The Heiress Effect

“She’s right. There would be no problem, if only you—”

“If I?” He slammed his hands against the desk and leaned forward. “So you’ll lay this at my feet, too? You encouraged her to defy me. You likely showed her how to leave, and told her—”

“She’s not a simpleton,” Jane snapped back, “nor is she led on strings. She’s a nineteen-year-old woman. She’s old enough to marry, to make her own decisions. Nobody needs to show her how to do things. She does them on her own.”

If Titus heard this, he didn’t show it.

“I can no longer avoid contemplating the ill effects of your influence,” he said piously.

Jane took a deep breath. “She’s a normal girl. She has high spirits, that’s all.”

Titus shook his head. “It is your telling her such things that causes these problems. A normal girl? She is no such thing. She is afflicted, Jane, and you let your sister wander about the countryside unchaperoned. What if she had met a man?”

“What if a burglar broke into her window?” Jane countered. “She’s not Rapunzel, to be locked away for good.”

Titus stared into her eyes. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at—anger, surely, but something more. Something halfway between anger and triumph. “That,” he finally said, “was a test. I know that she met a man. She told me so herself. I had given you that one last chance for honesty, you see. Your refusal to tell me the entire truth…” He shook his head, sad once more. “You disappoint me, Jane. You disappoint me deeply.”

It wasn’t fair. She wasn’t going to apologize for refusing to betray her sister. Especially since she would have received the blame no matter how Titus found out. He’d failed Emily and Jane both, thrust them into this untenable position where the choice was either to lie or to accept a future where Emily was isolated from company and tortured by physicians.

“You will leave tomorrow,” Titus said. “Your aunt, my sister Lily, will take you in.” His lip twitched distastefully. “She will find you a husband in short order. Emily will not write. You may not visit. It will be as if she has no sister. I have hopes that I may yet undo the damage you have caused.”

“No.” Jane choked on the word. “No. You can’t take her away from me.”

“I can.” He folded his arms in satisfaction. “I will. I already have, Jane. Your things are packed. You’ll be escorted to the train station tomorrow. Mrs. Blickstall will accompany you to Nottingham.”

Jane stared straight ahead of her, too dazed to cry. Her lungs burned. She couldn’t think of anything at all. If she were not here, what would Emily do? Her sister wouldn’t have books to read or companions near her age. And that was to say nothing about what would happen if Titus decided to bring in yet another charlatan to cure Emily’s condition.

She took a deep breath. “I’ll go, but if I do, there will be no doctors. No attempts to experiment on her.”

“Jane,” Titus said in a tired voice, “you cannot dictate terms. You are not your sister’s guardian. I am. I am responsible for her, and I will determine what is best for her welfare.”

If you need me, Oliver had said.

That thought filled her with a terrible, wistful hope. Surely this counted as need. Surely this was a situation where his promise would require him to return, and if he did…

He was not a full hour gone from her life, and she was already contemplating bleating for him like a little lost lamb. As if she’d been a foolish child when she’d told him that she was strong enough. Her lip curled, and she contemplated her uncle.

In the orangish light of the lamp, he looked old and tired. The lines on his forehead seemed gouged into his skin, deep dark ruts marking a lifetime of fretting.

Jane raised her chin. She’d beaten Bradenton, by God, and he was stronger than Titus.

She could still feel Oliver’s kiss on her lips. She imagined a box made of carbonized steel—steel as strong as the girders of a steamship, steel as thick as an engine boiler, able to withstand the heat and pressure of a thousand infernos. She could lock all Titus’s ineffectual rage away forever inside such strength.

She put the feeling of Oliver’s kiss inside the box and closed it tightly so that nothing could happen to it. While she could remember what it felt like, she was not alone. He’d said so, and she believed it.

She lifted her head and stared into her uncle’s eyes. Her greatest fear had come true, but…this was freedom, not disaster. She had no need to pretend any longer. Not with anyone. She held Oliver’s kiss close, until she drove the tremor from her hands. Until she was calm enough to speak without croaking.

“No,” she said softly. “That is not what is going to happen.”

He blinked at her in confusion. “You can say no all you wish, but you have no legal power.”

“No,” Jane repeated. “You are wrong. You’re Emily’s guardian, but you aren’t mine. You have no way to control what I do.”

He gave her a haughty look. “Speak sense for once, because I do not take your meaning.”

He couldn’t win. Why had she never seen it before? She’d been so busy hiding in the shadows that she’d ceded all her best weapons.

“I don’t have to go to our aunt’s house,” Jane said. “I have money. I can do anything I wish. You haven’t noticed because all I’ve wished for is my sister’s happiness and wellbeing. You’re so set on believing me disobedient. You’ve not realized that I have been trying to obey your edicts. Think what I could do, if I chose to be difficult.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“If I wished, I could purchase a house next to this one. I could live there with a string of lovers. I could purchase an advertisement in the newspaper announcing that you suffered from a malady of the brain.”

As she spoke, he turned white. “You wouldn’t.”

She leaned forward. “I could tell everyone I met about your sordid medical practices. I’d let them know how unfit a guardian you were. I could make your life impossible. That’s who I am, if you haven’t noticed. I’m an impossible girl, and you cannot rid yourself of me. Not with threats. Not with words. Those are my terms.”

He stared at her in mute, baffled confusion, as if she had suddenly transformed into a bear and he didn’t know whether to scream and run or fetch a rifle. “I will not have you in my household.”