The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)

They could be on a ship by…


No. If she disappeared without explanation, her uncle would have a telegram on his desk before Jane could arrive in Cambridge. He would never let Emily out of his sight.

Sometimes, it felt impossible to get ahead. She’d come to know Oliver Marshall and he’d left. She’d made friends with Genevieve and Geraldine, but she’d been sent away and they’d gone on to London. Now she was just beginning to make friends with a few ladies here, but she was being ripped away from them… And Emily, the one person she’d believed she could count on, was in danger.

Companionship was an illusion, one that could be snatched away at any moment. She’d been fooling herself. She stopped in the street, her hands shaking.

She was alone, all alone.

No. The thought came to her on a whisper of warmth. You aren’t.

That thought brought back a rush of memory—of Oliver’s hands, his eyes. Of the heat of his mouth. She’d tried—and failed—not to think of him in the months that had passed. It wouldn’t do any good, she’d told herself. She would never see him again. Thinking of him was a weakness.

So why, now, did thoughts of him make her feel strong?

For one glorious moment, her heart skipped a beat. The cold extremities of her fingers tingled with new life. You’re not alone.

It wasn’t rational thought that brought her down the street to her bank. It was a warm well of certainty. She wasn’t alone. She didn’t have to be. She smiled at the clerk, who knew her well. When she wrote out the amount she wanted withdrawn, his eyes widened. But he didn’t argue. He simply counted the bills.

Maybe it was foolish. She surely didn’t need him. Still, her next stop was the telegraph office. It was not far from the bank. It shared space with a confectioner, in fact, since neither were terribly busy, and the same round, jovial woman ran them both.

She didn’t need him. But she wanted, oh, she desperately wanted, to believe she wasn’t alone.

Jane was filling out the form, dreaming foolish, ridiculous dreams of Oliver Marshall thundering in on a white horse—what the horse had to do with anything, she didn’t know—and sweeping her away.

The store bell rang; the door opened. And Dorling walked in.

Her dreams vanished like popped soap bubbles. Her palms went cold. The little pencil she’d been holding fell to the floor, her nerveless fingers no longer able to grasp it. He looked about with purpose; when his eyes lit on her, he smiled quizzically as if surprised to see her.

Of course he had come here. He’d come to send the telegram she had feared—the one to her uncle, the one letting him know that Jane had fled and that he needed to keep watch on Emily.

“Miss Fairfield,” he said, coming to stand beside her. “Whatever are you doing here?”

Jane set her hand over the paper she had been filling out and nudged the pencil under the display with her foot.

He rubbed at his sideburns. “I, uh, I encountered your aunt this morning. She said you had gone missing.”

Jane looked George Dorling in the eyes. She imagined that he was Oliver Marshall. That was the only way she managed to manufacture a smile for him.

“I had need of a few things,” she said airily. She turned back to the woman in front of her. “Two shillings of peppermint, please.”

So saying, she shoved the scarcely filled-out paper and a heavy coin at the woman.

She turned back to Dorling. Behind her, she heard the mechanical gears of the register whir and click, the rustle of a bag as the woman started filling it with candy.

Pretending was so easy.

“My aunt,” Jane said, “is the most tiresome woman. She was driving me mad with her complaints this morning. ‘No, Jane, don’t wear those gloves.’ ‘No, Jane, stop talking so much. Nobody wants to hear about coal aniline dyes again.’” Jane heaved a put-upon sigh and looked down. She’d tasted something sour when she’d said those words, driving me mad.

“How untoward of her,” Dorling said softly. “Putting off a woman as sweet as you? She must be unbearable.”

Across the counter, the woman slid a bag of peppermints to Jane and a handful of small coins.

Would she even send the telegram, incomplete as it was? Would it even matter?

It didn’t, actually. The paper had done its job. Whether he got it, whether he came… Jane didn’t feel as if she were alone any longer. That left her with a renewed sense of purpose. She wasn’t going to let anyone steal her sister away.

She looked over at Dorling, who smiled warmly. Even though her skin crawled, even though she wanted to go home and scrub herself all over to rid herself of the thought of his persuading her, she gave him a saucy wink.

“My aunt,” she repeated, “is driving me mad. I can’t spend another night in the same house as her.”

“Can’t you?” He smiled back. It wasn’t affection in his grin or even pleasure. It was, she imagined, the smirk of a cat facing a mouse in a corner.