The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)

But he didn’t look disgusted by her admission. He didn’t even look amused by her babbling. He looked… She wasn’t sure what that expression was on his face. His eyes were clear, so clear that in the moonlight they looked almost colorless.

He took his hand from hers. “Never trust a man who claims that he is telling you ninety-five percent of the truth.”

His words came over her like a cold wash of water. There was something grim in his face, something she couldn’t quite understand. She peered up at him. “What do you mean?”

“What would you do,” he said carefully, “if I were to tell everyone of this conversation? If you think matters are impossible now, when they think you merely ignorant, what do you suppose they would do if they knew you had done all this on purpose?”

She opened her mouth to answer and then shut it, ever so slowly. “But you wouldn’t tell.”

He shook his head. “Miss Fairfield,” he said, “why do you think I was kind to you?”

“Because—you—that is to say…” She swallowed. “You mean to say, that’s not just the way you are?”

“No. If I’d had my choice of matters, I would have simply avoided you after that first awful night. I talked to you because Bradenton asked me to do it.”

She took a step back involuntarily. “Bradenton! What has he to do with any of this?”

“He thinks you need to know your place. He offered me a trade: his vote in Parliament, if I’d deliver a sharp lesson to you. I talked to you to figure out if I could do it.”

Her head spun. She should have known. This wasn’t real. That hand on hers, that look in his eye. None of it was real. He had been too nice, and she was—

She shook her head, dispelling those thoughts. “You wouldn’t be telling me of this if you intended to take him up on the offer.”

His lips compressed. Then he took her arm. “Walk with me,” he said.

There wasn’t much of anywhere to go—just a little circuit around the verandah. But when they got to the far edge, he stopped, gesturing for her to sit on a bench. He’d led her out of view of everyone else. He looked around and sat down next to her.

“There’s something you should know.” He wasn’t looking at her now; he was staring off into the night sky. “I tell myself the exact same thing you just said—that I would never do it. But there was a time. I was fifteen years old at Eton.” He leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees. “I didn’t fit in. My brother and my cousin did their best, but when they were not present, I had to take care of myself. I did it, too. There were a handful of us who weren’t born to a grand position in society, and we made our way by banding together. Walking together. Working together. Offering such small encouragements to one another that would make the days bearable.”

“Did none of the adults stop what the other boys were doing?”

He turned and gave her a level glance. “Boys will be boys, Miss Fairfield, and generally speaking, the punishment we were subjected to wasn’t so awful. We were tripped, insulted, occasionally set upon. The sort of thing every boy experiences at school. We just had a larger dose. Enough so that we would know our places.”

For some reason, his mouth set into a harder line at that, and he didn’t speak for a minute.

“I had it a little easier than most. My father had been a pugilist, and the other boys learned to be wary of me. They wouldn’t take me on unless there were two or three of them at a time.”

She bit back a horrified gasp.

“It doesn’t matter how good you are at fisticuffs, though. At some point, you get tired of bruises.”

Jane reached out and took his hand. She’d been afraid he would push her away, but he didn’t.

“There was another boy. Joseph Clemons. He was small for his age and timid. He hid behind me every chance he got.” He sighed. “And you know what? I hated him. I tried not to. It wasn’t his fault he was set on so much. It wasn’t his fault that I’d stand up for him. It wasn’t his fault his father was a shoemaker, nor was it his fault that he was a brilliant Latin scholar, the likes of which the school had not seen in dozens of years. Still, I resented him so for causing me such difficulties. I just protected him out of…”

He shrugged. His hand clenched around hers. Out of some innate sense of fair play, she suspected.

“Out of spite,” he said. “One fight is nothing. Two fights are nothing. Three years of fighting makes you weary. One day, I came upon Clemons with two older boys. I was going to stop them, because that was what I did. But Bradenton was nearby. He said, ‘Marshall, all they want is for you to stop challenging them. Walk away and leave them alone.’” He looked up. “I think he could have given me any reason to walk away at that point and I would have taken it. I did.”

“I take it that Bradenton was wrong.”

“Oh, no,” Oliver said softly. “He was right. Those particular boys never came for me again. As for Clemons… I don’t know what they did to him, but when he left the infirmary, he never came back.”