The Countess Conspiracy

by Courtney Milan

Not pretty, and also selfish. Selfish to feel pride at what she’d done. Selfish to want…

  She looked at herself in the mirror, her head tilting.

  It wasn’t working. Usually when she called herself selfish, she squirmed and stuffed the things she wanted away.

  But today, it wasn’t working. Maybe she was too tired.

  “Selfish Violet,” she said aloud, but stripped of the shame that usually accompanied them, the words rang false. Selfish?

  No. She wasn’t empty. Those words had lost their place in her heart. Today she had another refrain in her head, one that had been playing so quietly that she hadn’t even heard it until that moment.

  Clever Violet. Resilient Violet. Sweet Violet. That whispered memory left no room for selfish.

  Was what she’d just done was selfish? What did the word even mean?

  Violet contemplated the mirror. When her husband called her selfish for refusing to go to bed with him, what had he meant?

  I deserve my chance to have an heir more than you deserve to live.

  When Lily said it would be selfish of Violet to ally herself with Sebastian, what did she mean?

  My attendance at balls is more important than your happiness.

  When Violet called herself selfish, that was what she meant—that she didn’t deserve the thing she wanted. Not happiness. Not recognition. Maybe not even her own life.

  She touched her fingers to the mirror.

  “Fundamentally unlovable,” she said aloud. That’s what she had told herself, what she’d resigned herself to. Someone fundamentally unlovable didn’t deserve…anything. She’d believed it so powerfully that she’d been unable to understand Sebastian when he said he loved her. When Jane had said we love you, she had actually shaken her head, unable to comprehend that it might be true: that people might know the truth about her and love her anyway.

  The person who looked at her from the mirror seemed subtly different from the woman she’d seen reflected at her year after year. There was still no beauty to mask the intensity of her gaze, no little tricks to disguise who she was.

  Selfish. She’d been hiding for so long that she hadn’t even seen herself.

  She wasn’t unlovable. She wasn’t selfish. To admit that she wanted something, that she deserved to have it? To think that she might make a decision on the basis of her own desires, and not her fears for those around her?

  Those thoughts sounded almost obscene.

  Clever Violet. Lovely Violet.

  Obscene, to imagine she was someone who mattered.

  A knock sounded on the door. Violet had only begun to turn when it swung open and Sebastian stepped through. He took one look at her—at her flushed face, her disheveled hair. His lips quirked up in amusement.

  But he didn’t make fun. “Violet,” he said instead. “I know that Bollingall might do for this matter, but his work is primarily done through a microscope.” He swallowed. “You’ll want someone else so that you can continue on with your work. I’ve started to make a list.”

  Her head spun. “A list?”

  “Yes. You’ll need someone who can work with you. Someone who will understand the science well enough to do a creditable job on the presentation. Someone who will respect you.”

  “I don’t need a list,” she heard herself say. “I’ve already found someone.”

  He tilted his head. “You have? You’re going to have Bollingall claim all the credit, then?”

  Her heart pounded. Thump-thump-thump-thump, the beats running together until she could scarcely hear herself talk. “No.”

  She knew she looked an absolute fright. Still, his gaze fixed on her as if she were beautiful.

  Sebastian was handsome and rich and desirable. She hadn’t been able to believe that he loved her. She had done everything she could to convince herself that he didn’t. That she’d misheard. That what he felt was just friendship, that he couldn’t care for her the way he claimed he did. And yet every time she’d allowed herself to believe that, he’d gone and done something that exploded her theories.

  He hadn’t taken her to bed. He hadn’t hurt her. He hadn’t even kissed her, because he thought it would cause her harm. His entire presentation on violets… She’d tried to figure out what it meant, but the best she had come up with was that it was a seduction.

  It hadn’t been. It had been a love letter, and she couldn’t have understood it until this moment. She’d been unable to believe he loved her until she realized that she deserved to be loved.

  She understood it now. She felt incandescent. And it didn’t matter how she looked or how frightful her hair appeared.

  “This person,” Violet said with a little choke in her throat, “is perfect. This person knows my every thought. This person can explain what I’ve discovered in a way that everyone can understand.” She crooked her finger at him. “Let me show you.”

  He looked at her warily. But despite the protest, he came toward her, step by step.

  He’d slept as little as she. Still, his hair looked casually, perfectly disheveled. That dusting of dark stubble made him look like a scoundrel, but the look suited him. Through some strange alchemy, he still smelled good. It wasn’t fair how good he smelled—Sebastian intensified, a lovely musk that made her want to close her eyes and inhale. He advanced on her until he stood by her side.

  “Violet,” he said softly. “I know what you’re going to say. You want me to do it. But…” He swallowed. “It hasn’t changed. Nothing has changed. I know how important this discovery is, but it ruins things between us, those lies.”

  Violet took his hand and turned him toward the mirror. “I know who’s going to take credit for this discovery,” she whispered. And then she lifted her free hand and pointed at her own reflection, so terribly disarranged and yet so utterly right. “She is.”

  He let out a breath into the silence that followed. Their eyes met in the mirror. Violet realized that she was still holding his hand, still touching him. That his fingers were warm against hers, that his body was close, so close to hers. It was a strangely, starkly intimate moment.

  “Violet,” he whispered.

  She had gone mad, and she steeled herself to hear all of the ways she was being a fool.

  They’ll never let you present it.

  Nobody will listen.

  Think of what it will mean to your family.

  They all came down to the same thing: Selfish, selfish. You don’t deserve recognition. You don’t deserve anything.

  But this was Sebastian, and Sebastian didn’t say any of those things. He simply turned to her. Violet didn’t want to look into his eyes. Exchanging glances through a mirror was one thing, but he was holding her hand, standing so close to her. She tried to look away, but he set his hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, she looked up.

  Her whole body was on fire. Gazing into his eyes… Oh, that was a mistake. Not when he was holding her hand. Not when they were so close that they could trade breaths the way they had once traded sentences, finishing each other’s inhalations and exhalations as if their entire beings were twined together.

  Sebastian always smiled—it was one of his hallmarks. He wasn’t smiling now. He was watching her, looking at her, drinking her in. And she wasn’t flinching from him. God, what a terrible mistake. She couldn’t do this.

  But he raised his hand to her face and brushed his palm against her cheek, and she didn’t pull away. She might even have leaned into him.

  It was going to be hard. Impossible, in fact. She didn’t have the slightest idea how to go forward from here. Her sister was going to hate her. Her mother was…what word had she used? Disgusted by her. The entire world was going to despise her.

  But not Sebastian. Sebastian just touched her forehead with his. “Bully for you, Violet,” he whispered. “This time, I can make them pay attention to you. And believe me, I will.”

  She didn’t care about the rest of the world.

&n
bsp; He brought his other hand up, running his thumb along her jaw. Her whole being sparked at that. He wanted her…and oh, she wanted him.

  She wanted him so much.

  He was leaning in now, his breath on her face, his lips mere inches from hers. He was going to kiss her. He was going to kiss her.

  A stab of panic shot through her.

  He was going to kiss her.

  She pulled away. “I’m sorry.” She couldn’t think of anything more than those words. “I’m sorry. I have to go—I have to go—” She pointed wordlessly at the door. “I’m sorry.” She backed to the door. “I have to go think.”

  And with that, she fled.

  Chapter Seventeen

  VIOLET THOUGHT.

  She thought about kissing Sebastian as she fled to the upstairs room that had been set aside for her use. She thought about kissing him as she called for her maid. Louisa undid her buttons, but Violet could only think of the warmth of his hand on her shoulder. That wall that she’d built, the one she’d used to protect herself for so long—it had been breached. There was no safety any longer.

  She called for a bath, and when it came, she sent her maid away.

  She thought about his lips on hers when she stepped into the large copper tub filled with steaming water. She thought about his hands, the faint dusting of dark hairs that brushed the backs of them. She thought about them drifting over her thighs.

  And she thought about what Sebastian looked like when he wasn’t smiling—darkly intent on her, as if she were all that mattered. She swallowed and shifted, and when she rubbed the soap between her hands and washed her legs, she didn’t feel her own skin. In her imagination, she felt his.

  The liquid heat of the water surrounded her—almost too hot to bear, the way she liked it. She lathered the soap into a frenzy of suds and then slipped beneath the heated surface, holding her nose as she went under. It didn’t help. The water was like a full-body embrace. It made her aware of her skin, so aware of Sebastian.

  He probably wasn’t where she’d left him. He’d have gone to change. He might take a bath of his own.

  Not good to think of him unclothed. Very not good.

  Thinking, Violet realized, wasn’t doing any good. Thinking was treacherous. Her thoughts wandered into his room, into his very bath. She imagined herself wrapped in nothing but a towel, opening his door and tiptoeing in…

  Thinking wasn’t the answer. It wouldn’t do.

  Not thinking had served her as well as anything could. “You idiot,” she admonished her body. “You don’t want this. This could kill you.”

  She washed her hair and made herself think cold, rational thoughts. She thought about all the cats she had ever owned, and how many of them had had four versus five or six toes. She scrubbed between her toes and thought about the process for creating cold-pressed soap. And when those things didn’t help, she got out of the warm bath and stood in the cold air and made herself remember a set of autopsy woodcuts reproduced in one of the articles she’d read. The human heart, she admonished herself, was a disgusting organ, all ventricles and chambers and atria, a big ugly lump of muscle.

  The heart was one of the most disgusting pieces of meat in the body. Even the intestines were better looking. She wasn’t going to let something so ridiculous make her decisions.

  She nodded, in control of herself finally.

  She called for her maid. When Louisa dressed her again—in a high-necked long-sleeved gown of dark purple with gloves to match—Violet had no errant thoughts. She was better, entirely better. She’d talk to Sebastian. She’d apologize—after all, she ought not to have taken his hand or turned to him. She shouldn’t have almost-kissed him. She certainly should not be having these thoughts.

  She would apologize, and they’d go back to being friends. All the stupid flapping valves in her heart could keep on flapping, for all Violet cared. The heart was a muscle like any other muscle in her body.

  She was manicured and coiffed. Her maid gave her gown one last brushing. And then she brought out the mirror-stand. No longer homely, Violet once again qualified as barely handsome. As much as she could ever hope for. She stared at herself in the mirror. Her mirror-eyes glinted at her.

  It’s not selfish to want to be held.

  “You be quiet,” Violet told herself.

  “Your pardon? Your ladyship, I didn’t say anything.”

  Violet waved a hand in apology. “I was talking to her,” she said, extending a finger to the mirror.

  “Oh, then. That’s all right.” Louisa bobbed. “Will there be anything else?”

  Violet shook her head and went in search of her best friend.

  She would have to tell him something. The problem was that he knew her too well. None of her lies would work on him.

  I may have given you the wrong impression, but actually, I don’t want to kiss you. It’s just an unfortunate muscular tic, an involuntary twitch of the heart.

  Yes, well, remember how we’re friends? What good friends we are! How lovely is it to have a good friend, someone you don’t want to kiss!

  No good. He’d know she was lying.

  I do want to kiss you, but it seems like an awful idea.

  I do want to kiss you, but I’m scared.

  If she gave him the truth, he’d say rational things—things like, it’s just a kiss, and you don’t have to do anything that will risk another miscarriage. True. But the kiss scared her. A kiss was a beginning, not an end. Kissing was like opening a door onto a beautiful sunlit land and saying, “Don’t worry; you don’t have to venture outside.”

  Violet knew herself too well. If she opened the door, she would venture.

  She hadn’t decided what to say by the time she came to his door. And so she stood there, staring at it. The handle was cunning metalwork, mimicking the opening of a flower, petals flaring. She could have examined it for hours, especially since she had a reason to procrastinate.

  “Stupid heart,” she muttered, tracing the edge of one petal. “Why couldn’t you have become fixed on this?” Something inanimate and cold. Something that could never hurt her. She raised her hand to knock…

  “Stupid heart,” she muttered again. “I won’t have it. Nobody controls my muscles but me. I will knock, yes, but only when I’m good and—”

  The door opened. Sebastian stood on the other side. His eyes widened as he saw her, but he didn’t say anything. And oh, oh, how wrong she had been. Her heart wasn’t just a muscle; it was the muscle that pumped blood throughout her body. She tried to think of it as just the rhythmic movement of ventricles and chambers, but with Sebastian in front of her, it was more. It was a faint flush of heat throughout, a slight dizziness as her blood delivered more oxygen to her tissues than they needed. The functioning of her entire body was tied to his smile, and when he gave it to her, all her efforts to expunge her desires failed.

  She took a step forward. He didn’t move back. It felt inevitable, then. She wished she could say that she was no longer in control of her muscles, but she was. She was the one who reached up to touch his hair—still slightly damp; he had taken a bath.

  He bowed his head, letting her fingers lace through his hair, letting her draw his face down to hers.

  “Sebastian,” she whispered.

  “At your service.”

  She kissed him. She’d kissed him once before in fury and anguish. But this was different. This was a kiss that came from every ventricle of her heart, every last valve. All four chambers of her heart pumped for him. And it was a damned good thing he didn’t know what she was thinking, or he’d realize that she had gone mad.

  No. He knew her too well. He’d probably laugh with her, which wouldn’t be so awful, except she wanted him to kiss her back.

  He did. He brushed her lips with his lightly, first, and then again, with greater tenderness. And then he slid his arm around her and pulled her into his room. She scarcely heard the closing of the door, but she felt the plane of the wood against her back, the
press of his legs against hers. His hands cupped her face, and his lips parted.

  She’d thought his tongue would come next, but instead, he seemed content to trade air from his lungs with hers.

  “Violet,” he said. “My most wonderful Violet.” His lips brushed hers. “Violet. Lovely Violet. Clever Violet.”

  His kiss overpowered her. She’d always imagined that in the height of passion, all thought would stop. But it didn’t. She thought. She couldn’t stop thinking—of the way his fingers brushed over her nerve endings, finding every last sensitive spot as surely as if he’d examined them under a microscope. She was all too aware of the beat of the muscle that had brought her here—that sequential thump-thump of her atria pumping blood, followed by the ventricles. She’d heard people say they were aware of the blood in their veins, but she was aware of the blood in her arteries, in every last capillary sending oxygen to her starved tissues.

  She was aware of it all, until Sebastian straightened and contemplated her. His hand was still on her shoulder, rubbing her collarbone.

  “What was that?” Sebastian asked.

  “That was a kiss.” Violet brought up her chin. “If you couldn’t tell—”

  “No. I mean, what happened there? I thought earlier you wanted more, but then you ran away, and I assumed I’d misjudged.”

  What was she to say? That her brain had got into a fight with her heart, and her heart had triumphed?

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she told him. “I smelled. I had to take a bath. That’s all.”

  He smiled as if he could see right through her. “Violet.” He leaned in. “For future reference, I don’t give a damn how you smell.”

  “Well, I do.” She folded her arms and stared at a corner of the opposite room. “And for future reference, my heart is an ass.”

  He stared at her. “I see. It carries heavy burdens long distances.” He leaned in to kiss her again.

  “That’s not what I meant,” she protested. Now that she’d stopped kissing him, the reasons for not doing so spilled back in. But she couldn’t take back that kiss; it had become his. “This is never going to work. Think about it, Sebastian. I can’t have intercourse, and you love it.”