The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)(56)

He stepped forward and looked obligingly.

Maybe not so obligingly. She was close enough to see his eyes behind his spectacles, dropping not to her pendant but…

Technically, her gown climbed halfway up to her neck. Also technically, the upper fabric of her bodice was dark lace. And lace had holes.

Nothing showed that wouldn’t have shown in a ball gown, but it still showed. If someone stood close, pretending to look at a necklace…

He lifted his gaze to her face and gave her an unapologetic smile.

“You’re right. That quite makes the outfit.” He crooked his finger. “Let me see it again.”

Jane flushed, and in front of her, Geraldine coughed.

“Oh, Geraldine,” Genevieve said loudly, “I hope you’re not coming down with something.”

“Nonsense,” said Hapford. “That didn’t—”

But Geraldine interrupted him. “I’m afraid I might be. We’d better go. Hapford, you’ll walk me?”

“But…”

She linked her arm with her fiancé’s. “Come along,” she said.

“But… Oh.”

“Unless,” Geraldine said, “you wish us to stay, Miss Fairfield?”

“Um.” Jane flushed hotter. “No. That would be unnecessary.”

Genevieve waved at her, and the three of them walked away. Jane watched them go, the entire time feeling Mr. Marshall’s eyes on her…necklace. She turned back to him and he raised his eyes to her face.

“You have a smudge on your spectacles.”

“I do?”

“Yes.” She lifted her hand and placed it deliberately against the glass. “A fingerprint right there.”

He gave her a look of mock annoyance and took off his glasses to clean them with a handkerchief.

“That’s what you get for ogling my monkey. Now imagine what I’ll do if you take Bradenton up on his offer.”

That smile that had curled the corners of his lips faltered. His breath sucked in. “Jane.”

“What vote is it?” she asked. “The one that’s so important.”

But he didn’t answer right away. Instead, he held out his elbow to her. “Walk with me.” They passed by the cricket game.

“You know,” he finally said, “that I’m a duke’s byblow.”

“Yes.”

“Legally, I am not any kind of bastard. My mother was married when I was born and I was acknowledged by her husband. Up until a few years ago, I wasn’t even publicly recognized as the duke’s progeny. Some people knew, of course, but it was at best whispered about, never spoken aloud.”

Legally, Jane wasn’t a bastard, either. But she still was treated like one.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I forget that people think I’m Clermont’s son. They don’t believe that Hugo Marshall is my father. It’s odd, because he’s never been anything else to me. Just…father. He never acted as if my sisters who were his flesh and blood were more important than I was. I didn’t realize how extraordinary this was for most of my childhood. It just was.”

Oh, she felt a twinge of jealousy at that, one that twined around her heart at the thought of having a real family.

“What was it like?” she asked, her voice low.

“He taught me how to fish, how to set a snare for a rabbit, how to fight politely at fisticuffs, and how to win a fight very impolitely using dirty tricks. If necessary.” Mr. Marshall took a deep breath. “He taught me how to balance books and how to fold a piece of paper into a box. He showed me how to whistle on a blade of grass. My father taught me everything. And so I call him father because that’s what he was. In every sense of the word except that one tiny thing.”

“So you were a part of the family, then?”

“Oh, yes. I grew up with them. They ran a small farm. And that’s what brings me to all of this. My parents have never been wealthy. They have always had enough. My mother and father are both clever. Twice a year, they lease out factories for a week, just long enough to distill oils and make soaps. Not great big bars of soaps, produced for the masses, but scented, molded soaps. My mother packages them for ladies and charges twenty times their worth.” He smiled and glanced at her. “You use it, I think. Lady Serena’s Secret.”

She did. The boxes appealed to her in their colorful range of pastels. The bars of soap had come wrapped in tissue, accompanied by a slip of paper explaining the scent. There were different scents for every month of the year, altering with the seasons. She paid five times more for those small, sweet-smelling bars than she might otherwise have laid out, but unwrapping them gave her pleasure so she’d accounted it money well spent.

“My parents do well for themselves,” Mr. Marshall continued. “But I have three sisters. Two of them have recently married, and they’ve laid out funds to establish them in their new lives. There was my own schooling at Cambridge. And while the current Duke of Clermont—my brother—settled money on me when I came of age, they’ve refused to take anything from him on principle.”

“Are you telling me your family is poor?” she said.

“No, not at all.” He swallowed and looked away. “Although…yes, I suppose you would think so. I am telling you that my father is a tenant at will in a county constituency. He pays an annual rent of forty pounds a year.”