The Countess Conspiracy (27 page)

“I…” She licked her lips. “It’s that…”

If the truth came out, she’d never be received in polite society. Lily would cut her entirely. Her mother would… Violet couldn’t even think of what her mother would do.

And yet she wasn’t afraid. Maybe she was too tired for fear. Maybe she was too excited. She should have been shaking. Usually, a recital of the horrors to come would be enough to scare her, to remind Violet that she needed to keep quiet and keep her head down.

But today…

Jane had joined her husband in the room. She was staring at Violet, too. All those eyes, all focused on her.

Why wasn’t Violet afraid?

“Good God,” Violet heard herself say disdainfully. “Why would any of you want to know?”

She couldn’t wait for the answer, couldn’t watch her friends flinch from her, now that they knew the truth. She felt visible, picked out in vibrant colors, when she’d only ever wanted to hide away.

She stood. “Now if you’ll excuse me. I have to—I have to—”

God, what did she have to do?

“Sleep,” she said. “Change.”
Hide.
She touched Alice’s shoulder. “I’ll call on you when we’ve both had a chance to rest.”

Nose in the air. Don’t look at anyone. Don’t let them see how much you care.

Those were her mother’s rules, and even though her mother would hate to see them used under these circumstances, she was grateful to have them. Her mother had taught Violet how to be reviled, how to pretend that nothing mattered. It came so easily to her—that haughty brush past Oliver and Robert.

But then Jane stepped forward.

“Violet,” she said softly. “We want to know because we love you.”

Violet stared at her friend for a moment in unblinking befuddlement. Her words didn’t make sense. Didn’t Jane realize what Violet had just disclosed? What she’d done? Who she was?

Jane set a sympathetic hand on Violet’s arm. Violet didn’t understand sympathy. She couldn’t make sense of any of this. She felt hollow inside. Hollow and utterly brittle.

“I’m going.” She turned and fled.

“No,” she heard Sebastian saying. “Let her go. She needs a little time to figure out how she feels.”

But he was wrong. Violet knew how she felt already: Empty. Utterly empty.

V
IOLET FELT EMPTY
when she escaped into Sebastian’s study. She was totally devoid of all proper feelings.

It felt good to be in a familiar place—here, at his desk, where they’d gone over paper after paper together. The clock made a comfortable sound, its steady ticks slowing her heart. The books smelled of Sebastian.

She sat in her usual chair and put her elbows on his desk.

God, what a mess. Two people could keep a secret. Even the addition of Alice could have been hidden—she and her husband clearly had their own set of secrets, and they’d have been motivated to join the charade.

But the idea had sprung into Violet’s head and she’d charged straight on with it, paying no attention to the fact that Oliver, Robert, Jane, Minnie, and Free—
Free
for God’s sake,
Frederica Marshall
was practically unknown to her—were all present. What had she been thinking?

“I wasn’t thinking,” she snapped aloud. “That was the problem.”

But as soon as she said the words, she knew them for the lie that they were.

She
had
thought. For a split second, when she’d glanced at the sketches in the paper and had that inkling of an idea, she
had
thought.

You can’t do this. You had better wait.

She hadn’t wanted to wait. She’d selfishly shoved aside all thoughts of her future, her reputation, her family, caught up in the blaze of a brilliant idea. The fear that if she set it aside, it would vanish.

Even now, she wasn’t properly afraid. Her arms curled around herself. How could she have made such a mess of things? One moment of selfishness. One moment, and everyone she cared for would pay the price.

Selfish.
That’s what she was.

She’d escaped to Sebastian’s study so she could be alone, so she could let her thoughts wind out to the point where she might sleep. She
knew
she was tired—exhausted beyond belief. The room was papered in blue and silver; a small writing table sat against one wall, and shelves of books lined the walls. A full-length mirror was propped up next to the table, reflecting the volumes back to her.

She stood and turned the mirror toward her. Her eyes looked back, dark and solemn. She was not much to look at. She could aspire to “handsome” when she took pains with her appearance, but if—for instance—she stayed up the entire night peering into a microscope, she was unabashedly homely.

Dark circles lined her eyes. Her skin was waxy; her hair could have passed for a nest of dark snakes hissing about her shoulders. Add a few warts and Violet suspected she could get herself burned at the stake.

Not pretty, and also selfish. Selfish to feel pride at what she’d done. Selfish to want…

She looked at herself in the mirror, her head tilting.

It wasn’t working. Usually when she called herself selfish, she squirmed and stuffed the things she wanted away.

But today, it wasn’t working. Maybe she was too tired.

“Selfish Violet,” she said aloud, but stripped of the shame that usually accompanied them, the words rang false. Selfish?

No. She wasn’t empty. Those words had lost their place in her heart. Today she had another refrain in her head, one that had been playing so quietly that she hadn’t even heard it until that moment.

Clever Violet. Resilient Violet. Sweet Violet.
That whispered memory left no room for
selfish.

Was what she’d just done was
selfish?
What did the word even mean?

Violet contemplated the mirror. When her husband called her selfish for refusing to go to bed with him, what
had
he meant?

I deserve my chance to have an heir more than you deserve to live.

When Lily said it would be selfish of Violet to ally herself with Sebastian, what did she mean?

My attendance at balls is more important than your happiness.

When Violet called herself selfish, that was what she meant—that she didn’t deserve the thing she wanted. Not happiness. Not recognition. Maybe not even her own life.

She touched her fingers to the mirror.

“Fundamentally unlovable,” she said aloud. That’s what she had told herself, what she’d resigned herself to. Someone fundamentally unlovable didn’t deserve…anything. She’d believed it so powerfully that she’d been unable to understand Sebastian when he said he loved her. When Jane had said
we love you,
she had actually shaken her head, unable to comprehend that it might be true: that people might know the truth about her and love her anyway.

The person who looked at her from the mirror seemed subtly different from the woman she’d seen reflected at her year after year. There was still no beauty to mask the intensity of her gaze, no little tricks to disguise who she was.

Selfish.
She’d been hiding for so long that she hadn’t even seen herself.

She wasn’t unlovable. She wasn’t selfish. To admit that she wanted something, that she deserved to have it? To think that she might make a decision on the basis of her own desires, and not her fears for those around her?

Those thoughts sounded almost obscene.

Clever Violet. Lovely Violet.

Obscene, to imagine she was someone who mattered.

A knock sounded on the door. Violet had only begun to turn when it swung open and Sebastian stepped through. He took one look at her—at her flushed face, her disheveled hair. His lips quirked up in amusement.

But he didn’t make fun. “Violet,” he said instead. “I know that Bollingall might do for this matter, but his work is primarily done through a microscope.” He swallowed. “You’ll want someone else so that you can continue on with your work. I’ve started to make a list.”

Her head spun. “A list?”

“Yes. You’ll need someone who can work with you. Someone who will understand the science well enough to do a creditable job on the presentation. Someone who will respect you.”

“I don’t need a list,” she heard herself say. “I’ve already found someone.”

He tilted his head. “You have? You’re going to have Bollingall claim all the credit, then?”

Her heart pounded. Thump-thump-thump-thump, the beats running together until she could scarcely hear herself talk. “No.”

She knew she looked an absolute fright. Still, his gaze fixed on her as if she were beautiful.

Sebastian was handsome and rich and desirable. She hadn’t been able to believe that he loved her. She had done everything she could to convince herself that he didn’t. That she’d misheard. That what he felt was just friendship, that he couldn’t care for her the way he claimed he did. And yet every time she’d allowed herself to believe that, he’d gone and done something that exploded her theories.

He hadn’t taken her to bed. He hadn’t hurt her. He hadn’t even kissed her, because he thought it would cause her harm. His entire presentation on violets… She’d tried to figure out what it meant, but the best she had come up with was that it was a
seduction.

It hadn’t been. It had been a love letter, and she couldn’t have understood it until this moment. She’d been unable to believe he loved her until she realized that she deserved to be loved.

She understood it now. She felt incandescent. And it didn’t matter how she looked or how frightful her hair appeared.

“This person,” Violet said with a little choke in her throat, “is perfect. This person knows my every thought. This person can explain what I’ve discovered in a way that everyone can understand.” She crooked her finger at him. “Let me show you.”

He looked at her warily. But despite the protest, he came toward her, step by step.

He’d slept as little as she. Still, his hair looked casually, perfectly disheveled. That dusting of dark stubble made him look like a scoundrel, but the look suited him. Through some strange alchemy, he still smelled good. It wasn’t fair how good he smelled—Sebastian intensified, a lovely musk that made her want to close her eyes and inhale. He advanced on her until he stood by her side.

“Violet,” he said softly. “I know what you’re going to say. You want me to do it. But…” He swallowed. “It hasn’t changed. Nothing has changed. I know how important this discovery is, but it ruins things between us, those lies.”

Violet took his hand and turned him toward the mirror. “I know who’s going to take credit for this discovery,” she whispered. And then she lifted her free hand and pointed at her own reflection, so terribly disarranged and yet so utterly right. “She is.”

He let out a breath into the silence that followed. Their eyes met in the mirror. Violet realized that she was still holding his hand, still touching him. That his fingers were warm against hers, that his body was close, so close to hers. It was a strangely, starkly intimate moment.

“Violet,” he whispered.

She had gone mad, and she steeled herself to hear all of the ways she was being a fool.

They’ll never let you present it.

Nobody will listen.

Think of what it will mean to your family.

They all came down to the same thing:
Selfish, selfish. You don’t deserve recognition. You don’t deserve anything.

But this was Sebastian, and Sebastian didn’t say any of those things. He simply turned to her. Violet didn’t want to look into his eyes. Exchanging glances through a mirror was one thing, but he was holding her hand, standing so close to her. She tried to look away, but he set his hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she looked up.

Her whole body was on fire. Gazing into his eyes… Oh, that was a mistake. Not when he was holding her hand. Not when they were so close that they could trade breaths the way they had once traded sentences, finishing each other’s inhalations and exhalations as if their entire beings were twined together.

Sebastian always smiled—it was one of his hallmarks. He wasn’t smiling now. He was watching her, looking at her, drinking her in. And she wasn’t flinching from him. God, what a terrible mistake. She couldn’t do this.

But he raised his hand to her face and brushed his palm against her cheek, and she didn’t pull away. She might even have leaned into him.

It was going to be hard. Impossible, in fact. She didn’t have the slightest idea how to go forward from here. Her sister was going to hate her. Her mother was…what word had she used? Disgusted by her. The entire
world
was going to despise her.

But not Sebastian. Sebastian just touched her forehead with his. “Bully for you, Violet,” he whispered. “This time, I can make them pay attention to you. And believe me, I will.”

She didn’t care about the rest of the world.

He brought his other hand up, running his thumb along her jaw. Her whole being sparked at that. He wanted her…and oh, she wanted him.

She wanted him so much.

He was leaning in now, his breath on her face, his lips mere inches from hers. He was going to kiss her. He was going to kiss her.