The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister 2)

And Emily had called him Bhattacharya. He’d fallen a little bit in love with her the moment she’d said his name as if it had value.

His fist clenched, but he kept on smiling.

Oliver didn’t think of Jane much. In the last week of January, he managed to keep his thoughts of her to a minimum—a few wistful imaginings at night, wondering what might have happened between them if matters had been different. If she’d had no need to drive suitors away. If she’d been a legitimate daughter of a well-respected family. If he’d been able to court her.

Court. Ha. He didn’t think about anything so sedate as courting her. His thoughts ran darker and deeper, starting from their kiss and ending against stone walls and thick trees. His thoughts ran far ahead of his sensibilities, until he had to take the problem in hand to solve it. But after, when sanity returned…

He still couldn’t imagine Jane in plain white and demure pearls. So he made himself give up that fantasy.

In February, he scarcely thought of Jane at all. He didn’t have time to think of her. Parliament was sitting once more. The queen herself addressed the nation’s lawmakers and urged them to extend the franchise. The work began in earnest. Oliver hashed out his plan with Minnie, his brother’s wife, who had a head for strategy; between them, they planned a series of dinners. Working men from all over the country were brought in by train. Oliver gave short two-day courses on etiquette and the workings of politics. The men then ate with dukes and duchesses, barons and baronesses. Members of Parliament sat down for an hour with bakers.

The message was clear: These are reasonable, rational men. Why should they not vote?

He very assiduously did not think of Jane in those moments. He didn’t want to contrast her with the pallid, smiling wives he encountered, women who never made a single faux pas, who would blush if they heard the word “fuchsine,” and would certainly never don a glove of that color, let alone a gown.

He smiled instead. And when those women mentioned their unmarried sisters or cousins or nieces, he smiled again, this time a little more distantly, and tried not to call to mind brilliant colors.

By the time March rolled around, Oliver had stopped telling himself he wasn’t thinking of Jane. It didn’t matter whether he was thinking of her or not; she wasn’t here, she was still impossible, and he was unlikely to ever see her again. If he found himself still a little enamored of her memory, it was hardly worth moping about. Not when there was so much to do. Dinners gave way to arguments. Bills were drafted; bills were rejected. He wrote a series of articles for a London paper, on the subject of the representation of the people, that was well-received; he wondered, idly, if Jane had read them and what she had thought of them.

At the end of April, the men Oliver was working with took him aside and asked him when he was planning on running for Parliament. When, not if. He had their support, they assured him. He nodded calmly and spoke very little. He let them tell him the things he had always known—that he was levelheaded, intelligent, articulate, that he had ties to the nobility and ties to the working class. He let them tell him that he was exactly the sort of man who should be joining them. He let them tell him that he would succeed, while inside he was dancing a jig.

The future he’d envisioned so long ago was opening wide.

Then they told him that all he needed to complete the picture was domestic felicity. That, he passed over somewhat.

Oliver went home that night and shared a bottle of port with his brother, trading jokes back and forth until he got a little tipsy. They drank until Minnie, his sister-in-law, came downstairs. She smiled and shook her head at them, and then escorted her husband to bed.

She left Oliver behind to contemplate the fruition of all his dreams.

Once the port and his brother had deserted him, the euphoria drifted away.

All he needed was domestic felicity. A pleasant girl, someone who would smooth his way. There were hundreds of women who would do. Surely, one of them would eclipse Jane. He just had to meet her.

He wasn’t in love with Jane, after all. He just admired her spirit. That was it. He poured himself another half glass of port, all by himself in the darkness.

Well, perhaps it was more than her spirit. He admired her intelligence. The way that she’d walk into a room and immediately determine who was in charge and how best to alienate him. He wanted a wife just like that—except, of course, she’d have to do the opposite of alienation. Someone just like Jane, he mused. That’s who he wanted. Just like Jane, but completely opposite. He finished off the port in his glass.

It was more than her spirit and intelligence he admired. Because there was her body. There was definitely her body.

At this point, he was too steeped in liquor to rouse any real physical ardor, no matter how heated his thoughts. That was a good thing, because once he’d started to think of her body—of the generous swell of her br**sts, the soft curves of her hips—it was rather difficult to stop thinking of what he’d like to do with her.

He hadn’t touched her enough. Not nearly enough. His thoughts turned wild, then, and even though the port had rendered him unable to do anything about it, he thought of it all—of the slide of his hard member into soft, willing female flesh, at the noise she would make when he did it. He wanted until he was half mad with drunken lust.

Yes, he whispered to himself as he stumbled up the stairs to his room. Jane was exactly the sort of woman he wanted. Someone exactly like Jane, but totally opposite. It was a good thing he wasn’t in love with her or it might be difficult to find that other woman.

He had a terrible headache the day afterward, and he couldn’t quite decide if it was caused by the liquor or the dissonant irrationality he’d indulged in.

In any event, he had no time to consider the question. Parliament still had come to no agreement, and the Reform League promised to hold a demonstration in Hyde Park. Not just a few hundred men, either; they were talking about having everyone available show up. The government, fearing the inevitable unrest and violence that would be associated with such a gathering, had promised to arrest anyone who attended. Neither group would back down. Plans were made in London to initiate special constables just to handle the rabble.

May arrived, and people began to come for the demonstration. Not one or two or even five thousand of them, but tens of thousands.

Members of Parliament who had refused to consider some type of reform now grew uneasy with the threat of that crowd hanging over their heads. The papers contained reports from the police, detailing the number of guards that would be needed to stop such a gathering. Someone pointed out that there weren’t that many constables to be found in all of England, that deadly force would be necessary to stop the crowd.