The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)(15)

Still, she felt something that she’d only read about in the pages of a book. There was a slow prickle in her throat, a flush of heat that slid over her skin. She felt a sense of pure awareness. A frisson. She felt a real live frisson just from looking into his eyes.

How dreadful.

She looked away. “Mr. Cromwell,” she said, almost desperate to erase that feeling from her skin. “How lovely to encounter you again.”

He didn’t seem annoyed at her misidentification. He didn’t blink or correct her. “Miss Fairfield,” he said, and gave her a smile so friendly that she almost stepped back.

Mr. Marshall’s companion was a dark-haired gentleman who would have fit the brooding hero mold rather better. He blinked and looked between the two of them with a curious expression on his face. “Cromwell?” he asked in low tones.

“Yes,” Mr. Marshall said. “Did I forget to mention that? I’ve been politiciking under an assumed name. Play along, Sebastian.” He turned to Jane and said, “Miss Fairfield, might I introduce my friend? This is Mr. Sebastian—”

The other man took a step forward and took her hand. “Sebastian Brightbuttons.” This, with a glance at Mr. Marshall. “If you get to assume a name, I want one, too.”

In all the months in which Jane had been operating under a charade, she’d learned to deal with almost every emotional response to her mannerisms. She could manage everything from anger to disbelief.

Playfulness? That was new. She swallowed and tried to do what she always did. She imagined the conversation as a prime coach-and-four. She imagined it racing along a road at top speed, the wheels glinting in the sunlight. And then she imagined driving it straight into a hedge.

“Sebastian,” Jane mused. “Like Sebastian Malheur, the famous scientist?” A comparison guaranteed to put this gentleman off. Malheur was a name that one heard around Cambridge a great deal—a man who was known for giving lectures where he openly talked of sexual intercourse under the guise of discussing the inheritance of traits. His name was cursed alongside that of Charles Darwin, and sometimes with greater vituperation.

But instead of flushing, Mr. Marshall and Mr. Brightbuttons exchanged amused glances.

“Very much like him,” Mr. Brightbuttons said. “Are you an enthusiast of his work? I am.” He leaned in a little closer. “Actually, I think he’s brilliant.”

Marshall was watching her again, and Jane’s skin prickled under his perusal.

That was when Jane realized she’d made a mistake. Those freckles, his background—they’d all misled her into thinking that he was a quiet little rabbit.

He wasn’t. He was the wolf that looked as if he were lounging about on the outskirts of the pack, a lone hanger-on, when in truth he had adopted that position simply so that he could see everything that transpired in the fields below. He wasn’t solitary; he was waiting for someone to make a mistake.

He looked willing to wait a very long time.

But he hadn’t had to. She’d used the wrong-name trick on Marshall the other night, and here she was, repeating it again. Use a stratagem too many times, and people began to be suspicious.

She blamed that damned frisson.

Mr. Brightbuttons, or whatever his name was, was grinning at her, too.

“Tell me,” he said, “do you really think that I’m like Sebastian Malheur? Because I’ve heard that he is excruciatingly handsome.”

He smiled at her, and Jane realized she’d made another mistake. He wasn’t Sebastian some-random-name-that-he-hadn’t-admitted-to. He was Sebastian Malheur in the flesh.

Mr. Marshall was friends with the infamous Malheur. Jane swallowed.

“You can’t be very much like Malheur, then,” she managed. “I’ve been looking at you for a full thirty seconds, and I haven’t had a single flutter of interest.”

Mr. Marshall let out a crack of laughter.

“Very well, Miss Fairfield,” he said. “You’ve earned it. May I introduce Sebastian Malheur, my friend and cousin. He won’t assume you’re as dreadful as rumor says, so long as you give him the same credit.”

Jane opened her mouth to agree. She almost did, before she realized what he’d said—and what she’d almost assented to. She had to physically yank her hand behind her back to keep from offering it in friendship.

“What are you talking about?” Her voice sounded far too high. “I haven’t got a dreadful reputation. And Malheur—isn’t he some kind of evolutionist? I have heard that his lectures are entirely wild.”

“I’d planned to call the work I’m preparing now ‘Orgies of the Peppered Moth,’” Mr. Malheur said brightly. “It’s a series of heated interrogations of winged insects, completely unclothed, doing nothing but—”

Mr. Marshall jabbed his friend with an elbow.

“What? Have you got some sort of vendetta against moth-on-moth—”

“Really, Sebastian.”

His friend shrugged and then looked back at Jane. “Only one way to find out,” he said. “Come to my next lecture in a handful of months. I’ll start off with snapdragons and peas. Nobody can object to a discussion of plant reproduction. If they did, we’d require flowers to don petticoats instead of wandering around, showing their reproductive parts to all and sundry.”