She put her arm on his shoulder and he turned to her.
“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me,” he said. “I want you to know how much I love and admire you. Because they tried to do it to you, too, and it didn’t take.”
She smiled. “They didn’t get to me until I was nineteen. I had a little longer to become set in my ways.”
“Last time I asked you to marry you, I asked you to change.” He took a deep breath. “This time, I can do better. Let me be the one who supports you. Who believes that you must not be any less. Who adds to your magnificence instead of asking you to make yourself less.”
Jane ran her hand down his back. “I think you owe me a better apology.”
He looked over at her. “I’m sorry. I was an ass. I—”
She set her fingers over his mouth. “I didn’t mean that you should use words, Oliver.”
It took him a moment to understand. A long, slow smile spread over his face. He put his arm around her and then slowly, ever so slowly, he reached out and touched her cheek.
“Jane,” he said softly. “I love you.” He tilted her chin up. “I love you.” He leaned down, his lips so close to hers that if he spoke again, their mouths would touch. “And I am never going to fail you again.”
That whisper brought their lips together. And then he did it again. And again. And again, a sweet kiss that she never wanted to end.
“Very well,” she whispered.
“What’s well?”
“This,” Jane said, sliding closer to him. “Forgiving you. Loving you.” She leaned into him and tilted her head up for another kiss. “Marrying you.”
He wrapped his arms around her. “Good.”
Epilogue
Six years later.
Oliver stood against a wall, watching the room around him. There was quite a crowd in his main salon tonight; he’d given up the count at several hundreds.
Sometimes, it seemed odd to remember that he had a main salon. He and Jane had purchased the house on the event of their marriage, and sometimes, even now, it felt strange to have a room large enough to fit the home where he’d grown up. This one was beautifully appointed: large plate windows at the front looked out over a park. The twinkle of lamplight in other windows was dimly visible across the square.
The window, indeed, was the most beautiful part of the room. Jane stood framed in it, after all, the center of attention.
This gown was an extraordinary one. Purple-and-green striped silk. Gold brocade, perhaps overdone by fashionable tastes. Heavy rubies at her throat.
Everyone had gone beyond wincing at her. They were used to her now; her garb was nothing more than an idle curiosity. She was too important to cut.
After all, at this event, a charity musicale for the Youth Hospital, he was the gracious, smiling spouse.
Over by the window, Jane was talking with animation to a baron, introducing him to the bearded man at her side—one of her sober young protégés, a fellow who—if Oliver recalled—she had sponsored through medical school. He was writing on medical ethics.
“Marshall,” a voice said.
Oliver turned. It was the Right Honorable Bertie Pages, one of Oliver’s colleagues in Parliament.
“Pages,” Oliver said, with a nod of his head.
“Good speech today,” the man said.
Oliver smiled.
“A bit forceful for my tastes, but effective.”
“You always seem to say that,” Oliver said. “If it’s intended as a gentle rebuke, it has long since ceased to work.”
“No… No.” The other man turned and swept his arm out. “When you announced that you were marrying her, I thought you’d made a mistake. A grave mistake. She was…”
“She is,” Oliver corrected.
“Too loud,” Pages said. “Too bright. That gown she’s wearing—it’s got no subtlety at all. There’s never been anything of subtlety to her. And yet…”
“That’s precisely why I married her. You’d best get to the and yet swiftly, because she is my wife.”
“And yet her hospital has already attracted some of the brightest minds in the nation. The symposium she sponsored on medical ethics has had an extraordinary effect on the world. People pay attention to her.”
Oliver smiled.
“And you have only gained respect as her husband.”
In the end, it had been easy to get attention for his parliamentary campaign. Jane had already captured everyone’s interest with her plans. The gowns she’d worn had simply fit in with her personality. She’d fascinated everyone—and once she began to accomplish things, she’d won their grudging respect.
“How did you know?” the man asked.
Oliver shrugged. “I had seen her in action. I knew what she could do. But come. Enough of that. There’s a man I’d like to introduce you to.”
Introductions were made; hands were shaken. Oliver chalked that one up to a job well done, and set his glass on a nearby table. Then he crossed the room. Nobody could tell—nobody but Oliver—but underneath her gown of striped silk, Jane’s belly was growing. In a few months, it would be obvious that she was increasing with their second child. For now…
He stalked toward her. God, she was lovely. Her back was to him, leaving a view of the nape of her neck, adorned tonight by gold and diamonds. The curve of her waist begged for his touch. She was talking with great animation to the people next to her.
“There need to be some repercussions to all this fine theory,” Jane was saying. “It’s all well and good to say that doctors should act in the best interests of their patients, but what if they do not? Who determines what happens next? This is what I need you to consider. Then, we’ll talk to Parliament.”
“Speak of the devil,” the doctor next to her said.
Jane turned. “Oh. It’s you.” But she glowed at him—the smile of a woman completely in her element—and she took his hand, entwining it in hers. “Did you bring Bertie Pages? I wanted to introduce him to Anjan.” She leaned in. “Emily says that Anjan is considering joining you in Parliament.”
“I know. I talked to him earlier. It’s already done.” Oliver gestured across the room, where his colleague was talking to his brother-in-law. Emily stood next to her husband, smiling.
“You are efficient,” she said.
“Sometimes.” He smiled.
Jane was framed in the window. Everyone else might think the décor in the salon a bit odd. There was, after all, a small collection of plants on the table by the window: six of them so far. One cactus for every anniversary they’d celebrated together, plus the one Jane had brought to their marriage. For their tenth anniversary, Oliver was going to try to get her a saguaro—but that was going to take some doing. For now…
“I came to see if you were tired,” Oliver said. “After all this work, I’m sure that when you finish up, you’ll need a rest.”
For the first few months of the pregnancy, she had been exhausted. She’d needed naps and back rubs, and he’d been happy to oblige.
“I haven’t been tired in a while,” she told him. “But yes, after we’re done, I’ll be…” She trailed off slowly.
She met his eyes, saw his smile. Her hand, tangled with his, went still for a moment. Very deliberately, Oliver drew his thumb over her fingers.
She answered his smile with one of her own.
“Now that you mention it,” she said, “I will be particularly tired after this. I might need a little help getting upstairs.”
Her forefinger traced an answering line down the side of his hand.
“Yes,” Oliver said. “I can manage that.” He leaned in and brushed a kiss against her forehead. “Until then.”
Thank you!
Thanks for reading The Heiress Effect. I hope you enjoyed it!
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•You’ve just read the second full-length book in the Brothers Sinister series. The books in the series are The Governess Affair, a prequel novella about Oliver’s parents, The Duchess War, A Kiss for Midwinter, The Heiress Effect, The Countess Conspiracy (out December 2013), and The Mistress Rebellion (out sometime in 2014). I hope you enjoy them all!
You probably don’t want to know what was going on with Sebastian in this book. You probably don’t care what secret he has been hiding. If that’s the case, you definitely don’t want to read one of the first scenes from The Countess Conspiracy, the next book in this series. Whatever you do, don’t turn the page. And if you do, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The Countess Conspiracy: Excerpt
The Countess Conspiracy
coming in December of 2013
This is a short, unedited excerpt from somewhere in Chapter One.
The morning sun beat down viciously, slicing into Sebastian’s eyes as he looked out over the garden. The rose arbor caught the early sunlight, and the beds of flowers glistened with dew. It was damnably pretty, and he might even have enjoyed it, were it not for the persistent throb of his head. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have imagined he was suffering from the ill effects of drink. Except he hadn’t had anything stronger than tea in the last forty-eight hours. No; something else plagued him, and unlike a few bottles of wine, it could not be cured by an efficacious potion.
It would take a far greater dose than any apothecary could deliver to change how he felt.
He’d known where he was heading from the beginning. Violet was in the greenhouse; when he rounded the shrubbery, he saw her sitting on a stool, peering at an array of little pots of soil. She’d hooked her boots around the legs of the stool. Even from here, he could hear her whistling happily to herself. Sebastian felt sick to his stomach.
She didn’t look up when he opened the door. She didn’t look up when he crossed over to her. She was concentrating so fiercely on those little clay pots in front of her, a magnifying glass in one hand, that she hadn’t even heard him come in.
God. She looked so cheerful sitting there, and he was going to ruin it all. He’d agreed to this charade when he hadn’t understood what it would mean. When it had just meant signing his name and listening to Violet talk, two things that had seemed like no effort at all.
“Violet,” he said softly.
He could see her coming back into an awareness of herself—blinking rapidly, slowly setting down the glass she was holding before turning to him.
“Sebastian!” she said. There was a pleased note in her voice. She’d forgiven him for last night, then. But the smile she gave him slowly died as she saw the look on his face. “Sebastian? Is everything all right?”
“I should apologize,” he blurted out. “God knows I should apologize for last night. I should never have spoken to you that way, and especially not in public.”
She waved this off. “I understand the strain you’re under. Really, Sebastian, after everything we’ve done for each other, a few harsh words hardly signifies. Now, there was something I needed to tell you.” She frowned and tapped her lips. “Let’s see…”
“Violet. Don’t get distracted. Listen to me.”
She turned back to him.
Nobody else thought Violet pretty. He had never understood that. Yes, her nose was too big. Her mouth was too wide. Her eyes were set a little too far apart for beauty. He could see those things, but somehow they’d never signified to him. Of all the people in the world, Violet was the closest to him, and that made her dear in ways he didn’t want to comprehend. She was his dearest friend, and he was about to rip her apart.
He held up his hands in surrender to the entire world. “Violet, I can’t do this anymore. I’m done living a fraud.”
Her face went utterly blank. Her hand reached out, falling on her magnifying glass, clutching it to her chest.
Sebastian felt heartsick. “Violet.”
There was nobody he knew better, nobody in the world he cared for more. Her skin had turned to ash. She sat looking at him, totally devoid of expression. He'd seen her like that once before. He’d never imagined he would be the one who did that to her again.
“Violet, you know I would do anything for you.”
She made a curious sound in her throat, half sob, half choke. "Don't do this. Sebastian, we can figure out—”
“We’ve tried,” he said sadly. “I'm sorry, Violet," he whispered, "but this is the end.”
He was breaking her, but then, the last thing that was good in him had already broken, and he had nothing left to give her. He smiled sadly and looked around her greenhouse. At the shelves and shelves, filled with tiny little pots, each one labeled. At the bookshelf in the corner, twenty leather-bound volumes strong. At all the evidence that he kept waiting for everyone else to discover. Finally, he looked at Violet—at a woman he had known all his life, and loved for half of it.
“ I will be your friend. Your confidante. I’ll be a helping hand when you need one. I will do anything for you, but there is one thing I will never do again.” He drew a deep breath. “I will never again present your work as my own.”
Her magnifying glass slipped from her fingers, and landed on the paving stones beneath her chair. But it was strong—like Violet—and it hadn’t shattered.
He reached down and picked it up. “Here,” he said, handing it back to her. “You’ll need this.”
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If you haven’t read The Duchess War, the first full-length book in the series, the first chapter follows.
The Duchess War: Excerpt
The Duchess War
available now
Miss Minerva Lane is a quiet, bespectacled wallflower, and she wants to keep it that way. After all, the last time she was the center of attention, it ended badly—so badly that she changed her name to escape her scandalous past. Wallflowers may not be the prettiest of blooms, but at least they don’t get trampled. So when a handsome duke comes to town, the last thing she wants is his attention.
But that is precisely what she gets…
Chapter One
Robert Blaisdell, the ninth Duke of Clermont, was not hiding.
True, he’d retreated to the upstairs library of the old Guildhall, far enough from the crowd below that the noise of the ensemble had faded to a distant rumble. True, nobody else was about. Also true: He stood behind thick curtains of blue-gray velvet, which shielded him from view. And he’d had to move the heavy davenport of brown-buttoned leather to get there.
But he’d done all that not to hide himself, but because—and this was a key point in his rather specious train of logic—in this centuries-old structure of plaster and timberwork, only one of the panes in the windows opened, and that happened to be the one secreted behind the sofa.
So here he stood, cigarillo in hand, the smoke trailing out into the chilly autumn air. He wasn’t hiding; it was simply a matter of preserving the aging books from fumes.
He might even have believed himself, if only he smoked.
Still, through the wavy panes of aging glass, he could make out the darkened stone of the church directly across the way. Lamplight cast unmoving shadows on the pavement below. A pile of handbills had once been stacked against the doors, but an autumn breeze had picked them up and scattered them down the street, driving them into puddles.
He was making a mess. A goddamned glorious mess. He smiled and tapped the end of his untouched cigarillo against the window opening, sending ashes twirling to the paving stones below.
The quiet creak of a door opening startled him. He turned from the window at the corresponding scritch of floorboards. Someone had come up the stairs and entered the adjoining room. The footsteps were light—a woman’s, p
erhaps, or a child’s. They were also curiously hesitant. Most people who made their way to the library in the midst of a musicale had a reason to do so. A clandestine meeting, perhaps, or a search for a missing family member.
From his vantage point behind the curtains, Robert could only see a small slice of the library. Whoever it was drew closer, walking hesitantly. She was out of sight—somehow he was sure that she was a woman—but he could hear the soft, prowling fall of her feet, pausing every so often as if to examine the surroundings.
She didn’t call out a name or make a determined search. It didn’t sound as if she were looking for a hidden lover. Instead, her footsteps circled the perimeter of the room.
It took Robert half a minute to realize that he’d waited too long to announce himself. “Aha!” he could imagine himself proclaiming, springing out from behind the curtains. “I was admiring the plaster. Very evenly laid back there, did you know?”
She would think he was mad. And so far, nobody yet had come to that conclusion. So instead of speaking, he dropped his cigarillo out the window. It tumbled end over end, orange tip glowing, until it landed in a puddle and extinguished itself.
All he could see of the room was a half-shelf of books, the back of the sofa, and a table next to it on which a chess set had been laid out. The game was in progress; from what little he remembered of the rules, black was winning. Whoever it was drew nearer, and Robert shrank back against the window.
She crossed into his field of vision.
She wasn’t one of the young ladies he’d met in the crowded hall earlier. Those had all been beauties, hoping to catch his eye. And she—whoever she was—was not a beauty. Her dark hair was swept into a no-nonsense knot at the back of her neck. Her lips were thin and her nose was sharp and a bit on the long side. She was dressed in a dark blue gown trimmed in ivory—no lace, no ribbons, just simple fabric. Even the cut of her gown bordered on the severe side: waist pulled in so tightly he wondered how she could breathe, sleeves marching from her shoulders to her wrists without an inch of excess fabric to soften the picture.