The Heiress Effect (25 page)

She flushed at that. “Did you have something
else in mind?”

He was surely talking about a kiss. Not on
the lips—the idea of that made her whole body flutter with nervous
anticipation. Lovely, sweet, anticipation, a yearning that filled
her with sudden force.

“You don’t remember my given name, do you?”
He spoke a little ruefully.

Oh. He was talking about
that
kind of
greeting. Emily blinked, dispelling the force of her want.

“Of course I do. It’s Anjan.”

He broke into a smile to match hers.

The meeting
after
you held a
gentleman’s hand was, Emily decided, more awkward than the one
before. Was she supposed to snatch his hand straight off, like some
prize already won, or did she need to work up to it?

He took another step forward.

“Pretty Emily,” he said. “Clever Emily. Sweet
Emily.” He reached out, then, but he didn’t take her hand. He
brushed one of her curls, fingering her hair ever so softly.

“I think,” Emily said shakily, “that you are
the best dream I have ever had.”

He raised an eyebrow in question.

“My guardian thinks I’m taking a nap,” she
explained. “I know. I shouldn’t have lied to you. I’m…trying to do
better.”

He didn’t let go of her hair, but she could
see his face tensing, his jaw shifting ever so slightly, his
nostrils flaring.

“I see,” he said.

“You probably don’t. Pretty Emily. Clever
Emily. Lying Emily. Almost my entire life is a falsehood.”

He looked into her eyes. “Mine is, too. I’m
Indian. I’m the good-natured one, the one who doesn’t hear half of
what is said in front of him. The one who doesn’t complain no
matter what. I suppose I should not be surprised that you’re lying
to your guardian after all. There are very few parents in England
who would allow me to court their daughter, no matter what my
prospects might be.”

Emily swallowed. “Court?” she said. Court was
a word with hard edges, a word she didn’t quite understand.
Flirt
she might have understood.
Bedazzle.
She would
have said that he was enjoying her company. But… He was going out
this year. And her guardian didn’t even know what was
happening.

“Aren’t you going back to India after you
receive your degree?” she asked.

He contemplated her. “No.”

“You’ll…surely be marrying an Indian woman. I
had…”

“It’s not likely,” he said again. “I have a
friend here by the name of Lirington. His father has offered me a
position when I graduate. I’m staying.”

“Here,” she said blankly. “Here with the
boiled spinach and bread. Here with all of us Napoleons. You’re
staying
here?
I know how much you miss your family.
Why?”

He didn’t say anything for a very long time.
Finally, he let out a long breath and turned away. “My eldest
brother,” he said. “We were quite close even though I was ten years
younger. I worshipped him, followed him everywhere. He told me all
about his plans. He had always intended to go to England, he said.
In India, they never saw him as anything other than another
soldier, another fellow with brown skin. ‘There are so many of us
here,’ he said, ‘they never see us as people.’ He told me that if
things were going to change, he would have to go to the English in
their home country. He’d planned to move here when he was
twenty-five, to set up a business. To live here the rest of his
life. To know them, and have them know him.”

He’d started speaking quietly; by the time he
reached the end of his sentence, he had returned to normal
volume.

He swallowed and looked away.

“Without that,” he said softly, “he feared
that more lives would be lost by idiocy. The Sepoy Mutiny… That was
started by criminal thoughtlessness. I don’t think it was ill
intentioned, but it was foolish. If the English had listened, they
would have understood what it meant. To them, it was just grease.
Pig lard and beef fat are just parts of an animal. They didn’t
understand that they were asking the Indian soldiers to go against
their holy beliefs. That was the sort of thing Sonjit would tell
me—that he could save lives and stop this stupidity, if only he
could make the English understand.” Anjan swallowed. “As I said, I
worshipped him.”

Emily only watched.

“During the Sepoy Mutiny, he took a knife to
the gut. It wasn’t even during a battle; someone just ran up to him
on the street, yelling. By the time he was brought home, it was too
late to do anything except watch him die. When I saw him, he said,
‘Well, it looks as if I won’t be going to England.’” Anjan’s voice
was tight. “So I promised him I would do it.”

She reached out and touched his hand. “I’m so
sorry for your loss.”

He shook his head as if throwing off old
memories. “I told my parents what he had said, told them I wanted
to go in his memory. We…talked. I’d had a marriage arranged, but
the girl died young, and they hadn’t arranged another yet. I told
them they shouldn’t. That I’d be more accepted if I…”

He paused.

“If you what?”

“If I was unmarried,” he said, without
blinking. “Or if I found a wife in England instead of bringing one
with me. It was not a happy conversation. My parents argued over it
for years, but they eventually gave in. Even so, I suspect my
mother still hopes to surprise me with a nice Bengali girl.”

Emily stared at him. “You had a marriage
arranged before you were ten?”

“It’s not what you think. My parents love me.
They wouldn’t want me to be unhappy. They would have picked someone
I would grow to love, someone with a temperament like mine. They
did quite well for my brothers.”

He looked away again, and then slowly took
off his hat. He turned it in his hands.

“The post is slow between here and India,” he
finally said. “But I wrote and asked for their approval.”

Emily swallowed. She couldn’t imagine the
enormity of what he was talking about. She’d been enjoying his
company. Enjoying it very much, as it was. But this…

“Our children would have to spend time in
Calcutta,” he told his hat. “She would insist on having a chance to
spoil them. My mother, I mean.”

“Anjan,” Emily heard herself say. “Are you
asking me to marry you? Because…”

“No, of course not,” he replied. “It’s too
soon for that. We haven’t known one another very long, which I hear
is important for you English. And I have not heard from my parents,
which is important to me. I’m just telling you a story, that’s
all.”

A
story.
A story. She swallowed,
trying to envision the story that would follow. It wouldn’t be an
easy life, that much she knew. He rarely talked about how he was
treated, but she hadn’t received the impression that many people
were kind. Quite the reverse. And that would be what she entered
into? That would be what her children would experience? She felt
too young for children, let alone for a decision of this magnitude.
She wrapped her arms around her waist.

“Here’s another story,” she said quietly.
“I’m not of age. My uncle hasn’t even let me come out because of my
fits. He would never let me marry.”
Least of all you,
she
thought, but she didn’t want to have those ugly words said. “No
matter what happened, I would have to wait until I turned
twenty-one. And that’s a year and a half away.”

“Would you?” he asked. “Would you consider
the wait, if we were in a story?”

But as much as she’d pretended this was an
escape, this wasn’t a story.

“Every day we meet, I tell myself I shouldn’t
come,” Emily said. “I’m afraid my uncle will find out, that he’ll
start thinking of me as he thinks of Jane—well, never mind that.”
She shut her eyes. “How can I consider the rest of my life when I
can scarcely contemplate tomorrow?”

He drew back. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. It was a story. A story and
a rhetorical question.” She looked at him and felt a wash of
sadness. “The strange thing is, I think that if our parents had
arranged our marriage, I would be happy with the prospect. Isn’t
that daft? It’s only because I have a choice that I’m
fretting.”

He took a step toward her. “You’d have a
choice,” he said softly. “Your mother would love you. After we met,
she’d come to you alone. ‘How did I do?’ she’d ask. ‘Do you like
him?’ A parent offering her beloved child a precious gift and
hoping that it finds favor.”

Emily thought of her father—the one who
hadn’t even visited every year. She thought of the mother she
didn’t even remember, one who had brushed off her inconvenient
children, seeing them only as an audience to listen to her
complaints about the country life her husband had forced on her.
She thought about Titus’s sad little pout when she and Jane had
driven off that horrid Doctor Fallon with his foul-smelling
jars.

“No,” she said, trying not to choke on the
words. “That isn’t what would happen. He’d say, ‘nineteen-year-old
girls are given guardians because they cannot choose for
themselves.’”

Anjan didn’t speak for a moment. Then he
lifted his hand and slowly, ever so slowly, touched her cheek.

“This part isn’t a story,” he said. “This
part is just the truth. If he won’t hold you precious, then I
will.”

It was just his hand. It was just her cheek.
Her eyes stung. She didn’t move away, didn’t try to hold back the
liquid that burned her vision. She couldn’t say anything in
response, and so she just stayed with him—long enough that a cloud
slid lazily across the sky, casting them in shade, and then passed
on, putting them in sunlight once more.

“I’ll consider your story,” Emily finally
said huskily. “For all the difficulty I see in it, it would have
its rewards.”

The evening of Bradenton’s gathering came all
too quickly. After a few feverish days of planning, Oliver found
himself in Bradenton’s home once again. This time, though, the
house was packed with the marquess’s allies in Parliament, and so
the rooms were rather too warm. There were more than twenty here
tonight—a smattering of lords, Members of Parliament, and
accompanying wives.

“Marshall.” Bradenton made his way to Oliver
through the gathered group, looked about, and leaned in. “I have to
say I’m disappointed. Disappointed and surprised.” His voice was
low, scarcely audible in the din of conversation. “Everyone is
here, and yet Miss Fairfield’s reign of ridiculousness continues
unabated. I had expected better of you.”

Too bad Oliver’s own expectations had
intervened. He smiled faintly. “Oh ye of little faith,” he intoned.
“You said tonight, and tonight I plan to deliver.”

The marquess, who had been shaking his head,
paused. “Really?”

They’d gone through the plan inch by
painstaking inch. Across the room, Hapford caught Oliver’s eye. His
fists clenched, and he looked away.

“Let’s just say,” Oliver said, “she is
primed. By the end of the night, Miss Fairfield will know exactly
where she belongs.”

“How delightful.” Bradenton smiled. “I knew
you would come around. And yes, here she is.” He shrugged. “Knowing
what I do, I can even be gracious.” He walked forward, a smile on
his face. “Miss Fairfield. How lovely to have you here.”

Miss Fairfield’s response was lost in the
noise, but Bradenton bowed and walked away.

Oliver approached her a few minutes later.
“Miss Fairfield,” he said. “How are you this evening?” He already
knew the answer. Her fingers twined together in nervous
anticipation; her eyes were alight with possibility. He felt it,
too—the thing they might achieve here tonight.

He felt a twinge of something stronger than
anticipation looking at her. At the lips he hadn’t kissed, the
veins in her wrist that he’d not examined with his fingertips. Of
the smooth swell of her breasts, no longer occluded even by black
lace.

Don’t touch.

And so he didn’t. He inclined his head to her
as if she were a trifling little acquaintance, and then let her go
talk to the others. She wasn’t his, after all. They were just…

Friends.

Yes, he thought. That. How had they come to
be just that?

For once, her heavy gown was almost
unobjectionable. Yes, her wrists blazed with sparkling stones, and
the brocade at her hem was a little too colorful. But the great
excesses had been slightly muted, changing her from utterly
impossible to merely overly exuberant.

Bradenton returned to her side with a
lemonade. She took it—and then, when he offered his arm—took that
too. Oliver watched as the man introduced his set—Canterly,
Ellisford, Rockway—one after the other, running through the names
so swiftly that nobody would have been able to recall them. Jane,
of course, had been coached. She greeted everyone politely by name.
She smiled. And—oh, yes—she wasn’t perfect. She flubbed Lord James
Ward’s title—he was Lord James, as his father was a duke, not Lord
Ward—but one of the Johnson twins, who flanked her, whispered in
her ear and she flushed and apologized prettily.