The Countess Conspiracy (10 page)

She looked over at him, her lips compressed. “My heart’s not broken.” She jabbed the needle into the soil. “I’ve never
needed
recognition for myself. Recognition is the last thing I want. It’s just that…awful as it makes me, this is the thing that I do. I wake up thinking about it. I dream of it when I sleep. The thought of doing all this and having it evaporate into nothing is more than I can bear. I want to do something, and have someone notice.” She swallowed, and then reached out and touched the leaf of a bean sprout, ever so gently. “This is as close as I will ever come to having children.”

She had never talked about children before. Sebastian knew only that she had been married eleven years without bearing one, and that her husband had wanted an heir very, very badly. So badly that at the end, he’d encouraged Sebastian to spend untold hours with his wife—giving his implicit approval to a cuckoo in his nest. Better that, apparently, than an empty one.

One didn’t have to have much intelligence to figure out that something had gone wrong. Whatever it was, he suspected it had soured more than just a marriage.

He wondered if she was recalling any of that. What those events had looked like from her eyes, colored by her emotions. But Violet rarely admitted to having emotion.

“There
is
more to you,” he insisted.

She looked up at him. “You’re only saying that because you don’t know how little there is in my life.”

She said there was nothing in her life the way someone else might state that there was nothing in his cup: as if it were a matter of a minute’s worry.

And that’s when he made a mistake: He reached out and touched her hand.

He hadn’t meant anything by it. He’d have touched anyone he cared about who said something that bleak, and when that person was Violet… He didn’t have it in him to hear a thing like that and not respond, to not want to make it better in whatever way he could.

But Violet froze, every muscle tensing. All the color rushed from her cheeks. And before he could apologize, she snatched her hand away, cradling it to her chest as if he’d burned it.

Sebastian considered himself something of an expert on female response. Often, quickened breath suggested a heart that raced in anticipation. But not when it came in sharp bursts. Violet’s gasping respiration did not suggest anything other than panic.

He knew better than to touch her. Not even in friendship.

Sebastian put his offending hand in his pocket and bit back a curse, trying for nonchalance in his tone.

“Violet,” he said, “we’re friends.”

She started to open her mouth but he waved her into silence.

“I know you’ll say you don’t know what that means, but I do. Just because I won’t present your work any longer doesn’t mean I no longer…”

Care,
he had been about to say. But she wouldn’t want to hear that word.

“…have an interest in your happiness. This matters to you. Things have changed since you wrote your first paper. I can introduce you, if you’d like. Your work would be read. They’d listen to you now. If I told them to do so.”

For a moment, her entire expression changed. Her eyes widened. Her hands clenched into fists, and her lips parted. She turned to him—and then just as swiftly, all that hope drained from her. That light dissipated from her features, leaving her eyes nothing more than dark, dull orbs.

“No,” Violet said. “Almost nobody cares about me now. I’d hate to see it become nobody at all.”

“Then…” Sebastian paused. “I don’t know how to proceed, how to find a new balance that will work for both of us. But I’ve been thinking since we spoke a few weeks ago. It’s not as simple as me or nothing. I have another idea.”

She looked over at him quizzically.

“Let me talk to someone. Get a little advice on how best to proceed.”

She blinked, considering this. “Telling secrets only creates trouble.” But her gaze slid away from his. “Who did you have in mind?”

“Simon Bollingall,” Sebastian said. “He’s been my mentor for these last years. I trust him as much as I trust anyone. I wouldn’t tell him your name. I would tell him…a little of the surrounding circumstances. Maybe he’d have some idea of how we can both be happy.”

She stared fixedly at the dirt. “Do you think he might help?”

“Maybe.”

She didn’t say anything for a long while. “I like his wife,” she finally said. “Alice Bollingall. We’ve met at your lectures. She’s a photographer by hobby. She takes pictures of the countryside.” She set her needle down. “She offered to have me sit for one of her photographs. I think she develops the pictures herself. She’s a very clever woman, and he…treats her with respect.”

“May I talk to him?”

“My mother would kill me.” Her lips compressed. “But then… it’s not as if she wants to know. It’s awful to even think of it. Awful and selfish. To want this, even knowing what I’m risking.”

“So that’s a yes, then.”

She turned and looked at him. And then, because Sebastian had nothing to lose, he winked at her.

“God.” She waved a hand at him in dismissal, but he could see a hint of a smile tilting the corner of her lip.

So long as he could still make her smile, he hadn’t lost yet.

“You,” she said with a shake of her head. “Yes, then.”

S
EBASTIAN BOARDED A TRAIN
for Cambridge the morning after he talked to Violet. The familiar journey had calmed his cycling worries. He left the station, walked along the riverbanks, and then made his way up the cobbled streets wending up through the market, all the while telling himself that this was his usual journey, that he need not think of his mission. He made his way from there to his friend’s office, where he was greeted and ushered in with good grace.

Five years ago, Sebastian had sat on this precise chair, in this precise position, watching Professor Simon Bollingall read a paper he hadn’t written. In those first years, he’d provided advice. He’d helped Sebastian at every step of the way.

Since that time, Professor Bollingall had become a friend. Nowadays,
he
listened intently to Sebastian’s every word. And today, Sebastian needed his help to end the career he’d helped to start.

The man sat on his chair, his attention fixed attentively on Sebastian, his lips forming a too-eager smile. All that smiling attention was an illusion.

Sebastian glanced around the room. “Is that a photograph of your family?” he asked, gesturing to a frame that stood on a side table. It showed a grouping of five—man, woman, and three children in that awkward, spotty stage just before adulthood. Sitting for a photograph didn’t make them look any better; the children stared blankly ahead, no expressions on their faces whatsoever.

“Yes,” Bollingall said. “Alice made that one—you know she’s made quite a hobby of her photography. She’s become quite good. That one there is also hers—Trinity College from the backs in winter.”

Sebastian nodded, glancing politely at the other framed photograph.

“So, Malheur,” Bollingall said, “what have you come up with this time?”

Sebastian leaned back in his chair. “I’m giving this up.”

That eager smile faded into blank confusion. Bollingall leaned back in his chair. “Giving what up?”

“Scientific discovery.”

Instead of looking startled, though, the professor laughed. “Ah, you’re at that stage of your career, are you? We all feel that way from time to time. When the work isn’t going well. When we’re feeling overwhelmed.” He leaned forward. “You work too hard—that’s your problem. When was the last time you took a holiday? Go to the shore. Engage in a little sea-bathing. Relax for a week or two, and you’ll feel like a new man.”

Sebastian bit his lip. “It’s a lovely idea, but my problem is not that I work too hard. It’s that I do not work enough.”

Bollingall nodded compassionately. “That’s typical, too. There’s always something else to do, some other idea to explore. You can’t put the work down. You think of it all the time and feel guilty every minute you’re away. I only repeat my recommendation: Take a little time for yourself, and you’ll soon feel better.”

Sebastian had been afraid it would come to this. He trusted Bollingall implicitly. But he felt a little sick. He was about to expose himself his secret to a man who had put his own reputation on the line for Sebastian several times over.

“That’s not what I mean, either.” Sebastian took in a deep breath. “I am not weary of doing work. Hypothetically speaking, what would you say if you heard that I did not do all the work myself?”

Across the desk from him, Bollingall didn’t even bat an eye. “Most of us don’t. I have a servant take measurements for me. The point isn’t who performs the actual work—that’s mere manual labor. It’s the intellectual work that matters, after all.”

Sebastian expelled a sigh. “Let us suppose that the intellectual work that I have reported was not done by me. That it was done by someone else.”

Bollingall frowned.

“Let us suppose,” Sebastian said, “that it was done by a woman.”

The other man froze. Only for an instant—just long enough to stare at Sebastian in surprise. Then he exhaled and glanced at the door. It was shut firmly—something Sebastian had made sure of before he spoke. But even the books lining his office seemed to judge Sebastian—hundreds of volumes all penned by men who were
not
frauds. Sebastian’s pulse quickened, and he braced himself for Bollingall’s disappointment.

Instead the man licked his lips and leaned in. “Well,” he said softly, “that happens, too.”

Sebastian’s mouth went dry.

“In fact,” Bollingall continued in a low voice, “it’s more common than you might think. It’s so common, in fact, that it ought to remain unremarked upon.”

Sebastian’s mouth curled into a grimace. “I don’t know what you mean. Spell it out.”

“She’s a helper, yes?” Bollingall shrugged. “I know a man who dictates all his papers to his wife. She writes them down.”

“I’m not talking about mere dictation.”

“No,” Bollingall said slowly. “But that’s all anyone needs to know. When you are engrossed in a subject, it’s only inevitable that your most intimate relations would be involved, too. Her interest is a subset of yours. Her contribution is a subset of yours. And if she’s married to you…why, it’s essentially you who is doing the work after all. You’re one person in a legal and spiritual sense. Why not in the scientific sense, too?”

Sebastian’s head spun. He could scarcely believe what he was hearing. “But I’m not married.”

“There are quite a few,” Bollingall said slowly, “quite a few of us who operate this way. We never inquire as to the extent, and indeed, no gentleman would raise the question. You’re quite safe.” He shook his head, and then glanced at Sebastian. “Or, that is—you’re almost safe. There’s one thing you really should do, if you want to truly be as one.”

Sebastian felt a confused, dark longing overtake him. His head seemed full of cotton. “I’m not married,” he repeated.

Bollingall—quite pointedly—looked up at the ceiling. “Yes,” he said. “That’s it. Change that, and you have nothing to worry about.”

Marriage to Violet. God, what an awful idea. She drew back from him when he put a hand on her in friendship. She shuttered up when he said he cared for her. His own feelings were immaterial; Violet wasn’t interested in him for any length of time, least of all for the rest of their lives.

And to marry her for such a reason? Part of him didn’t care what the reason was. He’d wanted her so long that this chance—any chance—pierced through him.

Giving her back her work might be the only thing that could drive her to his bed. And for an instant, he imagined it—imagined being able to kiss her into compliance. He might soothe her fears and seduce her into maybe, one day…

He shoved aside heated visions of Violet, with her hair undone, strewn around his pillows.

Maybe, he reminded himself ruthlessly, if he was very, very persuasive, he might one day seduce her into not flinching when he took her hand. He felt as if he’d been offered an apple from a tree: He might gorge himself to sickness on this particular temptation.

Sebastian rubbed his forehead. “Thank you for the advice.”

“I know you’re enjoying your freedom,” Bollingall said. “You’re young yet. But think about it. You’re doing important work.”

Sebastian shook his head.

“None of that nonsense,” Bollingall said. “
You
are doing important work. Never forget that, and never tell anyone otherwise.
You
are doing important work, Malheur. You need only go make it yours.”

It was only in his mind that those words rearranged themselves.

Go make her yours.

No, no. Insidious, awful thought.

Luscious, invigorating thought. He couldn’t drive it away. It lingered through the remainder of their conversation, whispered in the back of his mind the entire journey back to London. He didn’t care about the work or the credit. He cared about Violet.

Go make her yours.

The truth was, it wasn’t only his work with Violet that divided him from everyone.

His entire life had been shaped by two lies: the secret he shared with Violet, and the secret he kept from her.