The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)(61)

“She has you there.” Canterly smothered a smile.

“Do I?” Jane asked innocently. “Because if that’s so, then I win this round of our game, Bradenton.”

That was met with an even more prickly silence. Bradenton squinted at Jane, leaning forward, as if trying to make her out from a distance.

“Our game?” he repeated.

“Yes,” Jane said. “Our game. You know, the one where I play at ignorance and you play at insults.”

Bradenton inhaled. “Play?”

“It is play, of course,” Jane said. “The alternative is that you’ve been carrying a grudge against me all these months, simply because your fortunes were in a decline and I had suggested that you needed to find another heiress.”

Bradenton stood up. “Why, you poxy little—”

Next to him, another man put his hand on Bradenton’s sleeve. “Come now, Bradenton.” Bradenton looked down and then—very slowly—he sat.

“Good heavens,” Jane said, “you’re not upset about the game, are you? And here I thought it was all in good fun, after all.”

“I don’t understand,” Canterly said.

“There’s only one part I regret,” Jane said. “Mr. Whitting, a few weeks ago, I implied that you were deficient in understanding. That wasn’t well done of me. In my defense, you’ve said worse of me, but…” She shrugged. “I still ought not have done it.”

“A game,” Bradenton said, choking on the words. “A game. You think this is a game.”

“You seem so surprised. Here I thought you all gamesters.” Jane looked around the table. “After all, Bradenton did offer to sway your votes to the newly proposed Reform Act if only Mr. Marshall would humiliate me. Are you telling me the rest of the table knew nothing of this?”

Silence met this—a long, deep, uncomfortable silence. One that Oliver reveled in.

Across the table from Jane, Mr. Ellisford set down his spoon. “Bradenton,” he said seriously, “you know I’m your friend. I’ve known you far too long. You’d never prevail on our friendship for such petty reasons. I know you wouldn’t.” But despite the certainty of his words, there was a question in his voice.

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Bradenton said heartily. “You have only her word for it. She’s hardly reliable. Ask anyone here.” He looked up at Oliver. “Except Marshall. He’s a bastard, and he’d tell any lie to get ahead.”

“No,” Oliver said quietly.

“No, you’re not a bastard? You can’t deny your parentage.”

“No,” Oliver said. “I’m not the only one who will speak on her behalf.”

“I saw you threaten her,” Genevieve Johnson put in. “Geraldine and I both did. We feared for her safety.”

A murmur swelled around the table.

Bradenton’s eyes narrowed. “You misunderstood.”

Across the table from her, Hapford shut his eyes. “I’m sorry, uncle.” He spoke softly.

“What?” Bradenton said.

“I’m sorry,” Hapford repeated more loudly. His hands had worked his serviette into a ball. “But I don’t think my father would want… I do not think he would want…” He trailed off. “Miss Fairfield is telling the truth. I was there when the marquess made his offer to Mr. Marshall. You offered him precisely what she said—your vote, your help swaying the men here, if only he would show Miss Fairfield her place.” He swallowed. “I didn’t like it then, and it has not sat well with me since.”

The silence grew again, threatening like thunder.

Hapford blew out his breath. “When my father recommended a relationship with you men to me on his deathbed, I did not think he intended to attach me to a group of small-minded power-mongers, intent on hurting women. He recommended you as a group honestly interested in the best interests of England.”

“Yes,” Ellisford finally said, pointedly turning away from Bradenton. “You have the right of it. That’s what I thought we were, too.”

“Then maybe we can listen to Mr. Marshall without having him pay so high a price.”

“You’ve convinced me,” Ellisford said to Oliver several hours later. “I’m rather glad we had this talk. I’d never imagined…”

His eyes darted to the left. The gentlemen in the library sat with cigars and glasses of port. Bradenton was the only one who kept his silence. He’d stewed the entire evening: through dinner, through the conversations after the men separated from the ladies. Just as well he’d kept quiet; nobody else seemed inclined to talk to him, even though he was the host.

“I feel the same,” Oliver said. “And we’ll talk again in London.”

“Of course.”

Bradenton’s silence shouted sullenly, but nobody was paying him any mind.

Oliver had won. Not Bradenton’s vote—he’d never get that now—but all the things he’d wanted. The votes of Bradenton’s little set. His own integrity. He could afford to be magnanimous—and in this case, magnanimity meant letting the man stew in peace.

“Well,” Oliver said, “shall we rejoin the ladies?”

Everyone agreed. But when Oliver stood, Bradenton finally spoke. “Not you, Marshall,” he growled. “You and I have business.”