The Heiress Effect (16 page)

“There’s something you should know.” He
wasn’t looking at her now; he was staring off into the night sky.
“I tell myself the exact same thing you just said—that I would
never do it. But there was a time. I was fifteen years old at
Eton.” He leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees. “I
didn’t fit in. My brother and my cousin did their best, but when
they were not present, I had to take care of myself. I did it, too.
There were a handful of us who weren’t born to a grand position in
society, and we made our way by banding together. Walking together.
Working together. Offering such small encouragements to one another
that would make the days bearable.”

“Did none of the adults stop what the other
boys were doing?”

He turned and gave her a level glance. “Boys
will be boys, Miss Fairfield, and generally speaking, the
punishment we were subjected to wasn’t so awful. We were tripped,
insulted, occasionally set upon. The sort of thing every boy
experiences at school. We just had a larger dose. Enough so that we
would know our places.”

For some reason, his mouth set into a harder
line at that, and he didn’t speak for a minute.

“I had it a little easier than most. My
father had been a pugilist, and the other boys learned to be wary
of me. They wouldn’t take me on unless there were two or three of
them at a time.”

She bit back a horrified gasp.

“It doesn’t matter how good you are at
fisticuffs, though. At some point, you get tired of bruises.”

Jane reached out and took his hand. She’d
been afraid he would push her away, but he didn’t.

“There was another boy. Joseph Clemons. He
was small for his age and timid. He hid behind me every chance he
got.” He sighed. “And you know what? I hated him. I tried not to.
It wasn’t his fault he was set on so much. It wasn’t his fault that
I’d stand up for him. It wasn’t his fault his father was a
shoemaker, nor was it his fault that he was a brilliant Latin
scholar, the likes of which the school had not seen in dozens of
years. Still, I resented him so for causing me such difficulties. I
just protected him out of…”

He shrugged. His hand clenched around hers.
Out of some innate sense of fair play, she suspected.

“Out of spite,” he said. “One fight is
nothing. Two fights are nothing. Three years of fighting makes you
weary. One day, I came upon Clemons with two older boys. I was
going to stop them, because that was what I did. But Bradenton was
nearby. He said, ‘Marshall, all they want is for you to stop
challenging them. Walk away and leave them alone.’” He looked up.
“I think he could have given me any reason to walk away at that
point and I would have taken it. I did.”

“I take it that Bradenton was wrong.”

“Oh, no,” Oliver said softly. “He was right.
Those particular boys never came for me again. As for Clemons… I
don’t know what they did to him, but when he left the infirmary, he
never came back.”

She gasped.

“So, yes, Miss Fairfield.” He looked over at
her now. “You might think you know who I am. What I’m willing to
do. I tell myself all the time that I’m not that man. That I
wouldn’t be so awful as to cause harm to someone else. But I know
better.”

She dropped her gaze from his. “You can’t
blame yourself for what the other boys did.”

“It wasn’t the only time.” His voice was
harsh. “Anyone in my position, anyone born without power, who
aspires to more… Trust me, I didn’t arrive here by standing on
principle my entire life. I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut when
it must be shut, to do what a man in power asks because he asks it.
I count myself lucky that I’ve survived as unscathed as I have.
Don’t fool yourself, Miss Fairfield. I could hurt you. Badly.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. But by
the light in his eyes—that cold, serious gleam—he meant every word.
His hand felt clammy in hers, but she squeezed it.

“And you are telling me this because…”

“Because I don’t think what is happening to
you is right, Miss Fairfield.” His voice was tight. “Because no
matter how many times I tell myself I would never do it, I cannot
trust myself. The bait that is dangling before me is too tempting.
I’m giving you a chance to run off before my ambition overwhelms my
better judgment.”

She opened her mouth to speak, and then
closed it once more. It made no sense, what he said. It made no
sense, not unless…

She turned to him. “Are you always this
starkly honest?” she demanded. But she knew the answer to that
already. She had seen him in the group with the others—smiling,
talking, always seeming to know what to say so that nobody looked
at him askance. He knew how to belong with them. He
couldn’t
always be honest.

“You’re special.” His voice was low. “I
resented Clemons. I rather like what I know of you.”

She looked up, and he reached out with his
free hand and, very gently, drew a finger down the side of her
face.

“There are so few people in this world to
whom I dare tell the whole truth. I hate to waste a one.”

It wasn’t a frisson she felt. A frisson went
only skin deep, just a prickle of hairs on the back of her neck.
This was a full-body experience. As if the past years had tightened
her internal organs into a snarl of emotion, and he had just
convinced them to relax. She found herself tilting toward him, ever
so slightly. Wanting that moment, that point of contact, to last
and last.

He drew away, letting go of her hand. Her
fingers felt suddenly cold. “You see,” he said, “even now, I’m
doing it.” His voice was low, almost like a caress. “I’m telling
you everything, but I’m making it worse, too. You should not let me
touch you, Miss Fairfield.”

She didn’t want him to stop. Jane swallowed.
“Oh,” she said. “Very well.” She turned away, unsure what to
think.

“Good. Now you’re angry.”

She shook her head. “I suppose I should be.
But I’m not, really. It doesn’t surprise me that you’d want to
betray me. Everyone else already does.” She laughed again, but her
laughter rang a little high to her ears. Too much like nervous
giggling, and not at all like the half nausea that she felt turning
in her belly. “So there you have it. You might betray me, but
you’re my favorite betrayer thus far.”

He made a noise. “You should be angry, Miss
Fairfield. You should push me away.”

“Mr. Marshall, haven’t you figured it out?
I’m too desperate to be angry.”

It sounded bald and terrible in the night.
But it
didn’t
sound pitiful—almost as if giving voice to the
truth made her less vulnerable.

“Maybe,” she continued, “if I had a slew of
true friends, I could afford to fly into a rage. But as it is, all
you’ve confessed is that someone told you to do a cruel thing to
me, and you have considered doing it. Most people don’t need to be
asked to be cruel to me, and they do it straight away.”

“Damn it, Miss Fairfield. Listen to what I’m
saying. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want the damned temptation
hanging over my head. I don’t want to be the man who hurts a woman
for personal gain. Slap me right now and have done with it.”

Jane shrugged. “Have your temptation, Mr.
Marshall, and be welcome to it. I don’t expect anything of you, but
at least for the moment I can pretend that I have a friend. That
there is one person in the world besides my sister who cares
whether I wake up in the morning. If you’ve never been without, you
can have no idea what it is like to not have it.” She looked up at
him, her eyes wide. “And to have him be a man like
you
on
top of it all…”

Her cheeks flamed as she realized what she’d
implied.

“Oh,” she said. “Not that I expect—not that I
would think—that is, you’ve already said that I’m the last woman
you would marry. And I have no intention of marrying as it is…”
She’d lost control of her mouth. She clapped her hands over it and
refused to look up at him. “Oh, God,” she said.

He didn’t say anything for a moment, and she
wondered if she’d succeeded in frightening him off after all.

“Oh, God,” she repeated, squeezing her eyes
shut. “Why do I always do this?”

“What do you always do?”

“I talk. I talk so
much.
I talk as if
my life depended on nothing but words filling the space. I talk and
talk and talk and I can’t stop. Not even when I tell myself I
must.” She gave a little sobbing laugh. “I do it all the time—tell
myself to shut up—but generally, I’m talking too much to listen to
my own advice.”

She glanced over at him. He was watching her
with a hooded, unreadable look in his eyes.

“Just say it,” she begged. “
Shut up,
Jane.
See? It’s not hard.”

“Keep talking, Jane,” he said softly.

“Stop. Stop humoring me.”

“If you won’t push me away, why should I
return the favor? You’re bright and incisive. And as I do not like
to talk all of the time, I don’t mind listening to you.”

“What?”

“I think that you’ve been told to shut up so
often that you’ve started saying it to yourself.”

“Oh?” She swallowed. “You think…”

“You say things that make other people
uncomfortable. Of course they want you to shut up.”

“Don’t I make you uncomfortable?”

He smiled. And then, he reached out and set
his thumb on her lips. It was a casually intimate touch—as if her
lips were his to caress. Jane’s breath caught. She had the sudden,
horrible urge to suck his digit into her mouth.

Instead, she exhaled.

“You make me uncomfortable,” he murmured.
“But not, I expect, the way that you mean.”

“It’s because you’re an absolutely lovely
man,” she confessed. And then she heard what she’d said aloud and
flushed warmly. “Oh, God. Not that I think you’re attractive…”

That was worse. Far worse.

“I mean, of
course
I think
you’re…”

Worst of all.

She screwed her eyes shut. “Shut up, Jane,”
she whispered to herself.

“No.” He drew his thumb along her bottom lip.
“Keep talking, Jane.”

“That’s a terrible idea.” Her own voice
sounded husky. “There’s no way to come out ahead. It doesn’t matter
whether I think you’re attractive. You don’t care what I think.
Even I don’t care what I think.”

A finger joined his thumb on her lips. “I
think you’re very brave,” he whispered. “You’re a fire that should
burn itself out in five seconds of brilliant combustion. I know
what it’s like to put forth that much energy, and yet you do it
night after night. And nobody—not marquesses nor guardians nor
physicians, not the whole weight of society’s expectations—can make
you stop.”

She let out a sigh, a trembling sigh that had
her lips brushing against his thumb. So much like a kiss.

“If people want you to stop talking, or to
stop dressing the way you do, or to change who you are, it’s
because you hurt their eyes. We’ve all been trained not to stare
into the sun.”

Another finger joined his thumb against her
lips. “I can’t look, and I can’t look away. But never fear, Miss
Fairfield. I care what you think.”

He tilted her chin up. He did it gently, as
if he were asking a question. But if his fingers on her face asked
a question, his eyes answered it. They were clear and blue and
stronger than she’d imagined.

“So which one is it?” he asked softly. “Do
you find me attractive, or…”

“There is no or,” she told him.

He leaned close to her. So close that she
could feel the heat of his breath against her lips. So close that
she imagined that if she breathed in, she’d get a lungful of his
essence. She felt an electric sense of expectation, as if she were
putting together a jigsaw puzzle. As if she were about to set two
pieces together, and she knew in her entire being that they would
fit.

Instead, he straightened with a grimace and
let his hand fall away.

“Is it something I said?” Jane asked.
And
if so, which sentence?
There had been so many of them, after
all.

“Impossible girl,” he said softly.

It stung that he would call her that after
all they’d exchanged. “It’s only by choice,” she snapped, but she
knew it was more than that. Deep down, she knew that even if she
had tried to get everything right, polite society would never have
loved her. “I may be impossible, but at least I’m not—I’m not—”

“That’s not what I meant.” He reached out as
if to touch her again, and Jane went still. Wishing those few
inches between her cheek and his fingers would disappear. Her whole
face tingled, and she sucked in her breath.

“Impossible girl,” he repeated, but this time
his tone was soft and low, making the words into something sensual.
“I’m saying it for me as a reminder, not for you as an insult.
Jane. Brave girl. Lovely girl.” He did touch her cheek then, laying
his fingers against it once more. And, oh, how good it felt, that
tiny little touch. That point of connection.

“Girl I should not touch,” he said. “Or kiss.
Or have.”

His smile was a little sad, and she could
recall him saying that she was the last woman he would ever
marry.

“But bright. So bright. It’s a shame you’re
so impossible, Miss Fairfield, because otherwise, I think I would
try for you.”

She had preferred it when he’d called her
Jane. She liked the way he said her name, not short and terse, a
spare syllable to be gotten over with, but long and slow, a bite to
be savored.

She reached up and laid her hand over his
against her cheek. Warmth met warmth. He let out a noise, not quite
a protest, but he didn’t move away.

“Remember,” he finally said, “what I am
contemplating. I don’t think I should be making you more vulnerable
to me. Not at all.”

“Too late for that,” she told him.

He pulled his hand away as if it would make a
difference. It didn’t matter. He’d slipped past the layers of lace
that she’d used to shroud her heart. She wasn’t anything so foolish
as in love with him; even she was not that brave. But…