The Countess Conspiracy
He let out a breath. “There is something more. If you can’t escape this through whatever legal mumbo-jumbo Oliver and Robert and Minnie are cooking up, tell them it was all a joke. That I put you up to it. That you were foolish enough to trust me, but that I was to blame.”
She became very quiet and pulled away from him. She turned her face toward her own home, where a solitary window blazed with light. Her jaw twitched.
“What,” she finally said with a touch of scorn, “and have you sent to prison in my stead? As if I would do anything so craven.”
He’d known she would balk. He’d expected it.
“Besides,” she said, “that would merely implicate us both.”
“They’ll leap at the chance,” he said. “I’ll offer to plead guilty—to raise no contest at all—so long as they allow you to walk free.”
“That presupposes that I would tell a lie to save my skin.” She pulled her hands from his. “You know me better than that.”
“First,” he said, “it’s not a lie—just the truth, mangled only a tiny portion.”
“Stretched like taffy.” She snorted.
“Second.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew the thing he’d brought along. “Second, Violet, for what it’s worth—no, I didn’t expect you to go along with my plan. And so…” He held out the marble he’d saved from Oliver’s wedding.
She stared at it glinting in his palm in the moonlight. “Even marbles have limits,” she breathed.
“The limits of friendship.” He stared at her, willing her to understand. “Between the two of us, Violet, how deep does our friendship run?”
She turned away from him, putting one hand to her forehead in distress.
“How many years have we known each other? All our lives. How many years have I loved you? More than I can count. It hasn’t been long since you’ve begun to…” He swallowed. “Since you’ve begun to return my deeper feelings, I know, but—”
“Longer than you might imagine.” Her voice was husky.
“If you care anything for me, let me make a difference. Don’t make me watch you get dragged away when I can change matters. Let me do this for you.”
She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “But I must watch you go?”
“Don’t think of it that way. They can’t hurt me if I know you’re safe,” he told her. “You are my heart, Violet. You’re the most important person in my life. Let them throw me in prison and I’ll go with a smile and a quip. I could not bear it if I had to watch you suffer.”
“But—”
He took the marble and pressed it into her palm. “You made the rules yourself, Violet. With a marble, I can ask for anything within the bounds of friendship. To betray this would blacken the name of everything that stands between us. Take the marble, Violet, and let me do this for you.”
She stared at the glass ball in his hand for a moment as if staring into the eyes of a snake. Then she shut her eyes and closed her fingers around it with a grimace.
“Thank God,” he said. “You don’t want to know what I would have had to do if you hadn’t agreed.”
She didn’t say anything, just slid the marble into her skirt-pocket.
“So.” He swallowed. “I suppose we should try to get some sleep.”
She set one hand on his chest. “Do you really think that after you told me that, I am going to let you walk away from me?”
He swallowed. His throat felt dry. “I don’t want to impose.”
“Impose.” Her lip curled. “That marble is an imposition. But you tell me you love me, that you’ll do anything to keep me safe, and you expect me to turn around and go to my bed alone? What kind of rake are you?”
“The kind of rake who loves you.”
She turned the marble around in her palm, watching it roll in the moon. She didn’t say anything—didn’t respond to that declaration, didn’t take his hand. She simply stared at the marble, as if wondering what to do with it.
“Sebastian,” she finally said, still not looking at him, “if you were to have intercourse with me and you absolutely did not want to get me with child, what would you do?”
A shot of heat went through him. He wanted to grab her to him. But she still wasn’t looking at him.
“I’d use a sheath.” His voice rasped in his throat. “They’re not completely effective, so I’d also pull out before the moment of crisis. Even that has risks. They’re not large, but…” He groped for sanity. “Violet, I don’t want…” But he did want. He wanted with an intense hunger. “If you didn’t wish to—you said…”
And now she did look up at him. He wasn’t sure what he saw in her eyes. Sadness. Hunger. She smiled at him, a long, slow, tremulous smile that seemed to wrap around the very core of his being.
“I’ve been afraid,” she said in a low voice. “So afraid. Afraid that because that one act was a slap in the face from my husband, that it could not be an act of love from you. That it would always be beyond me.”
“Violet.” His whole being had caught on fire. He wanted to draw her to him, to kiss her, but if he did, he didn’t know that he could stop.
“Take me to your bed,” she whispered, “and prove all my fears wrong.”
Chapter Twenty-four
“I DIDN’T ASK TO SHOULDER THE BLAME to get your gratitude,” Sebastian was saying as they made their way back to his house.
In the dark of the night, little brambles caught at Violet’s skirts, tugging her backward as if even the shrubbery wanted her to know that this was a terrible idea.
“I did it because—”
Violet turned to him. They’d come to the edge of the trees that separated their estates; up a wide, grassy hill she could see his home. She held up a hand and laid it against his lips.
“Sebastian,” she said.
He halted. “I’m trying. Violet, I don’t want to cause you harm, not in any way.”
“I can’t live my life without any risk,” she said. “I tried. A life without risk is one where I tell myself I’m not worthy of taking a chance. It’s a life without hope for the future.”
Tomorrow, he’d remember that she’d said those words. He’d put quite another cast on them. But for tonight…