The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)(107)

He’d started caring more about becoming the kind of person who could make a change than he cared about the change itself. He’d walked away from Jane, and by doing so, he’d told her all the things about herself that everyone else had thrown in her face: that she was wrong, broken, awful.

It was not the little lust of unmet physical needs that he felt for her. He loved her. He loved everything about her, from the fierceness of her devotion to her sister to the shrug of her shoulders when she found herself on horseback with him. He loved the way she smiled. He loved the way that she simply refused to feel shame simply because someone else didn’t approve of her behavior.

He loved Jane. He was always going to love her.

He loved the person she’d made of him—a man who could foil abductions and break into houses when circumstances required. A man who could take on Bradenton and see a foe to vanquish, not a powerful lord to be appeased.

And he’d wanted to make her into nothing because that’s what he’d done to himself.

He’d thought he needed a wren—some proper, upstanding woman who needed his money as much as he needed her breeding.

He could suddenly see his life with that unchosen woman. His ever-so-proper wife would never tell him outright that his father was uncouth and improper. She would simply intimate it with a sniff. Perhaps she might suggest that next year they might want to consider having the elder Mr. Marshall stay at home during the season, as he’d be so much more comfortable amongst his own kind.

She would bear his children—and she’d raise them to be quiet, well-behaved folk just like herself, faintly ashamed of their father’s origins.

“Yes,” he could imagine one of them saying, “perhaps there was that little defect of his mother, but at least our grandfather was a duke. That has to count for something.”

They’d never speak of their Aunt Free—too bold, too forward, altogether too everything. Even Patricia, married to a Jew, or Laura, running a dry-goods store, would be suspect. Eventually, his cipher of a wife would suggest that perhaps they’d all be happiest if they just pretended that Oliver’s family didn’t exist.

Jane had it right: He’d traded his bravery for his ambition.

And if he didn’t make this right—if he didn’t learn to suppress that memory of pain and reach in and grab hold of the coals in front of him, he’d be locked up for life in the chains of his own silence. He’d let too much go already: Jane, his sister, even that time with Bradenton. He’d let Jane do most of the talking. He hadn’t even told Bradenton to his face how disgusting he was.

With that, at least one thing came clear. Oliver stood. He didn’t know how to make things right with Jane yet, but Bradenton…

Bradenton owed him a vote, and Oliver was going to collect.

He set the book down, retrieved his coat. He went down the staircase and out into the main entry.

And with a great effort—with the effort of a man uprooting everything he had made of himself—Oliver put one foot outside into the warm May sunshine.

It was half an hour later when Oliver was shown into the Marquess of Bradenton’s study. The man looked extremely annoyed. He shook his head as he sat at his desk, tapping Oliver’s card against the wood.

“I had three-quarters of a mind not to see you,” he said.

“Of course you did.” Oliver said. “But your curiosity got the better of you.”

“But then,” Bradenton said, “I recalled that Parliament would be voting, and I wanted to work on a speech. One about farmers and governesses. I figured I needed to study my source material.”

Was that supposed to be offensive?

“Save your insinuations,” Oliver said. “And your sly jabs. You’ll need your breath to cast your vote to extend the franchise.”

Bradenton laughed. “You can’t be serious. With what you did to me, you think to win my vote?”

“Of course not,” Oliver said. “How could I win your vote? You’re a marquess, and I’m just one man out of a hundred. One man out of a thousand.” He let his smile spread as he tapped his fingers on the table. “One man out of, say, a hundred thousand.”

Bradenton frowned. “One hundred thousand?”

“More than that, actually. Did you go to Hyde Park a few weeks ago? I did. There was an infectious joy, an exuberance in the air. The people gathered. The people won. I read the estimates of the crowds in the paper later, and yes, that was the lowest number I saw bruited about. One hundred thousand.”

Bradenton shifted uneasily in his chair.

“It’s precisely as you’ve pointed out before,” Oliver said. “There’s one of you, and one hundred thousand of me. You seem to find that comforting. I can’t figure out why.” Oliver leaned forward and smiled. “They’re terrible odds, after all.”

“I’m entirely unmoved by the protestations of rabble.” But Bradenton spoke swiftly, refusing to look Oliver in the eyes. “I have my seat in the House of Lords by birth. I don’t have to bow to what the common people desire.”

“Then you won’t mind when the headlines proclaim that the Reform Bill was blocked once again, and this time by a margin that included the Marquess of Bradenton.”

Bradenton’s eyes widened and he sucked in a breath. But a moment later, he shook his head with vehemence. “I wouldn’t be the only one.”