The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)(25)

The question surprised her.

“I haven’t read it.” She shrugged. “But I did read the first eight of the series. They’re awful, but they’re also curiously compelling.”

“I like curiously compelling. And I love awful. Should I get it?”

She choked, imagining Mrs. Larriger on his bookshelf next to A Practical Guide to Political Careers.

But he was flipping through the book as if he were considering the purchase.

“Mrs. Larriger is old, bossy, annoying, and I do believe she isn’t in her right mind. You wouldn’t…”

“She sounds a great deal like my aunt Freddy.” He smiled at her. “Old, bossy, annoying… She never leaves her home any longer, and some people speak ill of her for that. But don’t tell me my aunt isn’t in her right mind. It’s like with your sister. I love her too well to hear your criticism.”

She swallowed. “If you’re going to do this, you have to start with the first one.” She wandered back down the aisle and scanned the titles on the spines. “Here.”

She held out Mrs. Larriger Leaves Home and waited to see what he would do with it.

He took it without hesitation and opened it up. “Nice frontispiece,” he commented. “Do you think the author is really named Mrs. Larriger?”

“No,” Jane said baldly. “I do not. The first book was printed two and a half years ago, and since that time, there have been twenty-two more published, practically a book every month. I think Mrs. Larriger is composed by committee. No one person could write so swiftly—not unless she had nothing else to do.”

“Mmm, that does seem unlikely.” Mr. Marshall turned to the first page. “‘For the first fifty-eight years of her life, Mrs. Laura Larriger lived in Portsmouth in sight of the harbor. She never wondered where the ships went, and cared about their return only when one of them happened to bring her husband home from one of his trading voyages. There was never any reason to care. Her house was comfortable, her husband brought in an excellent income, and to her great satisfaction, he was almost never present.’” He looked up. “There are worse starting paragraphs, I suppose.”

“Do continue on.”

“‘But one day, on one of those rare occasions when her husband was home, he was struck on the head by a falling anvil. He died instantly.’” Mr. Marshall blinked. He blinked again and set his finger on the text he’d just read. “Wait. I don’t understand. How did an anvil fall on her husband while he was at home? Where did it come from? Was he in the habit of suspending anvils from the ceiling?”

“You will have to read and find out,” Jane said. “I am not in the habit of telling people what happens in a book. Only brutes disclose what comes next.”

He shook his head. “Very well, then. ‘That day, Mrs. Larriger sat in her parlor. But the walls seemed thicker. The air felt closer. For almost sixty years, she had never felt the slightest curiosity about the world outside her door. Now, the air beyond her walls seemed to call out to her. Leave, it whispered. Leave. Leave before they conduct the inquest.’” Mr. Marshall laughed. “Ah, I think I am beginning to understand the anvil—and Mrs. Larriger.

“‘She took a deep breath. She packed a satchel. And then, with a great effort, with the effort of a woman uprooting everything she had known, Mrs. Larriger put one foot outside her door into the warm May sunshine. And as she didn’t burst into flame, she marched down to the harbor and purchased passage on a vessel that was departing within the next five minutes.’” He closed the book. “Well. I’m getting it.”

“It will go well with A Practical Guide to Plato’s Most Important Writings.”

He frowned. “What’s that?”

She gestured. “I can’t see the entire title of your book.”

“Ah.” His grin flashed brilliantly, and he turned the book to face her.

A Practical Guide to Pranks, it read.

“All nostalgia, I’m afraid. I miss the days when I could respond to ridiculousness with a little mischief, that’s all.” He sighed. “There was one night when we were students at Trinity… There was a man who had a new phaeton that he was crowing about. So my brother, Sebastian, and I disassembled it and then reconstructed it entirely inside his rooms. We couldn’t put the wheels on, you understand, but everything else… He was so violently drunk when he returned that he thought nothing of it, but you should have heard him shout come the morning.”

He wasn’t anything like she’d imagined, this man who claimed he would be prime minister. He had a sparkle in his eye and an air of mischief about him. Was he pretending at politics, or was he pretending at this?

“And here I had the impression that you were respectable.”

He sighed, and the light in his eyes dimmed. “Alas. I am.” He spoke the words grudgingly. “High spirits are always excused in the young, but I’m well past the age where a good prank can be overlooked. Still, one can imagine.”

This felt like a dream—standing next to him, talking about books and pranks.

“Sebastian,” she said. “That would be Mr. Malheur, would it not?”

“He’s the only one of us who skipped over the respectable phase. He’s never stopped being a troublemaker.” His eyes abstracted. “In some ways, I envy him. In others, not so much.”