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

A few years ago, Sebastian would have laughed off such an outrageous statement. Now, he simply looked at the fellow. “Thank you very much,” he said, as if by rote. As if he’d memorized the words, and now threw them out like a false lure, hoping to distract the man long enough to make his way out. “That means so much to me.”

“Why, you insolent cur!” The big man took a step forward.

Violet let out a great breath and slid in front of the fellow, taking hold of Sebastian’s sleeve. Look at me. Look at me. It will all be better if you just look at me.

He turned toward her, but as he did, the last trace of false humor slipped from his face.

Violet had been friends with Sebastian a long time. She’d thought she knew him. That he cheerily waved off the public strain of constant criticism, that he thought nothing of that stream of insults and threats. She had to think that, or she’d never have put him under such a strain.

In that instant, she realized how wrong she had been.

Violet swallowed. “Sebastian,” she said, fumbling for words.

“What?” he snarled.

“You were brilliant.” She looked into his eyes, wishing she could make everything better. “Utterly bril—”

Something flared in his eyes—something dark and furious.

It had been the wrong thing to say. She knew it the moment the words came out of her mouth. How must she have sounded to him? Awful. Self-congratulatory.

They were surrounded by a crowd. His knuckles grew white at his side, and he lifted his nose in the air.

“Fuck you, Violet.” His voice was a low, savage growl. “Fuck. You.”

They’d been in this conspiracy for so long that sometimes even Violet forgot the truth. She remembered it now. She felt it in every cell of her being.

That sense of invisibility vanished. Violet sometimes thought that her position in society was something like a fallen log in the middle of a forest: She might not be picturesque, but at least she was accepted as part of the landscape. So long as she stayed still, nobody would discover the truth.

Right now, Sebastian glared at her—utterly livid, as if he were about to take a hatchet to that log. To expose its rotten core to the world, to show them that inside, Violet was a dark, awful, filthy thing, infested by many-legged creatures. If he spoke one word more, everyone would know.

She never would have thought that Sebastian would betray her. But this stranger glaring at her through Sebastian’s eyes? She had no idea what he might do.

Her hands grew cold. She could almost see that nightmare playing out before them. He would spill out the truth in front of everyone. Newspapers would trumpet it within the day; she’d be ruined by noon tomorrow, cast out completely.

The vast crowd seemed nothing but shadows around her. She could scarcely breathe. Filthy, she could hear people whispering. Reprobate. Her gorge rose. Violet would be ruined, and she would take her mother, her sister, her nieces and nephews with her.

Sebastian’s nostrils flared, and he turned away from her to talk to another man, leaving everything he could have said hidden safely behind silence.

Violet couldn’t help herself. She gasped in relief. She was safe. And so long as no one ever found out, she’d stay that way.

THE MORNING SUN BEAT DOWN VICIOUSLY, slicing into Sebastian’s eyes as he looked out over the garden. The rose arbor caught those early rays of sunlight, and the beds of dew-spangled flowers glistened in response. It was damnably pretty. He might even have enjoyed it, were it not for the persistent throb of his head.

If he hadn’t known better, he’d have imagined he was suffering from the ill effects of drink. Except he hadn’t had anything stronger than tea in the last forty-eight hours. No, something else plagued him, and unlike a few bottles of wine, it could not be fixed by an efficacious potion.

No apothecary on earth could cure reality.

He’d known where he was heading from the beginning. Violet was in her greenhouse; when he rounded the shrubbery, he saw her sitting on a stool, peering at an array of little pots of soil. She’d hooked her boots around the legs of the stool. Even from here, he could hear her humming happily to herself.

Sebastian felt sick to his stomach.

That was no reason to flout proper procedure. The outer door to Violet’s greenhouse opened onto a glassed-in entryway. He took off his shoes and replaced his jacket with a gardening smock. He checked himself and the air thoroughly; no bees in sight.

She didn’t look up when he opened the second door, nor when he pushed through the layers of gauze that kept insects out. She didn’t look up when he crossed over to her. She was concentrating so fiercely on those little clay pots in front of her, a magnifying glass in one hand, that she hadn’t even heard him come in.

God. Even after what he’d said to her last night, the way he’d run off, leaving her in the lurch, she looked so cheerful sitting there. He was going to ruin it all.

He’d agreed to this charade years ago, when he hadn’t understood what would happen. When it had just meant signing his name and listening to Violet talk, two things that had seemed like no effort at all.

“Violet,” he said softly.

No response.

“Violet,” he repeated, this time a little louder.

He could see her coming back into an awareness of herself—blinking rapidly, slowly setting down the glass she was holding before turning to him.