought in an excellent income, and to her great satisfaction, he was almost never present.’” He looked up. “There are worse starting paragraphs, I suppose.”

“Do continue on.”

“‘But one day, on one of those rare occasions when her husband was home, he was struck on the head by a falling anvil. He died instantly.’” Mr. Marshall blinked. He blinked again and set his finger on the text he’d just read. “Wait. I don’t understand. How did an anvil fall on her husband while he was at home? Where did it come from? Was he in the habit of suspending anvils from the ceiling?”

“You will have to read and find out,” Jane said. “I am not in the habit of telling people what happens in a book. Only brutes disclose what comes next.”

He shook his head. “Very well, then. ‘That day, Mrs. Larriger sat in her parlor. But the walls seemed thicker. The air felt closer. For almost sixty years, she had never felt the slightest curiosity about the world outside her door. Now, the air beyond her walls seemed to call out to her. Leave, it whispered. Leave. Leave before they conduct the inquest.’” Mr. Marshall laughed. “Ah, I think I am beginning to understand the anvil—and Mrs. Larriger.

“‘She took a deep breath. She packed a satchel. And then, with a great effort, with the effort of a woman uprooting everything she had known, Mrs. Larriger put one foot outside her door into the warm May sunshine. And as she didn’t burst into flame, she marched down to the harbor and purchased passage on a vessel that was departing within the next five minutes.’” He closed the book. “Well. I’m getting it.”

“It will go well with A Practical Guide to Plato’s Most Important Writings.”

He frowned. “What’s that?”

She gestured. “I can’t see the entire title of your book.”

“Ah.” His grin flashed brilliantly, and he turned the book to face her.

A Practical Guide to Pranks, it read.

“All nostalgia, I’m afraid. I miss the days when I could respond to ridiculousness with a little mischief, that’s all.” He sighed. “There was one night when we were students at Trinity… There was a man who had a new phaeton that he was crowing about. So my brother, Sebastian, and I disassembled it and then reconstructed it entirely inside his rooms. We couldn’t put the wheels on, you understand, but everything else… He was so violently drunk when he returned that he thought nothing of it, but you should have heard him shout come the morning.”

He wasn’t anything like she’d imagined, this man who claimed he would be prime minister. He had a sparkle in his eye and an air of mischief about him. Was he pretending at politics, or was he pretending at this?

“And here I had the impression that you were respectable.”

He sighed, and the light in his eyes dimmed. “Alas. I am.” He spoke the words grudgingly. “High spirits are always excused in the young, but I’m well past the age where a good prank can be overlooked. Still, one can imagine.”

This felt like a dream—standing next to him, talking about books and pranks.

“Sebastian,” she said. “That would be Mr. Malheur, would it not?”

“He’s the only one of us who skipped over the respectable phase. He’s never stopped being a troublemaker.” His eyes abstracted. “In some ways, I envy him. In others, not so much.”

“Of us?”

“I forget; you don’t know us. My brother, Ro—the Duke of Clermont. Sebastian Malheur. Me. They called us the Brothers Sinister because we were always together, and we are all left-handed.”

“Are you sinister?” she asked.

Something flashed in his eyes, a hint of discomfort. “I’ll leave you to decide. I can hardly judge for myself.”

Her nervousness had faded to a pleasant hum. She was smiling a great deal at him.

“Tell me, Miss Fairfield,” he murmured in a low voice. “What do you think? Because I rather get the impression that you’re a good judge of sinister behavior.”

She could feel the tug of him. She’d dreamed of this—of having a friend, someone she could laugh with. Someone who looked at her and looked again, who looked for the pleasure of looking and not to criticize her deportment or her clothing. If she had dared, she might have dreamed of more.

But the bell rang behind him, and Jane glanced over to see who had entered the shop.

Her breath caught. It was Susan, the upstairs maid, dressed in brown and white. She caught sight of Mrs. Blickstall, still sitting bored at the front of the room; Mrs. Blickstall sat up straighter and pointed at Jane in the back.

Jane took a step forward just as Susan came up to her.

“Miss Fairfield, if you please.” The maid’s voice was breathy, as if she’d dashed all the way here from the house.

She probably had.

Susan glanced once at Mr. Marshall. “Perhaps we might have a word outside.”

“You can speak freely,” Jane said. “Mr. Marshall is a friend.”

He didn’t dispute the label, and her heart thumped once.

“There’s another physician come,” Susan said. “I got away as soon as I could, but he was just going in with Miss Emily as I left, and that was twenty minutes past.”

“Oh, hell. What kind of quackery does this one practice?”

“Galvanics, Miss. That’s what he said.”

“What the devil are galvanics?”

“Electric current,” Mr. Marshall supplied. “Usually stored in some sort of electrical battery, used to deliver shocks as—” He stopped talking.