The Heiress Effect Read online

  She had an unapproved novel in one cloak pocket, a handkerchief in the other, and a determination to spend all two hours of her ridiculous nap outside.

  Titus Fairfield’s house sat at the outskirts of Cambridge. It was a sad, two-story affair of graying stone surrounded by drab bushes. She pulled her skirt close to avoid the thorns of the gooseberry bush, squeezed through a narrow gap in the back hedge, and obtained her freedom on the gravel track leading away from town, across fields and over hills.

  This was behavior that Uncle Titus would call foolish—setting out on her own, unaccompanied by a chaperone, walking with real strides instead of taking the delicate steps that befitted her status as a supposed invalid. Going out for hours instead of minutes.

  And maybe he was right. A little bit. But the alternative—lying in bed when it was light outside, staring at the ceiling, imagining bludgeoning her uncle with one of his law books—was even more ill advised. That left her feeling shaky, guilty, and almost feverishly restless. When she felt that way, she’d watch him over breakfast, thinking idly of pulling his bookshelf down around his head.

  Not the sort of imagery that made her proud. She held her head high on the main road, nodding at passing farmers. Her gown was a little too fine to make her anything other than a lady escaped from chaperonage, but people saw what they thought would fit in. She marched down the road, brushing the fence posts and stone walls with the tips of her fingers, marveling in the feel of wind on her cheeks, the taste of freedom. It was cold; the wind bit through her gloves, and her cloak wasn’t thick enough to keep off the worst of the chill, but she didn’t care.

  What if something happens? Her uncle’s mournful voice seemed to drift to her on a memory. He could have carved it in stone and set it above the mantelpiece, he’d said it so often. What if something happens? He’d been worrying about something happening to her for years, with the result that nothing happened at all.

  Today, she was resolved to walk through Grantchester. She’d seen Grantchester Road half a dozen times in her stolen ramblings, and while a village might not be the stuff of Mrs. Larriger’s exploits, it was something more than a handful of goats. She would walk and smile, and nobody would know that she’d escaped from the dreadful clutches of…of…

  Not pirates. Not whalers. Not the czar of Russia.

  “I’ve escaped from the dreadful clutches of a nap,” she announced to the road.

  Emily passed a farmhouse, then another, then—a sign that the village was nearby—a grain mill. Students were working industriously inside a grammar school. She nodded at a smith in his yard as he examined a horse’s hooves.

  When she reached the main square, she thought about buying an apple from a green grocer, just to prove she could. But it seemed futile to waste her few coins on wizened fruit.

  She wanted so little—just the chance to do the things everyone else did. Was it so much to ask?

  What if something happens?

  A bitter thought, that—that she had to fear everything, simply because of what might occur. A bitter thought, indeed.

  And at that, Emily realized it wasn’t just the thought that was bitter. It was the taste in her mouth.

  It wasn’t an actual taste. Years of experimentation had demonstrated that. It was a growing bitterness that spread through her until she tasted it not just on her tongue, but in her cheeks and stomach—in parts of her body that ought not to have been able to taste at all. The taste fell somewhere between rancid almond and rotting eggs.

  Familiar. Annoying. And—as the timing went—completely awful. In a minute, Emily was going to start smelling bad things. Shortly after that…

  Something was going to happen. The very thing her uncle feared, the reason she wasn’t allowed outside.

  She didn’t have time to make her way out to the indifferent fields outside of town, and if she collapsed in front of the grammar school with her leg spasming, someone would see her for certain. They’d ask to help, insist on seeing her home. Her uncle would find out, and…

  And she’d never go out again. There wasn’t time to think or time to choose.

  Emily crossed the square and ducked into the public house.

  Act as if you belong.

  She swallowed the taste in her mouth, smiled as the telltale olfactory dysfunction took her senses, masking the scents of baking bread and soup in a foul miasma.

  She slid into the nearest bench and tucked her skirts behind the table. Hopefully nobody would look at her. Hopefully, the few minutes of her fit would pass with nobody the wiser. Hopefully—

  “Miss,” a pleasant voice said from across the table, “please don’t sit here.”

  Emily looked up, and that was when she realized that she wasn’t alone at the table. A man sat across from her, wedged against the wall. A book was open before him, and he had half a loaf of bread sitting beside an empty soup bowl.

  Her leg had already begun to twitch.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, gritting her teeth. “I really can’t stand up right now.”

  His accent had been almost too perfect, too studied. His clothing was as English as tea and biscuits. He’d tied his blue cravat in a crisp, formal style, fixed it in place with a gold pin, and laid a very proper hat on the table. The white perfection of his cuffs peeking out from underneath his coat contrasted all the more with the dark brown of his skin.

  She looked up into his eyes—almost black—ringed with thick, long eyelashes. His lips pressed together in something that might have been annoyance.

  “Miss…” His breath hissed out, and his hands flattened on the table.

  He was Indian. She’d seen Indian students before—there were dozens attending Cambridge. Like all of the men in Cambridge, she’d seen them only at a distance from carriage windows or across a green. She doubted her uncle would have let her anywhere near them. Something, after all, might have happened.

  He looked at her, more wary of an English miss than any Cambridge student should have been. Maybe he wouldn’t turn her in after all.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized again. “I don’t mean to be making faces at you. I’m about to have a fit. It will pass in a few minutes.”

  He frowned, but there was no time to explain.

  Emily didn’t have proper fits. At least, that was what Doctor Russell from London had said. It wasn’t really epilepsy, he’d explained, because she never lost her senses. She was always present; she could even speak and move her limbs. It came on her now, the seizure, familiar as a glove.

  She’d watched herself in a mirror before. Mostly, her right leg spasmed. But that was not the only effect. Her whole body shivered and her face contorted. Her heart raced, too—heavy, swift erratic beats, like a three-legged horse attempting to gallop.

  Her companion at the table stared at her in consternation for a few moments. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  She gritted her teeth. “Don’t tell anyone what is happening.”

  He made a noise that might have been assent.

  Sometimes, Emily wished she were not conscious during her fits. She was constantly aware of how she looked, what others would be thinking of her. She wished she could disappear into nothingness and return with no awkward memories. If she had lost consciousness, a doctor had told her, he’d have known it was epilepsy for sure. As it was, she was a special case—not fitting in anywhere. No known treatments. No understood causes.

  She focused on the grain of the wooden tabletop in lieu of thinking of what was happening. Someone had carved a set of initials into the corner. She held onto those letters—A+M—repeating them to herself over and over until her spasms faded to twitches, until the twitches faded to the liquid exhaustion of well-used muscles.

  It had lasted twenty seconds. Such a short space of time to cause her so much trouble.

  She let out a breath.

  “Miss,” said a voice behind her. “Are you well? Is this man bothering you?”

  She turned to see a buxom woman
, a towel strapped to her apron strings.

  “If he’s any trouble at all, I’ll have my husband…”

  “No,” Emily squeaked out. “Not at all. I felt faint, and had to sit down. He has been solicitous. Very solicitous.”

  “Pushing himself on you?”

  “Quite the opposite,” Emily said. “I’m afraid I intruded at his table without so much as asking his leave.”

  He—whoever he was—hadn’t said a word in this exchange, as if he were used to not having his opinion consulted. To being discussed as if he were not there. He simply watched Emily with those dark, wary eyes.

  “Hmm,” the woman said. “Well, he has been quiet thus far, but you never know.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind bringing some tea?” Emily smiled at her. “I would appreciate the refreshment.”

  “Of course, dearie. And he’s truly not bothering you?”

  Emily shook her head and the woman left.

  The man across from her was silent for a few moments. Finally, he said, “Thank you for not having me thrown out of here. It’s the only place within a four-mile walk of Cambridge that serves a vegetable soup, and I get tired of bread and cheese and boiled greens.”

  “You’re studying at Cambridge, then?”

  The book in front of him made that much obvious.

  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.

  But thank God, finally, finally, something was happening.

  It had been three days since Jane’s last conversation with Mr. Marshall
, and in that time, she had imagined telling him everything a hundred times over. Last night, she had scarcely slept, thinking about what she would say when next she saw him. What it would be like to have someone who understood, who knew.

  She had a list of things she would say—a calm, precise, rational list. She wouldn’t let words tumble out of her like a stream undammed, rushing back to old banks. He wouldn’t think her deranged at all.

  That delusion lasted up until the moment she saw him again. Jane had just disembarked from the carriage and turned to wait for Mrs. Blickstall, who was right behind her. As she did, she caught sight of him on the other side of her horses.

  He was walking on the pavement headed in the direction of the market a few streets over. His stride was determined and swift, his expression abstracted as if his mind were on anything other than her. He didn’t see her; he simply kept walking. Five strides, and he was already several yards distant.

  She started to wave at him, but he bore a distant expression, one that arrested her hand.

  He was a duke’s son. A man who, by his own admission, wanted one day to be prime minister. No doubt he had far more pressing problems on his mind than the piddling questions that plagued Jane: accounts of her sister’s guardianship and medical treatment. In the time it would take to hash through the sordid, petty details of her life, Mr. Marshall could review the entire text of every act passed by Parliament in their last sitting.

  She curled her fingers in an abortive movement and brought her hand back to her side.

  He’d been kind. He’d been clever enough to see a great deal about her. But it would be foolish to think that those two things meant that he actually cared about her. He had more important things to deal with than a young lady and her sister.

  Jane squared her jaw and crossed the pavement to the bookstore. She wouldn’t watch him retreat down the street. She wouldn’t relive her stupid fantasies of friendship.

  The store was musty and empty; Mrs. Blickstall, bored, took a seat at the front and folded her hands primly while Jane looked through the volumes at the back of the shop. She could hear the bell ring, idly, the murmur of a customer’s voice as he spoke with the shopkeeper. Jane picked one book from the shelves and then wandered down the aisle, perusing titles. She heard footsteps behind her.