The Countess Conspiracy

She hadn’t wanted to wait. She’d selfishly shoved aside all thoughts of her future, her reputation, her family, caught up in the blaze of a brilliant idea. The fear that if she set it aside, it would vanish.

Even now, she wasn’t properly afraid. Her arms curled around herself. How could she have made such a mess of things? One moment of selfishness. One moment, and everyone she cared for would pay the price.

Selfish. That’s what she was.

She’d escaped to Sebastian’s study so she could be alone, so she could let her thoughts wind out to the point where she might sleep. She knew she was tired—exhausted beyond belief. The room was papered in blue and silver; a small writing table sat against one wall, and shelves of books lined the walls. A full-length mirror was propped up next to the table, reflecting the volumes back to her.

She stood and turned the mirror toward her. Her eyes looked back, dark and solemn. She was not much to look at. She could aspire to “handsome” when she took pains with her appearance, but if—for instance—she stayed up the entire night peering into a microscope, she was unabashedly homely.

Dark circles lined her eyes. Her skin was waxy; her hair could have passed for a nest of dark snakes hissing about her shoulders. Add a few warts and Violet suspected she could get herself burned at the stake.

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.