The Heiress Effect

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.