The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)

“Who knows where he got that?” Emily said. “He had already started ranting about Ba’al. No doubt he intended to reject Mammon, too.”


It was too much. As Emily spoke, Jane caught her eye. They exchanged a look—an unfortunate look that she never could have described to anyone else. It was a look that only a sister could understand, sly and happy and furious all at once. It let Jane know that she wasn’t alone in the world.

It was too much. Involuntarily, they both broke into betraying laughter.

“Jane,” her uncle said, shaking his head. “Jane, Jane, Jane. Whatever am I supposed to do with you?”

In lieu of giving her opinion on the matter—she’d made enough trouble for herself already—Jane looked around Titus’s office.

She wasn’t sure why he called it an office. It wasn’t as if he did real work in it. He had students, but they rarely met here. The only time he did work was when he grew enamored of some idea he heard at some lecture. For months when she had first come, he’d talked of nothing but some man’s take on the Odyssey; another time, he’d become fascinated by a visiting lecturer’s discussion of workers and capital. He’d read industriously, scribbling his own ideas on paper. But eventually, he always gave up, moving on to the next item that caught his attention. It didn’t matter what subject he pored over. Her uncle never altered. He always took whatever it was that he was doing too seriously, and imagined that his involvement, puny though it was, was vital for the intellectual health of the community.

Their discussions had much the same pattern. She couldn’t count the number of times they’d had this particular conversation.

“Jane,” Titus said, “I am so disappointed with you.”

She had been nothing but a disappointment to him ever since he’d found himself guardian to a handful of girls two years ago.

“This was an honest effort,” he told her. “From a good man, one who was willing to take on a patient who offered so little reward as Emily.”

“Did you even ask for his credentials?” Jane said. “Or speak to happy patients he had cured?”

But, no. He looked at her in bewilderment. “He was a good man,” he repeated.

“I had not noticed that there was a paucity of doctors offering to experiment on my sister,” Jane tried again, and then bit her lip. That was enough. She had no reason to antagonize him further. Best to hold her tongue. He’d shake his head at her and be disappointed. And then he’d forget and get wrapped up in the question of which map of the world he should purchase to grace the south wall of his office. They’d hear of nothing but various projections and cartographers for months, and finally he’d settle on just the right thing.

“Up until this point,” Titus said, “I have forgiven your many, many foibles.” He shook his head gravely. “You are argumentative and stubborn as befits the indelicacy of your birth. I have always hoped that my kind, patient attentions would prevail upon you to change your ways.” He steepled his fingers and looked upward. “I begin to despair of my object.”

Quibbling with the label argumentative had somehow never altered his opinion of her.

She donned an expression of contrition. “I’m sorry, uncle,” she said, as meekly as she could manage. “I am trying.”

The faster she expressed an apology, the sooner they could have this conversation over with. The one good thing about having a gullible uncle was that Jane could usually apologize her way out of anything.

But he didn’t start in on the usual lecture, the one she almost had memorized. There was no temporizing over the immoral tendencies that she had so clearly inherited from her mother, the ones she needed to guard against. Instead he frowned.

“What worries me this time,” he said, “is that you appear to have wrapped your sister up in one of your ploys.”

Jane swallowed.

“I had thought that I would serve as a softening influence on you, but I fear that the reverse is happening. Your ways are instead extending to your sweet younger sister. In her innocence, I suppose she imagines that you feel affection for her.”

“I do,” Jane protested. “Do not doubt that, if you doubt anything.”

He simply shook his head. “If you cared for her,” he said, “you would not draw her down your dark path.”

“What dark path?”

“The path of lies,” Titus said gravely. “You have taught your sister how to lie.”

Emily hadn’t needed any teaching on that front.

“If this continues,” Titus said, “I will have to send you away to my sister. Lily is not as kind as I am. She wouldn’t allow you to gad about to party after party without making an attachment. She tells me on a regular basis how I have erred with you. She’d have you married off in no time.”