The Countess Conspiracy

But she turned away again. “No.”

She had said no.

There were ten feet between them, ten feet that he felt instinctively had to be there or she’d flee.

He could have asked for an explanation. He could have advanced on her and found out if the more she wanted was what he yearned for.

But she needed that distance. If she’d wanted to explain, she’d have done so. She stood in the gap between the walls, impossibly far away, her hands wringing together in an unexplained misery.

After a long pause, he shook his head. “Then I’m sorry, too, sweetheart,” he said huskily. “I’m sorry, too.”

BY UNSPOKEN AGREEMENT, the next time Sebastian saw Violet, they didn’t talk of his feelings. They didn’t mention what she might or might not have seen in the dark gap between the walls that night. They didn’t talk about that night at all.

They talked about shipping. They talked of the Society for the Betterment of Respectable Trade, of their nieces and nephews, of their mutual friends. They talked of everything except themselves.

He didn’t ask her why she was unhappy, and she didn’t volunteer the information. Their lives went on as if nothing had changed: Sebastian gave a presentation to the London members of the Society that was well-received; Oliver and Jane returned from their wedding trip and hosted a dinner. Days dribbled by, and truths remained unspoken.

But perhaps Violet also felt the lack of conversation, because one night, after they’d exhausted all the usual subjects, she gave Sebastian a wary look.

“Do you remember the first paper I wrote?” she asked.

It was an evening in June. Crickets were calling in the darkening twilight, and the two of them were ensconced in the gardener’s quarters at the back of Sebastian’s property, which he’d converted into an office years ago so that they might have a comfortable place to talk away from the prying eyes of servants. The room was just big enough to fit a desk and a sofa, cozy for one and snug for two.

Violet was curled on the embroidered sofa; Sebastian sat at his desk, trying not to drink in the sight of her, and mostly succeeding.

“How could I ever forget the snapdragons?”

She turned and rested one elbow against the arm of the sofa. “Did I ever tell you how I came to write about snapdragons?”

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.