The Countess Conspiracy

  “I should apologize,” he blurted out. “God knows I should apologize. I should never have spoken to you that way, and especially not in public.”

  She waved this off. “I should have known better. I should have thought of the strain you’re under. Really, Sebastian, after everything we’ve done for each other, a few harsh words hardly signify. Now, there was something I needed to tell you.” She frowned and tapped her lips. “Let’s see…”

  “Violet. Don’t get distracted. Listen to me.”

  She turned back to him.

  Nobody else thought Violet pretty. He had never understood that. Yes, her nose was too big. Her mouth was too wide. Her eyes were set a little too far apart for classical standards of beauty. He could see those things, but somehow they’d never mattered. Of all the people in the world, Violet was the closest to him, and that made her precious in ways he didn’t want to consider right now. She was his dearest friend, and he was about to rip her apart.

  “Is something amiss?” she asked carefully. “Or—rather—” She cleared her throat. “I know something is amiss. How can we fix it?”

  He held up his hands in surrender to the entire world. “Violet, I can’t do this anymore. I’m done living a fraud.”

  Her face went utterly blank. Her hand reached out, falling on her magnifying glass, clutching it to her chest.

  Sebastian felt heartsick. “Violet.”

  There was nobody he knew better, nobody in the world he cared for more. Her skin had turned ashen. She sat looking at him, totally devoid of expression. He’d seen her like that once before. He’d never imagined he would be the one who made her look that way again.

  “Violet, you know I would do anything for you.”

  She made a curious sound in her throat, half sob, half choke. “Don’t do this. Sebastian, we can figure out—”

  “I’ve tried,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, Violet, but this is the end.”

  He was breaking her, but then, he’d come to the end of even his ability to perform. He smiled sadly and looked around her greenhouse. At the shelves and shelves, filled with little pots, each one labeled. At the beds of plants in various stages from tiny clusters of leaves to brilliant green growth. At the bookshelf in the corner, holding twenty leather-bound volumes of notes. He looked over all the evidence that he kept waiting for everyone else to discover. Finally, he looked at Violet—at the woman he had known all his life and loved for half of it.

  “I will be your friend. Your confidante. I’ll be a helping hand when you need one. I will do anything for you, but there is one thing I will never do again.” He drew a deep breath. “I will never again present your work as my own.”

  Her magnifying glass slipped from her fingers and landed on the paving stones beneath her chair. But it was strong—like Violet—and it didn’t shatter.

  He reached down and picked it up. “Here,” he said, handing it back to her. “You’ll need this.”

  Chapter Two

  THREE HOURS LATER, VIOLET found herself dawdling outside Sebastian’s home.

  In the years in which they’d worked together, they had found a hundred ways to meet without exciting comment. When they were in Cambridge, meeting was relatively easy: their houses were a mere mile apart, a twenty-minute walk along a wooded path. Thick trees hid their passage from gossip. Violet’s greenhouse was shielded from the prying eyes of servants by a tall shrubbery, while the path to his study was obscured by a maze of head-high boxwoods that allowed her to come and go without knocking at his door.

  She waited now within that maze, marshaling her breath and her nerves. She had to make this right, had to try and figure out a way to continue. But she could remember the look on his face, that look of sad determination, and she didn’t know how to change that.

  She sat on a stone bench and kicked the crushed white stone of the path in frustration. If she just laid out everything in order, there had to be a solution. A proper, reasonable solution.

  Stone crunched; she looked up in consternation.

  It was Sebastian. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, but even in his shirtsleeves, that serious expression made him seem formal. He had one hand in his waistcoat pocket and he was watching her with an unreadable expression.

  She thought about standing—thought about it so long that she realized that the moment had passed. She’d look a fool popping to her feet now, half a minute after he arrived.

  She settled for inclining her head in his direction. “Sebastian.”

  “Violet.” He didn’t move any closer. “I expected you to arrive almost forty-five minutes past. I’m shocked it took you so long to come and debate with me.”

  Her fingers twitched. She thought of objecting on principle, but that was what she had come to do. “I was trying to figure out my best arguments. I made a list of everything I might say.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “A list? I must see this. You did write it down, didn’t you?”

  She thought about denying it, but he knew her too well. She drew the paper from her skirt pocket and handed it over. He unfolded the page and flattened it between his palms.

  “Money,” he read. “Land. Your mother’s influence.” He looked up. “These aren’t arguments, Violet. They’re bribes. Excepting, of course, that line about your mother. She’s a threat.”

  “Yes. Well.” She couldn’t let him see her unease. She looked him in the eye. “I will give you five thousand pounds, if—”

  “I don’t need five thousand pounds,” he interrupted, “and it’s hardly just compensation in any event. Let me explain what I want: I want to never again lie to the people I care about.” He held up her paper. “That’s not on your list.”

  She snatched the paper from him. “As I said, I was still contemplating.” The page crumpled ruthlessly between her fingers; she crunched it into a hard, dense ball of sharp corners, one that dug into her palms. “There has to be something.”

  A bird sang overhead. Blue sky shone brilliantly above the clipped shrubbery. It wasn’t weather for giving up, and Violet didn’t intend to do so. But by the look on Sebastian’s face, he wasn’t about to surrender easily, either.

  “My brother,” Sebastian said, “is dying, and when he told me what he planned to do with his son, he said…” He looked away. “He said he’d send Harry to his grandmother because I was too busy to look after him. I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t do all the work. I could only stand there mutely, wondering how to respond without giving away all our secrets.”

  Violet dug her fingers into the ball of paper.

  “My friends are worrying about me,” Sebastian continued. “That’s completely backward. I’m supposed to take care of them. But I can’t even explain to them that I’m thirty-two and I’m disappearing—that I’m being praised for work that is not mine, and reviled for thoughts I didn’t think.”

  Her throat felt scratchy. She didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how she could make any of this better.

  “And then last night,” he said, “you complimented me on my talk, when we both know that you wrote it.”

  Violet bowed her head. “That was a mistake. I know. It was just—”

  “When the two of us begin to forget that this is a lie, it’s time to stop. I can’t tell anyone the truth any longer, and every little lie piles up. I’m feeling irritable. I meant what I said: I’m done telling lies for you. I don’t like the person I’m becoming.”

  If he walked away now, he’d leave an empty hole in her life. But what did that signify, next to his complaints? She stuffed the balled-up paper into her pocket.

  He took a step forward to stand in front of her. “It’s making me irritated with you,” he said more softly. “And that’s the last thing I want. I don’t want to resent you. You’re the only friend I have who understands everything. I don’t want to lose you.”

  It almost hurt to look at him. That look in his eyes, the way he advanced on her. She could feel the pull of him, as if she were a moon to be c
aptured, sentenced to orbit around him forever.

  She looked away, biting her lip. He probably made all women feel like that. He did it without trying.

  “We are friends,” Sebastian said. “Friends beyond just your work. Aren’t we?”

  He took another step toward her. A dangerous step. This one brought him too close. Close enough to reach out, close enough to touch her.

  The possibility of his touch loomed when he stood this close. It brought out that hidden yearning in her—the kind that wished he would pull her into an embrace.

  But Violet wasn’t touchable. She was hard and unswerving.

  She forced herself to stare back at him, forced her heart to beat at a steady pace, unaffected by the dark glitter of his eyes. He had no impact on her. He was the kind of man who could draw a response from a rock—but then, Violet was colder than rock.

  She had to be.

  He took yet another step toward her—her heart thumped despite her best efforts—and leaned over her.

  He could lay his hands on her shoulders, pin her to the bench…

  She inhaled fiercely and stood, putting distance between them.

  “So that’s what this is about,” Violet heard herself say. “You’re annoyed that out of all the women in the world, you can’t make me fall at your feet.”

  He let out a breath and straightened.

  “Talk all you like about friendship, but clearly, I left the one thing that would convince you off my list.” She raised her chin. “Intercourse. That’s the currency you deal in, isn’t it?”

  Her hands were trembling simply contemplating it. She was cold all over, and yet her pulse was racing. She’d left that item off her list on purpose—one didn’t bargain with things one wasn’t willing to relinquish.

  He looked at her now—his gaze settling on her lips and then running down her body, down to the lace edging her walking gown, and then up to the ribbons clasping her waist. She could feel him dismissing every aspect of her—those angular elbows, the mud of her eyes.

  If he didn’t want fifty acres of farmland, he’d certainly have no need for as poor a specimen as herself.

  “I see,” he said slowly. “You’ve never known me at all.” His mouth twisted. “I’ve given lectures for you for five years running, delivering them over and over until I knew your mind better than anyone else’s. And this whole time, you’ve never bothered to return the favor.”

  “Sebastian.” She could scarcely look at him, but she couldn’t look away. His eyes were dark, his face grim.

  “I know you this well.” He took a step toward her. “I know that if I stand too close, you look for an escape. If I so much as brush your fingers…” He lifted his hand.

  She scrambled back.

  “Precisely.” He bit off the word. “Violet, you and I—we lie to each other as much as we lie to the rest of the world.”

  It was true. She felt a panic brewing in her stomach. Over the last year—she couldn’t help herself—she’d begun to feel again. That flutter of interest, those moments of weakness. But Sebastian didn’t know what he was asking. For him, it would mean nothing to crumble her defenses. For her, the truth would wash away everything she was.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice didn’t sound the least bit shaky. And why should it? Stone was firm. Stone was unyielding. “You already know everything about me.”

  “All I know about you these days is your work.”

  Stone didn’t care about the hurt that bloomed in his eyes. Stone persisted; that’s what it did. She sniffed. “My work is all there is to me.”

  He looked at her and slowly, slowly shook his head. “Damn it, Violet.”

  Stone felt no pain. It had no heart to do so.

  “I suppose matters would be different,” she heard herself say, “if I were one of your women—susceptible to your charm. Then, perhaps I could—”

  He turned from her, withdrawing so quickly that she caught her breath.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Violet.” His voice was low and withering. “I don’t care what you think of my morals, but I do have standards.” He turned his head to contemplate her over his shoulder, his eyes dark and intense. “And you don’t meet them.”

  She felt a pit open in her stomach. There was too much truth in that—enough to remind her why she’d pushed him away.

  “Good riddance, then,” she heard herself say to her best friend. “It’s just as well we’re not working together any longer. I doubt I’ll even notice your absence.” She wished she could sweep away, but she had to fumble for her gloves, still lying on the bench.

  “I’m sure you won’t,” he shot back. “Good thing I won’t be here.”

  She grabbed up her gloves and glanced at him. His arms were folded, his eyes bright with hurt. Sebastian was rarely angry, rarely out of sorts. If Sebastian was showing such a thing—and twice, in twenty-four hours—he had to be upset beyond her comprehension.

  He was right. It hurt, admitting that. He was right; they couldn’t keep on as they had. He had too much to hope for from life, and she had too little.

  He looked at her as if imagining that even now she’d apologize. Yes, Sebastian. I’ll stop pushing you away. I’ll just let myself fall in love with London’s greatest rake.

  For a moment, she wanted to take his hands and confess everything. But when she thought of opening her mouth, she found that she had nothing to say. That much hadn’t been a lie. There couldn’t be anything to her but her work. Anything else…well, it would turn to fossil soon enough.

  Instead, she slipped on her gloves and walked away.

  Chapter Three

  THE ESTATE WHERE SEBASTIAN had grown up lay ten miles west of London, a pleasant hour’s ride from the point where the clutter of close-packed buildings gave way to smaller hamlets and countryside.

  His charade with Violet had absorbed so much of his adult life that a gaping emptiness presented itself. A vast distance had sprung up between himself and the people he most cared for. But if there was a place where he might go to bridge that gap, it was here. Here on the land that belonged to his brother, in the place where his childhood memories clustered, fuzzy indistinct recollections of his earliest years.

  Memories of falling in that stream, there, when he’d been six years old, trying to imitate Violet as she gracefully crossed a log. Of her reading a story aloud when he was just learning his letters.

  Even here, Violet was intertwined with his life. She’d grown up half a mile from him. She was two years older than he, and for as long as he could remember he’d been following her around, seeing her as some wonderful creature, one more clever and more capable than he. These last few days marked the first time in Sebastian’s life that he’d pushed her away.

  But there were other memories here besides those containing Violet, and that was why Sebastian had come.

  He brought his horse to the stables. A man came out and offered to care for the animal; Sebastian waved him away.

  It had been a gentle ride and his black mare was hardly in need of anything more than a rub and a bucket of oats. Still, he took his time currying her, running the brush over the whorls of her hair, watching her hide twitch when he tickled her flank. It was one of the oldest tricks he knew: If he couldn’t make sense of the world, he could at least make sense of his horse.

  The stable doors opened. Light flooded in; another horse huffed at the entrance, blowing hard.

  Sebastian looked up. The rider—a tall, thick figure—slid to the floor. The man was gasping for air. For a long while, he stood there, clinging to his animal as if his knees wouldn’t support him any longer. Sebastian sat on the stool next to his own animal, frozen, wanting to stand but afraid to intervene.

  Gradually, the man’s breath evened. He straightened.

  He didn’t call for a servant.

  Sebastian blinked in disbelief as his elder brother sank to one knee beside his horse and undid the girth on his own. Before Sebastian could o
ffer his help, he had lifted all that heavy leather off his stallion. He staggered under the weight, managed to catch himself against a wall. His breathing was shallow, echoing too loudly in the dark stable.

  Sebastian stood. “Benedict. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Benedict Malheur froze where he stood. For an instant, it was as if their positions were reversed—as if Sebastian were the elder and Benedict the one who had been caught in a misdeed. But the moment didn’t last long.

  “Sebastian.” Benedict gave a last heave and shoved the saddle into its proper place. “You’ve arrived after all.”

  “Arrived to find you hurling saddles about, riding hard enough to work Warrior into a lather—”

  “It’s called galloping.” Benedict turned back to his horse. “And I’ll stop going out for a gallop when I’m dead.”

  Sebastian glared at his brother. It was the only thing he could do, aside from wrestling Benedict to the ground and boxing his ears. Which, come to think of it, he really couldn’t do either.

  “That’s not funny,” he said.

  “Of course it wasn’t. It wasn’t a joke.”

  It was. It was all a joke. Sebastian’s entire world had become a convoluted jest. He’d wanted to reclaim his life. Instead, he was losing Violet, losing Benedict…

  His brother calmly bent and picked up a pail. Without glancing at Sebastian, he strode through the stable doors. Sebastian raced after him.

  “For God’s sake,” he said, catching hold of the metal handle in his brother’s grip. “I’ll pump the water. I’ll carry it.”

  He gave the pail a tug, but his brother refused to yield it.

  “A gentleman always cares for his cattle,” Benedict replied.

  “Yes.” His brother had taught him that as soon as Sebastian had learned to ride. “But under the circumstances—”

  “A gentleman always cares for his cattle,” Benedict repeated. “Good heavens, Sebastian. I never would have told you if I had known you were going to hover over me so.”