“Behave properly, Jane,” he said quietly. “Stop arguing. Stop influencing your sister to do wrong. Do your best to attach a man. You may be overplump, but you have money and I suppose that will do. And if I hear tell that you’ve bribed another doctor…” He trailed off ominously.
“You won’t,” Jane promised. “You won’t hear a thing. I promise.”
He wouldn’t hear a thing. Next time, she would bribe better.
Four hundred and seventy-one days of this. How was she to keep up this façade for a year and a half? She felt ragged and weary, impossibly tired.
“Yes, Uncle,” she said. “I’ll do everything you say.”
Chapter Seven
There was an assembly that night, a glittering gathering of young men and delicately arrayed women. Oliver had come, and he still wasn’t sure why. To see Miss Fairfield, he suspected, but his reasons for that…
He was not going to take Bradenton up on his offer. He’d find some other way to bring the man around. Bradenton could be reasonable, after all.
He’s not asking for a reasonable thing.
Oliver shoved that voice away. He’d watched Miss Fairfield’s face turn to wax as her maid informed her of the waiting doctor of galvanics. He’d been right. Whatever she was facing, it was awful. Bradenton would turn reasonable, and that was that.
But if he doesn’t?
Oliver shook his head. He would be.
The assembly room was smaller than most London ballrooms. But then, there were far fewer people—no more than perhaps a dozen couples with only a few more on their way. Everyone had already mingled and made introductions. A few ladies had glanced Oliver’s way shyly—ever since it had come out that he was a duke’s son, there had been a little more interest. He talked to them halfheartedly. He might have enjoyed the conversations, had he not been waiting for Miss Fairfield.
It was not so much that he wanted to see her.
She was pleasant enough to look at—the parts of her that she didn’t drape in hideous apparel, at least. Earlier in the bookshop, he’d enjoyed their conversation. He’d enjoyed it so much that he’d stopped noticing the head-splitting pattern of her day gown.
And now here he was, waiting for her to arrive. Waiting with an eagerness that seemed a little out of proportion to simple curiosity.
Just when he was on the verge of giving up hope of her, she walked into the room.
Oliver saw her immediately and was so stunned that he could not move. For the first few ticks of the clock, nobody took notice. Ladies talked; gentlemen offered their arms. Glasses were raised and drunk from.
Then one man glanced up, and another. Ladies’ heads turned. There were no gasps—the dress she was wearing was beyond gasps. Oliver himself had to close his mouth. Silence rippled over the room—an active, electric silence, the stillness between the lightning strike and the rumble of thunder overhead.
The cut of her gown was completely unobjectionable. Rather modest, in terms of lace. It had no more pattern than a few delicate twining vines at the hem. But aside from those curling green tendrils, the gown was the bright pink of…of…of…
All comparisons failed Oliver. It wasn’t the bright pink of anything. It was a furious shade of pink, one that nature had never intended. It was a pink that did violence to the notion of demure pastels. It didn’t just shout for attention; it walked up and clubbed one over the head.
It hurt his head, that pink, and yet he couldn’t look away.
The room was small enough that he could hear the first words of greeting. “Miss Fairfield,” a woman said. “Your gown is…very pink. And pink is…such a lovely color, isn’t it?” That last was said with a wistful quality in the speaker’s voice, as if she were mourning the memory of true pink.
“Isn’t it lovely?” Miss Fairfield spoke loudly enough to be heard by all. “I asked Miss Genevieve, and she said that pink is always appropriate for a debutante.”
“Well,” said that other woman, “there’s…certainly a great deal of pink in that gown.”
“Yes,” Miss Fairfield responded happily. “I think so too!”
Everyone was looking at her. Literally everyone—there wasn’t a single person who could do anything but gawk at that gown.
It would have been bearable if there were not so much of that fabric, but the seamstress had not stinted. It wasn’t just the pink bodice and the pink skirts, but the excessively pink sash—all pink, no vines on that—which had been looped and wired to stand out from her gown. There were floridly pink flounces, which were trimmed with gouge-your-eyes-out pink lace.
So much vicious, pink fabric. And all of it was shiny.
She smiled brilliantly, as if she were proud of that confection and utterly unaware that she was the cause of all those titters.
Oliver had once watched a man eat a lemon. His own mouth had dried in vicarious response, and he’d looked away. He felt like that now, looking at her gown. She didn’t hold back one bit. She wore her too-bright gown and spoke in her too-loud voice, and she didn’t flinch while everyone gawked at her.
She was going to get burned, not caring. She went about the room greeting people. Behind her, a gentleman made a rude gesture at her backside—a flip of his hand that was too crass for a ballroom—and the laughter that erupted had an ugly tint to it.
Miss Fairfield smiled as if she’d done something brilliant.
No, it was not just that she was going to get burned.
She had already been burned. She was afire now. She smiled and laughed and she didn’t care what they thought of her. It was as painful to watch as that fellow had been, casually peeling a lemon and then eating the slices one by one as if nothing were wrong. Oliver wanted to tell himself that he wouldn’t hurt her, that he wasn’t that kind of man. But right now, all he wanted to do was push her so far from him that he never had to see this, never had to hear that low, mocking laughter again.
He remembered being laughed at. He remembered it all too well, and he remembered its aftermath. They’d come find him later, taunting, a group of them when he’d been caught out alone…
No. He couldn’t watch this. He turned away.
But it did little good. He could still hear her.
She greeted the hostess, cheerily. “Mrs. Gedwin,” she said in a carrying voice, “I am so delighted to be in attendance. And what a lovely chandelier you have. I wager it would look almost new, if it had been dusted recently.”
Oliver’s fists clenched. Stop playing with fire, you foolish girl, before you hurt yourself.
“Good God,” said a woman near him. “Even her gloves match.”
Sebastian had said that nature chose its most brilliant colors as a warning: Don’t eat me. I’m poison. If that were the case, Miss Fairfield had just announced that she was the most poisonous butterfly ever to grace the drawing rooms of Cambridge. She flitted about the room, leaving dazed looks and cruel titters behind her.
By the time she made her way to him, he had a headache. Hell, he didn’t need Bradenton to offer him his vote. He might have pushed her away just so he wouldn’t have to listen to everyone laugh.
“Mr. Marshall,” she said.
He took her hand and inhaled. And that, perhaps, was what brought him back to himself. Amidst all that was unfamiliar, there was one thing he recognized—the smell of her soap, that mixed scent of lavender and mint. It spelled instant comfort, and it made his course of action quite clear.
He’d promised not to lie to her. That was all he had to do now—not lie.
“Miss Fairfield,” he said in a voice pitched normally. “You look well today.”
She dimpled at him.
He let his gaze drift down briefly, and then looked up at her. “Your gown, on the other hand…” He took in a deep breath. “It makes me want to commit an act of murder, and I do not consider myself a violent man. What are you wearing?”
“It’s an evening gown.” She spread her outrageously gloved hands over her hips.
“It is the most hideous shade of pink that I have ever seen in my life. Is it actually glowing?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” But the smile on her face seemed more genuine.
“I fear it may be contagious,” he continued. “It is setting all my preternatural urges on edge, whispering that the color must be catching. I feel an uncontrollable urge to run swiftly as far as I can in the other direction, lest my waistcoat fall prey next.”
She actually laughed at that and brushed her shoulder. “This would make a lovely waistcoat, don’t you think? But don’t worry; the color isn’t virulent. Yet.”
“What does one call a color like that?”
She smiled at him. “Fuchsine.”
“It even sounds like a filthy word,” Oliver replied. “Tell me, what sort of devilry is fuchsine?”
She glanced around them, ascertained that nobody was near enough to hear. “It’s a dye,” she said, as if that were not obvious. “A new one, a synthetic one, made from some kind of coal tar, I believe. Some brilliant chemist with a talent for experimentation and no sense of propriety came up with this.”
“It’s…” There were still no words for it. “It’s malevolent,” he managed. “Truly.”
She leaned in. “You’re maligning the shade,” she whispered. “Don’t. I actually love it. And I wager that everyone else here would, too, if it had been someone else wearing it first.”
He swallowed. “Maybe. That other person might have been wearing it in greater moderation.”
“I had it made up specially. The gloves, the lace. I thought about having little brilliants sewn all over the bodice in sparkly patterns, but…” She shrugged expressively.
“You decided you didn’t actually want to be responsible for blinding the entire gathering. Thank you.”
“No. I decided that I would save that for the virulently green dress.” She gave him a waggle of the eyebrow. “There must be some escalation, after all. What’s the point in being an heiress, if you aren’t allowed to make anyone cringe?”
Oliver simply shook his head. “Yes, but…”
“It’s the most amazing thing. I don a gown like this, and you’re the only one who tells me to my face how utterly hideous it is. Everyone else has been giving me the most contrived compliments. Here comes someone else, no doubt to compliment me on the extraordinary color.”
He shook his head. “That must take some calculation, Miss Fairfield. Determining precisely the line you must walk to prevent yourself from being bodily hurled from the assembly.”
She smiled. “No calculation at all. They put up with me for one reason, and one reason only. I call it the heiress effect.”
The heiress effect. Maybe that was it—that was what stood between those ugly whispers and the prickle of hair on the back of his neck. He managed a halfhearted smile.
“Miss Fairfield, you frighten me. You and your wardrobe.”
She tapped his wrist with the fan. “That,” she said briskly, “is the point. This way, I can repel dozens of men in one fell swoop, all without even opening my mouth. And nobody can say it’s not demure. I’m even wearing pearls.”
He glanced down. If anyone asked, he was looking at her pearls. Definitely looking at her pearls, which were displayed to admirable effect by her bosom. That lovely swell of sweet flesh, so soft-looking. Her breasts made even the pernicious pink fabric that framed them appear touchably good.
“Miss Fairfield,” he said, after a moment of silence that stretched a little too long. “I would ask you to dance, but I fear our last conversation was interrupted.”
The smile slowly slid off her face, and her brow crinkled in little lines of worry. “There’s a verandah,” she finally said. “We could go out. It is a little cold, but… Other people are getting air. Not many of them, but we’ll be in sight of the company. If anyone asks, you can claim that you were doing the assembly a favor. Ridding them of the horror of looking at me for a quarter hour.”
She smiled as she said it. She sounded perfectly serious.
And Oliver… Oliver felt a twinge deep inside him. He wasn’t that man. He wasn’t going to humiliate her. He wasn’t.
You will, his gut whispered back.
“You’re not horrid,” he said. “Your gown is.”
“I can guess,” Mr. Marshall said a little later, as they made their way onto the verandah, away from the press of other people, “as to why you are doing this.” His gesture encompassed her gown of fuchsine.
Jane had expected as much. He seemed a clever man; he wouldn’t have missed the import of the conversation he’d overheard. But she looked away, concentrating on the gray Portland stone of the verandah, the stone balustrade ringed by naked trees, cast in flickering shadows.
“Is it your sister?”
“Emily.”
“She’s ill, then.”
“Ill is not the right word. She has a convulsive condition. That is to say, she has convulsions. Seizures. F—” She was talking too much again, and she bit back the even longer explanation that popped into her mind.
“It’s not epilepsy?”
“Some doctors call it epilepsy,” she said cautiously. “But she has seen so many of them. The only thing they can agree on is that they don’t know how to cure her fits.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “What I overheard the other day, that’s the nature of the typical experiment, then? The doctors want to send an electric shock through her?”
“Among so many other things.” Too many treatments to list. Too many for Jane to think about without feeling sick to her stomach. “They’ve tried bloodletting and leeches and potions that make her vomit. Those are the easy ones to talk about. The rest…” If she closed her eyes, she could still smell the poker burning into her sister’s arm. She could still hear her scream. “You don’t want to hear about the rest.”
“Her guardian, I take it, is in favor of experimentation. You are not.”
“Emily is not,” Jane said tightly. “Therefore, I am not.”
She waited for him to argue with her. To tell her what Titus always said—that young girls had guardians so that someone could make them do the things they did not wish to do.
“I can scarcely imagine,” Mr. Marshall finally said. “My sister-in-law, Minnie—she’s the Duchess of Clermont—bother, never mind her title.”
Jane blinked, but he went on, as if he called duchesses by their Christian names every day. Maybe he did.
“In any event,” he said, steering her around a few dormant rose bushes, “Minnie’s best friend is married to a physician. Doctor Grantham and I have had some frank discussions on the state of medicine. I don’t think it is possible to speak with five doctors without hearing of some terrifying practice.”
“Twenty-seven,” Jane said softly. “She has seen twenty-seven doctors, and I’m not counting the ones who haven’t the proper credentials. It’s simple, really. If I marry, I’ll leave her alone in the household. I have money, but she does not. As she is not yet of age, if I gave her money it would simply be held in trust by her guardian. Who, needless to say, would use it to find more doctors. So I must stay in the household, unmarried, so that I might bribe them to leave her in peace.” There was so much more to it than that. She worried about her sister, left alone so much. Emily had so much vitality in her; restricting her movements left her restless. And Emily needed companionship, friends of her own age.
But he nodded. “That much I had gathered. But why is it that you make this particular attempt?” He gestured at the doors of the assembly. “Why not simply say that you don’t plan to marry?”
She sighed. “It’s my uncle. He is a very dutiful man. He allows my presence only because he believes he is doing me a favor—helping me find a husband who will curb my tendencies. But I’m not his ward any longer. If he wanted me out of his household, he could have me out.”
“Your tendencies?”
“I am,” she said swiftly, “stubborn, argumentative, and…and he fears, consid
ering my birth, potentially licentious.” She didn’t look up at him to see how he would take this. She probably shouldn’t have told him that. What he would think…
There was a pause. “Lovely. My favorite kind of woman.”
“You’re very droll.”
“Was I joking?” He held up his hands. “I wasn’t joking.”
“No man wants a woman who argues with him,” she said. “He especially doesn’t want a…licentious woman.”
He laughed. “You,” he said, “have a very odd idea of what men like in a woman. Most men I know prefer a woman who favors a good, long night of…” He trailed off, leaning in.
“Of what?”
“Of argument,” he replied.
“That’s ridiculous.” But she found her lips tugging upward in a smile. “I have proof positive you are wrong on this point. I argue with men all the time, and they absolutely despise me.”
“Ah, see, you’ve got the idea now. Contradict me again, Miss Fairfield, and see how I like it.”
“You don’t.”
“That, my dear, you cannot dispute. We can argue over the general preferences of my sex until the cows come home, but we cannot argue over what I like. I will always win.”
“Why should that stop me?” Jane asked. “I have made an entire career out of losing.”
The smile slipped off his face. He took a deep breath and regarded her. “Yes, as to that. We have established why you do not wish to marry. But there are a great many easier ways that a woman can stay unmarried. What made you choose this one?”
She’d not expected the question. Even her own sister had never asked her why she’d chosen this particular route. And that brought back memories—memories that still itched under her skin, if she let them.
“It suits me,” she finally said.
“I don’t think it does.”
“You cannot argue over what I like,” Jane retorted. “I will always win.”
“Miss Fairfield.” He did not seem to be saying her name as a prelude to anything, but simply to be speaking it for the pleasure of the syllables. He shook his head slowly as he did, and then put his hand over hers.