The Countess Conspiracy

“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 night 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!”