The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)(44)

“We’ll just be a moment, ladies,” he said to the twins, before he ushered Jane inside.

She’d been in the greenhouses before. A main hallway stretched in front of her, with individual rooms connected off it, each with its separate temperature and humidity. The hallway itself was moist and heated; jungle vines flourished on the walls.

The specimens here were labeled in both Latin and English, and sometimes in letters and numbers that meant nothing to Jane. Some university botanist must be studying them, Jane supposed. Steel pipes made a quiet gurgling sound, hot water flowing through them, radiating warmth. Jane had dressed for the cold, and suddenly she was sweltering.

Geraldine probably wouldn’t have done anything so uncouth as sweat.

Bradenton bowed her into a room of clay pots and sand with a smile. Jane didn’t smile back. This was the man who wanted her hurt. Humiliated. Who was willing to trade a vote in Parliament to get that result.

“So, my lord,” Jane asked, “where is this exceedingly rare plant?”

He contemplated her. “I cannot make you out.”

“Whyever not?” Jane spun around, taking in the plants in the room. “You and I are so similar.” It was dry and hot; a big, square planter to the left contained rocks and sand and a number of squiggly misshapen green things. They’d have been swallowed up by the underbrush if they’d dared to grow in the Cambridge woods.

“Similar?”

“But of course.” Jane still refused to look at him. “We’re simple people. The sort that nobody would care about if circumstances were different. I’m elevated by my fortune. You’re elevated by your title.”

He made a sound of disbelief. “That’s why you spurned me? Because you think you’re my equal?” There was an ugly tone in his voice.

Her heart beat faster. She put him off because that was what she did. But perhaps she’d made a special effort with him. Others had talked and laughed about her, but after those first few weeks, he’d encouraged them. And he’d tried to pretend he didn’t.

“Spurn you?” she said with a laugh. “How could I have spurned you? You’ve never offered me anything to spurn.”

He made a noise. “No matter.”

“I can’t imagine why you’d offer,” Jane said. You’re a marquess. You don’t need…” She stopped, as if something had just occurred to her. “Oh.”

His eyes burned into hers, but Jane wasn’t going to let his glare stop her. She wanted him to feel a fraction of the pain he wished on her.

“You do need my money,” Jane said. “Don’t you?”

“Shut up.”

“Of course.” Jane kept her face a mask of solicitude. “I feel dreadfully for you. How embarrassing that must be. You write all the laws, you can’t lose your lands even by mismanagement, and yet with all those advantages, you can’t even fix the game to turn a profit on your own estates. Good heavens; that must take singular skill.”

He took another step toward her. “Shut up,” he said on a low growl.

“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone. You know I am the very soul of discretion.”

He made a strangled noise in his throat and took yet another step toward her.

She’d gone too far. Twitting him was one thing; taunting another. She froze and looked up at the menace that had taken over his features. For all that the Johnson sisters were watching, there was nothing they could—quite possibly nothing they would—do to save her if he wanted to hurt her. She was effectively alone with the man, and he wished her ill. He wanted her to shut up.

It had never been one of her skills.

She smiled blindly at him, clinging to her pretense of ignorance. “I feel for you, Bradenton. Did you hear of me and imagine a poor, impressionable child, one who would be overwhelmed by your wit and charm? You must have been so disappointed. You imagined my dowry was yours, and then I laughed at you the first time you gave me a grandiose compliment.”

If anything, his eyes grew angrier. “You little bitch,” he whispered. “You’ve been doing it on purpose.”

“Doing what?” Jane held on to her smile as if it were the only thing shielding her from a dragon’s flames. “I haven’t been doing a thing except stating a few facts. Don’t you like facts, my lord?”

No. He didn’t. He took a final step toward her, and this time he raised his walking stick, clenched like a truncheon in his fist.

Her hands went cold. She really had gone too far.

She kept smiling. “You were going to show me a plant, my lord.”

He stopped, shook his head, as if remembering that they were in a greenhouse. That the walls were glass. That no matter what words had been exchanged, she was a lady—and if it got out that he’d struck her, his reputation would suffer.

He took a breath, and then another, and then yet another, until his countenance presented as smooth a lie as Jane’s.

“There.” He inverted his walking stick so that the curved head pointed to a clay pot filled with sand. “That is it.”

It was greenish-gray, an ugly mess of a plant. Fat snakes as thick as her thumb pointed up in a tangled knot, radiating sharp little needles.

“It reminds me of you, Miss Fairfield.” A trace of venom still carried on his voice.