The Countess Conspiracy

She never would have thought that Sebastian would betray her. But this stranger glaring at her through Sebastian’s eyes? She had no idea what he might do.

Her hands grew cold. She could almost see that nightmare playing out before them. He would spill out the truth in front of everyone. Newspapers would trumpet it within the day; she’d be ruined by noon tomorrow, cast out completely.

The vast crowd seemed nothing but shadows around her. She could scarcely breathe. Filthy, she could hear people whispering. Reprobate. Her gorge rose. Violet would be ruined, and she would take her mother, her sister, her nieces and nephews with her.

Sebastian’s nostrils flared, and he turned away from her to talk to another man, leaving everything he could have said hidden safely behind silence.

Violet couldn’t help herself. She gasped in relief. She was safe. And so long as no one ever found out, she’d stay that way.

THE MORNING SUN BEAT DOWN VICIOUSLY, slicing into Sebastian’s eyes as he looked out over the garden. The rose arbor caught those early rays of sunlight, and the beds of dew-spangled flowers glistened in response. It was damnably pretty. He might even have enjoyed it, were it not for the persistent throb of his head.

If he hadn’t known better, he’d have imagined he was suffering from the ill effects of drink. Except he hadn’t had anything stronger than tea in the last forty-eight hours. No, something else plagued him, and unlike a few bottles of wine, it could not be fixed by an efficacious potion.

No apothecary on earth could cure reality.

He’d known where he was heading from the beginning. Violet was in her greenhouse; when he rounded the shrubbery, he saw her sitting on a stool, peering at an array of little pots of soil. She’d hooked her boots around the legs of the stool. Even from here, he could hear her humming happily to herself.

Sebastian felt sick to his stomach.

That was no reason to flout proper procedure. The outer door to Violet’s greenhouse opened onto a glassed-in entryway. He took off his shoes and replaced his jacket with a gardening smock. He checked himself and the air thoroughly; no bees in sight.

She didn’t look up when he opened the second door, nor when he pushed through the layers of gauze that kept insects out. She didn’t look up when he crossed over to her. She was concentrating so fiercely on those little clay pots in front of her, a magnifying glass in one hand, that she hadn’t even heard him come in.

God. Even after what he’d said to her last night, the way he’d run off, leaving her in the lurch, she looked so cheerful sitting there. He was going to ruin it all.

He’d agreed to this charade years ago, when he hadn’t understood what would happen. When it had just meant signing his name and listening to Violet talk, two things that had seemed like no effort at all.

“Violet,” he said softly.

No response.

“Violet,” he repeated, this time a little louder.

He could see her coming back into an awareness of herself—blinking rapidly, slowly setting down the glass she was holding before turning to him.

“Sebastian!” she said. There was a pleased note in her voice. She’d forgiven him for last night, then. But the smile she gave him slowly died as she saw the look on his face. “Sebastian? Is everything all right?”

“I should apologize,” he blurted out. “God knows I should apologize. I should never have spoken to you that way, and especially not in public.”

She waved this off. “I should have known better. I should have thought of the strain you’re under. Really, Sebastian, after everything we’ve done for each other, a few harsh words hardly signify. Now, there was something I needed to tell you.” She frowned and tapped her lips. “Let’s see…”

“Violet. Don’t get distracted. Listen to me.”

She turned back to him.

Nobody else thought Violet pretty. He had never understood that. Yes, her nose was too big. Her mouth was too wide. Her eyes were set a little too far apart for classical standards of beauty. He could see those things, but somehow they’d never mattered. Of all the people in the world, Violet was the closest to him, and that made her precious in ways he didn’t want to consider right now. She was his dearest friend, and he was about to rip her apart.

“Is something amiss?” she asked carefully. “Or—rather—” She cleared her throat. “I know something is amiss. How can we fix it?”

He held up his hands in surrender to the entire world. “Violet, I can’t do this anymore. I’m done living a fraud.”

Her face went utterly blank. Her hand reached out, falling on her magnifying glass, clutching it to her chest.

Sebastian felt heartsick. “Violet.”

There was nobody he knew better, nobody in the world he cared for more. Her skin had turned ashen. She sat looking at him, totally devoid of expression. He’d seen her like that once before. He’d never imagined he would be the one who made her look that way again.

“Violet, you know I would do anything for you.”

She made a curious sound in her throat, half sob, half choke. “Don’t do this. Sebastian, we can figure out—”

“I’ve tried,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, Violet, but this is the end.”

He was breaking her, but then, he’d come to the end of even his ability to perform. He smiled sadly and looked around her greenhouse. At the shelves and shelves, filled with little pots, each one labeled. At the beds of plants in various stages from tiny clusters of leaves to brilliant green growth. At the bookshelf in the corner, holding twenty leather-bound volumes of notes. He looked over all the evidence that he kept waiting for everyone else to discover. Finally, he looked at Violet—at the woman he had known all his life and loved for half of it.

“I will be your friend. Your confidante. I’ll be a helping hand when you need one. I will do anything for you, but there is one thing I will never do again.” He drew a deep breath. “I will never again present your work as my own.”

Her magnifying glass slipped from her fingers and landed on the paving stones beneath her chair. But it was strong—like Violet—and it didn’t shatter.

He reached down and picked it up. “Here,” he said, handing it back to her. “You’ll need this.”

Chapter Two

THREE HOURS LATER, VIOLET found herself dawdling outside Sebastian’s home.

In the years in which they’d worked together, they had found a hundred ways to meet without exciting comment. When they were in Cambridge, meeting was relatively easy: their houses were a mere mile apart, a twenty-minute walk along a wooded path. Thick trees hid their passage from gossip. Violet’s greenhouse was shielded from the prying eyes of servants by a tall shrubbery, while the path to his study was obscured by a maze of head-high boxwoods that allowed her to come and go without knocking at his door.