The Countess Conspiracy

Another pause. “Is Papa going to die?”

“Why…” Sebastian licked his lips. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because the doctor comes so often. He did that last year with Mama.”

It wasn’t Sebastian’s place to tell Harry about his father’s illness. But he couldn’t bring himself to lie, either. “Ask your papa,” he finally said.

Harry’s face crumpled. “That means yes.”

“Shh.” Sebastian sat down on the steps next to his nephew, removing that awful difference in their heights. “It will all work out, somehow.” He let out a breath. “I’ve been making your father angry these last few weeks, and that isn’t good for him.” He looked up. He didn’t know what to make of his brother anymore, didn’t know what was right, except that yelling wouldn’t change anything. “I’m not going to do that anymore,” he promised. “That will help. Don’t cry.”

“I’m not,” Harry said.

And he wasn’t. His shoulders shook convulsively, but he didn’t let out so much as a sob.

“I’m not crying,” Harry repeated. “Papa said men don’t cry, and so I’m not crying now.”

Don’t be ridiculous, Sebastian thought of saying.

Or: Crying is allowed when you’re sad.

But Benedict wouldn’t appreciate Sebastian’s interference with his parenting, and in the end, Harry was Benedict’s child. It was his decision, no matter what Sebastian thought of it.

“Right,” Sebastian said, sliding his arm around Harry. “Good. You’re not crying. I’m here, not crying with you.”

“VIOLET,” LILY SAID, taking her sister’s hands. “How did you know that I needed you so?”

They were in Lily’s private study, the door locked. Lily had threatened her children with tarring and feathering if they interrupted her within the next hour, which meant they had at most fifteen minutes. Lily sat at her desk, her eyes wide and beseeching.

Violet hadn’t known. She’d needed Lily—needed to be reminded that someone needed her, if only to talk sternly to Frederick about how the dignity of his tin soldiers could not be upheld if they continued to conduct excursions in his chamber pot. With Lily, she served a purpose, a real one.

Violet folded her hands.

“Help me,” Lily said. “This is more than any mother can bear.”

“What is wrong?” If one of Lily’s children had been ill enough to occasion concern, surely she would have sent for Violet already.

“Look what I found in Amanda’s things.” Lily’s hands were shaking as she took a key from the ring in her pocket and unlocked the drawer of her desk.

Suddenly, Violet had a very bad feeling about what Lily was about to produce.

“This.” Lily pulled out a volume. “This.” Her voice trembled.

It was only with great effort that Violet kept the emotion from her face. “Pride and Prejudice,” she said calmly. “And a first edition at that. Good heavens. Those have become quite valuable now. Did a suitor give it to her? You’re right. She never should have accepted such a thing from a man, no matter how thoughtful the gift. She’ll have to return it.”

Not lies. Not the truth, either, but none of it was outright falsehood.

“Open it.” Lily looked away. “Just…open it.”

Violet did, even though she knew what she would see. It wasn’t the frontispiece of Pride and Prejudice.

The Higher Education of Women, by Emily Davies.

Violet looked up into her sister’s eyes. “Emily Davies,” she said so calmly that she’d never have known how her own heart raced, had she not felt it beating wildly in her chest. “I have not heard of a novelist by that name.” Also true; the Emily Davies Violet knew wrote essays, not novels. “Does she write improper fiction?”

“She’s not a novelist,” Lily spat. “She’s one of those…awful women. She writes about the rights of women.”

“Oh. Dear me.”

“I knew you’d understand. My own daughter has been sneaking about with that sort of subversive literature! She won’t tell me which of her friends gave it to her. I don’t know who is attempting to lead her astray. It’s not enough that she’s harboring such vile thoughts; it has made her tell me falsehoods.”

“Falsehoods?” Violet said. “Surely she did not tell actual lies.”

“As good as,” Lily said scornfully. “Truths designed to mislead are just as bad as lies.”

Violet licked her lips. “She loves you, you know. She’s not sly by nature. Maybe she felt you’d not be open to having such a discussion.”

“Well, of course she thought that! I’m not open to such conversation. Who would be? Nobody of good family. This talk of higher education may be an unfortunate necessity for women who cannot obtain a respectable offer, but Amanda is not in that situation.”

Violet didn’t say anything.

“You and I,” Lily said, “we understand. The female sphere is not lesser, merely because it is relegated to the weaker sex. We may not be as strong as men, as clever as men, but we have our purpose. To have Amanda shirk that…”

“Purpose,” Violet said ruefully. And then, after a pause, “Remind me what that is again?”

Lily looked at her sister. For a moment, she simply looked, as if only now remembering that Violet had neither children nor husband. As if wondering how she would be able to look her sister in the eye after telling her flat-out that she served no purpose.

“This is why I love you,” Lily said awkwardly. “Because no matter what our outward differences may be, you still understand me. You know what is in my heart, just as I know what’s in yours.”

Violet sat in frozen silence, scarcely able to nod in reply. She’d always known she had to mislead Lily in order for her sister to love her. Not just about her activities or her thoughts; she had to lie about everything.

It had never occurred to her that Lily—warm, sweet, open Lily—was lying to her, too. That Violet wanted her to do it, because even the illusion of love was preferable to the utter lack of it.

“When I find the fiend who gave my daughter that dreadful material,” Lily was saying, “I’ll ruin him. Or her. That sneaking, lying, selfish, false-faced coward.”

She was lying to Lily. She was lying to Sebastian. She was lying to everyone who mattered to her.