The Heiress Effect

Shut up, Jane. Learn when to shut up. She closed her mouth and swallowed all her protests. They tasted bitter.

“Behave properly, Jane,” he said quietly. “Stop arguing. Stop influencing your sister to do wrong. Do your best to attach a man. You may be overplump, but you have money and I suppose that will do. And if I hear tell that you’ve bribed another doctor…” He trailed off ominously.

“You won’t,” Jane promised. “You won’t hear a thing. I promise.”

He wouldn’t hear a thing. Next time, she would bribe better.

Four hundred and seventy-one days of this. How was she to keep up this façade for a year and a half? She felt ragged and weary, impossibly tired.

“Yes, Uncle,” she said. “I’ll do everything you say.”

Chapter Seven

There was an assembly that night, a glittering gathering of young men and delicately arrayed women. Oliver had come, and he still wasn’t sure why. To see Miss Fairfield, he suspected, but his reasons for that…

He was not going to take Bradenton up on his offer. He’d find some other way to bring the man around. Bradenton could be reasonable, after all.

He’s not asking for a reasonable thing.

Oliver shoved that voice away. He’d watched Miss Fairfield’s face turn to wax as her maid informed her of the waiting doctor of galvanics. He’d been right. Whatever she was facing, it was awful. Bradenton would turn reasonable, and that was that.

But if he doesn’t?

Oliver shook his head. He would be.

The assembly room was smaller than most London ballrooms. But then, there were far fewer people—no more than perhaps a dozen couples with only a few more on their way. Everyone had already mingled and made introductions. A few ladies had glanced Oliver’s way shyly—ever since it had come out that he was a duke’s son, there had been a little more interest. He talked to them halfheartedly. He might have enjoyed the conversations, had he not been waiting for Miss Fairfield.

It was not so much that he wanted to see her.

She was pleasant enough to look at—the parts of her that she didn’t drape in hideous apparel, at least. Earlier in the bookshop, he’d enjoyed their conversation. He’d enjoyed it so much that he’d stopped noticing the head-splitting pattern of her day gown.

And now here he was, waiting for her to arrive. Waiting with an eagerness that seemed a little out of proportion to simple curiosity.

Just when he was on the verge of giving up hope of her, she walked into the room.

Oliver saw her immediately and was so stunned that he could not move. For the first few ticks of the clock, nobody took notice. Ladies talked; gentlemen offered their arms. Glasses were raised and drunk from.

Then one man glanced up, and another. Ladies’ heads turned. There were no gasps—the dress she was wearing was beyond gasps. Oliver himself had to close his mouth. Silence rippled over the room—an active, electric silence, the stillness between the lightning strike and the rumble of thunder overhead.

The cut of her gown was completely unobjectionable. Rather modest, in terms of lace. It had no more pattern than a few delicate twining vines at the hem. But aside from those curling green tendrils, the gown was the bright pink of…of…of…

All comparisons failed Oliver. It wasn’t the bright pink of anything. It was a furious shade of pink, one that nature had never intended. It was a pink that did violence to the notion of demure pastels. It didn’t just shout for attention; it walked up and clubbed one over the head.

It hurt his head, that pink, and yet he couldn’t look away.

The room was small enough that he could hear the first words of greeting. “Miss Fairfield,” a woman said. “Your gown is…very pink. And pink is…such a lovely color, isn’t it?” That last was said with a wistful quality in the speaker’s voice, as if she were mourning the memory of true pink.

“Isn’t it lovely?” Miss Fairfield spoke loudly enough to be heard by all. “I asked Miss Genevieve, and she said that pink is always appropriate for a debutante.”

“Well,” said that other woman, “there’s…certainly a great deal of pink in that gown.”

“Yes,” Miss Fairfield responded happily. “I think so too!”

Everyone was looking at her. Literally everyone—there wasn’t a single person who could do anything but gawk at that gown.

It would have been bearable if there were not so much of that fabric, but the seamstress had not stinted. It wasn’t just the pink bodice and the pink skirts, but the excessively pink sash—all pink, no vines on that—which had been looped and wired to stand out from her gown. There were floridly pink flounces, which were trimmed with gouge-your-eyes-out pink lace.

So much vicious, pink fabric. And all of it was shiny.

She smiled brilliantly, as if she were proud of that confection and utterly unaware that she was the cause of all those titters.

Oliver had once watched a man eat a lemon. His own mouth had dried in vicarious response, and he’d looked away. He felt like that now, looking at her gown. She didn’t hold back one bit. She wore her too-bright gown and spoke in her too-loud voice, and she didn’t flinch while everyone gawked at her.

She was going to get burned, not caring. She went about the room greeting people. Behind her, a gentleman made a rude gesture at her backside—a flip of his hand that was too crass for a ballroom—and the laughter that erupted had an ugly tint to it.

Miss Fairfield smiled as if she’d done something brilliant.

No, it was not just that she was going to get burned.

She had already been burned. She was afire now. She smiled and laughed and she didn’t care what they thought of her. It was as painful to watch as that fellow had been, casually peeling a lemon and then eating the slices one by one as if nothing were wrong. Oliver wanted to tell himself that he wouldn’t hurt her, that he wasn’t that kind of man. But right now, all he wanted to do was push her so far from him that he never had to see this, never had to hear that low, mocking laughter again.

He remembered being laughed at. He remembered it all too well, and he remembered its aftermath. They’d come find him later, taunting, a group of them when he’d been caught out alone…

No. He couldn’t watch this. He turned away.

But it did little good. He could still hear her.

She greeted the hostess, cheerily. “Mrs. Gedwin,” she said in a carrying voice, “I am so delighted to be in attendance. And what a lovely chandelier you have. I wager it would look almost new, if it had been dusted recently.”