The Heiress Effect

“You were brilliant, Sebastian,” she said. “Utterly bril—”

He took a staggering step backward. “Fuck you, Violet,” he said savagely. “Fuck. You.”

He’d spoken into a momentary lull in conversation, so that everyone near could hear his words.

Violet winced.

Oliver came up beside his friend. “Sebastian,” he said quietly. He steeled himself for a similar outburst.

But when Sebastian turned to him, he merely looked tired, not savage.

“Ah, Oliver. Perhaps you can explain—”

“Excuse me,” Oliver said to the crowd around them, “he’s drunk.”

“I’m not—”

“You might as well be,” Oliver whispered, and jerked on his arm. “What the hell are you doing? You know what’s at stake here. What we have to do.”

Sebastian opened his mouth to answer, and that’s when Oliver heard it—that strangely diffident voice, the one he remembered from the walk he’d taken with Sebastian so long ago.

“Mr. Malheur? Mr. Malheur?” The voice spoke from behind them. “You wished to speak with me? That is, I had a message from you regarding a little tidbit you had to share?”

Sebastian and Oliver turned as one. Titus Fairfield stood before them, rubbing his hands together. He shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

“Is this not a good time?” he asked.

God, the man was inept. Anyone with a brain would know this was a terrible time—the worst time.

But Sebastian’s face didn’t change at all from his impassive mask.

“Mr. Fairfield,” he said in a forbidding tone, completely at odds with his words. “You are just the person I want to see.”

“I am?” Even Fairfield sounded dubious.

“You are. Unfortunately, at the moment, I am a little tipsy.”

Oliver inhaled. That had not been the plan that he’d worked out with Sebastian. He took a step forward, reached out—but his cousin was already forging on.

“Luckily, my friend Violet here will explain everything. I trust her implicitly, so…”

“What are you doing?” Oliver whispered. “That was not the plan.”

“Yes,” Sebastian said, “I imagine that Violet could say anything I could. And turnabout is always fair play.”

Oliver glanced over at Violet. He would have expected her to look hurt by Sebastian’s savage outburst. At the very least, he had thought she would be confused. Instead she simply shrugged her shoulders.

“Come on, Oliver,” Sebastian said, hooking his arm through Oliver’s. “Let’s leave Violet to it.”

“That wasn’t the plan,” Oliver said to Sebastian, as Sebastian headed out onto the street. “That’s not what we were going to do. We were going to—”

“Come on, Oliver,” Sebastian said. “If we look back now, Fairfield will think he can talk to me. And right now, I can’t bear him.”

“This isn’t about you,” Oliver fumed. It’s about—”

His cousin stopped on the street and looked about them. It was dark by now, and a little foggy; the lamps on the street had been lit, and they did their best to drive away the darkness with warmth. It wasn’t quite enough.

“It’s been a good long while since it’s been about me,” Sebastian finally said. “I think it’s my turn.”

And in that moment, Oliver looked at his friend. Sebastian looked…wrecked was the closest word that Oliver might have chosen.

“Violet will handle it,” Sebastian said. “She likes Miss Fairfield, and she’s the most frighteningly competent woman I have met. If you would pay attention, my dear cousin, you might have noticed that more than half the population of England wants me dead. I think I am allowed to crack under the strain. Once. I’m allowed.”

It seemed impossible. Sebastian always seemed so indifferent to what others thought of him. He treated his infamy like a lark. He was…

Oliver had accused Sebastian of hiding unhappiness when last he was in Cambridge. But he’d suspected a mild melancholy, not…this. Sebastian had always joked, had always laughed. How much of that had ever been real?

They walked in silence for a few blocks. “You know, Sebastian,” Oliver said quietly, “I don’t pretend to understand what is going on—but you owe Violet an apology.”

Sebastian snorted.

“I mean it. In front of an entire crowd, you—”

“You don’t know what she did.” Sebastian’s voice was shaking. “What she’s doing to me.”

“I don’t care what she’s doing. How could it justify what you just said? In front of everyone?”

Sebastian shrugged and looked away. He didn’t add anything else, which seemed uncharacteristically like him.

“Very well,” Oliver said. “What is she doing?”

“Nothing,” Sebastian said with a maddening shake of his head. “She’s not doing anything.” But his voice was a few notes higher than normal.

“Sebastian, you can’t put me off—”

“Everyone hates me.” Sebastian turned to him. “Everyone. At first it was just a few people. Now, everywhere I go, there are death threats, people wishing me ill. The papers are filled with vitriol. Everyone hates me, Oliver. Everyone.”

“Surely not everyone.”

“Enough as to make no difference,” Sebastian retorted. “Does it matter if the entirety of England wants me dismembered, or merely a half of it? Either way, it’s a bloody great lot of people howling for my blood.”

Oliver swallowed. “I thought you liked that sort of thing—tweaking people, getting under their skin.”

Sebastian threw his hands up in the air. “In all the time you have known me, Oliver,” he said, his voice shaking, “in all that time—when have I ever made a joke at anyone else’s expense?”

“Uh…”

“When have I ever done anything except make a fool of myself, expose myself to ridicule to get others to laugh?”

“Well…”

“Yes, I love tweaking noses.” His friend paced away and then turned back. “But I like to be liked, Oliver.”

How had Oliver never seen that before? Prankster Sebastian. Smiling Sebastian. But he was right; all of Sebastian’s clever tricks and pranks had been aimed at making everyone else laugh. He mocked himself with greater alacrity than anyone else, and when they’d been in school together, everyone had loved him for it.