The Heiress Effect

I am ablaze.

Fire washed away sickness. Oliver didn’t smile. He didn’t look Bradenton in the eye. He simply shrugged. “Nine days, then. If that’s what I have.”

The next morning came on a wash of gray clouds. Oliver awoke with the memory of the previous night in his head—like a dream, gauzy and insubstantial, the sort of thing that could not really have happened.

He sat up. He was in a spare room in his cousin’s house. He waited for his head to clear. And instead of dissipating into impossible nothingness, as dreams were wont to do, his recollection solidified, memory after memory coming atop each other. Jane’s smile. Her gown. The look on her face as she’d smiled and said, I am ablaze.

God. What was he going to do?

A knock sounded on his door. “Are you ready?”

It was his cousin. Yesterday, he’d foolishly agreed to accompany Sebastian on his morning ramble. Oliver rubbed his eyes, looked out the window. It was early yet, dawn still combing gray fingers of mist through the fields. From the back window, he could see fog stretching over the River Cam and the fields beyond.

“Hurry up, Oliver,” Sebastian called.

“It’s not fair,” Oliver responded. “Why is my cousin the only rake I know who likes getting up in the morning?”

The only sound that came in response was Sebastian’s laughter.

It took half an hour to get dressed and leave. The mist was beginning to burn off in the early sunlight, and a bird called somewhere. But for the first few minutes of the walk, it was too cold to do anything but tread briskly, rubbing gloved hands together, until the exercise brought its own warmth. They crossed the Cam, went up the backs of the colleges, and wandered out into the fields before Sebastian spoke.

“Are you going to finally tell me what you’re up to?”

“Here? I told you already. Bradenton—”

“Hang Bradenton,” Sebastian said. “I never liked him anyway. That’s not what I mean.”

Oliver quirked up his mouth, perplexed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t mean your Miss Fairfield, either.” Sebastian sighed. “I’m talking about something far more important. The most important thing, if you will, the center of the universe, Copernicus be damned.” He smiled broadly. “I’m talking about me.”

Oliver glanced at Sebastian. His parents had told him about his sire when he was young. They’d described his half-brother, living in a grand house with a less-than useful father. Oliver had known all about Robert.

He hadn’t known about his cousin Sebastian until he was twelve years old.

The Duke of Clermont’s elder sister had married an industrialist in a desperate—and as far as Oliver could tell, futile—attempt to fill the Clermont family coffers. Sebastian Malheur was the result of that marriage. He was dark-haired and handsome, and he smiled at everyone. He had always been up to mischief when they’d been in school together. And somehow, that had never changed.

This sort of charming boast was precisely the sort of thing that Sebastian did best. Oliver was never sure what his cousin believed because he was so rarely serious.

Sebastian was smiling. “You keep asking me open-ended questions such as, ‘How are you?’ and ‘Are you really delighted to hear…’ All this stuff about my feelings. I thought I would give you the opportunity to be direct. You act like I’m going to die. Why are you doing that?”

Some things never changed, but…

Oliver sighed. “It’s your letters. Since I was heading down here anyway, Robert asked me to see how you were doing.”

“My letters.” Sebastian looked around as if expecting some Greek chorus to pop up and serenade him in explanation. “What have I been doing wrong in my letters?”

“I don’t know.” Oliver shrugged. “But Robert says there is something wrong with them. That you’re not yourself. And you know how he is. He’s always right about those things. He’ll never figure out what’s wrong on his own, or how to fix it—but he knows when something is off. And he says that you don’t sound happy.”

Sebastian beamed beatifically. It seemed like a ridiculous charge to make with the early morning sun touching his cousin’s face.

“Not happy?” Sebastian said. “Why wouldn’t I be happy? I’ve achieved the sort of success that most men only dream of. I have set all of England—indeed, the entire world—on its ear. I’ve wrought mischief of the highest order, and the lovely thing is that I am demonstrably, provably right. So tell me, Oliver, under those circumstances, why wouldn’t I be happy?”

Oliver glanced at his cousin and then shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “But in all that lovely, long speech just now, the one thing you never said was that you were happy.”

Sebastian looked at him, and then gave a wry shake of his head. “Minnie,” he said, as if that were an explanation. “Robert married her, and now the two of you are parsing language for all the meaning you can shake out of it. It’s a good thing she’s not here, because if she were, she’d see what wasn’t happening. You’re an amateur.”

“What isn’t happening?” Oliver asked.

Sebastian ignored him. “Let us suppose for the sake of argument that you are correct. I am deeply wounded and unhappy to my toes, but I don’t want to explain why.” He smiled as he spoke, as if to show how ridiculous the notion was. “Wouldn’t we all be better off assuming that I had reasons for that choice and respecting them?”

“Maybe,” said Oliver slowly. “But… I feel as if you aren’t really yourself lately. There’s something different about you.”

“Again, assuming that you are right,” Sebastian said, “you won’t make me feel any better by telling me how miserable I appear to be.”

“Very well, then,” Oliver said. “Have it your way. This is just like old times.” They walked on down the path, past a yard where a farmer’s daughter was feeding geese, past a man carrying water in yokes about his neck.

“What did you mean back then,” Oliver said finally, “about what wasn’t happening?”

“So many things aren’t happening,” Sebastian said airily. “I’m not flying. You aren’t turning to gold when I touch you. I have yet to strike a deal with the devil.”