The Heiress Effect (17 page)

“You’re the most scaldingly honest betrayer
I’ve had,” she told him.

He grimaced. “Come, Miss Fairfield,” he
finally said. “It’s getting cold and we ought to go in.”

“More than two weeks in Cambridge,” the man
Oliver had called father all his life said from his vantage point
overlooking the stream. “And you’re just now visiting?” He didn’t
look at Oliver as he spoke; he was examining the lure on the end of
his line.

It was mid-afternoon—the worst time for
fishing—and January to boot. But his father hadn’t quibbled when
Oliver suggested a trip to the stream.

Hugo Marshall was a good bit shorter than
Oliver. His hair was an untidy brown, his features square, his nose
broken. He looked nothing like Oliver, and with good reason: They
were not actually related. Not by anything other than time and
affection.

Oliver very carefully didn’t look at his
father. They had situated themselves next to their fishing pool—a
wide, flat stretch of water where the stream went still. A large,
gray rock on the bank made an excellent seat. “It took me far too
long.”

His parents’ farm, just outside the tiny
village of New Shaling, was a mere forty minutes’ ride from
Cambridge. When he’d been at university, he’d visited every weekend
he could.

“Free thinks you’re avoiding her,” his father
said.

She
would
think that. His youngest
sister had always had a temper—and a tendency to think the world
revolved around her. That it appeared to do so on a regular basis
had done nothing to dissuade her.

“Of course I wasn’t,” Oliver replied. “I was
avoiding you.”

His father chuckled obligingly.

Oliver didn’t laugh. Instead, he busied
himself with his own rod and line.

“I see,” his father said after a moment.
“What horrible thing have I done now?”

Oliver cast his line with vicious intent into
the pool, watching little ripples rise up in the otherwise still
water. “Not you. Me.”

His father didn’t say anything.

“I’m struggling with a question of
ethics.”

“Ah.” Hugo Marshall’s gaze abstracted. “Is it
a thorny question of ethics? Or is it the sort of ethical question
where the right choice is easy, but the unethical answer is too
tempting?”

Trust his father to see to the heart of his
problem without having heard a word of it. Oliver fiddled with his
rod and didn’t look up. Normally, he’d have laid the whole thing
before his father. But this time… This time, he wasn’t sure if he
wanted to tell the story. Too much of it had to do with Hugo
Marshall himself.

His parents had scrimped and sacrificed and
saved so that Oliver could have the chance he did. He’d only barely
begun to understand what his parents had given up for him.

When Oliver’s brother, the duke, had reached
his majority, Oliver had visited Clermont House for the first time.
Oliver had dimly known that his father had once worked for the Duke
of Clermont in some capacity, but he’d never known details.

Not until he was twenty-one. Not until he’d
arrived in London alongside his brother and was introduced to the
staff. A good half-dozen servants remained from the time twenty-two
years ago when Hugo Marshall had worked for the duke. They had been
very curious about Oliver…and even more curious about what had
become of Hugo Marshall.

“I knew him,” the housekeeper had said. “I
was only first maid, then, and we’d all fight over who had to take
him tea. None of us wanted the task, he was that fearsome.”

Fearsome
. He’d seen his father angry a
few times in his life, and Oliver supposed he was fearsome. But
he’d understood that she had meant more than that. His father was
fiercely intelligent and brooked no foolishness.

The housekeeper had sighed.

“He was the sort of man who I thought would
be running all of London in twenty years. Sometimes you meet a man,
and you just
know
about him. You know he’s going to be
something more.” She’d sighed fretfully and readjusted her cap.
“That’s what we all said at the time. We just
knew
. It was a
feeling you had, looking at him. And then it all came to
nothing.”

It all came to nothing.

Oliver glanced at his father. Hugo had cast
his line in the deep pools at the edge of the river and sat without
speaking, without expecting. Waiting to see if Oliver wanted to
talk, assuming that anything that needed to be said would be.

It hadn’t come to precisely nothing. All that
energy had been devoted to this—into fishing trips with boys who
were not really his sons, to money made and then immediately
invested into his children.

Every bit of excess that the business had
produced had gone to his family—helping Laura and her husband start
a dry-goods store in town, paying for Oliver’s university tuition,
managing Patricia’s shorthand lessons and then, when she had
married Reuven, giving them enough to start their own business in
Manchester.

It all came to nothing
.

No. It wasn’t going to be nothing. Oliver was
going to make his father’s sacrifice mean something. He was going
to make it mean
everything
.

“Does it matter,” Oliver asked, “if I want it
very, very badly?”

“What is it you want?” his father asked.

I want you to be proud of me. I want to do
everything you dreamed of and deliver it at your feet.

Oliver reached out and pulled a twig from the
dirt, rolling it between his fingers. There were uglier wants, too,
ones that made him feel almost uncomfortable.

I want them to pay.

Instead he shrugged. “Why did you do it? Give
up everything to raise another man’s son?”

His father did look up at that. “I didn’t
raise another man’s son,” he said sharply. “I raised my own.”

“You know what I mean,” Oliver said. “And
that’s precisely what I am talking about. Why claim me? Why treat
me the way you have? It must have been an enormous struggle
deciding what to do about me. I know you loved Mother, but—”

“You were as much my salvation as your mother
was,” his father interrupted brusquely. “You were never a burden
that I had to grow accustomed to carrying. It was quite simple. If
I could make you mine, in defiance of blood and biology, it would
mean that I wasn’t
his.”

“Whose?” Oliver asked in confusion.

“My own father. If you were mine, I wasn’t
his.”

Oliver leaned back and watched the ripples on
the river. He knew—vaguely—that his father’s father had not been a
good man. His father had made a few curt remarks about it over the
years, but he spoke little about it.

“Claiming you was like claiming myself,” his
father said. “It was that easy.”

Oliver shut his eyes.

“So what is this thing you want so
badly?”

“I want to be someone,” Oliver breathed.
“Someone…who matters. Who can make things happen. Someone with
power.” Someone who would never be shoved around again. Bradenton
had it right; he had power, and Oliver had wants. That was a
balance that begged for reversal.

His father didn’t say anything for a while.
Finally he spoke. “Of all my children, you and Free are the most
like me. It’s a gift, and like all gifts, it comes with a
sting.”

“Odd,” Oliver said quietly, “that I should
take after you more than the older girls.”

His father made a noise of protest in the
back of his throat, but didn’t speak.

“I know,” Oliver said. “I know. I don’t mean
to imply that you’ve been less than a father to me. It’s just that…
The son of Hugo Marshall shouldn’t consider the offer I’m toying
with. I might be the son of the Duke of Clermont. I have it in
me.”

“Hmm,” his father said. “You have an odd view
of me. I’ve done a great many things I’m not proud of.”

“Me, too. There are times I’ve been quiet.
There are times I’ve spoken when I shouldn’t, just to keep myself
from the effort of fighting.”

“That doesn’t make you into a man like your
sire,” his father said. “It just makes you into a man.”

Oliver’s line had floated too far. He shook
himself and reeled it in before the lure could tangle in the brown
weeds on the far side of the stream.

“Hypothetically speaking,” Oliver said,
“suppose that there was a man—a marquess—who promised me his vote
on a very important issue. And all I would have to do in exchange…”
He took a deep breath and looked away. “All I would have to do was
humiliate a woman. Nothing physical, mind you. She wouldn’t be
ruined. Just…”

He glanced up into his father’s eyes, and
that was all he needed. There was no
just.
He knew Jane’s
situation. He knew how she felt, what it would do to her to have
Oliver hurt her.

She wouldn’t be ruined, but I could shred
her spirit.

“We’re speaking hypothetically?” His father
snorted.

“If the issue in question was important
enough, would you…”

“You’re ten years a grown man,” his father
countered. “If I still need to tell you what to think of a
proposition, I’ve done a poor job raising you, in which case my
opinion shouldn’t count for anything.”

“But what if it is a
very
important
issue? What if it would mean a very real difference for everyone,
and it’s just one woman who would suffer?” God. He couldn’t even
bring himself to spell out the personal consequences.

“No, Oliver. Keep your moral dilemmas to
yourself and your university friends. You can’t shunt that burden
off to me. I refuse it.”

“You’re annoying. You always act as if
everything is so easy. ‘Well, Oliver, it seems to me that your
choice is either to quit or continue,’” he mimicked, remembering
his father’s advice when he’d been on the verge of leaving
school.

The other man only smiled. “I’m your father.
It’s my job to annoy you.”

It was not the season for fishing, and
unsurprisingly, they hadn’t caught anything.

“When does it stop being one woman?” Oliver
finally asked. “And when does it start being…a disgusting thing to
ask in the first place?”

“Here’s what I know,” his father replied. “No
fish will swim up and leap at your lure three feet off the ground.
Cast.”

Oliver flushed and did so. Once more, his
lure and sinker hit the pool with a splash.

“What does it say about me that I’m still
considering it?”

His father shrugged.

“You’re useless,” Oliver accused. “I thought
you were going to tell me what to do.”

“I’m not here to be used. I’m here to
fish.”

Oliver contemplated his fishing line for a
moment longer. “You know,” he said contemplatively, “I think you’re
a fraud. You act as if you’re so wise, and what you mostly do is
make idle comments about fishing and expect me to figure it out
myself.”

His father let out a guffaw. “That comes as a
surprise? I taught you that trick years ago. When you keep quiet,
people fill in their own most intelligent thoughts on your
behalf.”

After another forty minutes of silence, in
which they’d managed to catch one four-inch trout, which was tossed
back without comment, Oliver finally spoke.

“When I’m not here, do you fish alone?”

“Free usually comes with me.”

“I didn’t mean to displace her. Is she angry
with me? She scarcely spoke last night before disappearing behind a
book.”

His father was eyeing the artificial fly tied
at the end of his line, prodding it back into shape after the
depredations of the fish. “You didn’t displace her,” he said
evenly. “I asked her if she wanted to come along, and she
declined.”

“So she
is
angry at me. I wonder what
I did.”

“Ask her,” his father said placidly. “I’m
sure she’ll tell you.”

Oliver was sure she would, too. Free wasn’t
the sort to hold anything back.

“I worry about her,” his father finally said.
“I never realized how easy Laura and Patricia were. They wanted
normal things. Security and marriage and a family. They wanted more
than that, of course. But Free… I didn’t realize your mother and I
were going to pass on all our ambition concentrated in one
child.”

“What is it that Free wants?” Oliver asked,
slightly puzzled.

His father smiled wryly. “What does she not?
Ask her. I thought you were ambitious, Oliver. You’ve nothing on
your youngest sister.”