The Heiress Effect

Oliver swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I…I know that the response you’re receiving must have taken you by surprise. Still… What you said to Violet just now? That was unconscionable.”

Sebastian stiffened. “I am not talking about Violet with you.”

“Well, then, I’ll be the only one talking, because I won’t let this go unsaid. Sebastian, I think Violet is in love with you.”

He’d expected Sebastian to protest, to frown. To think, perhaps, and reconsider.

Instead, Sebastian burst into laughter. “No,” he said, when he’d recovered himself. “No, she is not.”

“Give it some thought. The way she looked at you when you were talking… It was like—I don’t know, I can’t describe it—”

“I know how she looked at me,” Sebastian said, with a funny little smile on his face. “Trust me; I am quite sure Violet is not in love with me.”

“You can’t be sure. You didn’t see—”

“I can,” Sebastian said. He looked upward. “Just leave it, Oliver.” He smiled. “I’ll have to find my own way out of this morass. But never fear.” His voice gained strength. Or maybe, he was just finding his ability to lie again. “Our intrepid hero, beleaguered on all sides, may have had a moment of weakness.” His voice was deep and booming. “But so it always is. The darkest hour, indeed, is the one that comes before—”

Oliver shoved him. “Come on, Sebastian. Stop pretending. You don’t have to make me laugh.”

But Sebastian just raised an eyebrow. “I don’t have to,” he said. “But watch me do it.”

Jane waited in the little room to the side of the lecture hall for over an hour, each minute seeming longer than the last. The sounds of the crowd—never more than a dull murmur—were her only company. The rising volume of that murmur was the only indication that the event had ended and—she hoped—that her uncle would be coming soon. She waited long minutes after that, until she heard footsteps in the outside hall.

“…Not sure,” she heard her uncle say, in his sad, rumbling voice. “It seems a little improper, in fact. Are you sure that Mr. Malheur—”

“I am positive,” said a female voice. “There’s an important point to be made, namely—”

The door opened. Behind it stood a woman dressed in dark brown—the woman who had given Jane her cactus at the Botanic Gardens. For a moment, Jane blinked. She couldn’t recall the woman’s name. And then she remembered. She was a countess—the Countess of Cambury.

She was the sort of woman who would have been called “commanding” rather than pretty—and she was almost old enough to fit that look on her face. She seemed perfectly coiffed, not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle on her gown, even though she must have been sitting on the uncomfortable chairs above. It was as if even gravity didn’t dare to defy her.

She looked formidable, and Jane wanted to know how she did it.

“Well, Fairfield,” the woman said in a tone that made it clear that she had not dropped the Mr. from his name for reasons of familiarity. “What have you to say for yourself?”

“Your pardon?” Titus gave her a toad-eating little bow. “I—well—I rather thought that Mr. Malheur had something to say to me.” He bowed again; he hadn’t even looked around the room to see Jane. “Of course I understand that he is busy. Naturally so. But—”

With a sigh, the Countess of Cambury shut the door.

“This is becoming most improper.” Titus shook his head and rubbed his hands together in consternation. “In a room, alone—I could hardly think—that is to say—” A thought seemed to penetrate his head—a horrific one, by the pallor that crept over him, and the way he put his hand to his throat. “Oh, dear,” he whispered. “Mr. Malheur surely has been thinking about a breeding program, the one we had talked of earlier… He does not think to start it with me?”

Jane felt like laughing aloud. Nobody—not even somebody so depraved as to start a human breeding program—would look at her fussy, stuffy uncle and think, “There, there’s a fellow who ought to be included.”

The Countess of Cambury simply blinked at this nonsense and then shook her head. “Fairfield,” she said in cutting tones, ‘if you had been a hunter on the plains of old, the lions would have killed you while you were wandering around the savannah saying, ‘Where is everyone, and what have they done with my spears?’”

Jane did snort aloud at that.

“Your pardon?” Titus shook his head.

The countess gestured at Jane. “We are not alone.”

“We aren’t?” Titus frowned, and then slowly, he turned to see what the woman was indicating. His eyes fell on Jane.

She’d imagined that he would look embarrassed or fearful at the sight of her. She’d been blackmailing him, after all.

Instead, he turned bright red. “You!”

He pointed, took a step forward. His hands made fists at his side. “You!” he repeated. “What have you done with your sister?”

Chapter Twenty-Five

It took Jane a moment to realize what Titus had said. Her uncle advanced on her, his face blooming a brilliant crimson. “What have you done with her?” he demanded. “I’ll have the constable on you, I will. You can’t just rush in and grab her up, simply because you wish.”

It came to her in a flash: Titus hadn’t sent Emily away. And if she was gone nonetheless…

Jane couldn’t help herself. She’d been caught up with worry for the past two days. She had faked her own elopement, had been abducted, and then rescued. She had traversed half of England believing that her sister’s fate hung in the balance. She’d been as big a fool as Titus. She burst into laughter.

“Stop that,” Titus said. “And surrender your sister, or I’ll—I’ll—” Failing to come up with an adequate threat, he narrowed his eyes at her. “Or I’ll be very displeased.”

“I don’t have Emily,” Jane said. “I’m only here because I thought you had her put in an asylum.”

He blushed fiercely. “Why—uh—why would you think that? I certainly—well, I—which is to say, I was having her examined by physicians, to see if such a thing was possible. She was acting so…so differently. Less exuberantly. I was afraid that she was succumbing to melancholy, and was considering my choices.”