The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)

He frowned. “What’s that?”


She gestured. “I can’t see the entire title of your book.”

“Ah.” His grin flashed brilliantly, and he turned the book to face her.

A Practical Guide to Pranks, it read.

“All nostalgia, I’m afraid. I miss the days when I could respond to ridiculousness with a little mischief, that’s all.” He sighed. “There was one night when we were students at Trinity… There was a man who had a new phaeton that he was crowing about. So my brother, Sebastian, and I disassembled it and then reconstructed it entirely inside his rooms. We couldn’t put the wheels on, you understand, but everything else… He was so violently drunk when he returned that he thought nothing of it, but you should have heard him shout come the morning.”

He wasn’t anything like she’d imagined, this man who claimed he would be prime minister. He had a sparkle in his eye and an air of mischief about him. Was he pretending at politics, or was he pretending at this?

“And here I had the impression that you were respectable.”

He sighed, and the light in his eyes dimmed. “Alas. I am.” He spoke the words grudgingly. “High spirits are always excused in the young, but I’m well past the age where a good prank can be overlooked. Still, one can imagine.”

This felt like a dream—standing next to him, talking about books and pranks.

“Sebastian,” she said. “That would be Mr. Malheur, would it not?”

“He’s the only one of us who skipped over the respectable phase. He’s never stopped being a troublemaker.” His eyes abstracted. “In some ways, I envy him. In others, not so much.”

“Of us?”

“I forget; you don’t know us. My brother, Ro—the Duke of Clermont. Sebastian Malheur. Me. They called us the Brothers Sinister because we were always together, and we are all left-handed.”

“Are you sinister?” she asked.

Something flashed in his eyes, a hint of discomfort. “I’ll leave you to decide. I can hardly judge for myself.”

Her nervousness had faded to a pleasant hum. She was smiling a great deal at him.

“Tell me, Miss Fairfield,” he murmured in a low voice. “What do you think? Because I rather get the impression that you’re a good judge of sinister behavior.”

She could feel the tug of him. She’d dreamed of this—of having a friend, someone she could laugh with. Someone who looked at her and looked again, who looked for the pleasure of looking and not to criticize her deportment or her clothing. If she had dared, she might have dreamed of more.

But the bell rang behind him, and Jane glanced over to see who had entered the shop.

Her breath caught. It was Susan, the upstairs maid, dressed in brown and white. She caught sight of Mrs. Blickstall, still sitting bored at the front of the room; Mrs. Blickstall sat up straighter and pointed at Jane in the back.

Jane took a step forward just as Susan came up to her.

“Miss Fairfield, if you please.” The maid’s voice was breathy, as if she’d dashed all the way here from the house.

She probably had.

Susan glanced once at Mr. Marshall. “Perhaps we might have a word outside.”

“You can speak freely,” Jane said. “Mr. Marshall is a friend.”

He didn’t dispute the label, and her heart thumped once.

“There’s another physician come,” Susan said. “I got away as soon as I could, but he was just going in with Miss Emily as I left, and that was twenty minutes past.”

“Oh, hell. What kind of quackery does this one practice?”

“Galvanics, Miss. That’s what he said.”

“What the devil are galvanics?”

“Electric current,” Mr. Marshall supplied. “Usually stored in some sort of electrical battery, used to deliver shocks as—” He stopped talking.

Jane felt her face go white. She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t think of this dream world she was leaving, this place where one might talk of books and laugh about pranks and consider what it meant to be respectable. This was not the world she inhabited.

She fumbled a heavy coin from her pocket and pressed it into Susan’s hand. “Thank you,” she said.

The household staff no doubt very much appreciated the fact that Jane and her uncle were at odds. It gave them all sorts of ways to supplement their income.

“Miss Fairfield,” Mr. Marshall said carefully, “might I accompany you home?”

In her mind, she’d imagined telling him everything. She’d imagined him telling her not to fret, that it would be all right. But he couldn’t say that now. After all, he’d told her he wouldn’t lie to her.

It wouldn’t be all right. The best she could hope for was an uneasy truce—one bought with as many banknotes as she could carry.

Her mind had gone numb. There was no room in her life for a simple friendship.

“No.” Her voice was tight. “Don’t. You’re respectable, see, and you should try to remain that way. I have to go bribe a doctor.”