The Countess Conspiracy

“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.

“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.

Sebastian was standing right next to her, holding out a little pot for her. He’d filled it with soil already.

All her confusion—that big tangled mass of emotion—returned and took up residence in her gut.

“Sebastian,” she said stupidly. “When did you arrive?”

“Fifteen minutes past.”

She made a face. “Did I greet you by any chance?”

He shook his head. “It’s not the first time you’ve done this, and it certainly won’t be the last.”

But there was a warm tone in his voice. It brought her back to the reality of things. He was standing close to her, so close that she could feel the warmth of his body. He held out the little pot once again and she took it.

Now that she was aware of him, she was very aware. Her fingers brushed the palm of his hand, warmth on warmth.

Nothing had changed between them. Nothing except a little knowledge: Now he knew that she wanted him. She wished she could bury that knowledge the way she buried the seed she held, piling it in dirt precisely a quarter of an inch deep. She wished that knowledge would only grow roots, hidden from the sunlight, and not leaves, leaves that insisted on stretching up into her conscious mind.