The Heiress Effect by Courtney Milan

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