The Countess Conspiracy (Brothers Sinister #3)(100)

Sebastian let out a breath he hadn’t known he had been holding.

“Now,” Benedict said with a smile, “we’ll work out the details of his guardianship as soon as we have a chance. But at the moment, I believe you have a woman waiting for you downstairs.”

SHE WAS WAITING FOR HIM in the entry, her eyes alight.

When he turned the corner, she beamed at him.

“My lady,” Sebastian said. “Have you given any thought to the offers you’ve had? Cambridge? Harvard? King’s College?”

“I’ll have to find out more. The terms. I’ll have to think it all through.”

Sebastian came down the stairs slowly, stalking toward the woman he loved. “Me, personally? I’m partial to Paris. And I’ve always wanted to be a faculty spouse. I think I shall do well with that.”

“Paris is nice, but…” Violet stopped and looked up at him. “A what?”

“A faculty spouse. I could hold teas for all the other faculty spouses.” He grinned at her. “I’d do an excellent job.”

“Sebastian,” she said, “are you asking me to marry you?”

“Oh, no.” He put his arms around her and drew her close. “Just hinting that you ought to ask me.”

Violet burst into a laugh. “Well. Then.” She put her head against his shoulder. “Next Tuesday? That will surely keep the gossip going.”

He could smell her, sweet and enticing, could feel himself breaking into a smile. “Next Tuesday it is, then. And how clever of you to steal my coach and bring it out here. If we’d both come out on horseback, it would have been extremely inconvenient for my purposes. Guess what I’m going to do with you on the way back?”

She looked up at him, her eyes dark. “Am I guessing? Or are you giving me a choice?”

He found himself smiling. “Both. It’s been…quite a while.”

“Indeed,” she smiled up at him. “I’m exhausted after everything that has transpired.”

He tipped her chin up and kissed her. “Well, then. We’ll have to make sure you sleep very, very soundly tonight.”

Epilogue

Two years later.

MEET ME AT CASTEIN’S BOOKS. Your very own servant, Violet Malheur.

Sebastian smiled, folding the paper that had been delivered to him into quarters before sliding it into his breast pocket.

“Gentlemen.” He stood.

In the low light of the gentleman’s club, the other three men with him blinked up at him uncertainly. Sebastian reached out and began to gather the papers strewn about the mahogany surface.

“Malheur,” one of them complained, “I had almost got it. Just a few moments longer, and I’m certain I would have understood what you were saying. Just start again—start with the second-order corrections you made to the insurance rates, and then—”

“It’s no good,” Benedict said, leaning back in his chair and favoring Sebastian with a smile. “He has that look in his eye. And I happen to know that his wife has been out of town—so I think we can guess who sent him that note.”

“Yes, well,” the other man groused. “Wives. They’re all well and good, but…ah…” He stopped, his words slowing, and then glanced up at Sebastian, as if remembering who Sebastian’s wife was.

“She’s just back from Vienna,” Sebastian said. “She was giving a presentation there. I haven’t seen her in six days.”

“But…”

“But nothing,” Sebastian said. “We’ll meet tomorrow at ten in the morning.”

They took his departure with good grace, in part because Benedict gathered them in. The Underground would transport him faster than any carriage; Sebastian stepped down into its bowels. But he didn’t head to Castein’s Books after all—that had closed nine months ago.

What was the point of code, after all, if everybody could understand it? This one meant: To hell with all of our responsibilities. Come find me as soon as you can.

He made his way home, scarcely tolerating the men who brushed elbows with him on the cars. The traffic seemed abominably slow today; he found himself glancing at his watch, over and over.

He didn’t bother going through the front door. He let himself in through a side gate, jogged down the brick path, past the shrubbery, heading straight to her greenhouse.

I’ve missed you, her note had said. And he’d missed her, too.

Most of her experiments were now housed at King’s College, in a massive greenhouse that she ran. This one, sitting behind their home, held only a few curiosities that she played with in her spare time. Those, and a host of memories.

She was standing in place holding a pair of calipers, measuring the leaf of an orchid. She didn’t look up at his entrance. She didn’t even blink as he came up behind her.

But when he slid his hands around her waist, her eyes shivered shut and she leaned back against him, and her instrument fell to the table.

“I missed you.” Her hands joined his.

“I missed you, too.” He kissed her ear. “Next time, I’m coming with you.”

The skin of her neck was soft, delicate. She sighed when he nibbled at it.

“Next time,” she said, “they’ll want to talk to you, too. After all, you are the…”