The Heiress Effect

Anjan swallowed away a sick feeling. People made jokes about Bedlam, but the things he’d heard… An asylum was no place for anyone, let alone Emily.

“Already he refuses to allow me out of the house. When he discovered I was sneaking out…” She turned her head to Anjan, and nodded. “…he had a servant start sleeping in my room. I didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye.”

Lirington shook his head. “I’m sorry.” It was a dismissal, not an apology.

Anjan didn’t move. He was rooted in place, everything he knew about her falling into order.

Her breath was coming faster now. “My sister will help. She’s of age, and she has enough money to pay whatever it is you need.”

“I do wish you the best,” Lirington said, “but—”

“Be quiet, Lirington,” Anjan heard himself grate out. “She never asked for your opinion. She came to me.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Lirington frowned, though, and then his lips quirked, as if he were just remembering that in fact, she had asked for Anjan. By name. “I don’t understand,” he finally said. “Why would she do that?”

Anjan didn’t answer.

“Because I knew,” Emily said. “I knew if I came here, I would get a fair hearing. I knew, at the very least, that you would listen. That you would care.”

“Is that what you think?” Anjan said, almost curious to hear her answer. “I haven’t seen you in months; you disappear with scarcely a word to me. And you think that you can just arrive and tell me that I care?”

Emily tossed her head back. “Don’t be daft,” she said. “I know you do.”

Anjan felt a smile spread across his face—a slow, real smile. “Good.”

“I told you once that if our marriage had been arranged, I would not complain,” Emily said. “Since then…”

Anjan leaned forward, ignoring the surprised noise Lirington made.

“In the worst months of my uncle’s excesses, when my sister was away and I had no outlet for my frustration, I imagined that it was so. That I knew I would marry you. That I had that to look forward to, no matter what happened in the meantime.”

Anjan swallowed.

“And then I discovered that my uncle had been corresponding with an asylum.” She shut her eyes. “I couldn’t stay and risk that. And that was strangely freeing. I could go anywhere, could choose anything. Nothing was arranged, not a single thing in my future except the things that I could arrange for myself.”

Anjan couldn’t look away from her. She smiled at him, and he felt himself smiling in response.

“So I came here,” she said. “To you.”

Lirington looked at Emily—really looked at her—and then turned his head to look at Anjan. “Batty,” he said slowly, “I do believe you’ve been holding out on me.”

Across the table, Emily grimaced again and slapped her hand against the table.

“The name,” she said primly, “is Bhattacharya. And since it’s going to be mine, you had best learn to pronounce it properly.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“My sister left on her own,” Jane said when Oliver returned to the hotel late that evening. “I know where she’s gone, and I think she’s safe.”

Jane was smiling at him in open, friendly welcome. They’d obtained rooms on opposite sides of the hotel, for propriety’s sake. But shortly after he’d come back from his walk with Sebastian, she’d slipped through the hallways and knocked on his door.

She now sat on his bed, shoeless, her hair down, and he didn’t want her anywhere else. He wanted time to freeze. He wanted her in his room. He never wanted her to leave. And she knew where her sister was.

Perhaps it was the very shortness of the love affair that made every moment seem so dear.

“I’m so happy,” she said. “We have only to find her.”

It was easy for Oliver to put his arms around her, to draw her in close and inhale the scent of her. To think her not only possible, but likely—the only likelihood that he could comprehend.

He refused to think of the end.

He nuzzled her neck instead. “I’m glad everything is turning out for the better,” he said. “You’ll need me then, just a little longer. Just to be sure.” He held his breath.

“Yes. If you don’t mind.”

He kissed her ear, pulling her close. He didn’t want to let go of her. His hands played along her hair, tangling in it, and he inhaled her scent.

“You’re affectionate,” she said.

“No. Just besotted.” Besotted and beset by that worry in his gut. Once she was reunited with her sister, once the threat of her uncle’s guardianship dissipated, he would no longer have an excuse. He could sense the end now, so close he could smell it, and he didn’t want to let her go.

“Where is she?”

“London,” Jane replied. “I’m almost certain of it.”

“How…useful,” Oliver said. “I have to go to London, too.”

But he’d been hoping they would have to go somewhere else. Oliver had duties waiting for him there. He shut his eyes and imagined those duties—the neglected appointments, the newspaper column that he might write about the latest proposed amendments—and then pushed them aside. “But we’re not there yet,” he said. “We’re here. And now.”

“I had noticed,” Jane whispered. “What should we do about it?”

He pulled her close. “This,” he said. And he turned her face to his and kissed her.

“I do not know, Anjan.”

The woman who sat on the other side of the table from Emily wore a purple and gold silk sari draped about her. She had Anjan’s eyes, dark, ringed with impossibly long eyelashes. Mrs. Bhattacharya’s face was unwrinkled except for the frown that she leveled at Emily. Her arms were folded, and Emily tried not to twitch under her perusal.

Anjan’s mother sniffed and looked at her son. “Is something wrong with her? She looks sickly.”

“She has not been outside much.” Anjan seemed entirely calm.

A feeling Emily did not share. Her stomach danced, and it took all her effort to keep herself still.

Mrs. Bhattacharya simply shook her head. “And what will your father say when I tell him that your bride-to-be has fits? We only want the best for you.” She frowned at Emily. “Could you not find some other girl? A nice girl from home, maybe…”