The Countess Conspiracy

  Violet tried to look suitably blank, to shake her head in what she hoped came across as friendly confusion. But her mind had already leaped ahead of her sister. She had written dozens of papers discussing inheritance—and therefore sexual intercourse—in frank, clear terms. She thought about the paper she’d published explaining the reproductive habits of the peppered moth, the relative incidence of various moth colorings since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, and what that all had to do with Darwin’s evolutionary notions. She thought about the people who visited Sebastian’s lectures—waving placards and shouting epithets—and imagined them following her around instead.

  Filthy, that woman behind her had whispered. Filthy reprobate.

  In theory, Mama didn’t know any of that. In practice, Violet was never stupid enough to wager against her mother. Clearly, she needed to have a talk with the woman.

  Lily was shaking her head, oblivious to Violet’s thoughts. “That’s what I thought. There’s no scandal at all. Not unless you’re hiding something juicy.”

  There are six things every lady must lie about.

  Violet smiled at her sister, as warmly as she was able. “Goodness,” she heard herself say, her words starched and pressed to unbending crispness. “When have I ever been able to hide anything from you?”

  “Well,” Lily said slyly. “There is Mr. Malheur.”

  Violet blinked at her sister, afraid to say anything.

  “His reputation?” Lily said, nudging her playfully with an elbow. “With women? You are aware of that? Never say you’ve finally succumbed.”

  “Oh.” Violet inhaled. “That. Lily, you know we’re only old friends from childhood.”

  We’re not even that anymore.

  Lily smiled and set her hand on Violet’s wrist. “I’m teasing you, dear. Of course I know you’d never involve yourself with him in that way.” She winked at Violet. “He’s so awful—with those dreadful lectures he gives? If you ever were so selfish as to surrender to his wicked wiles, I’d have to give you the cut direct.” She laughed.

  Violet looked at her sister—listened to a laugh that was not quite merry enough, just a little ugly at the edges—and understood that Lily wasn’t joking. That had been a warning, not a tease. She swallowed hard.

  This was why Lily never understood Mama. Mama knew what it was like to carry a scandal in her heart, to know that the truth would cause you to be cast out forever. Lily had never understood that.

  “You’ll talk to Mama, then,” Lily was saying. “Convince her to stop filling Amanda’s head with such nonsense. She never listens to me, but you…”

  “That’s because I understand her,” Violet remarked.

  “Yes,” Lily said offhandedly, “you’re difficult like she is. Prickly, hard to understand.” She tossed this off as if it were a simple fact, one that everyone agreed on. “And could you talk to Amanda? She has something on her mind, something ridiculous. She listens to you.”

  “More fool her,” Violet muttered.

  Lily huffed and patted Violet on the shoulder. “Please, Violet. You’re my only hope.”

  “Hmph.” Violet sniffed politely.

  But Lily knew her too well. It was nice to be needed—if only for this tiny thing.

  “I’ll talk to them both,” Violet said.

  And if those tasks didn’t take her mind off the words Sebastian had spoken, the ones that cycled through her mind at the most inopportune moments—I have standards. You don’t meet them—nothing would.

  Chapter Four

  “SO TELL ME ABOUT THIS SUITOR you do not wish to marry,” Violet said.

  It was half an hour after she’d wished her sister farewell. The park was hot and her wide-brimmed hat scarcely shielded her face from the sun. Still, there was nowhere else to talk without interruption. Amanda had seven brothers and three sisters; privacy was in short supply at her home.

  Her niece flushed. “I never said I didn’t wish to—”

  “Good God,” Violet said. “If we have to talk around this thing, we’ll never get anywhere. Ignore Grandmama’s advice for once. Lean in and whisper.”

  Amanda leaned in. But her nose wrinkled. She glanced at Violet and then straightened and looked away.

  “Oh, come on,” Violet said. “I’ll help you start. It goes like this: ‘I don’t love him.’”

  “It’s worse than that.”

  “You’re in love with the stable boy.”

  Amanda smiled in spite of herself. “No. He’s twelve.”

  “Well, then. It can’t be that awful. You are not in love with a child in your family’s employ. So tell me.”

  Her niece grimaced. “I was visiting my friend Sarah. She married two months ago, you know? She told me what happens when women marry.”

  “Oh?” Violet’s spirits sank. It was one thing to do Lily a favor. But she refused—absolutely refused—to have the “penises are not that bad, and in fact, many women come to like them” talk with her in Hyde Park, of all places.

  “As far as I can tell,” Amanda continued, “you plan menus, look over the servants, and go on visits.” She huffed. “That’s the entirety of your life, once you marry.”

  Oh, thank God. It wasn’t the penis talk.

  “It sounds boring,” Amanda moaned, and then looked over at Violet. “Not—not that you are boring. Or my mother. Just—”

  Violet tapped her fingers together. “There are charitable organizations. You might volunteer.”

  Amanda blew out a breath. “Charity is well and good, but the organizations for genteel ladies seem particularly useless. It makes no sense to spend four hours a day meeting other women so you might knit stockings for the deserving poor, especially as you must pay three shillings to the association for tea while you do that.” Her lip curled. “If we took those shillings and used them to employ women to do piecework, we could both provide employment to the deserving poor and produce better stockings than our haphazard efforts.”

  Violet glanced at her niece. “I see why your mother fobbed you off on me,” she commented dryly. “You’re being logical.”

  Also, Lily seemed to be under the illusion that Violet favored the institution of marriage. It wasn’t so bad for people like her sister. But it had been Lily’s fault that Violet had married so well. Violet—plain, uninteresting Violet—would never have had any attention at all, were it not for her sister’s amazing fertility. In the mind of an aging earl, Violet’s presumed fecundity had trumped everything else.

  “It’s a colossal waste of my time,” Amanda said. “The entire institution of marriage sounds like a waste of time. Why does a woman agree to that?”

  “Because she hasn’t a better idea what to do with herself?” Violet said dryly. “That’s why most people marry.”

  “That’s an absolutely aggravating reason.”

  “It’s an aggravating system. Get used to it.”

  Amanda snorted and then looked away. “Ha. What I need is some kind of distraction for Mama. Something to do for now until I figure out a better idea.”

  Alarm bells began to ring in Violet’s head. This, she suspected, was not how Lily had hoped the conversation would run.

  “Would you go with me to America?” Amanda asked sweetly.

  “No.”

  “France?”

  “Maybe, but not for long enough to avoid the question of your marriage altogether.”

  “Aunt Violet, you’re my only hope.”

  Lily had said the exact same thing. Violet sighed and stared across the pond.

  “I’ll think about it,” Violet said, and proceeded to do just that.

  Lily wanted her to convince Amanda to marry. Amanda wanted Violet to carry her away. And Violet’s mother no doubt had an agenda of her own on top of all that, one that Violet was afraid to contemplate.

  Violet couldn’t see herself lying to her niece. Amanda would never forgive her. But she also couldn’t see herself telling her the truth: You can do a great deal if you marry. Jus
t make sure your grandmother negotiates an excellent settlement, hope your husband dies, and then find someone else to claim the credit for what you want to accomplish.

  God, what a mess.

  A gentleman stood in the middle of the path; she scarcely saw him as she puzzled the matter over. Deep in thought, she stepped to the side, drawing Amanda with her.

  That was when a voice broke Violet’s reverie. “Well, and a good day to you, too.” That voice was familiar—too familiar.

  Violet looked up from her reverie into dark eyes watching her in disbelief.

  Once, she would have smiled at a chance meeting with Sebastian. Now, the sight of him hurt. It brought back those words he’d said two weeks ago. She shook her head and looked away.

  That memory was a knife that kept on cutting.

  He was watching her with a small smile on his face. Sebastian almost always smiled. It might confuse someone who didn’t know him better, but Violet knew exactly what sort of smile this was. On another man’s face, it might have been a grimace—as if he’d smelled something foul and didn’t want to embarrass anyone by pointing out that someone had broken wind.

  “Pardon me,” she said brushing at her skirts. “Is something the matter?”

  “Were you really going to walk right past me without so much as a greeting?” he asked.

  Violet swallowed. “I did not see you, sir.”

  His smile never slipped, but his eyes flashed. “Oh, you didn’t see me, did you? Is that the way this is going to play out?”

  “No, I mean it. I didn’t see you.” Violet rubbed her eyes. And why was she feeling so contrite, when he had been the one to say those awful things? He’d told her that she didn’t meet his standards. “I literally did not see you. I was thinking about something else. I don’t think I would have seen the queen herself, if she’d been waltzing with a zebra.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched up in real, if reluctant, amusement.

  “Besides,” Violet said, as reasonably as she could, “I’m here with my niece. She’s in her first Season, and she has a reputation to protect. You should not be introduced.”

  Amanda stood next to Violet. Her eyes darted to Sebastian with wary curiosity.

  “Just so,” Sebastian said. “There will be no introductions. You must be Lady Amanda.”

  Amanda started to give Sebastian a curtsey until Violet caught her arm and shook her head.

  “We are not introduced,” Sebastian said. “You do not know me. The person you do not know, incidentally, is Mr. Sebastian Malheur.”

  A little gasp escaped Amanda’s lips and she took a step back. “Aunt Violet, you know…him?”

  Violet rolled her eyes. “I know him. Your mother knows him. We both know him quite well. He grew up in a house half a mile from the home where your grandmother raised us.”

  “Don’t worry,” Sebastian told Violet’s niece. “I’ll try not to seduce you on the spot.”

  Violet felt a headache starting to form, sharp little pinpricks in her forehead. “Sebastian, you can’t talk of seduction to my unmarried niece.”

  Another man might have blushed and apologized. But Sebastian just gave her a cocky smile and a wink.

  “I wasn’t talking of seduction,” he said. “I was talking of not seduction, which, as I’m sure you have surmised, is the exact opposite of seduction.”

  “That’s specious,” Violet retorted. “If I asked you not to talk of elephants and you wandered around bellowing about not-elephants, you’d be mentioning elephants with every breath. The column of all things that are not elephants includes marsupials, canines—”

  “The column of everything that is not an elephant does not include not-elephants?” he inquired, innocently examining his nails. “That’s counter-intuitive.”

  “The column of conversational topics,” Violet stressed, “that are not elephant related does not include a discussion of the elephant-shaped hole in the conversation!”

  Amanda was watching them with a quizzical look on her face. “Good heavens,” she said in awe, turning to Sebastian. “You’re good at that. You distracted Aunt Violet into an irrelevant argument without even lifting a finger.”

  Violet sniffed, recalling suddenly that they were standing in the path in the middle of Hyde Park.

  “I deserve no such credit,” Sebastian said. “It’s just that this entire conversation has gone elephant-shaped. It started with elephants, it continued with elephants…it’s elephants all the way down.”

  “Large elephants,” Violet agreed.

  Sebastian nodded in pretend sobriety. “All my elephants are large.”

  “Sebastian,” she said in agony, but at least this wasn’t a direct reference to seduction. “You can’t—we can’t—” But she didn’t know how to finish that sentence. You can’t try to cajole me into forgetting what you said. “I’m going to explode,” she muttered. “Into a cloud of dust and despair.”

  “Don’t do that,” Sebastian said, looking at her in mock worry. “It’s such a nice day, and I’d hate to have the weather ruined.”

  She glared at him. She had to, or she’d find herself laughing. She covered her mouth. “No more elephants.”

  “If you insist.” He looked off and away. “Here’s a topic of conversation that isn’t about elephants at all. I’ve been wishing I could talk to about it in any event. So, shipping—”

  If there was a more baffling change of subject, Violet didn’t know it. “Shipping?”

  “Yes. You know. Ships. Floating things that displace water and carry cargo? Using the method of least squares, I’ve begun to—”

  “Method of least what?” Violet’s reluctant amusement washed away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She could have kicked him. The Countess of Cambury didn’t know anything about numerical methods. She wasn’t supposed to know maths at all. If he didn’t want to talk to her about science when they were alone, he damned well wasn’t going to broach the subject in public.

  “Never mind,” Sebastian said with a sigh. “Just some figures. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Indeed. Save your mathematics about boats for your friends, Mr. Malheur. I’m busy.”

  He frowned, opened his mouth, and then shut it again.

  Amanda frowned. “I can’t tell if you two are fighting with each other, or if this is your normal mode of conversing.”

  “It’s normal,” Violet replied.

  But as she spoke, Sebastian said, “We’re fighting.”

  An awkward moment passed. He met her eyes.

  “We’re not fighting,” Violet contradicted mulishly. “We’re having a minor diplomatic discussion over…nomenclature.”

  He took off his hat and rubbed his hand through his hair, mussing it in a way that she found irksome and adorable all at once. She refused to think him adorable.

  “Look, Violet,” he said. “I know that there are…reasons why we might be uncomfortable with one another at the present. But we must try to be civil. Oliver’s getting married in a few days. We’ll have to see each other. Truce for now?”

  Oliver’s wedding. They’d be together for hours. He’d have all that time to cajole her back into their easy friendship. Look what he’d managed with five minutes of non-elephant-related conversation. Violet looked away. “That won’t pose a problem,” she said tonelessly.

  Sebastian knew her better than anyone else. At those words, he gasped and took a step forward. “You’re not thinking of staying away?” His voice dropped dangerously low.

  “Why? Oliver isn’t my childhood friend.” She felt a fat lump in her throat as she spoke. “He’s yours. Very well. You get him.”

  “Jane is your friend, in case you’ve forgotten, and as for Oliver—”

  “Miss Jane Fairfield,” Violet snapped, “only thinks I’d make a good friend because she is known for her poor taste.”

  The instant the words were out of her mouth, Violet knew she’d said a terrible thing. She stopped. Swallowed. Put h
er hands over her mouth and let out a breath.

  God, she was a hateful woman. A hateful, horrible, selfish woman. She liked Jane. It was just… She was feeling so snappish. What else could anyone expect? Her world was falling to pieces, and she had to pretend that it didn’t even belong to her.

  “Damn it, Violet,” Sebastian growled.

  “Don’t curse in front of the child.”

  “Damn it,” he repeated. “We would miss you. I’ll miss you.”

  She looked up at that, her heart in her throat. And that’s when she noticed what she hadn’t seen before—the dark circles under his eyes, the too-pale look to his face. She’d been so wrapped up in her own hurt that she’d failed to see his.

  “You are fighting,” Amanda remarked at her side.

  It had never occurred to Violet that he might miss her, too. Her heart skipped one beat, then another. As if he were her lover, not just the man she’d conspired with for the last five years. They’d never touched—not more than the accidental brush of an elbow, and even that she’d tried to avoid. But in their own way, they had been closer than lovers, more intimate than friends. She’d shied away from that, too, but she still missed him. She missed him dreadfully.

  She couldn’t admit it without choking on her words, and betraying how much she did actually care.

  “Very well,” she muttered. “I’ll go.”

  But she wasn’t fooling anyone present. Sebastian smiled in relief and Amanda let out a breath.

  “Brilliant,” her niece said. “Now kiss and make up.”

  Violet jerked back. Her niece hadn’t meant it like that. She hadn’t been talking about a lover’s kiss, but a kiss of friendship. Still, the word made her think of Sebastian’s lips, his smile. The smell of him in the air, so indescribable, so unlike anyone else. He smelled like comfort. She could sit next to him and breathe him in.