Instantly her mind went to the man she’d commanded herself to forget. Mr. Marshall. It was him.
No, ridiculous. It wouldn’t be. He was already off to a very important meeting. He had no time for stupid girls in small shops buying—
“What is it that you have there?”
She jumped.
God, his voice. She’d never properly imagined his voice when she thought of talking with him. She wouldn’t have known how to describe his voice to anyone else. Warm, of course. Such breadth in it. The other night it had hissed with controlled fury. Now it sounded as if he was on the edge of laughter.
She turned, ever so slowly. Oh, God, the frisson was back—a crackling electricity that rushed down her spine. Jane sucked in her breath and dug her nails into her palm, but it didn’t help. Before she could help herself, she was smiling—an over-large goofy grin, far too revealing.
He had the kind of looks that improved with familiarity. That brush of freckles across the bridge of his nose invited her touch. As if he were whispering to her. Come, make yourself comfortable.
Jane swallowed and pressed her palm against her stomach, lest she do precisely that.
He looked…well, he looked. He was looking at her, not at some faraway point. With his attention focused on her, her whole being felt insubstantial. As if she might simply float away.
He was already carrying a book. A Practical Guide to P—
She couldn’t read the end of the title, as his hand was obscuring it.
“Mr. Marshall,” she said with a laugh. Don’t blurt out everything all at once, Jane. Whatever you do, don’t blurt out everything all at once. “How lovely to see you. How do you do?”
She was congratulating herself on her restrained manners when, to her faint horror, she realized that her mouth was still moving.
“I saw you on the street, but you looked busy and I didn’t want to interrupt. You were doing something important, no doubt. You probably still are. I should let—ah…”
Shut up, Jane, she commanded her fluttering nerves, and luckily, they obeyed.
He didn’t wince at the excessive flow of speech. Instead, he reached out and took the volume she was carrying from her.
“You should let me look at your book,” he said, turning the spine so he could read it. His eyebrow rose. “Mrs. Larriger and the Criminals of New South Wales?”
Jane felt her cheeks flush even hotter. He probably read important books, books with sober-sounding names, like A Practical Guide to Proper Behavior. That had to be what he was carrying. He no doubt thought her flighty.
“It’s not mine,” she blurted out. “That is, it’s for my younger sister. My sister, Emily.”
He looked faintly amused.
She wrinkled her nose at him. “I’m allowed to abuse her taste because she’s my sister, but don’t you dare.”
“I have three sisters,” he said mildly. “Four, now, counting my sister-in-law. I would never be so foolish as to speak ill of anyone’s sister.” He turned the book in his hand. “So, is it any good?”
The question surprised her.
“I haven’t read it.” She shrugged. “But I did read the first eight of the series. They’re awful, but they’re also curiously compelling.”
“I like curiously compelling. And I love awful. Should I get it?”
She choked, imagining Mrs. Larriger on his bookshelf next to A Practical Guide to Political Careers.
But he was flipping through the book as if he were considering the purchase.
“Mrs. Larriger is old, bossy, annoying, and I do believe she isn’t in her right mind. You wouldn’t…”
“She sounds a great deal like my aunt Freddy.” He smiled at her. “Old, bossy, annoying… She never leaves her home any longer, and some people speak ill of her for that. But don’t tell me my aunt isn’t in her right mind. It’s like with your sister. I love her too well to hear your criticism.”
She swallowed. “If you’re going to do this, you have to start with the first one.” She wandered back down the aisle and scanned the titles on the spines. “Here.”
She held out Mrs. Larriger Leaves Home and waited to see what he would do with it.
He took it without hesitation and opened it up. “Nice frontispiece,” he commented. “Do you think the author is really named Mrs. Larriger?”
“No,” Jane said baldly. “I do not. The first book was printed two and a half years ago, and since that time, there have been twenty-two more published, practically a book every month. I think Mrs. Larriger is composed by committee. No one person could write so swiftly—not unless she had nothing else to do.”
“Mmm, that does seem unlikely.” Mr. Marshall turned to the first page. “‘For the first fifty-eight years of her life, Mrs. Laura Larriger lived in Portsmouth in sight of the harbor. She never wondered where the ships went, and cared about their return only when one of them happened to bring her husband home from one of his trading voyages. There was never any reason to care. Her house was comfortable, her husband brought in an excellent income, and to her great satisfaction, he was almost never present.’” He looked up. “There are worse starting paragraphs, I suppose.”
“Do continue on.”
“‘But one day, on one of those rare occasions when her husband was home, he was struck on the head by a falling anvil. He died instantly.’” Mr. Marshall blinked. He blinked again and set his finger on the text he’d just read. “Wait. I don’t understand. How did an anvil fall on her husband while he was at home? Where did it come from? Was he in the habit of suspending anvils from the ceiling?”
“You will have to read and find out,” Jane said. “I am not in the habit of telling people what happens in a book. Only brutes disclose what comes next.”
He shook his head. “Very well, then. ‘That day, Mrs. Larriger sat in her parlor. But the walls seemed thicker. The air felt closer. For almost sixty years, she had never felt the slightest curiosity about the world outside her door. Now, the air beyond her walls seemed to call out to her. Leave, it whispered. Leave. Leave before they conduct the inquest.’” Mr. Marshall laughed. “Ah, I think I am beginning to understand the anvil—and Mrs. Larriger.
“‘She took a deep breath. She packed a satchel. And then, with a great effort, with the effort of a woman uprooting everything she had known, Mrs. Larriger put one foot outside her door into the warm May sunshine. And as she didn’t burst into flame, she marched down to the harbor and purchased passage on a vessel that was departing within the next five minutes.’” He closed the book. “Well. I’m getting it.”
“It will go well with A Practical Guide to Plato’s Most Important Writings.”
He frowned. “What’s that?”
She gestured. “I can’t see the entire title of your book.”
“Ah.” His grin flashed brilliantly, and he turned the book to face her.
A Practical Guide to Pranks, it read.
“All nostalgia, I’m afraid. I miss the days when I could respond to ridiculousness with a little mischief, that’s all.” He sighed. “There was one night when we were students at Trinity… There was a man who had a new phaeton that he was crowing about. So my brother, Sebastian, and I disassembled it and then reconstructed it entirely inside his rooms. We couldn’t put the wheels on, you understand, but everything else… He was so violently drunk when he returned that he thought nothing of it, but you should have heard him shout come the morning.”
He wasn’t anything like she’d imagined, this man who claimed he would be prime minister. He had a sparkle in his eye and an air of mischief about him. Was he pretending at politics, or was he pretending at this?
“And here I had the impression that you were respectable.”
He sighed, and the light in his eyes dimmed. “Alas. I am.” He spoke the words grudgingly. “High spirits are always excused in the young, but I’m well past the age where a good prank can be overlooked. Still, one can imagine.”
This felt like a dream—
standing next to him, talking about books and pranks.
“Sebastian,” she said. “That would be Mr. Malheur, would it not?”
“He’s the only one of us who skipped over the respectable phase. He’s never stopped being a troublemaker.” His eyes abstracted. “In some ways, I envy him. In others, not so much.”
“Of us?”
“I forget; you don’t know us. My brother, Ro—the Duke of Clermont. Sebastian Malheur. Me. They called us the Brothers Sinister because we were always together, and we are all left-handed.”
“Are you sinister?” she asked.
Something flashed in his eyes, a hint of discomfort. “I’ll leave you to decide. I can hardly judge for myself.”
Her nervousness had faded to a pleasant hum. She was smiling a great deal at him.
“Tell me, Miss Fairfield,” he murmured in a low voice. “What do you think? Because I rather get the impression that you’re a good judge of sinister behavior.”
She could feel the tug of him. She’d dreamed of this—of having a friend, someone she could laugh with. Someone who looked at her and looked again, who looked for the pleasure of looking and not to criticize her deportment or her clothing. If she had dared, she might have dreamed of more.
But the bell rang behind him, and Jane glanced over to see who had entered the shop.
Her breath caught. It was Susan, the upstairs maid, dressed in brown and white. She caught sight of Mrs. Blickstall, still sitting bored at the front of the room; Mrs. Blickstall sat up straighter and pointed at Jane in the back.
Jane took a step forward just as Susan came up to her.
“Miss Fairfield, if you please.” The maid’s voice was breathy, as if she’d dashed all the way here from the house.
She probably had.
Susan glanced once at Mr. Marshall. “Perhaps we might have a word outside.”
“You can speak freely,” Jane said. “Mr. Marshall is a friend.”
He didn’t dispute the label, and her heart thumped once.
“There’s another physician come,” Susan said. “I got away as soon as I could, but he was just going in with Miss Emily as I left, and that was twenty minutes past.”
“Oh, hell. What kind of quackery does this one practice?”
“Galvanics, Miss. That’s what he said.”
“What the devil are galvanics?”
“Electric current,” Mr. Marshall supplied. “Usually stored in some sort of electrical battery, used to deliver shocks as—” He stopped talking.
Jane felt her face go white. She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t think of this dream world she was leaving, this place where one might talk of books and laugh about pranks and consider what it meant to be respectable. This was not the world she inhabited.
She fumbled a heavy coin from her pocket and pressed it into Susan’s hand. “Thank you,” she said.
The household staff no doubt very much appreciated the fact that Jane and her uncle were at odds. It gave them all sorts of ways to supplement their income.
“Miss Fairfield,” Mr. Marshall said carefully, “might I accompany you home?”
In her mind, she’d imagined telling him everything. She’d imagined him telling her not to fret, that it would be all right. But he couldn’t say that now. After all, he’d told her he wouldn’t lie to her.
It wouldn’t be all right. The best she could hope for was an uneasy truce—one bought with as many banknotes as she could carry.
Her mind had gone numb. There was no room in her life for a simple friendship.
“No.” Her voice was tight. “Don’t. You’re respectable, see, and you should try to remain that way. I have to go bribe a doctor.”
Chapter Six
By the time she reached home, Jane could scarcely breathe. Her chest heaved uselessly against her corset and spots danced in front of her eyes.
The housekeeper greeted her in the entry, glancing once out the door. But she didn’t ask any impertinent questions—questions like, Where is the carriage? or Why are you gasping for air?
Jane answered those unspoken queries anyway. “I left the carriage behind,” she said. “I thought a brisk walk would be nice.” In truth, with the market in full force today, it would have taken her forty-five minutes to bring the conveyance around. It had taken her fifteen minutes of quick marching to make her way home.
“Of course,” the housekeeper said, as if it made sense for Jane to be heaving in the entryway like a fish landed on the dock.
Jane’s hair was falling out of its careful arrangement. The curls at her ears were tilting; the hairpiece of long brown curls pinned to the nape of her neck had come askew. Pins jabbed into her scalp. She reached up a hand, tried to arrange it all into some semblance of order, and gave up when her fingers encountered chaos.
The housekeeper didn’t move from her spot. “The exercise has brought color to your complexion.”
Ha. Sweat beaded on Jane’s forehead. She could feel it trickling down one cheek, tickling her skin as it slid. She didn’t need a mirror to tell that her face was bright as brick.
“I’ll just go see my sister, then?” She threw this out airily.
Mrs. Blickstall was just turning onto the street behind her, puffing heavily.
“Yes,” Jane said. “I’ll go talk with Emily. Just like I always do when I return home.” Coming at a dead run, just like I always do. She clamped her lips together. Shut up, Jane.
The housekeeper gave her a pitying look—one that said, Really, Miss Fairfield, don’t bother with the lies. We all know how this is supposed to work.
Jane sighed and slipped her a coin. It disappeared almost instantly.
“She’s in the east parlor, with Alice and Doctor Fallon. I’ll see you’re not disturbed.”
Jane nodded and started grimly down the hall.
She found her sister sitting at a table. One sleeve was rolled up; the arm that was bared had been strapped to the table, exposing the pale skin of her scars.
Strips of white cotton were wound about her wrist and forearm, holding metal plates in place. These were attached to wires, which in turn were attached to some kind of contraption. Jane had no idea what it was. Some evil-looking, foul-smelling collection of jars. Galvanics. Electrical batteries.
But at least Emily looked to be bored rather than in pain. She brightened at the sight of her sister.
“Jane!”
“What is this all?” Jane asked.
“We’re waiting for a seizure to come on.” Emily rolled her eyes.
“Miss Emily,” said the man standing by the curtains, “I believe I have told you before. You must not move. When you wiggle your leg like that, you jar the contacts. They might come loose, and if they’re slack at the wrong time, I can’t complete the circuit.”
Emily gave Jane a speaking look of waggling brows and compressed lips. “Yes,” Emily said, “Meet Doctor Fallon. He’s been hard at work this morning.”
Doctor Fallon was a trim man of maybe forty. His chestnut-brown hair had not yet started to gray. He had a curling mustache and brown, bristling sideburns.
Jane strode forward. “I’m Miss Jane Fairfield, Emily’s sister. Would you mind explaining your methods?”
He frowned in puzzlement. “But I’ve already told Mr. Fairfield everything.”
“I take an interest in medical advances.” Jane settled into a chair next to her sister. “I would like to hear about yours.” She made a face at him that she hoped passed for a smile.
He seemed taken aback for a moment and then responded with a rusty smile of his own. “I am a galvanist,” he said earnestly. “Which is to say, I practice medicine of the galvanic sort. To wit, I have discovered that passing current through the human body can produce a number of effects, such as numbness, pain, convulsions…”
He glanced down at Emily, whose lips had pressed together into a thin line.
“Ah,” he said, “and, ah, I have found a few useful effects as well. For instance, t
he application of galvanics can cure malingering.”
Oh, Jane was sure it did. Delivering an electric shock to a patient who was pretending to be sick would no doubt be very effective. It would probably “cure” lesser illnesses, too.
“That’s lovely,” Jane said. “Good work, having found that out.”
He smiled uncertainly.
“I’m positive,” Jane continued, “that there’s absolutely nothing at odds with your oath as a physician in delivering—what was it you called it?—galvanic current to your patients.”
He flushed. “Ah, well, you see. In my case, doctor is something of a courtesy title.” He brightened. “A rank bestowed upon me by dozens of grateful patients.”
So he was a complete quack. Jane folded her hands and wished, not for the first time, that her uncle was not so dreadfully gullible.
“Interesting,” she said. “Have you ever cured anyone with a convulsive disorder?”
“Ah, no. But I have caused convulsions, and, ah…” He looked down at Emily, as if not quite sure he should speak on in her presence.
If he could deliver an electric shock to her, he could damned well tell her what he was doing. Jane made a gesture for him to continue.
“It’s a theory I have, you see. Galvanic current flows. It has a direction. If current can cause convulsion, flowing in one direction, then when someone is having a convulsion, one ought to be able to stop it by applying an equal and opposite current in the other direction. It’s a simple application of Newtonian laws. With sufficient experimentation, I am sure I can calibrate the precise amount to apply.”
“You are sure?” Jane asked dubiously. “Is sure the proper word to use to describe your theory?”
“I am…hopeful,” he amended. “Quite hopeful.”
Maybe a few years ago, she might have let him try. But Jane had heard a dozen men make equally grandiloquent, equally ridiculous claims about how their particular form of torture would cure her sister’s fits. None of their treatments had worked, and they’d all been painful. And there were Emily’s burns. She felt the corners of her mouth curl up in a snarl.