The Heiress Effect (48 page)

Oliver smiled.

“And you have only gained respect as her
husband.”

In the end, it had been easy to get attention
for his parliamentary campaign. Jane had already captured
everyone’s interest with her plans. The gowns she’d worn had simply
fit in with her personality. She’d fascinated everyone—and once she
began to accomplish things, she’d won their grudging respect.

“How did you know?” the man asked.

Oliver shrugged. “I had seen her in action. I
knew what she could do. But come. Enough of that. There’s a man I’d
like to introduce you to.”

Introductions were made; hands were shaken.
Oliver chalked that one up to a job well done, and set his glass on
a nearby table. Then he crossed the room. Nobody could tell—nobody
but Oliver—but underneath her gown of striped silk, Jane’s belly
was growing. In a few months, it would be obvious that she was
increasing with their second child. For now…

He stalked toward her. God, she was lovely.
Her back was to him, leaving a view of the nape of her neck,
adorned tonight by gold and diamonds. The curve of her waist begged
for his touch. She was talking with great animation to the people
next to her.

“There need to be some repercussions to all
this fine theory,” Jane was saying. “It’s all well and good to say
that doctors should act in the best interests of their patients,
but what if they do not? Who determines what happens next? This is
what I need you to consider. Then, we’ll talk to Parliament.”

“Speak of the devil,” the doctor next to her
said.

Jane turned. “Oh. It’s you.” But she glowed
at him—the smile of a woman completely in her element—and she took
his hand, entwining it in hers. “Did you bring Bertie Pages? I
wanted to introduce him to Anjan.” She leaned in. “Emily says that
Anjan is considering joining you in Parliament.”

“I know. I talked to him earlier. It’s
already done.” Oliver gestured across the room, where his colleague
was talking to his brother-in-law. Emily stood next to her husband,
smiling.

“You are efficient,” she said.

“Sometimes.” He smiled.

Jane was framed in the window. Everyone else
might think the décor in the salon a bit odd. There was, after all,
a small collection of plants on the table by the window: six of
them so far. One cactus for every anniversary they’d celebrated
together, plus the one Jane had brought to their marriage. For
their tenth anniversary, Oliver was going to try to get her a
saguaro—but that was going to take some doing. For now…

“I came to see if you were tired,” Oliver
said. “After all this work, I’m sure that when you finish up,
you’ll need a rest.”

For the first few months of the pregnancy,
she had been exhausted. She’d needed naps and back rubs, and he’d
been happy to oblige.

“I haven’t been tired in a while,” she told
him. “But yes, after we’re done, I’ll be…” She trailed off
slowly.

She met his eyes, saw his smile. Her hand,
tangled with his, went still for a moment. Very deliberately,
Oliver drew his thumb over her fingers.

She answered his smile with one of her
own.

“Now that you mention it,” she said, “I
will
be particularly tired after this. I might need a little
help getting upstairs.”

Her forefinger traced an answering line down
the side of his hand.

“Yes,” Oliver said. “I can manage that.” He
leaned in and brushed a kiss against her forehead. “Until
then.”

Thanks for reading
The Heiress Effect
. I
hope you enjoyed it!

• Would you like to know when my next book is
available? You can sign up for my new release e-mail list at
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•You’ve just read the second full-length book
in the Brothers Sinister series. The books in the series are
The
Governess Affair
, a prequel novella about Oliver’s parents,
The Duchess War
,
A Kiss for Midwinter
,
The Heiress
Effect
,
The Countess Conspiracy
(out December 2013), and
The Mistress Rebellion
(out sometime in 2014). I hope you
enjoy them all!

You probably don’t want to know what was going
on with Sebastian in this book. You probably don’t care what secret
he has been hiding. If that’s the case, you definitely don’t want
to read one of the first scenes from
The Countess
Conspiracy
, the next book in this series. Whatever you do,
don’t turn the page. And if you do, don’t say I didn’t warn
you.

The Countess Conspiracy

coming in December of 2013

This is a short, unedited excerpt from somewhere
in Chapter One.

The morning sun beat down viciously, slicing
into Sebastian’s eyes as he looked out over the garden. The rose
arbor caught the early sunlight, and the beds of flowers glistened
with dew. It was damnably pretty, and he might even have enjoyed
it, were it not for the persistent throb of his head. If he hadn’t
known better, he’d have imagined he was suffering from the ill
effects of drink. Except he hadn’t had anything stronger than tea
in the last forty-eight hours. No; something else plagued him, and
unlike a few bottles of wine, it could not be cured by an
efficacious potion.

It would take a far greater dose than any
apothecary could deliver to change how he felt.

He’d known where he was heading from the
beginning. Violet was in the greenhouse; when he rounded the
shrubbery, he saw her sitting on a stool, peering at an array of
little pots of soil. She’d hooked her boots around the legs of the
stool. Even from here, he could hear her whistling happily to
herself. Sebastian felt sick to his stomach.

She didn’t look up when he opened the door.
She didn’t look up when he crossed over to her. She was
concentrating so fiercely on those little clay pots in front of
her, a magnifying glass in one hand, that she hadn’t even heard him
come in.

God. She looked so cheerful sitting there,
and he was going to ruin it all. He’d agreed to this charade when
he hadn’t understood what it would mean. When it had just meant
signing his name and listening to Violet talk, two things that had
seemed like no effort at all.

“Violet,” he said softly.

He could see her coming back into an
awareness of herself—blinking rapidly, slowly setting down the
glass she was holding before turning to him.

“Sebastian!” she said. There was a pleased
note in her voice. She’d forgiven him for last night, then. But the
smile she gave him slowly died as she saw the look on his face.
“Sebastian? Is everything all right?”

“I should apologize,” he blurted out. “God
knows I should apologize for last night. I should never have spoken
to you that way, and especially not in public.”

She waved this off. “I understand the strain
you’re under. Really, Sebastian, after everything we’ve done for
each other, a few harsh words hardly signifies. Now, there was
something I needed to tell you.” She frowned and tapped her lips.
“Let’s see…”

“Violet. Don’t get distracted. Listen to
me.”

She turned back to him.

Nobody else thought Violet pretty. He had
never understood that. Yes, her nose was too big. Her mouth was too
wide. Her eyes were set a little too far apart for beauty. He could
see those things, but somehow they’d never signified to him. Of all
the people in the world, Violet was the closest to him, and that
made her dear in ways he didn’t want to comprehend. She was his
dearest friend, and he was about to rip her apart.

He held up his hands in surrender to the
entire world. “Violet, I can’t do this anymore. I’m done living a
fraud.”

Her face went utterly blank. Her hand reached
out, falling on her magnifying glass, clutching it to her
chest.

Sebastian felt heartsick. “Violet.”

There was nobody he knew better, nobody in
the world he cared for more. Her skin had turned to ash. She sat
looking at him, totally devoid of expression. He'd seen her like
that once before. He’d never imagined he would be the one who did
that to her again.

“Violet, you know I would do anything for
you.”

She made a curious sound in her throat, half
sob, half choke. "Don't do this. Sebastian, we can figure out—”

“We’ve tried,” he said sadly. “I'm sorry,
Violet," he whispered, "but this is the end.”

He was breaking her, but then, the last thing
that was good in him had already broken, and he had nothing left to
give her. He smiled sadly and looked around her greenhouse. At the
shelves and shelves, filled with tiny little pots, each one
labeled. At the bookshelf in the corner, twenty leather-bound
volumes strong. At all the evidence that he kept waiting for
everyone else to discover. Finally, he looked at Violet—at a woman
he had known all his life, and loved for half of it.

“ I will be your friend. Your confidante.
I’ll be a helping hand when you need one. I will do anything for
you, but there is one thing I will never do again.” He drew a deep
breath. “I will never again present your work as my own.”

Her magnifying glass slipped from her
fingers, and landed on the paving stones beneath her chair. But it
was strong—like Violet—and it hadn’t shattered.

He reached down and picked it up. “Here,” he
said, handing it back to her. “You’ll need this.”

Want to know when
The Countess Conspiracy
comes out? Sign up for my new release e-mail list on my website
today.

If you haven’t read
The Duchess War
,
the first full-length book in the series, the first chapter
follows.

The Duchess War

available now

Miss Minerva Lane is a quiet, bespectacled
wallflower, and she wants to keep it that way. After all, the last
time she was the center of attention, it ended badly—so badly that
she changed her name to escape her scandalous past. Wallflowers may
not be the prettiest of blooms, but at least they don’t get
trampled. So when a handsome duke comes to town, the last thing she
wants is his attention.

But that is precisely what she gets…

Chapter One

Robert Blaisdell, the ninth Duke of Clermont,
was not hiding.

True, he’d retreated to the upstairs library
of the old Guildhall, far enough from the crowd below that the
noise of the ensemble had faded to a distant rumble. True, nobody
else was about. Also true: He stood behind thick curtains of
blue-gray velvet, which shielded him from view. And he’d had to
move the heavy davenport of brown-buttoned leather to get
there.

But he’d done all that not to hide himself,
but because—and this was a key point in his rather specious train
of logic—in this centuries-old structure of plaster and timberwork,
only one of the panes in the windows opened, and that happened to
be the one secreted behind the sofa.

So here he stood, cigarillo in hand, the
smoke trailing out into the chilly autumn air. He wasn’t hiding; it
was simply a matter of preserving the aging books from fumes.

He might even have believed himself, if only
he smoked.

Still, through the wavy panes of aging glass,
he could make out the darkened stone of the church directly across
the way. Lamplight cast unmoving shadows on the pavement below. A
pile of handbills had once been stacked against the doors, but an
autumn breeze had picked them up and scattered them down the
street, driving them into puddles.

He was making a mess. A goddamned glorious
mess. He smiled and tapped the end of his untouched cigarillo
against the window opening, sending ashes twirling to the paving
stones below.