The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)(33)

She leaned in. “You’re maligning the shade,” she whispered. “Don’t. I actually love it. And I wager that everyone else here would, too, if it had been someone else wearing it first.”

He swallowed. “Maybe. That other person might have been wearing it in greater moderation.”

“I had it made up specially. The gloves, the lace. I thought about having little brilliants sewn all over the bodice in sparkly patterns, but…” She shrugged expressively.

“You decided you didn’t actually want to be responsible for blinding the entire gathering. Thank you.”

“No. I decided that I would save that for the virulently green dress.” She gave him a waggle of the eyebrow. “There must be some escalation, after all. What’s the point in being an heiress, if you aren’t allowed to make anyone cringe?”

Oliver simply shook his head. “Yes, but…”

“It’s the most amazing thing. I don a gown like this, and you’re the only one who tells me to my face how utterly hideous it is. Everyone else has been giving me the most contrived compliments. Here comes someone else, no doubt to compliment me on the extraordinary color.”

He shook his head. “That must take some calculation, Miss Fairfield. Determining precisely the line you must walk to prevent yourself from being bodily hurled from the assembly.”

She smiled. “No calculation at all. They put up with me for one reason, and one reason only. I call it the heiress effect.”

The heiress effect. Maybe that was it—that was what stood between those ugly whispers and the prickle of hair on the back of his neck. He managed a halfhearted smile.

“Miss Fairfield, you frighten me. You and your wardrobe.”

She tapped his wrist with the fan. “That,” she said briskly, “is the point. This way, I can repel dozens of men in one fell swoop, all without even opening my mouth. And nobody can say it’s not demure. I’m even wearing pearls.”

He glanced down. If anyone asked, he was looking at her pearls. Definitely looking at her pearls, which were displayed to admirable effect by her bosom. That lovely swell of sweet flesh, so soft-looking. Her br**sts made even the pernicious pink fabric that framed them appear touchably good.

“Miss Fairfield,” he said, after a moment of silence that stretched a little too long. “I would ask you to dance, but I fear our last conversation was interrupted.”

The smile slowly slid off her face, and her brow crinkled in little lines of worry. “There’s a verandah,” she finally said. “We could go out. It is a little cold, but… Other people are getting air. Not many of them, but we’ll be in sight of the company. If anyone asks, you can claim that you were doing the assembly a favor. Ridding them of the horror of looking at me for a quarter hour.”

She smiled as she said it. She sounded perfectly serious.

And Oliver… Oliver felt a twinge deep inside him. He wasn’t that man. He wasn’t going to humiliate her. He wasn’t.

You will, his gut whispered back.

“You’re not horrid,” he said. “Your gown is.”

“I can guess,” Mr. Marshall said a little later, as they made their way onto the verandah, away from the press of other people, “as to why you are doing this.” His gesture encompassed her gown of fuchsine.

Jane had expected as much. He seemed a clever man; he wouldn’t have missed the import of the conversation he’d overheard. But she looked away, concentrating on the gray Portland stone of the verandah, the stone balustrade ringed by naked trees, cast in flickering shadows.

“Is it your sister?”

“Emily.”

“She’s ill, then.”

“Ill is not the right word. She has a convulsive condition. That is to say, she has convulsions. Seizures. F—” She was talking too much again, and she bit back the even longer explanation that popped into her mind.

“It’s not epilepsy?”

“Some doctors call it epilepsy,” she said cautiously. “But she has seen so many of them. The only thing they can agree on is that they don’t know how to cure her fits.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “What I overheard the other day, that’s the nature of the typical experiment, then? The doctors want to send an electric shock through her?”

“Among so many other things.” Too many treatments to list. Too many for Jane to think about without feeling sick to her stomach. “They’ve tried bloodletting and leeches and potions that make her vomit. Those are the easy ones to talk about. The rest…” If she closed her eyes, she could still smell the poker burning into her sister’s arm. She could still hear her scream. “You don’t want to hear about the rest.”

“Her guardian, I take it, is in favor of experimentation. You are not.”

“Emily is not,” Jane said tightly. “Therefore, I am not.”

She waited for him to argue with her. To tell her what Titus always said—that young girls had guardians so that someone could make them do the things they did not wish to do.

“I can scarcely imagine,” Mr. Marshall finally said. “My sister-in-law, Minnie—she’s the Duchess of Clermont—bother, never mind her title.”

Jane blinked, but he went on, as if he called duchesses by their Christian names every day. Maybe he did.