The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)

“Come,” Jane said, “do you want the parish poor to suffer simply because you hadn’t the bravery to walk away from this house?”


He reached forward, fingers outstretched toward the bills. But before he could take them from her, he snatched his hand away, shaking his head in outrage. “This,” he said, his voice shaking, “this is an ungodly household.”

Jane could have struck him. He wasn’t even a real doctor. He wanted to torture her sister. And she was the ungodly one? Maybe she should offer thirty pounds.

But Emily was the one who smiled and peered innocently up at him. “Oh,” she said, in a deceptively naive voice, “but it is. It is. We all tell lies, all the time. You wouldn’t want to stay around here. It might be catching.”

Ironically, Jane thought, that was the actual truth.

“You should accept our filthy lucre and be shut of our wretched lies,” Emily continued.

He looked between the two sisters.

“Here,” Jane said, adding a third bill to the ones she already held. “Have thirty pounds. Leave tonight. You can still catch the six o’clock train.”

He hesitated, unspeaking.

“Alice will pack your things for you. Won’t you, Alice?” The maid had been sitting at the window—presumably to function as a chaperone for Emily when she had been alone with the doctor. But, like all the servants in the Fairfield household, she recognized an opportunity to earn a little extra when it was presented. She jumped to her feet and came forward. Doctor Fallon made no motion to stop her from wrapping his jars in cotton.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “This doesn’t seem right.”

“Well, if you would like to stay,” Emily said, “you are more than welcome to.”

Jane sent her sister a surprised look.

Alice undid the wires attached to her sister and Emily stood. She took a swishing step toward the doctor. Jane would have admired her form, but the cotton strips trailing from her arm rather ruined the effect.

“As you said, we are an ungodly household. We pray to Ba’al,” Emily said earnestly. “Every evening. And to Apollo, god of the sun, at daybreak. We would like it very much if you joined us.”

Jane had to clamp her lips together to keep from bursting into laughter.

“There are so few heathens in England, and you look like a big, strapping addition—”

Doctor Fallon turned bright red and grabbed the bills from Jane’s hand. “You are right,” he said coldly. “I cannot—I must not stay in this household.”

Alice wordlessly handed him the wicker case she had packed, which now contained the implements of his trade.

“I take my leave of you,” Doctor Fallon proclaimed. “I will not come back, no matter how you might beg, until you repent and accept—”

“What is going on here?”

Jane and Emily turned to the door as one. Oh, God. That was all this farce had needed. Uncle Titus had come into the room. He looked around in blinking confusion—at Doctor Fallon, waving a wicker case that smelled of acid, at the notes that fluttered between his fingers. He looked at Emily, smiling up at the man winsomely.

“Girls,” Titus repeated, “what is going on here?”

“This house!” Doctor Fallon said. “This house—it is a place of heathen infamy. I have been lied to, seduced…” His eyes slid to the bills in his hand, and he clutched them to his chest. “I have been bribed,” he said hoarsely. “I wash my hands of the lot of you, may the devil take you all.”

So saying, he snatched up his case and marched out. It was a good thing, Jane mused, because if he had stayed, he might have explained to Titus that he meant his last statement as the literal truth.

Their uncle watched him go in stunned silence. He waited until he heard the front door slam, before turning to Jane and Emily.

This, Jane thought, was going to be tricky. Very tricky.

“I was in my room,” Jane said cautiously. “And I heard noise. It was the sound of…of ranting.”

“It’s true,” Emily said. “I was sitting here, waiting for a fit to come on so he could test his methods, and suddenly he was pointing his finger at me and making all kinds of horrid accusations.”

Emily was better at lying, and so Jane let her do it.

“I don’t know what set him off,” Emily said earnestly. “He just kept…he kept looking at me. Just looking at me and muttering to himself about how I was seducing him. But I wasn’t. I was just sitting down. I wasn’t doing anything.”

It was a good story, Jane thought. Emily was uncommonly pretty, and even Titus understood what that meant. For a moment, Titus nodded his head, his brow wrinkling in sympathy.

“Oh,” Titus said. “I…I…” But he didn’t say that he understood. He frowned and wrinkled his nose. “Why was he holding those bank notes?”