She reached out and touched his hand. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
He shook his head as if throwing off old memories. “I told my parents what he had said, told them I wanted to go in his memory. We…talked. I’d had a marriage arranged, but the girl died young, and they hadn’t arranged another yet. I told them they shouldn’t. That I’d be more accepted if I…”
He paused.
“If you what?”
“If I was unmarried,” he said, without blinking. “Or if I found a wife in England instead of bringing one with me. It was not a happy conversation. My parents argued over it for years, but they eventually gave in. Even so, I suspect my mother still hopes to surprise me with a nice Bengali girl.”
Emily stared at him. “You had a marriage arranged before you were ten?”
“It’s not what you think. My parents love me. They wouldn’t want me to be unhappy. They would have picked someone I would grow to love, someone with a temperament like mine. They did quite well for my brothers.”
He looked away again, and then slowly took off his hat. He turned it in his hands.
“The post is slow between here and India,” he finally said. “But I wrote and asked for their approval.”
Emily swallowed. She couldn’t imagine the enormity of what he was talking about. She’d been enjoying his company. Enjoying it very much, as it was. But this…
“Our children would have to spend time in Calcutta,” he told his hat. “She would insist on having a chance to spoil them. My mother, I mean.”
“Anjan,” Emily heard herself say. “Are you asking me to marry you? Because…”
“No, of course not,” he replied. “It’s too soon for that. We haven’t known one another very long, which I hear is important for you English. And I have not heard from my parents, which is important to me. I’m just telling you a story, that’s all.”
A story. A story. She swallowed, trying to envision the story that would follow. It wouldn’t be an easy life, that much she knew. He rarely talked about how he was treated, but she hadn’t received the impression that many people were kind. Quite the reverse. And that would be what she entered into? That would be what her children would experience? She felt too young for children, let alone for a decision of this magnitude. She wrapped her arms around her waist.
“Here’s another story,” she said quietly. “I’m not of age. My uncle hasn’t even let me come out because of my fits. He would never let me marry.” Least of all you, she thought, but she didn’t want to have those ugly words said. “No matter what happened, I would have to wait until I turned twenty-one. And that’s a year and a half away.”
“Would you?” he asked. “Would you consider the wait, if we were in a story?”
But as much as she’d pretended this was an escape, this wasn’t a story.
“Every day we meet, I tell myself I shouldn’t come,” Emily said. “I’m afraid my uncle will find out, that he’ll start thinking of me as he thinks of Jane—well, never mind that.” She shut her eyes. “How can I consider the rest of my life when I can scarcely contemplate tomorrow?”
He drew back. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It was a story. A story and a rhetorical question.” She looked at him and felt a wash of sadness. “The strange thing is, I think that if our parents had arranged our marriage, I would be happy with the prospect. Isn’t that daft? It’s only because I have a choice that I’m fretting.”
He took a step toward her. “You’d have a choice,” he said softly. “Your mother would love you. After we met, she’d come to you alone. ‘How did I do?’ she’d ask. ‘Do you like him?’ A parent offering her beloved child a precious gift and hoping that it finds favor.”
Emily thought of her father—the one who hadn’t even visited every year. She thought of the mother she didn’t even remember, one who had brushed off her inconvenient children, seeing them only as an audience to listen to her complaints about the country life her husband had forced on her. She thought about Titus’s sad little pout when she and Jane had driven off that horrid Doctor Fallon with his foul-smelling jars.
“No,” she said, trying not to choke on the words. “That isn’t what would happen. He’d say, ‘nineteen-year-old girls are given guardians because they cannot choose for themselves.’”
Anjan didn’t speak for a moment. Then he lifted his hand and slowly, ever so slowly, touched her cheek.
“This part isn’t a story,” he said. “This part is just the truth. If he won’t hold you precious, then I will.”
It was just his hand. It was just her cheek. Her eyes stung. She didn’t move away, didn’t try to hold back the liquid that burned her vision. She couldn’t say anything in response, and so she just stayed with him—long enough that a cloud slid lazily across the sky, casting them in shade, and then passed on, putting them in sunlight once more.
“I’ll consider your story,” Emily finally said huskily. “For all the difficulty I see in it, it would have its rewards.”
Chapter Thirteen
The evening of Bradenton’s gathering came all too quickly. After a few feverish days of planning, Oliver found himself in Bradenton’s home once again. This time, though, the house was packed with the marquess’s allies in Parliament, and so the rooms were rather too warm. There were more than twenty here tonight—a smattering of lords, Members of Parliament, and accompanying wives.
“Marshall.” Bradenton made his way to Oliver through the gathered group, looked about, and leaned in. “I have to say I’m disappointed. Disappointed and surprised.” His voice was low, scarcely audible in the din of conversation. “Everyone is here, and yet Miss Fairfield’s reign of ridiculousness continues unabated. I had expected better of you.”
Too bad Oliver’s own expectations had intervened. He smiled faintly. “Oh ye of little faith,” he intoned. “You said tonight, and tonight I plan to deliver.”
The marquess, who had been shaking his head, paused. “Really?”
They’d gone through the plan inch by painstaking inch. Across the room, Hapford caught Oliver’s eye. His fists clenched, and he looked away.
“Let’s just say,” Oliver said, “she is primed. By the end of the night, Miss Fairfield will know exactly where she belongs.”
“How delightful.” Bradenton smiled. “I knew you would come around. And yes, here she is.” He shrugged. “Knowing what I do, I can even be gracious.” He walked forward, a smile on his face. “Miss Fairfield. How lovely to have you here.”
Miss Fairfield’s response was lost in the noise, but Bradenton bowed and walked away.
Oliver approached her a few minutes later. “Miss Fairfield,” he said. “How are you this evening?” He already knew the answer. Her fingers twined together in nervous anticipation; her eyes were alight with possibility. He felt it, too—the thing they might achieve here tonight.
He felt a twinge of something stronger than anticipation looking at her. At the lips he hadn’t kissed, the veins in her wrist that he’d not examined with his fingertips. Of the smooth swell of her breasts, no longer occluded even by black lace.
Don’t touch.
And so he didn’t. He inclined his head to her as if she were a trifling little acquaintance, and then let her go talk to the others. She wasn’t his, after all. They were just…
Friends.
Yes, he thought. That. How had they come to be just that?
For once, her heavy gown was almost unobjectionable. Yes, her wrists blazed with sparkling stones, and the brocade at her hem was a little too colorful. But the great excesses had been slightly muted, changing her from utterly impossible to merely overly exuberant.
Bradenton returned to her side with a lemonade. She took it—and then, when he offered his arm—took that too. Oliver watched as the man introduced his set—Canterly, Ellisford, Rockway—one after the other, running through the names so swiftly that nobody would have been able to recall them. Jane, of course, had been coached. She
greeted everyone politely by name. She smiled. And—oh, yes—she wasn’t perfect. She flubbed Lord James Ward’s title—he was Lord James, as his father was a duke, not Lord Ward—but one of the Johnson twins, who flanked her, whispered in her ear and she flushed and apologized prettily.
He could almost see her as one of them. Almost, if he ignored the over-long stares the other women gave her. If he refused to admit that her voice carried over everyone else’s.
They sat down to dinner.
She didn’t interrupt anyone’s conversation or insult anyone’s clothing. The twins spoke almost as much as she did.
In the end, it was Lord James who brought up politics.
“So,” he said, “I had a visit from the Countess of Branford. She said the women have been talking about the Contagious Diseases Act, of all things.”
“Ah, ah,” Bradenton said, wagging a finger. “Look about.” He inclined his head an inch to the left, indicating the Johnson twins.
The discussion of politics wasn’t always allowed in polite company, but in a group like this—men who thought of nothing else for much of the year—it was inevitable. More than half the women present were political wives or sisters and were used to such discussions at the table.
Lord James blinked in surprise. “I’m sorry, my lord,” he finally said. “I had thought Miss Johnson—but never mind.”
“Oh,” Miss Fairfield interrupted, two feet down the table from him, “please don’t stop on our account. I do so wish to hear everyone’s opinion. Starting with yours, Lord Bradenton.”
Bradenton looked up. Oliver could almost see him weighing the matter. He stroked his chin once, then twice.
“Humor Miss Fairfield,” Oliver said, with a pointed raise of his eyebrow at Bradenton.
Bradenton smiled broadly after a half-second’s hesitation. “Of course,” he said. “We all know how I feel—that the Act must go on, however harsh the consequences—and I gather we are in general agreement. But why don’t you tell us your opinion on the Contagious Diseases Act, Miss Fairfield? I’m sure you have a great deal to say.”
“Why, yes,” Miss Fairfield told him. “I do. I believe we should expand the scope of the Contagious Diseases Act. Radically.”
Bradenton blinked and glanced at her. The entire table was shocked into silence.
“How radical do you mean?” Lord James asked.”
Canterly nodded. “You’d extend it to more cities? Or would you, ah, hold suspects longer? Or—” He stopped, glancing at Jane, at the two sisters who were seated up the table from her.
Bradenton smiled more broadly, perhaps as if he thought he knew Oliver’s plan. Lure her into talking about sexual matters. Start a rumor, perhaps. The gossip would run amuck from there. Young virgins simply did not engage in frank conversations about the government’s policy of locking up prostitutes. The disgruntled mutters about Miss Fairfield would turn into outrage.
“It’s simple,” Jane insisted. “I know just how to do it. Instead of just locking up the women who are suspected of being ill, we should lock up all the women. That way, the ones who are well can never get sick.”
At the foot of the table, Whitting scratched his head. “But…how would men use their services?”
“What do men have to do with it?” Jane asked.
“Um.” Lord James looked down. “I take your point, Bradenton. This is…perhaps not the best conversation to be having at the moment.”
“After all,” Jane continued, “if men were capable of infecting women, our government in its infinite wisdom would never choose to lock up only the women. That would be pointless, since without any constraint on men, the spread of contagion would never stop. It would also be unjust to confine women for the sin of being infected by men.” She smiled triumphantly. “And since our very good Marquess of Bradenton supports the Act, that could never be the case. He would never sign on to such manifest injustice.”
There was a longer pause at that.
Bradenton had listened to this speech in stony silence, his lips pressing more and more closely together. He glanced over at Oliver, a warning in his glittering eyes.
“Yes, well,” he said tersely.
“She has you there.” Canterly smothered a smile.
“Do I?” Jane asked innocently. “Because if that’s so, then I win this round of our game, Bradenton.”
That was met with an even more prickly silence. Bradenton squinted at Jane, leaning forward, as if trying to make her out from a distance.
“Our game?” he repeated.
“Yes,” Jane said. “Our game. You know, the one where I play at ignorance and you play at insults.”
Bradenton inhaled. “Play?”
“It is play, of course,” Jane said. “The alternative is that you’ve been carrying a grudge against me all these months, simply because your fortunes were in a decline and I had suggested that you needed to find another heiress.”
Bradenton stood up. “Why, you poxy little—”
Next to him, another man put his hand on Bradenton’s sleeve. “Come now, Bradenton.” Bradenton looked down and then—very slowly—he sat.
“Good heavens,” Jane said, “you’re not upset about the game, are you? And here I thought it was all in good fun, after all.”
“I don’t understand,” Canterly said.
“There’s only one part I regret,” Jane said. “Mr. Whitting, a few weeks ago, I implied that you were deficient in understanding. That wasn’t well done of me. In my defense, you’ve said worse of me, but…” She shrugged. “I still ought not have done it.”
“A game,” Bradenton said, choking on the words. “A game. You think this is a game.”
“You seem so surprised. Here I thought you all gamesters.” Jane looked around the table. “After all, Bradenton did offer to sway your votes to the newly proposed Reform Act if only Mr. Marshall would humiliate me. Are you telling me the rest of the table knew nothing of this?”
Silence met this—a long, deep, uncomfortable silence. One that Oliver reveled in.
Across the table from Jane, Mr. Ellisford set down his spoon. “Bradenton,” he said seriously, “you know I’m your friend. I’ve known you far too long. You’d never prevail on our friendship for such petty reasons. I know you wouldn’t.” But despite the certainty of his words, there was a question in his voice.
“Of course I wouldn’t,” Bradenton said heartily. “You have only her word for it. She’s hardly reliable. Ask anyone here.” He looked up at Oliver. “Except Marshall. He’s a bastard, and he’d tell any lie to get ahead.”
“No,” Oliver said quietly.
“No, you’re not a bastard? You can’t deny your parentage.”
“No,” Oliver said. “I’m not the only one who will speak on her behalf.”
“I saw you threaten her,” Genevieve Johnson put in. “Geraldine and I both did. We feared for her safety.”
A murmur swelled around the table.
Bradenton’s eyes narrowed. “You misunderstood.”
Across the table from her, Hapford shut his eyes. “I’m sorry, uncle.” He spoke softly.
“What?” Bradenton said.
“I’m sorry,” Hapford repeated more loudly. His hands had worked his serviette into a ball. “But I don’t think my father would want… I do not think he would want…” He trailed off. “Miss Fairfield is telling the truth. I was there when the marquess made his offer to Mr. Marshall. You offered him precisely what she said—your vote, your help swaying the men here, if only he would show Miss Fairfield her place.” He swallowed. “I didn’t like it then, and it has not sat well with me since.”
The silence grew again, threatening like thunder.
Hapford blew out his breath. “When my father recommended a relationship with you men to me on his deathbed, I did not think he intended to attach me to a group of small-minded power-mongers, intent on hurting women. He recommended you as a group honestly interested in the best interests of England.”
> “Yes,” Ellisford finally said, pointedly turning away from Bradenton. “You have the right of it. That’s what I thought we were, too.”
“Then maybe we can listen to Mr. Marshall without having him pay so high a price.”
“You’ve convinced me,” Ellisford said to Oliver several hours later. “I’m rather glad we had this talk. I’d never imagined…”
His eyes darted to the left. The gentlemen in the library sat with cigars and glasses of port. Bradenton was the only one who kept his silence. He’d stewed the entire evening: through dinner, through the conversations after the men separated from the ladies. Just as well he’d kept quiet; nobody else seemed inclined to talk to him, even though he was the host.
“I feel the same,” Oliver said. “And we’ll talk again in London.”
“Of course.”
Bradenton’s silence shouted sullenly, but nobody was paying him any mind.
Oliver had won. Not Bradenton’s vote—he’d never get that now—but all the things he’d wanted. The votes of Bradenton’s little set. His own integrity. He could afford to be magnanimous—and in this case, magnanimity meant letting the man stew in peace.
“Well,” Oliver said, “shall we rejoin the ladies?”
Everyone agreed. But when Oliver stood, Bradenton finally spoke. “Not you, Marshall,” he growled. “You and I have business.”
“Of course,” Oliver said, as congenially as he could. Everyone else trooped out with only a few scant glances behind. Strange; the fire seemed to dim as they left and the shadows of the furniture seemed to grow, now that there was no warm conversation to fill the empty spaces.
“You think you’re so clever,” Bradenton snarled as soon as they were alone.
“I? I hardly said anything at all.”
“You know what I mean. But you can’t win.” Bradenton stood and paced to the fireplace. “You can’t win,” he repeated.