The Countess Conspiracy

  She wandered from room to room, her eyes moving from the false versions of La Mode Illustrée that she used to hide her inclinations from prying eyes to the knitting she used to make herself look innocuous.

  She’d only begun to knit because her father had banished her from his gardens. Even her knitting was a lie, an illusion of calm industriousness that she used to hide all her internal turmoil.

  Everything about her was a lie. And with good reason—the truth was so very ugly.

  So ugly that even Violet shrank from it in cowardice.

  She changed to a simple gown and slipped out to her greenhouse. The rain had begun to pour down, but she didn’t take an umbrella. The cold, fat drops that pelted her skin seemed a just punishment.

  Even her work was a lie. It wasn’t hers; nobody recognized it as such. And doing it was pointless, since nobody would present it any longer. She’d been lying to herself these last weeks.

  She looked down.

  Soaking seeds, trying to coax them to germinate? That illusion of fertility was the biggest lie of them all.

  She was a blacksmith’s puzzle without a solution. Her faults never lay in the beginning of her acquaintances, but at the end—when she drove everyone who cared for her away. It was only a question of how long it took them to ferret out the truth.

  Nothing was what she was; nothing was what she gave to those foolish enough to care for her. Nothing was what she deserved, and so nothing had been what she got. It didn’t matter how hard she tried or what she did.

  At the end of the day she was a selfish, pointless, lying coward.

  She put her hands over her ears, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t make that whisper go away. It wasn’t a voice, after all. It was just her own memory, and Violet’s memory was a harsh, terrible thing.

  She couldn’t make it go away. She couldn’t prove herself wrong. Maybe, it was time to demonstrate how right she was. Deep down, she had always known that if anyone knew the truth…

  Well. Even Sebastian would know how impossible it was to care for her. Violet took all the feelings that she’d packed away, all the hurts and lost desires, the things she dared not let herself feel.

  And she wanted. She wanted to be held so badly that it hurt. She wanted someone to say that she was wrong, that she mattered. She wanted to stop lying.

  Outside, thunder rumbled. Violet knocked a row of empty pots to the ground. They broke into useless shards, stinging her skin. Rain was falling in such quantity that she could scarcely see her back-garden wall. She doubted Sebastian would be in his garden, not in this downpour.

  Coward. Liar.

  She couldn’t wait. A little thing like rain wasn’t going to stop her from telling the truth and losing everything, once and for all.

  Chapter Thirteen

  SEBASTIAN WAS IN HIS GREENHOUSE trying to sort out the muddle of his feelings when the rain began to come down in earnest. It fell in great sheets out of nowhere, a fury of water. It obscured the view of his shrubbery, ten yards distant, washing the entire world in gray. The air chilled and the panes of glass on his greenhouse began to fog over.

  He was searching for the umbrella he was almost certain he’d left among the hooks and jackets at the entry when the door opened.

  He turned, expecting one of his servants, perhaps bearing the umbrella he needed—but it was Violet.

  He saw her skin first. She was wearing a simple gown of gray muslin, the sort of thing she wore to work in her greenhouse. Calling it a gown was being overly generous. Now it was a bedraggled, dripping cloth, one that clung to Violet’s curves in ways that he suspected she really didn’t want him to see.

  Violet swiped back a sopping braid and slammed the door shut behind her. The frame of the house rattled, shook by the wind. He couldn’t read the expression on her face. It might have been sad; it might have been defiant. A bead of water slid to the end of her nose, and her hands curled into fists at her side.

  “Violet?” he asked. “Whatever is the matter?”

  Her chin went up. Those fists at her side clenched into tight balls, and she came toward him, step by squelching step. She advanced on him as if he were an enemy force to be surrounded. She was a full half-foot shorter than he was, and yet somehow that martial light in her eyes made him want to back away.

  She stopped an inch before him. “Violet,” he breathed.

  “I have been concealing the truth from you.” She announced this in cold tones. At her side, her hand clenched, then unclenched. “You think that I have no physical desire for you.” Her eyes bored into his in sharp challenge.

  Sebastian didn’t know what to think; his entire being seemed to catch fire, breathlessly awaiting the completion of that thought.

  “You think I don’t want you.” She brushed more rain from her face. “You’re wrong. I can’t stop thinking about you. About what it would be like to…” She swallowed. “To hold you. And touch you.” Another pause. “You see how wrong you were? I desire you.”

  Yes, some part of him was chanting. Yes, yes, yes.

  But it was all so horribly wrong—that fist at her side, as if she needed protection from him, that glare in her eyes. The way she threw out the word desire as if it were a knife, one she intended to use to disembowel him.

  “I don’t understand.” He took a step back. “Something is wrong.”

  Her eyes glittered.

  “Shut up,” she said, and before he knew what she was doing, she launched herself at him. There was no other word for it. One minute, she was standing before him, bristling in bedraggled fury; the next, her hands were on his shoulders and her lips were seeking his.

  He’d imagined kissing Violet so many times that at first, he let it happen. Her mouth was cold and her hands were shaking, but that—he could tell himself—was the rain, and it would stop once he warmed her. He didn’t want to ask what had changed. He didn’t care why she was kissing him. He’d loved her for years and she was here. He pulled her close and she didn’t shrink from him. Her kiss was all ferocity, no tenderness. Her tongue warred with his before they’d even had a chance to warm up to one another. And while he tried to hold her close, her hands slid all over him—down the lapels of his coat, tracing the buttons on his trousers.

  Christ. She was undoing his trousers.

  “Don’t wait, Sebastian,” she was saying. “Don’t wait. I need you now.”

  His body needed no encouragement to come alive. He’d dreamed of holding her; now she was in his arms. The wet fabric clung to her curves—sweet, slight curves that he’d dreamed of exploring for so long. His cock came to immediate attention as her fingers undid his fly.

  “I need you,” she was saying. “I need you so much.”

  He’d wanted her hands there—precisely there, pulling his smallclothes down roughly, rubbing up the side of his cock without any shyness—for so damned long that he almost didn’t want to question his luck.

  Her fingers were cold, but he was hot enough for the both of them. And if her hands shook, at least they were eager and bold in their exploration.

  He didn’t want to ask questions, not now. Not with his erection coming to life in delighted surprise. But the bloody damned questions wouldn’t go away.

  He pulled away from her. “Violet, what are you doing?”

  She looked up at him. “Why are you stopping? You said…” She paused. “You said it was…” She swallowed, and there was another pause, a longer one. “You said it was not platonic.”

  Oh, God. Those pauses. She wasn’t stopping to search for words. She was scarcely coherent.

  “What are you waiting for?” she asked, pushing forward in miserable defiance. “You’re a rake and you want me. You said you did.”

  “First,” he said, trying to marshal his thoughts, “I’m a rake who uses sheaths, and I don’t keep any in my greenhouse. Second—”

  “You don’t need sheaths,” she told him.

  “I bloody well do. For one thing, it’s not just about
preventing pregnancy. For another, you don’t know that you’re barren. It could have been your husband.”

  She folded her arms around herself.

  “And one last thing. I said I loved you. What part of that makes you think that I would slake my lusts on you, in complete indifference to the fact that—that—”

  “That what?” she growled at him.

  “That you’re on the verge of tears.”

  “I am not.” She turned her head away, her shoulders shaking. “I am not on the verge of tears. I don’t cry.”

  The damnable thing about that was she was right. He had never seen her cry before—not ever. Not at her father’s funeral. She hadn’t shed a tear in the last year of her marriage—she’d been pale and listless and wouldn’t say a word about what was happening to her, but she hadn’t cried. He pulled up his trousers and redid his buttons.

  “Violet,” he said, “sweetheart. What on earth is the matter?”

  She collapsed on the ground and put her face in her hands. She wasn’t crying; just shaking.

  Thunder boomed around them. He couldn’t hear her over the booming rumble. The sound of rain striking the glass windows around them drummed out her words. He only knew she was distraught by the shake of her shoulders. He sat next to her and slid his arm around her sopping shoulders.

  She never would have let him hold her if she’d been in her right mind. He put his arms around her, bringing her to him, trying to breathe some semblance of warmth into her cold flesh.

  “It’s all right,” he told her. “Everything will be all right.”

  She gasped into his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll make it better. Whatever it is—I’ll make it better.”

  She lifted her face to his. Her eyes were dark, so dark that he couldn’t see the bottom of them when he peered into her face. “I’m not barren,” she whispered.

  It took him a moment to understand the words, spoken so quietly in the middle of the storm, and when he did, he couldn’t make sense of them.

  “You said I didn’t know if I was barren. I know I’m not. I’ve been pregnant before. I think I became pregnant on my wedding night. I was so happy, so excited when the doctor told me.”

  His eyes widened. “I had no idea.”

  “It was so new, we didn’t want to tell anyone.” She sniffled. “I miscarried after seven weeks.”

  He didn’t have anything to say to that, so he just pulled her close. “Oh, Violet. I’m so sorry.”

  “The second time was shortly after that. I wasn’t ready, but the doctor said that miscarriages were common in young brides, and my husband said that when a horse threw you, you had to get back on right away. So I did. It was so easy to get pregnant, Sebastian. Lily told me once that she gets pregnant when her husband sneezes at her, and I’m no different. It takes nothing to get me pregnant.” Her fingers bit into his arms. “I just never stayed that way. Eight weeks, ten weeks. That’s the way it was with me. Year after year.”

  “Year after year?” Sebastian repeated numbly.

  “I kept getting back on that horse,” Violet said. “Nineteen times, over and over…” She took in a large gasp of air.

  God. It hurt hearing it. It hurt, knowing what she’d gone through. He’d known she was prickly; he’d suspected there was a reason. But this?

  “After years of that, the doctor said we had to stop trying. That it was taking too much out of me.” She swallowed. “That if he didn’t stop, I was going to die. But my husband didn’t want to stop. He wanted his heir.” Her voice had started to shake. “I told him no, you understand. I told him no, and he never forced me when I did. But my no never stuck. He’d come back and argue. He’d wheedle and explain. He told me I was selfish to withhold myself. That the earldom needed its heir, that it was bigger than just me. I could have refused, if it was just that one no, but he only had to get one yes. One yes, and he’d be on me again. One yes, and he’d make me feel like nothing—like my whole life, my whole body, was worth nothing more than the chance to get me with child. And I was a selfish, conniving bitch for wanting anything else.”

  Sebastian felt sick. “He was wrong,” Sebastian said. But the anger that welled up in him at that thought had no object save a dead man, no place in this conversation. He wrapped his arms more tightly around her. “He was so wrong.”

  “I tried to think that. But when he died… It was a horrible accident. I listened to person after person offer their condolences. And I couldn’t make myself feel the least bit sorry. I was glad.” She gasped. “So, so selfishly glad that he died. He wasn’t wrong. My life didn’t mean anything to him, but his meant as little to me.”

  “Shh,” he whispered to her.

  “And look at what I’ve been doing to you. Lying to you, hurting you, because I can’t bear to think what it would mean to have to say no to you like that. It killed my marriage, Sebastian. It would kill us, too. I couldn’t bear that.” Her fingers clutched his arm. “My way, at least, there was no risk. I’m such a coward, Sebastian. I’m such a damned lying coward that I let you think I didn’t want you.”

  Her breaths had begun to calm.

  “And so you came to me,” he said softly.

  She flinched. “Sometimes I want you so much I could scream. But I…I don’t dare. I don’t dare want.” Her voice shrank and she pulled in on herself.

  No. After what she’d told him, he had no doubt why.

  “I can’t be anyone but who I am,” she whispered. “I’m a cold, sharp blacksmith’s puzzle. If I let you in, I’ll cut us both to shreds.”

  She’d come here and thrown herself at him. Thrown herself at him, told him she didn’t need sheaths. She’d come here thinking that he would take her, that he would do to her what her husband had.

  God, how could she think he would do that?

  She wasn’t looking in his eyes. “I owe you an apology, Sebastian.”

  Her husband had told her that she was nothing. He’d done his best to erase her, taking her to bed, knowing what that would mean. He remembered Violet those last years of her marriage—ill half the time, scarcely able to move, and yet so determined to live, to do something, to have that paper on snapdragons published.

  She’d thought it had been the end of her life.

  “Of all the horrible things I’ve done to you,” she was saying, “I think this is the worst. I came here because I wanted to disappear. Because I was ashamed of myself and I thought if I told you how I felt—if I just let you know—you would help erase me, too.”

  He thought of Violet fading as she had, and slowly, ever so slowly, he leaned his head against hers. “No, you didn’t think that.”

  She huffed. “Yes, I did.”

  “No.” Sebastian leaned down to her, until his lips were near her ear. “You came to me because I know you better than anyone else. Because you needed someone to tell you that you matter.”

  She stopped breathing.

  “Because even though you’ve been invisible to the entire world,” he said, “I have always seen you.”

  She let out a long breath. He pulled her closer, gathering her up, wet as she was, running his hands down her shoulders. Her face tilted up.

  He might kiss her. He’d dreamed about it long enough. His body was still alive with want, every part of him wishing for her. This would be a real kiss, not a scalded fury of an embrace like the one she’d hurled at him earlier. It would be sweet and tender and loving—as effortless as breathing.

  It would be…not the right thing to do, not when she was still this close to tears.

  Instead, he took off his cravat and used it to wipe the rain from her face. “Lovely Violet,” he said. “Clever Violet. Beautiful Violet.”

  She sighed and leaned against him.

  “You came to me,” he said, “because you know I would never hurt you.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes wide. Her hands were slowly unclenching, her breaths slowing to measured inhalations.

&n
bsp; “And see?” He grinned at her. “I won’t.”

  OF ALL THE WAYS THAT VIOLET had imagined she might start the morning after she admitted to Sebastian that she wanted him, waking up alone in bed was the possibility she’d never considered.

  She sat up. Her head throbbed at the temples, as if she’d passed a night of wild abandon.

  Instead, Sebastian had held her. He’d whispered to her. He’d told her jokes for forty-five minutes, until even she couldn’t keep from laughing, drunk on sorrow and confusion. And when the rain had faded to a patter, he’d rummaged through his things, given her his umbrella, and sent her home.

  Alone.

  Mystifying.

  She’d undone his trousers. She’d told him in plain English that she fantasized about his touch. And he hadn’t even kissed her good night.

  Perplexing.

  It gave the morning a strange sense of normalcy, as if yesterday’s storm hadn’t really happened. As if she could relegate the memory of those messy, uncomfortable emotions to an outdoor shed where they might be stored indefinitely alongside all the other abandoned rubbish.

  She dressed as she usually did. She breakfasted on toast and kippers without any change.

  She went out to her greenhouse and found nothing changed—nothing to signify that last night had happened but for a little fog on the windows and the broken shards of the pots she’d overturned. The fog dissipated in minutes; the pots took a little longer to sweep up and discard.

  It seemed ridiculous to pretend that her routine might continue, but nobody interrupted her, so she started planting the seeds she’d set to soak last night. The work was familiar and comforting, the soil nice and cool against her hands. The seeds she’d set out last night had swelled up plumply in the water; she gathered them up, one by one, and slipped them into tiny pots. Little by little, she lost herself in the act of planting.

  She didn’t know how deeply she’d sunk into the activity until she was halfway through her seeds and it suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t turned around to get a pot for at least the last five minutes. She blinked at the hole she’d made in the soil, slowly coming back into herself, and looked up.