The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)(49)

Emily wasn’t moving right now.

Suspicion gathered at the edge of Jane’s mind. There was rather more color in her cheeks, and…

“Emily, have you—”

Her sister looked up sharply. “Nothing,” she caroled sweetly. “I’ve been doing nothing. See how it feels?”

Jane shook her head. “Never mind. I don’t actually want to know. If Titus finds out, I want to be able to claim ignorance, and I’ll hardly be able to do that if you’re telling me everything.”

A wistful smile touched her sister’s face and she looked away. Jane knew that smile.

“Just tell me that whatever it is you’re doing”—Jane trailed off—“or not doing…”

Whatever it was her sister was doing, she had to be leaving the house. By herself; Blickstall had been with Jane today. There were risks there, and not just the foolish worries Titus held.

“Tell me,” she said, “that you’re staying safe.”

“Even Titus could not object.” Emily gave her a wicked smile. “I’m reading his law books, that’s all.” Her finger traced a curlicue on the coverlet.

“In the course of reading his books,” Jane said softly, “perhaps you’ll have noticed that people do each other harm from time to time. I’d hate for you to have to discover the criminal from personal experience.”

“Oh, no.” Emily sketched a curling tendril with the tip of her finger. “There’s no chance of that.”

“There’s always a chance—”

“Hypothetically speaking,” Emily said, “if someone is unwilling to eat an animal because he does not believe in doing it harm, it follows that he would think the same of humans.”

“No,” Jane said, “it does not follow. Please do not think it follows.”

Emily paused in the midst of her tracery. She stopped still—something she did so rarely that Jane felt herself leaning in, wanting to shake her to make sure that she was still breathing.

“If a rock never moves,” her sister finally said, “the water wears it away all the same. I am being hurt, Jane, and if I stay still, Titus will wear me away. Sometimes I wonder that there’s anything left of me at all.”

“Emily.” Jane touched her sister’s hand. “I won’t let that happen.”

“It’s not up to you to let it. That’s what Titus would say.” Her sister raised her eyes. “Don’t counsel me to stay home because I might get hurt.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

Emily squeezed her hand. “Then you keep your nothing, and I’ll keep mine.”

It was the third time that Emily had slipped out of her room to meet Mr. Bhattacharya.

If her uncle knew what was happening, he would have had a fit of his own. He would have delivered her lecture after lecture about her innocence and how she was too kind and good and young. How men were not to be trusted.

But Mr. Bhattacharya had proven far too trustworthy for Emily’s tastes. He smiled at her. He took her arm when they found a path that was narrow, but he relinquished it when the footing was secure. He looked—oh, he definitely looked. But he hadn’t done anything untrustworthy. Nothing at all.

Today, he was quieter than usual. He’d been perfectly polite in greeting her. And then they’d walked and walked along the brook, following the path until it met up with the road. He’d not said a word. After about a half an hour, he finally spoke.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not the best of company. I’m preparing for the Tripos, and I’m trying to figure out some of the trickier points of common law. It makes my head hurt.”

“Would you like to talk it over?”

She’d started reading Titus’s law books again just to see what Mr. Bhattacharya was talking about. Her uncle had been a little confused, but had finally said that she might enjoy the stories in the cases so long as she skipped over the conclusions of law.

Mr. Bhattacharya didn’t act as if she couldn’t follow the reasoning, as if the things he learned were above her. He just talked to her.

Last time, he’d pulled one of his books from his satchel and they’d read through a passage together, their heads bent over it in tandem, so close that he could have reached out and set his hand over hers.

He hadn’t.

Today, though, he didn’t take out his book. He looked up at the sky instead. “There is a case,” he finally said, “where the courts conclude that a bequest is invalid because an eighty-year-old woman could have had a child after the will was drafted.” He made an annoyed noise.

Emily folded her hands, waiting, but he didn’t say anything else. He simply glared at her as if the centuries-long foibles of Chancery could be foisted on her shoulders.

“Perhaps,” Emily finally said, “if you could explain to me precisely where you are having difficulties, I might be able to be of more help.”

“I—” He blinked at her. “How is it not obvious where I am having difficulties? Start with the fact that an eighty year old woman does not bear children.”

“Sarah had children in the Bible,” Emily said, “and she was at least eighty years old, so—”

“The Bible.” He shook his head. “If we are allowed to argue from that authority, I still don’t understand it. The rule in question says that it must become clear who a bequest is going to within twenty-one years of the death of a person who was living at the time the bequest was made. If we take the Bible as authority, we need only use Jesus Christ as a person living at the time of the bequest. Since he rose from the dead and lives forever, then—”