The Countess Conspiracy

by Courtney Milan

  She’d fooled Violet, after all.

  “I’m sorry to be so abrupt,” Violet said. “This isn’t a social call.”

  The other woman smiled in response. “I had gathered as much, given the hour. Is something amiss?” She had such a friendly smile. It crinkled at the edges.

  “See here,” Violet said, “there is no way for me to manage this, not without being horribly impolite. You are a photographer, yes?”

  Mrs. Bollingall’s smile widened in confusion. “How good of you to remember such an inconsequential detail. After all this time. Do you have something that you need photographed?”

  “Yes,” Violet said, “I do.”

  “Is it for you? It would be an honor, my lady, if you would sit for me. Maybe tomorrow?”

  “Not of me. Not tomorrow.”

  Mrs. Bollingall looked even more puzzled. “Of someone else?”

  “Not a person. A thing.”

  “A landscape,” Mrs. Bollingall said slowly. “An architectural feature. A gown.”

  Violet shook her head at each suggestion.

  The other women smiled uneasily. “Of what, then?”

  There was no way to say it, no way to do it without puncturing both their secrets. Violet had lived with hers for so long. Nobody but Sebastian had known about her; nobody, until her mother had guessed the truth.

  “I am going to tell you a story,” Violet said. “A story which, I suspect, will be familiar to you.”

  Mrs. Bollingall simply shook her head.

  “Years ago,” Violet said, “people who peered at small organisms through microscopes believed that the nucleus of a cell was empty. They believed this because they saw nothing. It was the subject of much argument: What was the point of the nucleus, after all? Was it a storehouse for the cell? Did it contain an invisible nuclear fluid, used for some unknown purpose?”

  Alice Bollingall licked her lips.

  “All those years,” Violet said, “people believed that just because they couldn’t see what was in the nucleus, nothing was there.”

  “What a fascinating story.” The other woman slowly sat back in her chair.

  “But that has changed,” Violet said. “A few years ago, someone came up with a dye—a dye that differed from the common dyes that had been available until that point. You see, there is something inside the nucleus. It wasn’t until scientists started staining cells with aniline blue that they could finally see it. Structures inside the nucleus: structures that had been invisible before, but were now chromatically tinged.”

  “Indeed.” The other woman’s breath had gone shallow. “My husband…this is the work that he does. You are right. This story is not unfamiliar to me.”

  “A month ago,” Violet said, “your husband told Sebastian Malheur that it was completely unexceptional for wives to be intimately involved in their husband’s work. I don’t know why I didn’t immediately realize what he implied. Selfishness, I suppose. I had other worries.” Violet shrugged. “It didn’t occur to me to consider what he must have meant until today.”

  Mrs. Bollingall’s face froze. “My husband would never say anything so…so…”

  Indiscreet, Violet suspected, was the word Mrs. Bollingall was looking for.

  “But late this afternoon, I was listening to a friend talk about aniline blue used as a dye for a gown. And I glanced at your paper.”

  “Not my paper. You don’t mean my paper.”

  Violet felt as if she’d been invisible all her life. As if she were about to stain herself with aniline dye, exposing her secret core. The only thing that kept her from panicking was the knowledge that she was no longer alone.

  “Your paper,” Violet repeated. “It is your paper, at least partially, isn’t it? It’s a paper about cellular division, the small features able to be observed through modern photographic techniques. You’re the photographer. I hope I’m right, because I need you to make a photograph of cellular division.”

  Mrs. Bollingall’s expression froze. Her hands flattened on the table. “Oh.” Her breath cycled too swiftly. “Oh,” she repeated. “Certainly not. No, no.”

  “Yes,” Violet said. “You took the photographs.”

  The woman hadn’t stopped gasping. Her face looked pale. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Violet leaned forward and took the other woman’s hands in hers. “Please,” she said. “You see, if I’m right, we’ll be seeing the thing I have been looking for all this time. I need you to help test my theory.”

  Mrs. Bollingall shut her eyes and took a breath, and then another. When she opened her eyes again, she looked at Violet. “You?” she asked in a small voice. “You have been looking?”

  Someone else was seeing Violet. Someone else would know her secret. Violet recognized the kindred panic in the other woman. Fear fluttered inside her.

  Tell no one. Anyone who finds out will hate you.

  She didn’t have room for her fear. It would come later. For now, though…

  “Mrs. Bollingall,” she said, “why do you think your husband was talking to Sebastian Malheur about the work women do?”

  For a long moment, the other woman just stared at her. Then she stood. “You had better call me Alice. I’ll get my coat.”

  “WHAT IS GOING ON?” Oliver asked Sebastian.

  It was almost nine in the evening, and in the last three hours, Sebastian’s dining room had been entirely rearranged. His plans for a quiet, happy evening with his friends had been turned upside down.

  Sebastian set a hand on his hip. “I should think it self-explanatory.”

  Oliver looked around dubiously. Silver from the butler’s pantry was stacked haphazardly along one side of the table, that room having been emptied in order to transform it into a darkroom. A heavy microscope sat at the head of the table. Various potted violets dotted the chairs, and the smell of acetic acid and chloroform pervaded the house.

  “No,” Oliver said slowly. “I’m looking about now, and matters are not explaining themselves.”

  Sebastian considered his words. “It’s about chromatin,” he finally said. “You see, until a handful of years ago—”

  “I don’t want to know the science,” Oliver said in exasperation. “I’d scarcely understand it anyway.”

  “Well, then,” Sebastian said. “Everything else is self-explanatory, isn’t it?”

  Oliver looked at him and then looked away. Violet and Mrs. Bollingall were locked in the butler’s pantry, developing a set of photographic negatives. Glass sample plates, labeled and stained, were stacked next to the microscope.

  “Sebastian,” Oliver said slowly, “when I stayed with you a few months back, you told me that there was something you were not doing and that nobody had noticed it.”

  Sebastian nodded.

  “I’ve driven myself to distraction trying to think what you could mean. Were you not eating? Sleeping? Taking women to bed any longer?”

  Sebastian didn’t say anything.

  “It was science,” Oliver said. “You weren’t doing science.”

  Sebastian had imagined this moment for years—the moment when someone else discovered the truth. Sometimes, he’d imagined blurting it out to his friends. On other occasions, he’d dreamed of disclosing the secret on his deathbed to a confused pack of family, who would all immediately assume that he’d lost his mind.

  “Yes,” he said. “Although it’s never been that simple.”

  “Oh my God, Sebastian.” Oliver shook his head. “We’re your best friends. How could you not tell us?”

  “Because Violet didn’t want you to know.”

  Oliver took that in in silence. He looked at the closed door to the pantry. He looked around the room, finally picking up viola odorata, the plant that sat nearest them, turning the pot so that he could examine the purple rosette of the flower.

  “Violet,” he said slowly. “And that was enough reason to keep it from us?”

  “I told you some of it.” Sebastian smiled. “The nig
ht before your wedding, I told you.”

  Oliver shook his head. “You said that you…” He trailed off and shut his eyes. “That you had been in love with Violet half your life. Christ, Sebastian. Are you serious?”

  “Look at her,” Sebastian said. “Really look at her one day.”

  His friend ran his finger over the violet, shaking his head.

  “Look at me,” Sebastian said. “I spent years crossing violets, and she was the one who took one look at what I had done, combined it with a paper she had just read, and…” He spread his hands. “She took what should have been a complete failure on my part, and look what she did.”

  Oliver exhaled. “Knowing all this… I worry, Sebastian. You’re so…you, and she can be so…prickly.”

  “Flowers only grow thorns because they need them to survive.” He smiled. “Look at what she’s managed, having to hide who she is. We can argue and argue and argue, for as long as we like. But in the end, thorns or no thorn, Violet is what she is.”

  “Sebastian!” The call came from the pantry. “We need you.”

  “And who are you?” Oliver asked.

  He gave his friend’s arm a squeeze. “I’m the one she needs.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  VIOLET PUSHED A LOCK OF HAIR behind her ear and peered at the photograph. It wasn’t so easy to tuck away her growing sense of disquiet—or, for that matter, her increasing weariness—but she managed.

  “We need a better name for these.” She stifled a yawn. “‘Individual chromatic elements’ is unwieldy. Chromatin is not a noun that can be counted. A pox on the person who named it chromatin.”

  Next to her, Alice slumped in a chair, pushing fingers to her temples. “Thingy-blobby.” Her voice was laden with happy fatigue. “I’ve been calling them thingy-blobbies for months now. I know it’s not accepted scientific nomenclature. I’ll ask Simon when he returns.” She yawned. “What is the Greek for thingy-blobby?”

  “I think it’s amoeba,” Violet said. It probably wasn’t funny, but they both slid into peals of extremely exhausted laughter.

  “What about chromosome?” said a voice across the table from them.

  “Chromosome,” Alice repeated, and they dissolved into laughter again. “Oh, that sounds funny. Look, it has the same meter as Figaro.”

  “Chromosome,” Violet sang, and after the first iteration, Alice joined in. “Chromosome, chromosome chromosome chromosome!”

  “I’m being tutored in Greek. Chromosome means colored body.”

  Violet frowned, considering this. That sense of unease came back; this time, even though she gave it a solid shove, it wouldn’t retreat.

  Slowly, she raised her head from the photograph she was contemplating.

  It was…morning. How had it come to be morning? She didn’t recall sleeping. She didn’t recall anything but a blur of film negatives and glass slides. Her fingers were dyed a deep blue; the early sunlight reflected off piles of silver spoons right across from her.

  Just beyond the silverware, watching with an earnest expression, sat Frederica Marshall. She was the one who had just spoken.

  For one moment, Violet was filled with in uncomprehending confusion. Oh, God. What had she done?

  “What are you doing, Violet?” asked a voice from behind her. She whirled in her seat. Robert and Oliver stood in the doorway. Robert’s hair was still damp; he held a cup of something steaming and hot, something that set her stomach growling.

  “Oooh.” Alice staggered to her feet. “Good heavens. Look at the time. I’m too old to stay awake the entire night. I haven’t done that since I was twenty-two.”

  “Violet?” Robert pressed.

  Violet blinked. There was nothing to do but brazen it out. “Didn’t you know?” she said breezily. “One of the great unsolved questions in biology is that of how traits are passed from parent to child. There have been many theories.”

  Robert shook his head blankly.

  “Now Alice and Sebastian and I have our own theory.” Violet frowned. “Or—I mean—Professor Bollingall and Sebastian. I don’t know who I mean. In any event, we believe that traits are passed from child to parent through these.” She tapped her finger against the photograph on the table. “Chromosomes. We correlated Sebastian’s chart of attempted violet crosses with the number of thingy-blobbies observed in the cells of these species—”

  “Yes, that’s enough explanation on that front.” Robert took a sip of his coffee. “I am still besieged with questions. Questions such as: Why are you doing this now?”

  “I could hardly have done it any earlier.” Violet frowned. “I didn’t get the idea until just last night, when Jane started talking about aniline blue right while I was staring at Alice’s photographs of cellular division. And then—”

  “No, no.” Oliver came and sat down next to Violet. “Violet. Good God. That’s not what he means. We just want to know.” He swallowed. “Why have you never told us you were one of the world’s foremost scientists?”

  Her world stopped. The thing she hadn’t wanted to think about slipped back into her consciousness. Years of carefully creeping about—and she’d thrown away all her hard-earned secrecy in one selfish toss. Everyone here must know by now.

  “I…” She licked her lips. “It’s that…”

  If the truth came out, she’d never be received in polite society. Lily would cut her entirely. Her mother would… Violet couldn’t even think of what her mother would do.

  And yet she wasn’t afraid. Maybe she was too tired for fear. Maybe she was too excited. She should have been shaking. Usually, a recital of the horrors to come would be enough to scare her, to remind Violet that she needed to keep quiet and keep her head down.

  But today…

  Jane had joined her husband in the room. She was staring at Violet, too. All those eyes, all focused on her.

  Why wasn’t Violet afraid?

  “Good God,” Violet heard herself say disdainfully. “Why would any of you want to know?”

  She couldn’t wait for the answer, couldn’t watch her friends flinch from her, now that they knew the truth. She felt visible, picked out in vibrant colors, when she’d only ever wanted to hide away.

  She stood. “Now if you’ll excuse me. I have to—I have to—”

  God, what did she have to do?

  “Sleep,” she said. “Change.” Hide. She touched Alice’s shoulder. “I’ll call on you when we’ve both had a chance to rest.”

  Nose in the air. Don’t look at anyone. Don’t let them see how much you care.

  Those were her mother’s rules, and even though her mother would hate to see them used under these circumstances, she was grateful to have them. Her mother had taught Violet how to be reviled, how to pretend that nothing mattered. It came so easily to her—that haughty brush past Oliver and Robert.

  But then Jane stepped forward.

  “Violet,” she said softly. “We want to know because we love you.”

  Violet stared at her friend for a moment in unblinking befuddlement. Her words didn’t make sense. Didn’t Jane realize what Violet had just disclosed? What she’d done? Who she was?

  Jane set a sympathetic hand on Violet’s arm. Violet didn’t understand sympathy. She couldn’t make sense of any of this. She felt hollow inside. Hollow and utterly brittle.

  “I’m going.” She turned and fled.

  “No,” she heard Sebastian saying. “Let her go. She needs a little time to figure out how she feels.”

  But he was wrong. Violet knew how she felt already: Empty. Utterly empty.

  VIOLET FELT EMPTY when she escaped into Sebastian’s study. She was totally devoid of all proper feelings.

  It felt good to be in a familiar place—here, at his desk, where they’d gone over paper after paper together. The clock made a comfortable sound, its steady ticks slowing her heart. The books smelled of Sebastian.

  She sat in her usual chair and put her elbows on his desk.

  God, what a mess. Two
people could keep a secret. Even the addition of Alice could have been hidden—she and her husband clearly had their own set of secrets, and they’d have been motivated to join the charade.

  But the idea had sprung into Violet’s head and she’d charged straight on with it, paying no attention to the fact that Oliver, Robert, Jane, Minnie, and Free—Free for God’s sake, Frederica Marshall was practically unknown to her—were all present. What had she been thinking?

  “I wasn’t thinking,” she snapped aloud. “That was the problem.”

  But as soon as she said the words, she knew them for the lie that they were.

  She had thought. For a split second, when she’d glanced at the sketches in the paper and had that inkling of an idea, she had thought.

  You can’t do this. You had better wait.

  She hadn’t wanted to wait. She’d selfishly shoved aside all thoughts of her future, her reputation, her family, caught up in the blaze of a brilliant idea. The fear that if she set it aside, it would vanish.

  Even now, she wasn’t properly afraid. Her arms curled around herself. How could she have made such a mess of things? One moment of selfishness. One moment, and everyone she cared for would pay the price.

  Selfish. That’s what she was.

  She’d escaped to Sebastian’s study so she could be alone, so she could let her thoughts wind out to the point where she might sleep. She knew she was tired—exhausted beyond belief. The room was papered in blue and silver; a small writing table sat against one wall, and shelves of books lined the walls. A full-length mirror was propped up next to the table, reflecting the volumes back to her.

  She stood and turned the mirror toward her. Her eyes looked back, dark and solemn. She was not much to look at. She could aspire to “handsome” when she took pains with her appearance, but if—for instance—she stayed up the entire night peering into a microscope, she was unabashedly homely.

  Dark circles lined her eyes. Her skin was waxy; her hair could have passed for a nest of dark snakes hissing about her shoulders. Add a few warts and Violet suspected she could get herself burned at the stake.