The Heiress Effect

by Courtney Milan

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The Heiress Effect: © 2013 by Courtney
Milan.

Cover design © Courtney Milan.

Cover photographs © SAlaettin YILDIRIM &
freya-photographer | Dreamstime.com.

Smashwords Edition 1.0

All rights reserved. Where such permission is
sufficient, the author grants the right to strip any DRM which may
be applied to this work.

For Bajeeny.

I’ve waited and waited for a book to dedicate
to you, my nearest sister. I wanted one that was perfect. I’m
settling for one where I didn’t accidentally name the heroine after
you.

Now look at the date—Bump.

Cambridgeshire, England, January 1867

Most of the numbers that Miss Jane Victoria
Fairfield had encountered in her life had proven harmless. For
instance, the seamstress fitting her gown had poked her seven times
while placing forty-three straight pins—but the pain had vanished
quickly enough. The twelve holes in Jane’s corset were an evil,
true, but a necessary one; without them, she would never have
reduced her waist from its unfashionable thirty-seven inch span
down to the still unfashionable girth of thirty-one inches.

Two was not a terrible numeral, even when it
described the number of Johnson sisters that stood behind her,
watching the seamstress pin the gown against her
less-than-fashionable form.

Not even when said sisters had tittered no
fewer than six times in the past half hour. These numbers were
annoyances—mere flies that could be waved away with one
gilt-covered fan.

No, all Jane’s problems could be blamed on
two numbers.
One hundred thousand
was the first one, and it
was absolute poison.

Jane took as deep a breath as she could
manage in her corset and inclined her head to Miss Geraldine and
Miss Genevieve Johnson. The two young ladies could do no wrong in
the eyes of society. They wore almost identical day gowns—one of
pale blue muslin, the other of pale green. They wielded identical
fans, both covered with painted scenes of bucolic idleness. They
were both beautiful in the most clichéd, china-doll fashion:
Wedgwood-blue eyes and pale blond hair that curled in fat, shining
ringlets. Their waists came in well under twenty inches. The only
way to distinguish between the sisters was that Geraldine Johnson
had a perfectly placed, perfectly natural beauty mark on her right
cheek, while Genevieve had an equally perfect mark on her left.

They had been kind to Jane the first few
weeks they’d known her.

She suspected they were actually pleasant
when they were not pushed to their extreme limits. Jane, as it
turned out, had a talent for pushing even very nice girls into
unkindness.

The seamstress placed one last pin. “There,”
the woman said. “Now take a look in the mirror and tell me if you
want me to change anything out—move some of the lace, mayhap, or
use less of it.”

Poor Mrs. Sandeston. She said those words the
way a man scheduled to be hanged this afternoon might talk about
the weather on the morrow—wistfully, as if the thought of less lace
were a luxury, something that would be experienced only by an
extraordinary and unlikely act of executive clemency.

Jane sashayed forward and took in the effect
of her new gown. She didn’t even have to pretend to smile—the
expression spread across her face like melted butter on warm bread.
God, the gown was hideous. So
utterly
hideous. Never before
had so much money been put in the service of so little taste. She
batted her eyes at the mirror in glee; her reflection flirted back
with her: dark-haired, dark-eyed, coquettish and mysterious.

“What do you ladies think?” she asked,
turning about. “Ought I have more lace?”

At her feet, the beleaguered Mrs. Sandeston
let out a whimper.

As well she should. The gown already
overflowed with three different kinds of lace. Thick waves of blue
point de gaze
had been wrapped, yard after obnoxiously
expensive yard, around the skirt. A filmy piece of
duchesse
lace from Belgium marked her décolletage, and a black Chantilly in
a clashing flowered pattern made dark slashes down the sleeves of
her gown. The fabric was a lovely patterned silk. Not that anyone
would be able to see it under its burden of lace frosting.

This gown was an abomination of lace, and
Jane loved it.

A real friend, Jane supposed, would have told
her to get rid of the lace, all of it.

Genevieve nodded. “More lace. I definitely
think it needs more lace. A fourth kind, perhaps?”

Good God. Where she was to put more lace, she
didn’t know.

“A cunning belt, worked of lace?” Geraldine
offered.

It was a curious sort of friendship, the one
she shared with the Johnson twins. They were known for their
unerring taste; consequently, they never failed to steer Jane
wrong. But they did it so nicely, it was almost a pleasure to be
laughed at by them.

As Jane wanted to be steered astray, she
welcomed their efforts.

They lied to her; she lied to them. Since
Jane wanted to be an object of ridicule, it worked out delightfully
for all concerned.

Sometimes, Jane wondered what it would be
like if they were ever honest with each other. If maybe the
Johnsons might have become real friends instead of lovely, polite
enemies.

Geraldine eyed Jane’s gown and gave a
decisive nod. “I absolutely support the notion of a lace belt. It
would give this gown that certain air of indefinable dignity that
it currently lacks.”

Mrs. Sandeston made a strangled sound.

It was only sometimes that Jane wondered if
they could have been friends. Usually, she remembered the reasons
she couldn’t
have
real friends. All one hundred thousand of
them.

So she simply nodded at the Johnsons’
horrific suggestions. “What think you two of that clever strip of
Maltese that we saw earlier—the gold one, the one with the
rosettes?”

“Absolutely,” Geraldine said, nodding her
head. “The Maltese.”

The sisters cast each other looks above their
fans—an exchange of sly smiles saying, clear as day:
Let’s see
what we can get the Feather Heiress to do today.

“Miss Fairfield.” Mrs. Sandeston put her
hands together in an unthinking imitation of prayer. “I beg you.
Keep in mind that one can achieve a far superior effect by
employing fewer furbelows. A lovely piece of lace, now, that’s the
centerpiece of a beautiful gown, dazzling in its simplicity. Too
much, and…” She trailed off with a suggestive twirl of her
finger.

“Too
little,”
Genevieve said calmly,
“and nobody will know what you have to offer. Geraldine and I—well,
we have only a mere ten thousand apiece, so our gowns must reflect
that.”

Geraldine gripped her fan. “Alas,” she
intoned.

“But you—Miss Fairfield,
you
have a
dowry of one hundred thousand pounds. You have to make sure that
people know it. Nothing says wealth like lace.”

“And nothing says lace like…more lace,”
Geraldine added.

They exchanged another set of looks.

Jane smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t
know what I would do without the two of you. You’ve been so good to
me, tutoring me in all things. I have no notion of what’s
fashionable, nor of what message my clothing sends. Without you to
guide me, who knows how I might blunder?”

Mrs. Sandeston made a choking noise in her
throat, but said nothing more.

One hundred thousand pounds. One of the
reasons Jane was here, watching these lovely, perfect women
exchange wicked smiles that they didn’t think Jane could
understand. They leaned toward one another and whispered—mouths
hidden demurely behind fans—and then, glancing her way, let out a
collective giggle. They thought her a complete buffoon, devoid of
taste and sense and reason.

It didn’t hurt, not one bit.

It didn’t hurt to know that they called her
friend to her face and sought to expose her foolishness to everyone
they saw. It didn’t hurt that they egged her on to more—more lace,
more jewels, more beads—simply so they might fuel their amusement.
It didn’t hurt that the entire population of Cambridge laughed at
her.

It couldn’t hurt. After all, Jane had chosen
this for herself.

She smiled at them as if their giggles were
the sincerest token of friendship. “The Maltese it is.”

One hundred thousand pounds. There were more
crushing burdens than the weight of one hundred thousand
pounds.

“You’ll want to be wearing that gown
Wednesday next,” Geraldine suggested. “You’ve been invited to the
Marquess of Bradenton’s dinner party, have you not? We insisted.”
Those fans worked their way up and down, up and down.

Jane smiled. “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it,
not for the world.”

“There will be a new fellow there. A duke’s
son. Born on the other side of the blanket, unfortunately—but
acknowledged nonetheless. Almost as good as the real thing.”

Damn. Jane hated meeting new men, and a
duke’s bastard sounded like the most dangerous kind of all. He
would have a high opinion of himself and a low opinion of his
pocketbook. It was precisely that sort of man who would see Jane’s
one hundred thousand pounds and decide that he might be able to
overlook the lace dripping off her. That kind of man would overlook
a great many defects if it would put her dowry in his bank
account.

“Oh?” she said noncommittally.

“Mr. Oliver Marshall,” Genevieve said. “I saw
him on the street. He doesn’t—”

Her sister gave her a gentle nudge, and
Genevieve cleared her throat.

“I mean, he looks quite elegant. His
spectacles are very distinguished. And his hair is quite…bright
and…coppery.”

Jane could just imagine this specimen of
thwarted dukehood in her mind’s eye. He would be paunchy. He would
wear ridiculous waistcoats, and he’d have a fob watch that he
checked incessantly. He’d be proud of his prerogatives and bitter
of a world that had led him to be born outside of wedlock.

“He would be utterly perfect for you, Jane,”
Geraldine said. “Of course, with our lesser dowries, he would find
us quite…uninteresting.”

Jane made herself smile. “I don’t know what I
would do without you two,” she said, quite sincerely. “If I didn’t
have you to look out for me, why, I might…”

If she didn’t have them trying to set her up
as a laughingstock, she might one day—despite her best
efforts—manage to impress a man. And
that
would be a
disaster.

“I feel that you two are like my sisters,
given the care you take for me,” she said. Maybe like stepsisters
in a blood-curdling fairy tale.

“We feel the same,” Geraldine smiled at her.
“As if you were our sister.”

There were almost as many smiles in that room
as there was lace on her gown. Jane offered up a silent apology for
her lie.

These women were
nothing
like her
sister. To say as much was to insult the name of sisterhood, and if
anything was sacred to Jane, it was that. She had a sister—a sister
she would do anything for. For Emily, she would lie, cheat, buy a
dress with four different kinds of lace…

One hundred thousand pounds was not much of a
burden to carry. But if a young lady wanted to remain unmarried—if
she
needed
to stay with her sister until said sister was of
age and could leave their guardian’s home—that same number became
an impossibility.

Almost as impossible as four hundred and
eighty—the number of days that Jane had to stay unmarried.