The Countess Conspiracy (Brothers Sinister #3)(13)

“Aunt Violet? Kind? Of course I didn’t, but—”

“You’re a very foolish girl,” her mother said, “but I’m sure that Violet will talk sense into you. Violet always talks sense. Now stop moping about and start feeling pride in your accomplishment. You’re going to be a countess.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“And don’t use that tone on me.” Lily raised a finger. “I don’t need to see you roll your eyes at me to know that your eyes are rolling inside.”

“Yes, Mother.” This came out a little closer to meek.

“Good. Now give me a chance to talk to your aunt without any of your brothers and sisters interrupting, and when we’re done, I’ll allow you to go for a walk in the park with your aunt. I won’t even come along. Is that fair?”

Amanda’s face lit at that. “Yes, Mother,” she said, and this exclamation was the most respectful of them all. She dropped a small curtsey and left them alone.

Lily watched her go with a smile on her face. “That girl,” she said, half shaking her head. “That girl. She’ll be the death of me.” But there was pride in her smile, a self-satisfied glint in her eyes. “She’ll come around,” she finally said, and then turned back to Violet. “Violet, dearest. I need your help. I need it most desperately.”

Everything was always desperate with Lily. It always had been. Although she’d been the elder, Violet had often felt as if she were the one following behind her sister, trying to smooth things over. That’s the way things were; people liked Lily, and while they were busy liking her, Violet got things done.

It never bothered Violet. She liked having things to do, and if her sister hadn’t been there, they wouldn’t have liked Violet any better. They’d only have ignored her more.

She tried to put a helpful expression on her face.

Clearly, it didn’t work, because Lily let out an exasperated sigh. “Please just listen to me. This time, it’s serious.”

“I’m listening,” Violet said.

“Be that way, then.” Lily tossed her head. “It’s Mama. She’s trying to do to Amanda what she did to us.”

Violet blinked uncertainly.

“You know what that was like.” Lily reached over and touched Violet’s sleeve. “It took me years after my marriage to come to trust Thomas, truly trust him as a wife ought. I was so hemmed in with Mama’s rules and shadow rules, what one could say, what one couldn’t. If it hadn’t been for Thomas’s lasting love and patience…” She looked away at the carpet, as if seeing some dismal almost-future. “No,” she said softly. “I can’t have Mama after Amanda that way. She did enough harm to the two of us already, and it’s only by the grace of God that you and I have recovered.”

Speak for yourself, Violet wanted to say. She didn’t feel harmed by her mother’s rules. She’d needed them desperately. But then, Violet had needed lessons on how to hide herself from the world. Everyone had already liked Lily precisely as she was; she’d had no need to pretend.

Violet looked at her sister. Lily’s eyes were wide. Her nut-brown hair was arranged perfectly. She had a softer version of Violet’s own face: a little less nose, a little more lip. More sparkle in her eyes, fewer wrinkles in her brow. It made her pretty, something Violet had never been able to achieve. It made her soft, and Violet had never been that either. Violet was all angles, a blunt, bludgeoning thing.

“You know,” Violet told her sister carefully, “it wasn’t as if Mama acted the way she did without reason.”

Lily reached out and took Violet’s hand. “That gossip is long dead. Those lies can’t hurt my children now.”

Violet looked away. It hadn’t been gossip. It had been scandal, one that could have destroyed them all.

“Lies?” she asked softly. “What lies?”

Lily waved a hand impatiently. “Yes, yes. I know. Never acknowledge the things that can hurt you.”

Violet hadn’t been referring to their mother’s rules.

But Lily made a sound of exasperation. “We’re family. And I know you feel as I do. What Mama did to us—what she made of us—was insupportable. She made us untrusting, hard things for no reason at all.”

God, Lily actually believed that. Had she never seen how desperate matters were? When the ugly details of the coroner’s report had surfaced—those coded words of likely accident—the whispers had started. Violet had heard them over her father’s casket. She’d stood there, fourteen years old, feeling awkward and ungainly, holding her nose in the air because she didn’t know how else to keep from crying. She’d clutched her mother’s black-gloved hand, feeling her mother grip too tightly in return.

The next day, her mother had sat down with Lily and Violet at breakfast.

“I am writing a book,” she had announced. “A book on proper deportment, and you two are going to exemplify its teachings.”

Lily and Violet had stared in numb, grieved confusion. “There will be a great many rules,” Mama had told them. “Public rules, which will appear in the printed guide itself, and private rules, which you must adhere to more closely.”

At the time, Violet hadn’t understood. She’d begun her mother’s lessons in bewilderment.