The Countess Conspiracy

  He’d always assumed it was because she liked snapdragons. She’d been a gardener even before she had started writing scientific papers. She’d approached her flowerbeds with a dogged determination unmatched by most amateurs. But she was looking out the window at the shadowed forms of his back garden, watching twilight cast lengthening shadows.

  “No,” he said simply.

  “My father was an avid gardener. He named his daughters after flowers. He used to take me out with him to his gardens.”

  She didn’t say anything else for a little while, as if she had to gather her thoughts.

  “He used to say,” Violet continued, “that I was his green good luck charm. That with me present, he could not fail in his aims. And he wanted one thing more than any other: He wanted to create a pink snapdragon that would breed true. He’d been working on it for years, since long before I was born.”

  She shook her head.

  “One of my first memories was watching him plant seeds. I remember him telling me that he needed me there, that I’d make them all come up pink. I walked his flowerbeds in spring, breathing on every leaf that came up. I actually believed I would make a difference. I wanted to be good luck for him. I wanted it so hard. Lily was pretty and accomplished. I wanted to be able to do that.” She shook her head. “That year, his bed of experimental flowers came up all pink. We cheered. He said it was all due to me, and I was wild with excitement.”

  Even though he’d never heard this story before, Sebastian knew how it had to end. He’d delivered her work on snapdragons too often not to know how it would turn out. But even though he ached for her coming disappointment, he just watched her.

  “He collected those seeds carefully, telling me how vital they were, how he’d managed something nobody had done before. Those little sprouts, when they came up the next year, he called the first true pink snapdragons.” She shook her head. “The entire household was flush with excitement when the first buds formed. I did my best to be good luck for him, spending every waking moment out-of-doors, encouraging the greenery. We waited breathlessly for the flowers to open and show their color. And when they did—they were a mix. Pink and white and crimson, all interspersed together.” She folded her arms.

  He could see the memory of her unhappiness mirrored on her face.

  “Clearly,” she said, “the seeds needed some perfecting. Father bred the pink flowers with each other, and the next spring, he repeated the planting. I thought that maybe I had made an error the year before, so this year I tried even harder. I added his flowers to my prayers every night, thought of them first thing upon waking. I wanted every flower to be pink as hard as I’ve ever let myself want anything.”

  She stopped.

  “They came up mixed,” Sebastian said.

  She turned away. “Mixed,” she agreed. “My father stopped calling me his green good luck charm. The next year, when that batch came up mixed, too, he told me to stop coming around.” She shrugged—not in indifference, but as if she could slide a burden off her shoulders. “That was the year my mother taught me how to knit.”

  There was so much in those words—the look in her eyes, that sad smile. He could see a small Violet wanting desperately to be her father’s good luck charm. He could imagine her mother, teaching her to wield more than needles. She’d have taught the young Violet to knit stoicism alongside every loop of yarn.

  “When it became clear that I would not make something of myself in the way that women normally do, I started to breed snapdragons. I think I wanted to prove to myself that…well, that it hadn’t been me that made everything go wrong. That I hadn’t somehow destroyed everything for my father. I don’t know when I realized the truth: that there is no such thing as a pink snapdragon. A pink snapdragon is only a snapdragon that is half white and half red, and nothing anyone does can pull the red from it. It cannot breed true, because there is no truth to it. Our eyes fool us; only years of experience can reveal the truth.”

  She looked over at Sebastian.

  Her voice had been so matter-of-fact during this—as if she’d been reciting a lesson instead of telling the story of how her father had blamed her for an indelible law of nature. He wanted to hold her, to put his arms around her and squeeze her until she could scarcely breathe.

  “You look at me,” Violet said, “and your eye shows you a pink snapdragon. It’s a lie. There are no pink snapdragons. There is no softness in me to give. Not to you, not to anyone. No matter what you do, you’ll never find any warmth in me. It simply isn’t there. On occasion, I tell the truth, and on occasion, the truth is comforting. But don’t break your heart searching for something that isn’t there.”

  Sebastian felt the tug of painful want. It was a bittersweet sensation, as if he were a soldier come home on temporary leave. He might stay by her side for a week or two and love every moment. He might envy the embroidered cushions of the sofa because they caressed her form.

  He harbored a stray thought or three thousand about pulling her to him, of kissing her until the bitter taste of truth fled before them. And, in truth, he’d thought—over and over—that she needed time. That if he waited, it would some day work out.

  All soldiers dreamed of armistice, after all.

  But Violet never let him hold her, and peace was never coming. It was a bitter thought, almost too bitter to bear. It didn’t matter how much he yearned for her.

  “I realized years ago,” Sebastian said, “that having you as a friend wasn’t second prize. It wasn’t something to chafe against. It was an honor.”

  She looked up warily.

  “My heart isn’t breaking because I can’t have you.”

  “Don’t say that. I saw the way you were looking at me just now. We can quibble over the precise words to use. But don’t tell me I haven’t hurt you.”

  “My heart’s not breaking because I can’t have you,” he insisted. “It’s breaking because you think you’re a hard thing, because you imagine that what I see in you is an illusion. It isn’t.”

  She looked over at him. Her eyes widened and she planted her feet firmly on the floor, straightening as if preparing to flee.

  But he didn’t let himself move toward her.

  She crossed her arms in front of her. “I’m not the sort of woman that men fall in love with,” Violet said flatly. “I’m not warm or welcoming. I’m harsh and cold.” Her eyes flashed. “I have no interest in sexual intercourse. It’s true, perhaps, that some man might take leave of his senses and imagine that he feels something like love for me, but I have every reason to believe that it would be a temporary departure from reality. Even the most imaginative, most sincere of men would eventually realize the truth. I’m scarcely a woman, Sebastian. Make a list of female qualities and I have none of them.”

  It was like coming home to a place that he held dear and finding that the woods had burnt to the ground and the house was in ruins. He stared at her aghast.

  She looked into his eyes. Her expression didn’t change, didn’t flicker one bit.

  “I have it on the best of authority,” she pronounced, “that I’m worthless as a woman.” She came to her feet then, turned, and wrestled the door open.

  Night had fallen; it was dark beyond.

  “Wait.” He followed after her. He reached for her hand and then checked himself, realizing that would only make things worse. “Wait,” he said. “Violet, listen to me. Your husband was an ass.”

  She stopped in her tracks. She didn’t turn back to him.

  “I mean it,” Sebastian said. “I have no idea what he was doing to you, but I watched you while it happened. When you wrote your paper—that first paper on snapdragons, the one that I sent in for you—I was afraid you’d not live out the year.”

  Her chin rose. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense. You were ill for weeks that year. Did he hit you? Were you hiding bruises? Did he tell you that you were worthless? That you were nothing?”

  Her ches
t rose. “I don’t want to talk about my husband.”

  “Even after you grew well enough to leave your bed, you scarcely had the capacity to walk in the garden with me. We had to stop and sit every ten yards. I hoped you could recover from whatever it was. But two months later, you were too ill to see me again. I thought you were dying, Violet.”

  She shook her head. “Obviously, you were wrong. I’m still here.”

  “You’re still here. Six months after we wrote that first paper, your husband fell down the stairs in a drunken fit and snapped his neck. And suddenly, after years of watching you struggle with ill health, I watched you get better—no relapses, no sudden illnesses. So don’t repeat your husband’s words to me, Violet. I can guess at the truth.”

  “You can’t.” Her voice choked. “You have no idea, Sebastian.”

  “Whatever it was that your husband told you, whatever it was that he did to you—he was wrong. He was horribly wrong.”

  Violet looked at him. “You’re telling yourself lies. You’re imagining that my husband was at fault, that he stripped me of warmth. You’re wrong. It was the other way around. My husband told me I was worthless because he discovered I didn’t have any warmth to give. He said I was selfish, and I’m not sure he was wrong. Because when he died, I couldn’t even make myself feel sorry for it.”

  “Violet,” Sebastian said, “you took in a baby owl with a broken wing for three months, ignored the fact that it shredded the antique furniture in the room where you kept it, and when your maids were too squeamish to capture mice, you did it yourself.”

  Her eyes flashed. “That was curiosity.”

  “I heard you cooing to it,” Sebastian said. “And shall we talk about Herman, the cat you found caught in a steel trap?”

  Violet pretended not to hear this. “My husband never hit me,” she said. “Not once. And if you think he was the only one who told me how little I mattered…” She drew a breath. “I was my father’s good luck talisman. Lily always used to tell everyone that Father loved us too much to kill himself. But I have always known better. I have never been enough.”

  God, more than anything, he wished it would help to take her in his arms. To squeeze her so tightly that all her fears fled. But this was Violet. She wouldn’t welcome his embrace. She wouldn’t want to admit that she had anything so messy as emotions, let alone that she was besieged by them. She stared out into the darkness, her eyes clear, her face unshadowed.

  “So forget about me,” Violet said. “Stop wanting to know. Everyone who understands me eventually becomes disgusted by who I am.”

  “Not me.”

  She glanced back at him. “You don’t know everything.”

  IT WAS GETTING WORSE.

  When Sebastian was around, Violet thought of the oddest things—of touching him, of kissing him, of simply holding him close and breathing in comfort from his warmth. When he wasn’t, she could feel the memory of him lingering, waiting to catch her unawares. Those unwanted thoughts came to her at the oddest times. She would pull on a glove and think of his fingers entwining with hers, that smile glowing on his face—just for her. He’d pull her close…

  She shook her head, banishing the thought before it could give rise to real want.

  But desire always found a way to creep back in, and next thing she knew, she was imagining laughter, the kind that took her breath away. The kind where he would hold her close as she shook with mirth.

  Another shake of her head, and that fantasy would slink shamefully away, vanquished, albeit temporarily.

  You’re not allowed to be that person, she reminded herself. Want is a danger for you.

  Late in the evening was the worst. When night fell, when even turning the lamps up full-bore only made the shadows deeper, she remembered his words.

  Platonic? God, no. I don’t love you platonically. I want you very, very much. If you wanted to go to bed with me, Violet, I’d take you there. Right now.

  Late at night, it was hard to remember that she was ice. That platonic love was all she dared allow herself to have. Late at night, she remembered what it was like to touch, the sensation of skin sliding against her own. That feel of warmth against warmth, of the delicious friction of fingers against her hips, pulling her close… That was a memory more luxurious than the softest silks. She remembered what it was like to drown in a kiss, to forget everything as bodies joined. She could remember what intercourse had been like, before it had gone sour.

  But just as surely she also recalled what it had turned into: the slide into icy nothingness, every thrust of his hips attempting to erase her from the world.

  She remembered it all, and she wanted it, and she feared.

  So she did what she always did: She found something else to take the place of that cavernous, treacherous want. She cut up scientific journals—even though anything she discovered from here on out would land only in silence. She slid the articles between the pages of her periodicals, turning the pages of La Mode Illustrée not from gown to gown, but from article to article, from topics that covered everything from sexual inheritance to the latest experiments in multiple exposure photographic methods for enhancing microscopic results. She pored over sketches of cells while pretending that she cared about woodcut drawings of pink tarlatan overskirts instead.

  She read and read until there was no room for want. Until she’d reduced herself to pure thought and work, a being with no feelings, no sensations, no desires. None of that had ever served her anyway.

  But thoughts were insidious, and if there was anything her scientific work had taught her, it was this: Almost every organism, no matter how small or how large, yearned to reproduce. It was a desire bred into every cell, and she could not drive it away, no matter how harmful she knew that want to be. She could only keep her yearning at bay.

  Sometimes at night, she failed.

  She felt the bed beneath her back that night, and remembered the feel of her husband on top of her, pushing inside her, leaning down to her as if for a kiss.

  The first few years, he’d whispered words of encouragement and affection. Darling and sweet and good. Later, he’d lapsed into silence.

  Near the end, though…

  What the hell is the use of you? He’d whispered in her ear as he took her. Selfish bitch.

  Those were the words that punctuated his thrusts. And with every passing cycle—every few months—she’d proved him right, subliming like ice in winter, turning into so much vapor.

  Selfish. Pointless. Bitch.

  How many more lovers do you need?

  Only one more.

  But Violet could never be anyone’s one more. She was a blacksmith’s puzzle made by a fiend. All anyone could do was be driven mad by her.

  She let out a breath in the darkness. Lily. She would visit Lily tomorrow, and Lily would need her.

  And oh, Violet needed to be needed. At the moment, she needed it more than anything.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE SUN WAS HIGH AND SEBASTIAN’S JOURNEY from London had been pleasant. He’d managed to bury all of Violet’s revelations deep in his heart. He hid them in the pleasant sun, in the too-humid air presaging some later storm.

  It had been a week since he’d last seen his brother and not quite that long since he’d first met with the leadership of the Society for the Betterment of Respectable Trade in London. He couldn’t have hoped for a better response from them.

  His brother, however…

  He made his way through his brother’s house, led by the servants, and came into his brother’s study. He didn’t say a word. He just handed over the circular he’d brought with him.

  He could hear the clock ticking seconds away. He didn’t dare count them; he didn’t want to know how long it would take Benedict to realize what he was reading.

  His brother smoothed the page in front of him against the desk and shook his head. He seemed to move so slowly. Once again, he frowned and started reading for the third time.

  Benedict?
??s lips twitched into a frown. His fingers tapped against the table, as if he could change the words if only he jarred the paper hard enough. He read through the end for a third time, and after his eyes had stopped moving down the page—long after—he simply stared at the paper.

  Sebastian couldn’t breathe. Some part of him still felt like he was still a younger brother, dancing around the older, showing off some skill that the elder had perfected years before. Look, he wanted to say. Look what I did.

  But it was more than that.

  Look who I am.

  All these years he’d let his brother tell him he was nothing, that the sum total of his accomplishments were the jokes he’d made, the wrath he’d incurred from respectable people outraged by his words.

  But Benedict was wrong.

  Finally his brother shut his eyes and shoved the paper away.

  “Sebastian.” The word came out on a sad sigh, and he shook his head as he spoke. “How the hell did you manage this one?”

  “Am I supposed to feel ashamed?” Sebastian asked in surprise. “I went to visit the Society in London. I talked with the leadership there. They were interested in my work on shipping, and even more interested to hear about the application of numerical methods to trade.”

  His brother grimaced. “That much is obvious. But…”

  The clock was still ticking, those seconds seeming to come faster and faster.

  “You don’t need to have a but,” Sebastian said. “You can just leave it at ‘Well done, Sebastian, I’m looking forward to attending that meeting.’”

  “Attending?” His brother’s nose wrinkled. “You think I’ll be in attendance? I made it clear to you that the Society was a respectable organization. And you think to prove something by dazzling their best minds with mathematical conjuring tricks?”

  “God, Benedict,” Sebastian said. “That…”

  Hurts, he might have said. But that simply word didn’t encompass the sting he felt, the ache deep inside. He’d wanted to bridge the gap between them. He’d hoped it was possible.