The Countess Conspiracy

by Courtney Milan

  “That’s not what I mean, either.” Sebastian took in a deep breath. “I am not weary of doing work. Hypothetically speaking, what would you say if you heard that I did not do all the work myself?”

  Across the desk from him, Bollingall didn’t even bat an eye. “Most of us don’t. I have a servant take measurements for me. The point isn’t who performs the actual work—that’s mere manual labor. It’s the intellectual work that matters, after all.”

  Sebastian expelled a sigh. “Let us suppose that the intellectual work that I have reported was not done by me. That it was done by someone else.”

  Bollingall frowned.

  “Let us suppose,” Sebastian said, “that it was done by a woman.”

  The other man froze. Only for an instant—just long enough to stare at Sebastian in surprise. Then he exhaled and glanced at the door. It was shut firmly—something Sebastian had made sure of before he spoke. But even the books lining his office seemed to judge Sebastian—hundreds of volumes all penned by men who were not frauds. Sebastian’s pulse quickened, and he braced himself for Bollingall’s disappointment.

  Instead the man licked his lips and leaned in. “Well,” he said softly, “that happens, too.”

  Sebastian’s mouth went dry.

  “In fact,” Bollingall continued in a low voice, “it’s more common than you might think. It’s so common, in fact, that it ought to remain unremarked upon.”

  Sebastian’s mouth curled into a grimace. “I don’t know what you mean. Spell it out.”

  “She’s a helper, yes?” Bollingall shrugged. “I know a man who dictates all his papers to his wife. She writes them down.”

  “I’m not talking about mere dictation.”

  “No,” Bollingall said slowly. “But that’s all anyone needs to know. When you are engrossed in a subject, it’s only inevitable that your most intimate relations would be involved, too. Her interest is a subset of yours. Her contribution is a subset of yours. And if she’s married to you…why, it’s essentially you who is doing the work after all. You’re one person in a legal and spiritual sense. Why not in the scientific sense, too?”

  Sebastian’s head spun. He could scarcely believe what he was hearing. “But I’m not married.”

  “There are quite a few,” Bollingall said slowly, “quite a few of us who operate this way. We never inquire as to the extent, and indeed, no gentleman would raise the question. You’re quite safe.” He shook his head, and then glanced at Sebastian. “Or, that is—you’re almost safe. There’s one thing you really should do, if you want to truly be as one.”

  Sebastian felt a confused, dark longing overtake him. His head seemed full of cotton. “I’m not married,” he repeated.

  Bollingall—quite pointedly—looked up at the ceiling. “Yes,” he said. “That’s it. Change that, and you have nothing to worry about.”

  Marriage to Violet. God, what an awful idea. She drew back from him when he put a hand on her in friendship. She shuttered up when he said he cared for her. His own feelings were immaterial; Violet wasn’t interested in him for any length of time, least of all for the rest of their lives.

  And to marry her for such a reason? Part of him didn’t care what the reason was. He’d wanted her so long that this chance—any chance—pierced through him.

  Giving her back her work might be the only thing that could drive her to his bed. And for an instant, he imagined it—imagined being able to kiss her into compliance. He might soothe her fears and seduce her into maybe, one day…

  He shoved aside heated visions of Violet, with her hair undone, strewn around his pillows.

  Maybe, he reminded himself ruthlessly, if he was very, very persuasive, he might one day seduce her into not flinching when he took her hand. He felt as if he’d been offered an apple from a tree: He might gorge himself to sickness on this particular temptation.

  Sebastian rubbed his forehead. “Thank you for the advice.”

  “I know you’re enjoying your freedom,” Bollingall said. “You’re young yet. But think about it. You’re doing important work.”

  Sebastian shook his head.

  “None of that nonsense,” Bollingall said. “You are doing important work. Never forget that, and never tell anyone otherwise. You are doing important work, Malheur. You need only go make it yours.”

  It was only in his mind that those words rearranged themselves.

  Go make her yours.

  No, no. Insidious, awful thought.

  Luscious, invigorating thought. He couldn’t drive it away. It lingered through the remainder of their conversation, whispered in the back of his mind the entire journey back to London. He didn’t care about the work or the credit. He cared about Violet.

  Go make her yours.

  The truth was, it wasn’t only his work with Violet that divided him from everyone.

  His entire life had been shaped by two lies: the secret he shared with Violet, and the secret he kept from her.

  He’d always had a reason for keeping quiet. A thousand reasons, really. Her husband, at first. And then after he’d passed away, she’d seemed so breakable that he’d not dared to disturb her. He’d waited and waited and waited even longer. He’d always had the sense that she had lost herself, that after her travesty of a marriage, he needed to give her time to look up and notice the world around her again. If only he waited long enough…

  I have standards, he remembered snapping at her. You don’t meet them.

  God. He couldn’t see any way that this could end well. But that temptation persisted: the desire to cut corners through those long years of uncertain waiting.

  Go make her yours.

  Chapter Six

  VIOLET WAS STILL IN HER GREENHOUSE at seven in the evening. She’d refused to let Sebastian’s journey distract her, had refused to think about the conversation he must be having. Her worry had hunkered at the back of her mind, an ominous, brooding weight.

  If things went wrong, she might be exposed. Everyone would know. She shouldn’t have assented. Her mother was right; she should never have allowed him to expose her secret, no matter how trustworthy he thought his friend.

  She heard the outer door open, then, a few minutes later, the inner door. His footsteps crossed the flagstones.

  “Violet.”

  She was afraid to look up. That was why she did it anyway, raising her eyes to his as if pretending not to care would eradicate the fears roiling inside her.

  “Well?”

  Sebastian looked tired. He let out a sigh and found a wooden chair, pulling it beside her and sitting down. He folded his arms in front of him and sagged, his shoulders slouching.

  “The good news,” Sebastian said, “is that he won’t tell anyone.”

  Violet removed a flat of seedlings from another chair, brushed the excess dirt onto the floor, and sat next to him.

  “The bad news…” Sebastian shut his eyes. “The bad news is, he says our arrangement is unremarkable, and that the best solution is for us to continue on as we were in all respects, except…” He trailed off and cast a wary glance at her.

  “Except what?”

  Sebastian was rarely reticent. But his jaw set and it took him a few moments to speak. “I want you to know that this idea did not come from me. I disclaim it entirely.”

  “What is it?” Violet repeated. “How bad can his advice be?”

  “He said I should marry you. That we should continue on as before.”

  For one second, her entire body tensed. She found herself shrinking back in her chair. No. No. Not that. But he looked reluctant, not eager. Her heart pounded, but he looked as likely to sprout antennae as he was to propose. She let out a slow breath and arranged her lips into a semblance of a smile. “How amusing,” she croaked.

  “I’m only repeating what he said.”

  “Of all the useless advice.” Violet wrapped her arms around herself. “He thinks we should marry?” Her laugh sounded overloud. “Presumably you didn’t mention it wa
s me, or he’d never have suggested such punishment.” She knew she was babbling, but so long as she kept talking, the idea couldn’t hurt her.

  Sebastian sank lower in his chair. “Violet,” he muttered.

  “He’s supposed to be so clever, and that’s the best he can manage?”

  “Yes,” Sebastian muttered. “We’ve covered my unsuitability quite enough for now. Now can we just take a few steps back and consider—”

  “Oh, why do that? Let’s just do as he says. Let’s get married after all.” If she could say it, she could make the notion safe: a joke, clearly labeled as such. A matter for derision, an item to be laughed at. Not something that would destroy her completely.

  Sebastian’s lip curled up reluctantly. “Ha.”

  “It would be fabulous. You could pretend to be busier and busier, and I would come give lectures in your stead. ‘Mr. Malheur says,’ I’d tell them. You could become a complete recluse.”

  “Wouldn’t that be amusing,” Sebastian said in a flat voice.

  “I can just see it now: the handbills for the event printed up, with ‘Mr. Sebastian Malheur’ in large print, and underneath that, ‘as portrayed by Violet Malheur, his wife.’”

  He snorted.

  “I’d put an advertisement in the paper: ‘Please address all hateful correspondence regarding scientific matters to Violet Malheur.’ That’s one aspect of your job I’d excel at. Nobody really likes me anyway; this way, they could go on hating me without a second thought.”

  “Violet.” He had a small smile on his face, one that she knew all too well. It was his patient smile, the one he gave people who were dreadfully wrong, when he’d decided not to speak and embarrass them. His hands were clenched.

  “What?” she demanded. “What did I say now? I was only joking.”

  His smile didn’t alter, but he looked away from her. “It’s just… Oh, hell.”

  Violet felt a tremor go through her, a shudder of emotion that jolted her shoulders before settling in her stomach. “I merely wished to lighten an uncomfortable moment. What did I do wrong now? I wasn’t trying to be difficult.”

  He swallowed. His lids fluttered down, and his dark lashes—so unfairly long—shielded his eyes for a moment.

  Finally, he looked up. “Violet,” he said calmly, “please don’t joke about marrying me.”

  It was so unfair that she couldn’t even gasp in outrage. Not that she wanted to marry him. God, no. Quite the opposite. But that wasn’t the point. “Have it your way.” She straightened in her chair and looked away. “I won’t.”

  She couldn’t put it aside, no matter how she tried. Of course she wasn’t the sort of woman who caught Sebastian’s fancy. He’d said as much himself. But they were friends of long standing. Couldn’t he even pretend to laugh? Was she so awful that even a joke about marrying her disgusted him?

  “It’s not as if you raised any expectations,” she told him. “I know how things stand between us. I’m not up to your standards.”

  He let out a long, slow breath. “I should never have said that.” His hands squeezed together. “I hate getting angry.”

  “Why? Was it a falsehood?”

  His lips pressed together. “I should… Perhaps I should have phrased it differently. But…” He looked up, as if beseeching the heavens to make her stop.

  Her stomach cramped. It didn’t matter. Her pain was irrelevant. She’d never let herself do anything so foolish as want him. There was no point in feeling hurt simply because a man she refused to want didn’t want her back.

  “Phrase it however you like,” she snapped. “The sentiment remains the same.”

  He stood. His gaze caught hers. She didn’t want to look in his eyes, but she couldn’t look away. There was something wild in his expression—something feral and dark. Something she didn’t understand.

  “Do you want to know why you don’t meet my standards?” he asked.

  She shook her head in mortification.

  “Too late,” he replied. “Here’s my most important rule: Never have intercourse when one of the parties is in love with the other. It won’t end well.”

  She gasped. Her whole world turned gray. “You arrogant cad! I’m not in love with you.”

  “I know.” He didn’t look away from her. “Isn’t that what I said? Only one of us is in love, and it isn’t you.”

  Violet stared at him. Her ears appeared to be working; her brain seemed to function. Tentatively, she added two and three and verified that they still made five.

  They did. And what of three and two? They also made five. The commutative property of addition was still in force, and yet her entire world had just tilted upside down. Sebastian had said…

  He had just implied…

  Oh, no. She must have misunderstood. He was wealthy and handsome and so charming. He had women in quantity. He could have anyone—anyone not overly nice about the proprieties, that was. And Violet was…was herself. It didn’t make any sense.

  And yet it made a horrific sort of sense—one she didn’t want to acknowledge. Her heart hammered inside her, and some part of her chanted in tune with the rhythm.

  No, no. No, no. No, no, no, no, no. Impossible. Every word he had just spoken was impossible.

  She licked her lips. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He was watching her with a little smile, as if he’d said nothing untoward at all.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she repeated, as if that would drive away the words he’d said. “That’s—that’s…” She stopped, took a deep breath, but it didn’t help. Her head was spinning as if she’d stood too quickly. “You’ve never given any indication that you…”

  His lips wrenched. “Violet, I played a role for you for five years. I bought a house near yours in London and installed gates by hand so we could talk about your work in secret. Don’t tell me that I’ve never given any indication that I loved you.”

  Her throat closed. She couldn’t speak.

  “For five years,” he said, “I’ve been your best friend, your confidante. I’ve been the one who has known everything about you.” He didn’t move toward her. “And yes, Violet. I’ve loved you.”

  She was still reeling from his disclosure. “But you’ve never said anything.”

  “Maybe I should have,” he said simply. “But…you were married. How was I supposed to bring up the subject? And then your husband died, and you were in…” He paused. “Mourning,” he said, although they both knew that it had been nothing so simple. “And after that, well… You know how it works. I flirted with you; you never responded. You’ve never responded to anyone who flirts with you, Violet. So, yes. I held my tongue. But if I don’t say anything now, you’ll be forever misunderstanding everything I say, everything I do.”

  “You flirt with everyone.” She shut her eyes and pressed her fingers against her forehead. “It…it didn’t…” But she couldn’t tell him it had never meant anything. It had. It had, even if she could not express what it had meant. “Sebastian, you’re not the kind of man who falls in love with a woman and suffers in silence.”

  He didn’t say anything for a while. He simply looked at her. For the first time in her life, she had no idea what was in his mind.

  He settled back into his chair. “Have you ever tasted a really good curry?”

  “What has that to do with anything?”

  “If you’re not prepared for that first taste,” he said, “the spice can be painful. It overwhelms everything. It burns your tongue, burns your throat all the way down. I suppose there are some people who take one bite and think they’ll never have anything like it again.”

  “This is going to turn into a dreadful analogy,” Violet said.

  “I’m only saying that there are a great many ways to suffer. Do you remember when you asked me to play along with you? After that first paper came out, and there was that initial swell of interest?”

  After all this time, even a confession of love couldn’t completely destroy their f
riendship. Violet felt the corners of her mouth twitch up. “How could I forget?”

  “I told you that it was impossible. That I wasn’t equipped to do it. That in order for me to present your work as my own, I’d need to understand everything behind it. I would have to know arcane details of natural philosophy, and I could never manage to do anything like that.”

  “What rubbish.” Violet sniffed.

  “That’s exactly what you said.” Sebastian smiled over at her. “You called it rubbish. You gave that little sniff of disbelief—there, that one. And you acted as if I had said the most ridiculous thing in the world.”

  “Look at what you’ve managed. I was right.”

  “Yes. But you know, Violet, you were the only one who had ever said that to me. You looked me over and raised one dubious eyebrow and told me that I could become one of the world’s foremost experts on a topic that had not been discovered yet. Until that point, nobody had ever believed that about me.” He was still smiling. “Benedict tells me, without a flicker of doubt, that I haven’t done anything with myself.”

  Violet shook her head.

  “Even Robert and Oliver see me as something of a joke, and I’ve known them since I was tiny. Other than you, they’re my best friends. That’s what I was good for when we started working together—a prank, a lark, a jest. They weren’t far off the mark. I am rather ridiculous. Nobody else can quite believe what I’ve done. You’re the only person in the entire world who looked at me and thought, ‘That man could play the role of genius, and nobody would ever question it.’”

  Her throat felt thick. She didn’t know what to say. “It was obvious,” she managed stiffly.

  “That’s one of the reasons I love you, Violet. You see so many surprising things and you think they’re obvious. And you’re right about them, too.”

  A woman would have to be made of stone to resist an appeal like that, eyes like those—dark and luminous, shining into her own across the few feet that separated them.