The Heiress Effect (10 page)

Familiar. Annoying. And—as the timing
went—completely awful. In a minute, Emily was going to start
smelling bad things. Shortly after that…

Something
was
going to happen. The
very thing her uncle feared, the reason she wasn’t allowed
outside.

She didn’t have time to make her way out to
the indifferent fields outside of town, and if she collapsed in
front of the grammar school with her leg spasming, someone would
see her for certain. They’d ask to help, insist on seeing her home.
Her uncle would find out, and…

And she’d never go out again. There wasn’t
time to think or time to choose.

Emily crossed the square and ducked into the
public house.

Act as if you belong.

She swallowed the taste in her mouth, smiled
as the telltale olfactory dysfunction took her senses, masking the
scents of baking bread and soup in a foul miasma.

She slid into the nearest bench and tucked
her skirts behind the table. Hopefully nobody would look at her.
Hopefully, the few minutes of her fit would pass with nobody the
wiser. Hopefully—

“Miss,” a pleasant voice said from across the
table, “please don’t sit here.”

Emily looked up, and that was when she
realized that she wasn’t alone at the table. A man sat across from
her, wedged against the wall. A book was open before him, and he
had half a loaf of bread sitting beside an empty soup bowl.

Her leg had already begun to twitch.

“I’m sorry,” she said, gritting her teeth. “I
really can’t stand up right now.”

His accent had been almost too perfect, too
studied. His clothing was as English as tea and biscuits. He’d tied
his blue cravat in a crisp, formal style, fixed it in place with a
gold pin, and laid a very proper hat on the table. The white
perfection of his cuffs peeking out from underneath his coat
contrasted all the more with the dark brown of his skin.

She looked up into his eyes—almost
black—ringed with thick, long eyelashes. His lips pressed together
in something that might have been annoyance.

“Miss…” His breath hissed out, and his hands
flattened on the table.

He was Indian. She’d seen Indian students
before—there were dozens attending Cambridge. Like all of the men
in Cambridge, she’d seen them only at a distance from carriage
windows or across a green. She doubted her uncle would have let her
anywhere near them. Something, after all, might have happened.

He looked at her, more wary of an English
miss than any Cambridge student should have been. Maybe he wouldn’t
turn her in after all.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized again. “I don’t
mean to be making faces at you. I’m about to have a fit. It will
pass in a few minutes.”

He frowned, but there was no time to
explain.

Emily didn’t have proper fits. At least, that
was what Doctor Russell from London had said. It wasn’t really
epilepsy, he’d explained, because she never lost her senses. She
was always present; she could even speak and move her limbs. It
came on her now, the seizure, familiar as a glove.

She’d watched herself in a mirror before.
Mostly, her right leg spasmed. But that was not the only effect.
Her whole body shivered and her face contorted. Her heart raced,
too—heavy, swift erratic beats, like a three-legged horse
attempting to gallop.

Her companion at the table stared at her in
consternation for a few moments. “Is there anything I can do for
you?”

She gritted her teeth. “Don’t tell anyone
what is happening.”

He made a noise that might have been
assent.

Sometimes, Emily wished she were not
conscious during her fits. She was constantly aware of how she
looked, what others would be thinking of her. She wished she could
disappear into nothingness and return with no awkward memories. If
she had lost consciousness, a doctor had told her, he’d have known
it was epilepsy for sure. As it was, she was a special case—not
fitting in anywhere. No known treatments. No understood causes.

She focused on the grain of the wooden
tabletop in lieu of thinking of what was happening. Someone had
carved a set of initials into the corner. She held onto those
letters—A+M—repeating them to herself over and over until her
spasms faded to twitches, until the twitches faded to the liquid
exhaustion of well-used muscles.

It had lasted twenty seconds. Such a short
space of time to cause her so much trouble.

She let out a breath.

“Miss,” said a voice behind her. “Are you
well? Is this man bothering you?”

She turned to see a buxom woman, a towel
strapped to her apron strings.

“If he’s any trouble at all, I’ll have my
husband…”

“No,” Emily squeaked out. “Not at all. I felt
faint, and had to sit down. He has been solicitous. Very
solicitous.”

“Pushing himself on you?”

“Quite the opposite,” Emily said. “I’m afraid
I intruded at his table without so much as asking his leave.”

He—whoever he was—hadn’t said a word in this
exchange, as if he were used to not having his opinion consulted.
To being discussed as if he were not there. He simply watched Emily
with those dark, wary eyes.

“Hmm,” the woman said. “Well, he has been
quiet thus far, but you never know.”

“If you wouldn’t mind bringing some tea?”
Emily smiled at her. “I would appreciate the refreshment.”

“Of course, dearie. And he’s truly not
bothering you?”

Emily shook her head and the woman left.

The man across from her was silent for a few
moments. Finally, he said, “Thank you for not having me thrown out
of here. It’s the only place within a four-mile walk of Cambridge
that serves a vegetable soup, and I get tired of bread and cheese
and boiled greens.”

“You’re studying at Cambridge, then?”

The book in front of him made that much
obvious.

She would have thought that the suppers at
Cambridge had more lavish offerings than boiled spinach. Little
lordlings went there, after all. But he didn’t explain further, and
she was already imposing on his space.

“I’ll be able to stand in a few minutes,” she
said instead. “I’ll vanish as quickly as I came.”

“No need to rush on my account,” he replied,
politely. He looked down at his book and then back up at her. There
was still a touch of wariness in his voice—and a hint of something
else.

“I do mean it,” Emily said sincerely. “I’m so
sorry to have imposed. You were here first, so—”

His lip curled up in a half smile, and that
last hint of wariness vanished. “I rarely have the chance to sit
with pretty girls,” he said. “I don’t feel imposed upon.”

Her heart was still racing. From the fit.
Absolutely from the fit. It couldn’t be because this man had looked
at her. But…he’d made her feel pretty.

She
was
pretty. Emily had always known
it, for all the good that it did her. The servants said so. Titus
said so. The doctors said so.
A shame, that all this is
happening to such a pretty girl. A waste, all that beauty.

Her looks didn’t seem so extravagantly
wasteful now, under his polite—but unmistakable—perusal.

“My name is Miss Emily Fairfield,” she
finally said.

He looked at her for a few moments longer. “A
pleasure to meet you, Miss Fairfield,” he replied. “I’m Mr. Anjan
Bhattacharya.” When he spoke his name, the precise tones of his
accent altered into something different, no longer English.

Emily bit her lip. “Wait.”

His face went blank.

“I’m sorry. Bhatta. Charya?” She felt herself
flush.

He sat back in his seat and looked at her.
“Yes. That’s actually not bad.”

“Bhatta. Charya. Bhattacharya.” She smiled.
“No, it’s actually quite easy. I’m just not used to hearing its
like. You’re from…”

“India, of course. Calcutta, to be exact. My
father is in the civil service in the Bengal Presidency. My uncle
is…well, never mind. I’m the fourth son, shipped off to obtain a
real, solid English education.” He shifted, glanced down at his
book again.

“And you’re studying law.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“My uncle is a tutor in law,” Emily
explained. “When I have no other choice, I read his books. I’ve
read that one.”

He smiled at her. “Then I’ll ask you if I
have any questions.”

“You can try,” she responded. “I understand a
little bit. But I have no formal education. Still, I’d welcome the
chance to talk…” Oh, how pathetic that made her sound. She
swallowed the rest of her sentence. “But I’m sure you have other
people you’d rather talk to. Are you far along in your
studies?”

“I’m going out this year.” He made a face.
“I’m studying for the Law Tripos. Between now and Easter, I suspect
I shall be terrible company.” A look passed over his face. “I
intend to do well.”

Emily knew a sign to keep quiet when she
heard one, so she stopped talking. Her tea came, and she drank it
slowly, trying not to watch him while he read and made notes in a
little book. She mostly failed. Her whole skin prickled with
awareness.

“Well, Mr. Bhattacharya,” she finally said,
when she could nurse her tea no longer, “it was lovely meeting you.
I suppose I must be going now. I’ll leave you to your reading.”

He looked up from his book. He blinked at her
a few times, as if somehow she’d surprised him. And
then—shockingly—he smiled. Not that placid non-smile he’d given her
before. This,
this
was what she’d been waiting for. This was
what she had left the house to find. His smile was like a sunrise,
and it slid over his face with genuine ease. Her pulse beat in
anticipation. Of what, she wasn’t sure—but she felt on the brink of
something.

“Miss Fairfield,” he said.

“It’s Miss Emily,” she told him. “I have an
older sister.”

“I believe,” he said, “that the gentlemanly
thing to do would be to offer to accompany you back to your home,
to make sure you came to no further harm.”

“Oh?” She liked the idea. She tried not to
let it show how much she liked it.

Something might happen,
that voice
whispered.

“I don’t think I’d get more than a hundred
paces with you,” he said simply. “In Cambridge, perhaps. Here?” He
shook his head. “I have no desire to be pummeled today, so I’ll
have to do the ungentlemanly thing and wish you farewell.”

“I’ll be walking this Thursday at one,” Emily
responded. “And…I don’t much like being around throngs of
people.”

His smile hadn’t abated. It was pulling her
in. “Oh?”

“There’s a path along Bin Brook, where it
crosses Wimpole Road.”

“I know it,” he said softly. “But your
parents will object, I’m sure.”

“My parents are dead,” Emily said. “I live
with my uncle.” She paused and saw the look on his face. If she
told him the truth, he’d never meet her. “Here I am,” she said
breezily, “out on my own without a chaperone. My uncle isn’t
conventional, Mr. Bhattacharya. He leaves me to my own devices. So
long as we stay to public roads, he won’t object.”

All true, and yet so misleading.

“But…”

“I have fits,” she told him. “My uncle knows
that I’m starved for rational conversation.”

Still true.

Emily gave him a dazzling smile and was
gratified to see him brace his hands against the table, dazzled in
spite of himself.

After her implications, a lie could not make
it any worse. “He won’t begrudge me a walk,” she told him. “And
it’s perfectly acceptable for men and women to walk together so
long as they remain in public.”

“Is it?”

Emily nodded and held her breath.

“Well.” He drew out the syllable slowly, as
if contemplating what she’d said. “I suppose. This Thursday.”

She smiled back and then stood. Her leg
ached, her muscles were sore—but the palms of her hands tingled
with excitement, and suddenly, the next few days didn’t seem too
awful. “Until then.”

Something might happen.

She thought of her empty room, of afternoons
composed of naps and evenings spent in company with her uncle’s
solicitous condescension. She thought of how she’d felt slipping
out of her room—as if she were on the brink of screaming, and sure
that if she shrieked, her uncle would think she’d gone mad. This
might have been foolish. It might have been wrong.

But thank God, finally,
finally,
something was happening.

It had been three days since Jane’s last
conversation with Mr. Marshall, and in that time, she had imagined
telling him everything a hundred times over. Last night, she had
scarcely slept, thinking about what she would say when next she saw
him. What it would be like to have someone who understood, who
knew.

She had a list of things she would say—a
calm, precise, rational list. She wouldn’t let words tumble out of
her like a stream undammed, rushing back to old banks. He wouldn’t
think her deranged at all.