The Heiress Effect by Courtney Milan Page B

Jane folded her
hands and wished, not for the first time, that her uncle was not so
dreadfully gullible.
    “Interesting,” she said. “Have you ever cured
anyone with a convulsive disorder?”
    “Ah, no. But I have caused convulsions, and, ah…” He looked down at Emily, as if not quite
sure he should speak on in her presence.
    If he could deliver an electric shock to her,
he could damned well tell her what he was doing. Jane made a
gesture for him to continue.
    “It’s a theory I have, you see. Galvanic
current flows. It has a direction. If current can cause convulsion,
flowing in one direction, then when someone is having a convulsion,
one ought to be able to stop it by applying an equal and opposite
current in the other direction. It’s a simple application of
Newtonian laws. With sufficient experimentation, I am sure I can
calibrate the precise amount to apply.”
    “You are sure?” Jane asked dubiously.
“Is sure the proper word to use to describe your
theory?”
    “I am…hopeful,” he amended. “Quite
hopeful.”
    Maybe a few years ago, she might have let him
try. But Jane had heard a dozen men make equally grandiloquent,
equally ridiculous claims about how their particular form of
torture would cure her sister’s fits. None of their treatments had
worked, and they’d all been painful. And there were Emily’s burns.
She felt the corners of her mouth curl up in a snarl.
    “So let me understand. You are proposing to
deliver as many electric shocks as you like to my sister, for an
indeterminate amount of time, on a theory for which you have no
evidence other than a wild guess.”
    “That hardly seems fair!” he squawked. “I
haven’t even had a chance—”
    “Oh, no,” Emily said, speaking up at last.
“He’s demonstrated that he can cause a convulsion in me with his
current. I told him that it wasn’t the same kind of fit that
I have. It doesn’t feel the same at all. But it is, after all, only
my body. What do I know?”
    Jane couldn’t speak for the black rage that
filled her. She’d wanted to protect Emily. Why did her uncle have
to bring in these fools?
    “Exactly,” the charlatan said. “I am the
expert on galvanics. What would she know?”
    Jane particularly remembered the man who had
insisted that the convulsions were an invention of Emily’s mind.
Since they were so, he’d insisted that he needed only offer her an
incentive to stop. Those burns along her sister’s arm—matched by
the ones on her thigh—had been his version of an incentive. What
did Emily know, after all?
    “Well.” Jane’s voice shook. “There’s only one
way I can think of to find out what Emily knows.”
    “Your pardon?” The doctor shook his head.
    Jane tried not to snarl at him. “I propose to
take the radical course of asking her. Emily, what do you think of
this course of treatment?”
    Only the tremble of Emily’s hands really
answered that question. Jane swallowed her anger and waited for her
sister’s reply.
    “I would rather have the fits, thank
you.”
    Then Fake Doctor Fallon could go to hell, for
all Jane cared. The only difficulty was how to send him there. She
turned to him. “Thank you very much,” she said, “but your services
are no longer needed.”
    He looked shocked, glancing from his
acrid-smelling jars to Emily, and then back to Jane. “You can’t
discharge me,” he finally said. “This is my chance. I could write
this up, make my name…”
    There was a good reason why Jane always kept
a few bills in an inner pocket. She found these now and unfolded
them, holding them out. “I am not discharging you, Doctor Fallon.
You may have these twenty pounds if you walk away right now. You
only need tell my uncle that you have determined that your
treatment is ill-suited to my sister’s condition. He will pay you.
I will pay you. And we will all profit from it.”
    He scratched his head. “But how can I know if
my treatment is ill-suited without further