The Countess Conspiracy

Christ. She was undoing his trousers.

“Don’t wait, Sebastian,” she was saying. “Don’t wait. I need you now.”

His body needed no encouragement to come alive. He’d dreamed of holding her; now she was in his arms. The wet fabric clung to her curves—sweet, slight curves that he’d dreamed of exploring for so long. His c**k came to immediate attention as her fingers undid his fly.

“I need you,” she was saying. “I need you so much.”

He’d wanted her hands there—precisely there, pulling his smallclothes down roughly, rubbing up the side of his c**k without any shyness—for so damned long that he almost didn’t want to question his luck.

Her fingers were cold, but he was hot enough for the both of them. And if her hands shook, at least they were eager and bold in their exploration.

He didn’t want to ask questions, not now. Not with his erection coming to life in delighted surprise. But the bloody damned questions wouldn’t go away.

He pulled away from her. “Violet, what are you doing?”

She looked up at him. “Why are you stopping? You said…” She paused. “You said it was…” She swallowed, and there was another pause, a longer one. “You said it was not platonic.”

Oh, God. Those pauses. She wasn’t stopping to search for words. She was scarcely coherent.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked, pushing forward in miserable defiance. “You’re a rake and you want me. You said you did.”

“First,” he said, trying to marshal his thoughts, “I’m a rake who uses sheaths, and I don’t keep any in my greenhouse. Second—”

“You don’t need sheaths,” she told him.

“I bloody well do. For one thing, it’s not just about preventing pregnancy. For another, you don’t know that you’re barren. It could have been your husband.”

She folded her arms around herself.

“And one last thing. I said I loved you. What part of that makes you think that I would slake my lusts on you, in complete indifference to the fact that—that—”

“That what?” she growled at him.

“That you’re on the verge of tears.”

“I am not.” She turned her head away, her shoulders shaking. “I am not on the verge of tears. I don’t cry.”

The damnable thing about that was she was right. He had never seen her cry before—not ever. Not at her father’s funeral. She hadn’t shed a tear in the last year of her marriage—she’d been pale and listless and wouldn’t say a word about what was happening to her, but she hadn’t cried. He pulled up his trousers and redid his buttons.

“Violet,” he said, “sweetheart. What on earth is the matter?”

She collapsed on the ground and put her face in her hands. She wasn’t crying; just shaking.

Thunder boomed around them. He couldn’t hear her over the booming rumble. The sound of rain striking the glass windows around them drummed out her words. He only knew she was distraught by the shake of her shoulders. He sat next to her and slid his arm around her sopping shoulders.

She never would have let him hold her if she’d been in her right mind. He put his arms around her, bringing her to him, trying to breathe some semblance of warmth into her cold flesh.

“It’s all right,” he told her. “Everything will be all right.”

She gasped into his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll make it better. Whatever it is—I’ll make it better.”

She lifted her face to his. Her eyes were dark, so dark that he couldn’t see the bottom of them when he peered into her face. “I’m not barren,” she whispered.

It took him a moment to understand the words, spoken so quietly in the middle of the storm, and when he did, he couldn’t make sense of them.

“You said I didn’t know if I was barren. I know I’m not. I’ve been pregnant before. I think I became pregnant on my wedding night. I was so happy, so excited when the doctor told me.”

His eyes widened. “I had no idea.”

“It was so new, we didn’t want to tell anyone.” She sniffled. “I miscarried after seven weeks.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that, so he just pulled her close. “Oh, Violet. I’m so sorry.”

“The second time was shortly after that. I wasn’t ready, but the doctor said that miscarriages were common in young brides, and my husband said that when a horse threw you, you had to get back on right away. So I did. It was so easy to get pregnant, Sebastian. Lily told me once that she gets pregnant when her husband sneezes at her, and I’m no different. It takes nothing to get me pregnant.” Her fingers bit into his arms. “I just never stayed that way. Eight weeks, ten weeks. That’s the way it was with me. Year after year.”

“Year after year?” Sebastian repeated numbly.

“I kept getting back on that horse,” Violet said. “Nineteen times, over and over…” She took in a large gasp of air.

God. It hurt hearing it. It hurt, knowing what she’d gone through. He’d known she was prickly; he’d suspected there was a reason. But this?

“After years of that, the doctor said we had to stop trying. That it was taking too much out of me.” She swallowed. “That if he didn’t stop, I was going to die. But my husband didn’t want to stop. He wanted his heir.” Her voice had started to shake. “I told him no, you understand. I told him no, and he never forced me when I did. But my no never stuck. He’d come back and argue. He’d wheedle and explain. He told me I was selfish to withhold myself. That the earldom needed its heir, that it was bigger than just me. I could have refused, if it was just that one no, but he only had to get one yes. One yes, and he’d be on me again. One yes, and he’d make me feel like nothing—like my whole life, my whole body, was worth nothing more than the chance to get me with child. And I was a selfish, conniving bitch for wanting anything else.”

Sebastian felt sick. “He was wrong,” Sebastian said. But the anger that welled up in him at that thought had no object save a dead man, no place in this conversation. He wrapped his arms more tightly around her. “He was so wrong.”

“I tried to think that. But when he died… It was a horrible accident. I listened to person after person offer their condolences. And I couldn’t make myself feel the least bit sorry. I was glad.” She gasped. “So, so selfishly glad that he died. He wasn’t wrong. My life didn’t mean anything to him, but his meant as little to me.”