The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)

There was nothing common about him, first impressions be damned. Behind those spectacles lurked something feral and untamable. He hadn’t moved from his chair, and yet still she felt a little tickle in her palms. A catch in her breath.

His eyes were too sharp, his expression far too even. He set his glass on the side table next to him and leaned back, looking her over as if he were royalty and she the thief who had been caught raiding his larder.

“Worry?” she repeated in her best breathless voice. “Why would I worry? You’re a gentleman. I’m a lady.” She took a step closer to the door. “I’ll join the others after all.”

He waved a hand. “Don’t bother, Miss Fairfield. I have sisters enough that I can recognize the supposedly innocent act from a half-mile’s distance. You’re not fooling me.”

She blinked. “Why should I not act the innocent? I have no guilt on my conscience.”

Mr. Marshall clicked his tongue and stood up. There ought to have been a rule somewhere that men who wore spectacles could not exceed six feet in height, but he was easily that. He should have been a jovial, round-faced clerk. He should have been anywhere else but here.

He shook his head and took a step toward her. “You’re wasting your breath. I know your secrets.”

“I haven’t any secrets. I—”

“Cut line, Miss Fairfield. You are either very, very stupid, or extraordinarily clever. And I, for one, suspect that you fall on the side of cleverness.”

She stared at him. “Mr. Cromwell. This is becoming improper.”

He shrugged and moved closer to her. “How convenient,” he said, “that you notice impropriety when it serves your purposes.”

She sucked in her breath as he reached out his hand.

“And when it doesn’t…” His fingers were inches from her face. He could have reached out and touched her.

He didn’t. He snapped his fingers. She jumped.

“Miss Fairfield,” he said quietly, “I am not your enemy. Stop treating me as one.”

Her heart slammed in her breast. “I have no enemies.”

“That, Miss Fairfield, is bullocks, and you know it. You have only enemies.”

“I…I…”

“And I,” he said, “know exactly what that feels like. Look at me, Miss Fairfield. Think about what I am. I’m a duke’s bastard, raised on a farm. I’ve never belonged anywhere. I spent my first few months at Eton with these jackasses, getting into fights three times a day because they wanted me to know I didn’t belong. There’s little love lost between me and Bradenton.”

She swallowed and looked at him. There was a proud set to his jaw, a fierce light in his eyes. She knew all too well that a little thing like expression could be falsified, but… She didn’t think he’d manufactured that note of anger.

“Bradenton thinks he can dictate what I do,” he told her. “So insult him and his ilk all you wish. I’ll applaud you every step of the way. Just stop lumping me in with them. I’ll tell you my truth, if you’ll tell me yours.”

She shook her head, not knowing how to answer. Nobody had ever questioned her act. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then don’t talk,” he said. “Sit, and hear me out.”

She needed to go. Immediately. She shouldn’t listen. She…

“Sit,” he repeated.

Perhaps it was because he didn’t speak it as a command. He indicated the chair she had recently vacated, and somehow turned a word that would have been a single, solitary demand in another man’s throat into a polite gesture.

She sat. Her stomach fluttered. She didn’t know what to say to him, how to regain what she had just lost. “I’m not going to marry you,” she finally blurted out.

He blinked twice and shook his head. “Is that what this is about? You’re trying to avoid marriage? You’re doing a good job of it.”

She couldn’t breathe.

“In fact…” He tilted his head and looked at her. “But I promised you truth, so here is mine. You’re the last woman I would marry.”

Her breath sucked in.

“I don’t need your money. My brother and I are on good terms, and when he reached his majority, he settled a good sum on me. If I needed more for any reason, I would apply to him first.” He shrugged. “I want a career in politics, Miss Fairfield. I want to be a Member of Parliament—and not some distant day in the future, either. I need time to gain influence. I want people to listen to me, to respect me. I will be prime minister one day.”

Not I plan to be or I want to be. Not for Mr. Marshall. I will be.

He leaned forward, his eyes blazing.

“I want every man who slighted me—everyone who called me bastard behind my back—to bow down and lick my boots for daring to think I was beneath him. I want everyone who tells me to know my place to eat his words.”

The air felt heavy and thick between them. His hand was a white-knuckled fist at his side.

“And so the last thing I need is to be tied to you. You’ll open no doors for me, bring me no influence. If the rumor is right, you only have a fortune in the first place because you’re a bastard like me.”

She let out a breath.