The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2)(3)
Instead, all she had to do for the next four hundred and eighty days was to look for a husband—to look assiduously, and not marry.
Four hundred and eighty days in which she dared not marry, and one hundred thousand pounds to the man who would marry her.
Those two numbers described the dimensions of her prison.
And so Jane smiled at Geraldine once again, grateful for her advice, grateful to be steered wrong once again. She smiled, and she even meant it.
A few days later
Mr. Oliver Marshall was almost loathe to relinquish his coat when first he entered the Marquess of Bradenton’s home. He could feel the chill biting through his gloves, the draft of a winter wind rattling the windowpanes. The wire frame of his spectacles felt like ice against his ears. But it was too late.
Bradenton, his host, stepped forward. “Marshall,” he said pleasantly. “How good to see you again.”
Oliver handed off his own gloves and heavy greatcoat and shook the marquess’s extended hand.
“Good to see you as well, my lord. It’s been too long.”
Bradenton’s hands were cold, too. He’d grown paunchier these last years, and his thin, dark hair had receded up his forehead, but the smile he gave Oliver was still the same: friendly and yet cold.
Oliver suppressed a shiver. It didn’t matter how high the servants piled the coal, how merry the blaze they set. These fine, old houses always seemed to be inhabited by a wintry chill. The ceilings stretched too high; the marble on the floors seemed icy even through the soles of his shoes. Everywhere Oliver looked he saw mirror-glass and metal and stone—cold surfaces made colder still by the vast, empty expanses that surrounded them.
It would warm up when they moved out of the entry, Oliver told himself. When more people arrived. For now, it was just Bradenton, Oliver, and two younger men. Bradenton motioned them forward.
“Hapford, Whitting, this is Oliver Marshall. An old school friend. Marshall, this is my nephew, John Bloom, newly the Earl of Hapford.” The Marquess of Bradenton gestured to a man at his side, earnest and pale. “And Mr. George Whitting, my other nephew.” He indicated a fellow with a shock of sandy hair and matching, untamed sideburns. “Gentlemen, this is Oliver Marshall. I’ve invited him to assist in completing your education, as it were.”
Oliver inclined his head in greeting.
“I’ve been tasked with seeing to Hapford’s introduction,” Bradenton explained. “He’ll be sitting with the Lords next month, and none of us were expecting that.”
Hapford had a black band around his arm; his clothing was dark. Maybe there was a reason the house seemed cold and somber after all.
“I’m sorry to hear of it,” Oliver said.
The new earl straightened and glanced over at Bradenton before responding. “Thank you. I intend to do my best.”
That glance, that deference paid to the other man… That was why Oliver was here. Not to recall school-era friendships that had gone tepid over the years. Bradenton was the sort of man who nurtured new entrants to Parliament. Nurtured them, and then did his best to keep them as part of his coterie. He had quite a collection now.
“I’d wish for a little more time to prepare you, but you’re coming along.” Bradenton gave his nephew an approving clout on the shoulder. “And Cambridge isn’t a bad place to conduct the exercise. It’s a microcosm of the world out there. You’ll see; Parliament is not so different.”
“A microcosm of the world?” Oliver was dubious. He’d never met a coal miner at Cambridge.
But Bradenton didn’t take his meaning. “Yes, there is rather a bit of the riffraff here.” He glanced over at Oliver.
Oliver didn’t say anything. To a man like Bradenton, he was riffraff.
“But the riffraff usually manage themselves,” Bradenton continued. “That’s the point of an institution like Cambridge. Anyone can aspire to a Cambridge education, so everyone who aspires chooses to start here. If you do it right, by the time they’ve finished their degrees, the most ambitious ones have become just like us. Or at least, they want to enter our ranks so badly that the next thing you know, all their ambition has been subsumed into the greater glory.”
He gave Oliver a pointed nod.
Once, Oliver would have been annoyed by such a speech. The sly implication that Oliver didn’t belong, the even slyer one that he’d been subsumed into Bradenton’s goals instead of being a person in his own right…
When he was thirteen, he’d knocked Bradenton down for committing precisely that sin. But now he understood. Bradenton reminded him of an old farmer, walking the perimeter of his property every day, testing the fences and peering suspiciously at his neighbors, making sure that his side and their side were clearly delineated.
It had taken Oliver years to learn his lesson: keep quiet and let men like Bradenton test the fences. It wouldn’t do them any good, and if you were careful, one day you’d be in a position to buy their whole damned farm.
And so Oliver held his tongue and smiled.
“The ladies will be arriving shortly,” Bradenton said, “so if you’d like to start with a brandy…” He gestured off the entryway.
“Brandy,” Whitting said decisively, and the party moved to a side room.
Bradenton had an entire room reserved for nothing more than this—a sideboard with glasses, a decanter of amber liquid. But at least the chamber was smaller and therefore warmer. The marquess poured generous splashes into tumblers. “You’ll need this,” he said, passing glasses to his nephews first and then to Oliver.