The Heiress Effect by Courtney Milan

novels.
    Still, she felt something that she’d only
read about in the pages of a book. There was a slow prickle in her
throat, a flush of heat that slid over her skin. She felt a sense
of pure awareness. A frisson. She felt a real live frisson
just from looking into his eyes.
    How dreadful.
    She looked away. “Mr. Cromwell,” she said,
almost desperate to erase that feeling from her skin. “How lovely
to encounter you again.”
    He didn’t seem annoyed at her
misidentification. He didn’t blink or correct her. “Miss
Fairfield,” he said, and gave her a smile so friendly that she
almost stepped back.
    Mr. Marshall’s companion was a dark-haired
gentleman who would have fit the brooding hero mold rather better.
He blinked and looked between the two of them with a curious
expression on his face. “Cromwell?” he asked in low tones.
    “Yes,” Mr. Marshall said. “Did I forget to
mention that? I’ve been politiciking under an assumed name. Play
along, Sebastian.” He turned to Jane and said, “Miss Fairfield,
might I introduce my friend? This is Mr. Sebastian—”
    The other man took a step forward and took
her hand. “Sebastian Brightbuttons.” This, with a glance at Mr.
Marshall. “If you get to assume a name, I want one, too.”
    In all the months in which Jane had been
operating under a charade, she’d learned to deal with almost every
emotional response to her mannerisms. She could manage everything
from anger to disbelief.
    Playfulness? That was new. She swallowed and
tried to do what she always did. She imagined the conversation as a
prime coach-and-four. She imagined it racing along a road at top
speed, the wheels glinting in the sunlight. And then she imagined
driving it straight into a hedge.
    “Sebastian,” Jane mused. “Like Sebastian
Malheur, the famous scientist?” A comparison guaranteed to put this
gentleman off. Malheur was a name that one heard around Cambridge a
great deal—a man who was known for giving lectures where he openly
talked of sexual intercourse under the guise of discussing the
inheritance of traits. His name was cursed alongside that of
Charles Darwin, and sometimes with greater vituperation.
    But instead of flushing, Mr. Marshall and Mr.
Brightbuttons exchanged amused glances.
    “Very much like him,” Mr. Brightbuttons said.
“Are you an enthusiast of his work? I am.” He leaned in a little
closer. “Actually, I think he’s brilliant.”
    Marshall was watching her again, and Jane’s
skin prickled under his perusal.
    That was when Jane realized she’d made a
mistake. Those freckles, his background—they’d all misled her into
thinking that he was a quiet little rabbit.
    He wasn’t. He was the wolf that looked as if
he were lounging about on the outskirts of the pack, a lone
hanger-on, when in truth he had adopted that position simply so
that he could see everything that transpired in the fields below.
He wasn’t solitary; he was waiting for someone to make a
mistake.
    He looked willing to wait a very long
time.
    But he hadn’t had to. She’d used the
wrong-name trick on Marshall the other night, and here she was,
repeating it again. Use a stratagem too many times, and people
began to be suspicious.
    She blamed that damned frisson.
    Mr. Brightbuttons, or whatever his name was,
was grinning at her, too.
    “Tell me,” he said, “do you really think that I’m like Sebastian Malheur? Because I’ve heard that he
is excruciatingly handsome.”
    He smiled at her, and Jane realized she’d
made another mistake. He wasn’t Sebastian
some-random-name-that-he-hadn’t-admitted-to. He was Sebastian Malheur in the flesh.
    Mr. Marshall was friends with the infamous
Malheur. Jane swallowed.
    “You can’t be very much like Malheur, then,”
she managed. “I’ve been looking at you for a full thirty seconds,
and I haven’t had a single flutter of interest.”
    Mr. Marshall let out a crack of laughter.
    “Very well, Miss Fairfield,” he said. “You’ve
earned