The Countess Conspiracy (17 page)

“You know about the numerical methods that have come into use in scientific research? I went down to Admiralty and got a little information. About three hundred pages’ worth. How often certain captains were late; what ports ships visited, and how that contributed to whether the ships were on time. Using the methods previously mentioned and a few brave souls whom I hired—those costs are accounted for on page seven—I was able to determine a few variables that contributed to the lateness of ships. I estimated how one should account for them on page four. At that point, it became easy to identify voyage shares that were undervalued—that is, ships that were late not because they should be presumed lost at sea, but because certain factors on the voyage suggested that they ought to be late as a matter of course.”

Benedict stared blankly at him. “I don’t understand a word you just said.”

“Yes. Well. I can go over the maths in more detail later, if you’d like.” He stopped, clearing his throat. “I still have several hundred outstanding shares—the ships might never come in—some of them, of course will not, as a statistical matter—or they might come in later. In any event, I wanted to try my hand at trade, let you have some idea of what I’m capable of, who I am.”

“But…but…” Benedict shook his head.

“It actually could have been seventy thousand,” Sebastian continued, “because Blotts and Snoffling—the insurers; I’m sure you’ve heard of them—figured out that I had some sort of trick, so they offered me fifty thousand pounds to disclose it. But I—”

“Oh my God,” Benedict exclaimed. “Fifty thousand pounds? That’s ridiculous!”

“Precisely what I said! Fifty thousand, when I’d made almost half that in a handful of weeks? Do they think me an idiot?”

Benedict ran a hand through his hair. “That’s…not precisely what I meant.”

“In any event,” Sebastian said, “this little method is only profitable now because I’m exploiting a gap between the information I have and that of those who are investing. Eventually, people will catch on to what I’m doing, and then there will be no profit in it. So I’ll have to be subtler in the future.”

His brother screwed his eyes shut and very, very carefully, hit himself in the forehead with a fist. “God,” he muttered, and hit himself again. And again.

Sebastian felt his smile fade into something cold and mechanical. He licked his lips. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s a fluke,” his brother said. “A damned fluke, using the most dangerous investment methods possible.”

“No, no!” Sebastian said. “Look, I brought the figures. It’s not dangerous, not the way I spread out my investments from ship to ship. It’s safe. It’s one of the safest things I could have done! I used information that nobody else had collected in a way that nobody else understood—that’s why I was able to do it. As soon as I publish my findings, every bank in town is going to be looking for a numerical specialist.”

“Fluke or…or whatever this is,” Benedict said, shaking his head, “this is…this is so
you,
Sebastian. You don’t need more money. I wanted to see you take up trade because I thought it would settle you down. Teach you to be careful, to not take…awful risks on the basis of some newfangled number-mangling. For all we know, this modern numerical nonsense could be completely wrong.”

“Mathematics are never wrong!” Sebastian said, aghast. “Only misapplied!”

Benedict waved this off. “I wanted you to learn responsibility. I wanted you to learn about organization, about how things worked. I didn’t want you to treat business like a game, one which you could win by garnering the maximum number of points in the smallest amount of time. This is precisely the opposite of what I was looking for.”

His brother was acting like Sebastian was a child to be scolded because he’d done something forbidden. But he was an adult, and Sebastian still couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong. It had seemed a good idea at the time: He’d create a common interest and he’d have a little fun in the process.

“I see.” His voice sounded cold. “So…”

He’d been sure that he could present Benedict with the results, that his brother would pay attention, that he would begin to feel maybe just a little pride. A little kinship, something to replace the years that lay between them. So he’d thought.

“I’m not angry at you, Sebastian,” Benedict said. “But sometimes I think we inhabit completely different countries, use entirely separate languages. It’s like having a dog. You tell it, ‘No chasing rabbits!’ and what it hears is ‘Rabbit!’ Next thing you know, there’s a big, dumb, slobbering beast tossing a hare at your feet.”

Sebastian looked away.

“Not that you’re a dog,” his brother put in quickly. “Or that you’re dumb or slobbering. It’s just…you’re loyal to a fault, you’re enthusiastic, and yet somehow, you always manage to do precisely the wrong thing. Speculation is gambling—a form of gambling just as pernicious as the sort with cards and dice.”

“Right,” Sebastian said, jumping on this. “But let’s talk of gambling as a business.”

“Gambling is
never
a business.”

“Not for the gambler, no,” Sebastian pointed out. “But it’s excellent business for the house. The house wins and loses, but it wins more than it loses. So long as it has the means to keep on playing, it will always come out ahead. This works the same way. It
is
like gambling—but as the gaming house, not as a gamester, and with far fewer operational outlays. I had a good idea as to the expected return—”

Benedict looked up at him and shook his head. “Only you, Sebastian. Only you would think that ‘my scheme is like running a gaming house’ counts as an exculpatory analogy. It doesn’t.”

Sebastian flushed. He always managed to do precisely the wrong thing whenever his brother was peering over his shoulder.

It had always been like that with them. Sebastian had tried to earn words of praise from his brother when he was younger. He’d jumped fifteen feet out of a tree into a lake to try and get Benedict’s attention once. That hadn’t worked so well; Benedict had scolded him and forbidden him from swimming. Showing his stamina by running naked through a blizzard had won him a lecture. And winning top honors in his classes had won him a scolding, because near the end he’d tried to stay up all night to memorize his Latin conjugations. It
had
been his fault he’d knocked over a candle, but he’d only burned a carpet. The scorch marks on the floor had been scarcely noticeable.

He’d kept on trying, year after year, because he wasn’t the kind to give up. And now that his brother seemed farther away than ever… Maybe they
did
speak different languages, but Sebastian wasn’t going to quit simply because he’d run into a difficulty.

“Look at me,” Benedict was saying, “and think of what I’ve done. I’m respected, yes, but I didn’t go out and gamble in hopes that the dice would turn up my numbers. I
worked
for this.”

Benedict stood. For a second, the light from the window behind him caught his profile, made it seem like the kind of patrician silhouette that one found on old Roman coins.

“I’m a County Captain for the Society for the Betterment of Respectable Trade,” Benedict told him. “It’s the most honored organization of its sort in the entire country—almost two centuries old and dedicated to the notion that tradesmen can and should be treated with respect. Our father was a member before me. Did I get my position by jumping up and down and tossing my money around like a fool?” He turned back to Sebastian. “Of course I didn’t. I was dependable. I was accountable. I was responsible. I worked for years and years, and now look at me.”

Now, Benedict was dying. Sebastian couldn’t bear to look away from him, for fear of what he would miss.

“I’ve earned the respect of my peers,” Benedict said. “I’m one of the foremost gentlemen in my district because of that. I’ve really accomplished something.”

Sebastian stood up. “People respect me, too,” he said quietly. “I’ve accomplished a great deal.”

Benedict let out a sigh and looked away, dismissing everything Sebastian had accomplished.

“I’m not giving up, Benedict.” Sebastian leaned in. “I told you already—”

“And I told you,” his brother interrupted. “I don’t want you risking everything on foolish speculation. I have enough worry to contend with in my final weeks. Stop trying to prove something to me, Sebastian. Your chances of success are not high, and it isn’t worth the risk.”

Sebastian felt as if he’d been punched in the kidneys.

His brother clapped him on the shoulder—a brotherly gesture of affection—as if he could set aside those harsh words so easily. “Now,” he said, “what do you say we get Harry and go for a walk?”

“
R
IDICULOUS,”
V
IOLET SAID.
“Utterly ridiculous. Although I suppose I should expect no less from a man as terrible at croquet as Benedict is.”

“It is a little ridiculous,” Sebastian said. “I misjudged the situation.”

Somehow, it had been easy for Violet to slide back into her friendship with Sebastian: to meet him in the evenings in her London greenhouse and swap stories of their day, uninterrupted by servants.

He stood next to her now, handing her tools as she worked, telling stories intended to make her laugh. It was almost as if nothing had happened—as if they were still working together, as if he’d never breathed a word about lusting after her.

She shook her head, refusing to contemplate that. Stubbornness was almost like ignorance, almost like bliss.

“In any event,” Sebastian was saying, “I did my best to explain—but you know me.” His smile tilted a little. “What came out was ‘it’s like running a gaming house.’ You should have seen his face.”

He was smiling—as if telling her that his brother was dying and being an ass all at the same time was an amusing little anecdote.

Violet folded her arms. “As I said. Ridiculous.”

“I know.” He grinned at her. “And then I realized what I’d said, and—”

“I wasn’t talking about you.” She sniffed and stretched, plucking another yellowing leaf off a bean plant. “I was talking about your brother.”

His expression didn’t change. He was leaning against one of the metal support columns that came down through the center of her greenhouse, his arms folded, his lips quirking.

“Benedict?” he asked quizzically. “Benedict is
never
ridiculous. Everyone knows that.”

She set down her shears and turned to him. “I realize that my opinion is of little value on this point. But trust me—your brother is being
ridiculous.
There is not one person besides him on this planet who would say that you’ve accomplished nothing. Not one.”

He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “That won’t do, Violet. You know the truth about me. We can fool everyone else—but in here, we both know what I really am.”

“Yes,” Violet said. “You aren’t the County Captain of some organization that I have never heard of. But you
are
one of the world’s foremost experts on the inheritance of traits.”

His smile flattened. “Oh, come now, Violet. We both know that’s you, not me.”

Nothing had changed between them.

Everything
had changed between them. When he talked to her like that—looking into her eyes and dropping his voice low—she had once been able to dismiss the swirling sparks in her throat as her own misguided, unwanted response. Now, she knew that she wasn’t alone. Some elemental part of her recognized that he wanted her—that even when he was saying things like
Come now, Violet,
he yearned for her. She had a new name for that dizziness she felt, that heady rush of warmth that swarmed her cheeks.

Not
Violet’s
attraction. That she could ignore. This was
mutual
attraction. How could he not sense it? How could he not know?

“You and I both know,” he said, “that without you, I would have been nobody. You’re the expert. I’m…” He shrugged. “I’m not even your mouthpiece any longer. I learned a great deal from working together. I enjoyed it most of the time, and I’ll grant you that I’m clever enough. But I’m not a serious fellow, Violet, and Benedict knows that. I didn’t set out to make a career for myself in trade. I just wanted to try a little trick.”

“Oh, to hell with that,” Violet heard herself exclaim. “And to hell with Benedict for making you believe it. Yes, you tell jokes. That has nothing to do with what you’ve accomplished. I never said you were
the
foremost expert on the inheritance of traits. I said you were one of them.”

“But—”

“You’re not a parrot,” Violet told him. “People have to be able to ask you questions and engage you in conversation. You can falsify the source of your knowledge, but you cannot falsify the knowledge itself. Aside from me, there is not one person in the world who understands what you do.”

“But only because you—”

“No. Because
you
worked and questioned and thought and tried,” Violet continued ruthlessly. “You have worked with me for years
.
When we needed to learn mathematics to proceed, we struggled together. If we were both men, the credit for our work would have been shared between us. We can quibble about whose name would have gone first, but your name belongs beside mine. You have been with me day after day, night after night. A stupid man, a faithless man, an undependable man—he could not have done what you did. And it is
codswallop
for your brother to say that you have done nothing. It is an insult to the name of accomplishment.”