The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)(9)

Nonetheless, when she and her sister stood side by side, Jane felt as if she were a draft horse. The kind of horse that people on the street eyeballed as it clopped past, whispering to one another. That beast is nineteen hands at the shoulder, I’d warrant. At least one hundred and fifty stone.

Jane supposed they took after their respective fathers. And that was part of Jane’s problem.

“Well?” Emily demanded again. “What did the new fellow think of you?”

Some people confused Emily’s energy with childlike enthusiasm. Jane knew her sister better. She was always in motion—running when it was allowed, walking when it wasn’t. When she was forced to sit, she jiggled her leg impatiently.

She jiggled her leg constantly these days.

Jane contemplated her answer. “He’s tall, at least,” she finally managed. He was tall—maybe an inch taller than Jane in heeled shoes, which was a rare feat in a man. “And clever.” He hadn’t even paused to deliver that quip about the Tower of London. “Luckily, I managed to wear him down in the end.”

She smiled faintly at the door as she spoke. Ah, the bittersweet taste of victory. He’d been impressive, really. He had tried so hard to be nice to her and her money.

“How did you do it?”

“I had to eat off his plate,” Jane admitted.

“How perfectly lovely. You used my trick.” Emily glowed with a smile, jiggling her leg against the pink of her coverlet. “I thought you said you were holding it in reserve. I’ll have to think of another good one.”

“I was holding it in reserve.” Jane blinked. “He was quite determined to be kind to me, and he was funny to boot. If I’d let him talk to me much longer, he would have made me laugh. I had to break him before that happened.”

He’d had the strangest expression on his face near the end, solemn and brooding, as if he wanted desperately to like her and was upset at his own failure. His complexion was so fair, she wouldn’t have thought he’d have been able to brood. His eyes had managed the trick—those pale, troubled eyes, masked slightly by the glass of his spectacles.

“We’ll need a new reserve trick.” Emily rubbed her chin.

Indeed. Jane wouldn’t feel safe until Marshall was actually laughing with the others. She was almost going to regret breaking him. He’d been nice.

But she’d given him no reason to be kind to her. No reason except the hundred thousand reasons that any man had, and that made him not nice at all. She shook her head, dispelling all thoughts of kind-eyed, bright-haired men, and turned back to her sister.

“I have something for you.” She turned back to the cloak she’d tossed aside and rummaged through the pockets until she found the gift.

“Oh!” Emily was sitting up straight now. “Oh, it has been forever since the last one.”

“I found it this afternoon, but Titus said you were not to be disturbed during your nap, so…”

She held out the volume.

Emily’s face lit and she reached out eagerly, taking the book with a reverent sigh. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you forever.” She brushed one hand gently down the cover. “I hope that Mrs. Blickstall didn’t raise too much trouble over it?”

Jane waved a hand dismissively. She had an understanding with her chaperone. Their uncle had chosen Mrs. Blickstall to accompany Jane, but it was Jane’s fortune that paid her salary. So long as Jane augmented the woman’s quarterly payments, Mrs. Blickstall was willing to alter the reports she delivered to their uncle…and to allow a little contraband from time to time.

Contraband like novels. In Emily’s case, dreadful novels.

“Mrs. Larriger and the Inhabitants of Victoria Land,” Jane said. “Really, Emily. Where is Victoria Land?”

A dreamy look stole into her sister’s eyes, and she clutched the book closer. “It is the land of ice and snow at the South Pole. At the end of the last volume—the one where Mrs. Larriger was kidnapped by Portuguese whalers and held for ransom—she talked them into letting her go. The whaler captain, in a fit of spite, deposited her on the icy shores of Victoria Land.”

“I see,” Jane said dubiously.

“I have had to wait two entire months to find out what happened to her.”

Jane simply shook her head. “I didn’t know there were inhabitants of Victoria Land. I had thought that a land without soil would be a harsh environment to support human life.”

“There are penguins and seals and who knows who else? It is Mrs. Larriger we’re talking about. She escaped execution in Russia after proving herself innocent of the murder of the Czarina’s pet wolfhound. She singlehandedly put down an armed revolt in India. She foiled the combined armies of Japan and China, and only then was she captured by whalers.”

“All those governments around the world,” Jane mused. “All wanting to execute the same woman. Surely they can’t all be wrong.”

Emily laughed. “You just don’t like her because she’s too much like you.”

“Oh, I’m like a fifty-eight year old woman?” Jane put her hand to her hip in mock disgust.

“No,” Emily said cheekily. “But you’re bossy and argumentative.”

“I am not.”

“Mm hmm.” Emily lifted the book to smell the fresh-cut pages. As she did, the sleeve of her night rail slipped to her elbow, exposing two round, shiny scars.