“No,” Oliver said quietly.
“No, you’re not a bastard? You can’t deny your parentage.”
“No,” Oliver said. “I’m not the only one who will speak on her behalf.”
“I saw you threaten her,” Genevieve Johnson put in. “Geraldine and I both did. We feared for her safety.”
A murmur swelled around the table.
Bradenton’s eyes narrowed. “You misunderstood.”
Across the table from her, Hapford shut his eyes. “I’m sorry, uncle.” He spoke softly.
“What?” Bradenton said.
“I’m sorry,” Hapford repeated more loudly. His hands had worked his serviette into a ball. “But I don’t think my father would want… I do not think he would want…” He trailed off. “Miss Fairfield is telling the truth. I was there when the marquess made his offer to Mr. Marshall. You offered him precisely what she said—your vote, your help swaying the men here, if only he would show Miss Fairfield her place.” He swallowed. “I didn’t like it then, and it has not sat well with me since.”
The silence grew again, threatening like thunder.
Hapford blew out his breath. “When my father recommended a relationship with you men to me on his deathbed, I did not think he intended to attach me to a group of small-minded power-mongers, intent on hurting women. He recommended you as a group honestly interested in the best interests of England.”
“Yes,” Ellisford finally said, pointedly turning away from Bradenton. “You have the right of it. That’s what I thought we were, too.”
“Then maybe we can listen to Mr. Marshall without having him pay so high a price.”
“You’ve convinced me,” Ellisford said to Oliver several hours later. “I’m rather glad we had this talk. I’d never imagined…”
His eyes darted to the left. The gentlemen in the library sat with cigars and glasses of port. Bradenton was the only one who kept his silence. He’d stewed the entire evening: through dinner, through the conversations after the men separated from the ladies. Just as well he’d kept quiet; nobody else seemed inclined to talk to him, even though he was the host.
“I feel the same,” Oliver said. “And we’ll talk again in London.”
“Of course.”
Bradenton’s silence shouted sullenly, but nobody was paying him any mind.
Oliver had won. Not Bradenton’s vote—he’d never get that now—but all the things he’d wanted. The votes of Bradenton’s little set. His own integrity. He could afford to be magnanimous—and in this case, magnanimity meant letting the man stew in peace.
“Well,” Oliver said, “shall we rejoin the ladies?”
Everyone agreed. But when Oliver stood, Bradenton finally spoke. “Not you, Marshall,” he growled. “You and I have business.”
“Of course,” Oliver said, as congenially as he could. Everyone else trooped out with only a few scant glances behind. Strange; the fire seemed to dim as they left and the shadows of the furniture seemed to grow, now that there was no warm conversation to fill the empty spaces.
“You think you’re so clever,” Bradenton snarled as soon as they were alone.
“I? I hardly said anything at all.”
“You know what I mean. But you can’t win.” Bradenton stood and paced to the fireplace. “You can’t win,” he repeated.
Oliver forbore from pointing out that he had just done so.
“You can’t win,” Bradenton said a third time, turning to Oliver, his cheeks ruddy with anger. “You might achieve a few trifling little victories here and there, but that’s what it means to be you—that you can never stop trying. That every inch you win, you must fight to keep. As for me?” He threw his arms wide. “I am a marquess. No matter what you managed today, you spent weeks considering doing my bidding.”
“That much is true.”
“Men like me? I’m rare. I was born a victor. What I have cannot be given or taken away. What are you? You’re one of a thousand similar men. One of ten thousand. Faceless. Voiceless. It’s men like me that run the country.”
Bradenton nodded, as if he had just convinced himself, and Oliver let him rage in peace.
“It will give me great pleasure to vote against the Reform Act,” he said. “Great pleasure indeed.”
“I would never begrudge you your amusement,” Oliver said. “Especially not when you must savor it alone.”
The two men stared at each other until Bradenton’s lip curled away from his teeth in a snarl. “I do believe we are done with each other, Marshall. I won’t forget this.”
Oliver shrugged. “I told you Miss Fairfield would discover her place tonight, Bradenton. She did.”
Chapter Fourteen
There was only one woman Oliver wanted to see when he joined the company. Jane was sparkling. Not just the diamond bracelets that ringed her wrists. It was her laugh, too loud, and yet just right. Her smile, too broad, and yet exactly as friendly as it needed to be. The look in her eyes when she turned and saw Oliver.
She was magnificent.
He greeted her politely and then leaned in to whisper. “Can you meet me afterward? I want to…”
There were too many ways to finish that sentence. He wanted to kiss her. Congratulate her. He wanted to slip that gown off her shoulders and have her legs around his waist. Her eyes slipped to her chaperone, sitting against the wall. “Northwest corner of the park,” she replied sotto voce. “After I leave.”
His pulse leapt at the thought. His imagination came alive. But he nodded to her politely, as if he’d not just arranged for an illicit rendezvous with her.
She arrived half an hour after him.
“You would not believe who I had to bribe,” she said by way of breathless greeting. “I have half an hour until Alice returns with her beau.”
She was beautiful, glowing with the victory she’d obtained.
“I would believe anything of you.”
Only a hint of light spilled into the park from a distant street lamp; moldering leaves crunched underfoot as he walked to her.
“You can’t imagine how I feel. I don’t have to pretend any longer. I’ll need a new way to not get married.” She laughed. “I’ll think of something. Maybe this time I’ll just say no.”
“I’ve heard that works wonders.” He couldn’t stop smiling at her. But his smile felt so false, for all that he couldn’t contain it.