The Countess Conspiracy (Brothers Sinister #3)(43)
And his eyes, oh, his eyes. They made her want to take a step forward, to take his hands in hers. She put her hands behind her back instead.
“Violet,” he said a little hoarsely.
She took a deep breath. “Really.” Another breath. “I resent Benedict, saying such stupid things.” Making her betray herself, making Sebastian look at her with that compelling intensity. “It makes me very angry. At him.”
He sighed and looked away, rubbing his lips. She wouldn’t think of kissing him. She wouldn’t.
“You have to admit,” Sebastian said calmly, as if nothing had just transpired, “that Benedict has a point. Whatever I have accomplished, I have not been very respectable.”
It was that lack of respectability that made it so impossible to comprehend what he’d told her. He claimed he loved her? Sebastian was a rake; love had never entered in to any of his dealings.
Sebastian never talked of his…escapades. Not with her, not with anyone else. He was extraordinarily discreet—one of the reasons, she suspected, that he proved so popular. For all she knew, he had a lover waiting for him tonight. He might have three of them. He couldn’t love her. It made much more sense to imagine that he saw her as a potential…candidate. He’d meant love in the physical sense. He had some lust for her, no more or no less than anyone else who had ever caught his fancy.
She looked away. “Benedict cannot know the extent of your respectability,” she remarked. “Even I don’t.”
He glanced at her. “Did you want to?”
Did she want to hear about other women? No. Definitely not. If he told her, she might do something embarrassing—something like imagining herself in another woman’s place.
“In any event,” Sebastian said after a pause that was not quite long enough to turn awkward, “you’re right, but you’re a little overexuberant. I attempted a bit of scientific research on my own. I never mentioned it to you, because I was embarrassed by my lack of progress. Maybe one day I’ll present the work as proof of my failure.” He shrugged. “That, at least, would be my own.”
“Ridiculous,” Violet told him.
“It’s not ridiculous. I could show you.”
“It is ridiculous. One failed project is not a failed career. Projects fail all the time for all kinds of reasons. You know that.”
Once again, he didn’t say anything in response. But he was giving her that look—that intense, dark look, the one that he wasn’t trying to hide any more.
“Every time,” he said quietly. “Every time I doubt, every time I wonder if I am less than I have imagined… Violet.”
He didn’t say anything more, but he didn’t have to. She swallowed and looked away. She didn’t want to think about him that way; she simply didn’t. Ignorance may not have been bliss, but at least it was risk-free.
“Benedict,” she muttered. “It’s all his fault. He’s stubbornly refusing to give you the credit you deserve. That’s all.”
“I don’t want credit,” he said. “I just want my brother.” He shut his eyes. “But…” He stopped, and then looked up. “But Benedict cares about the things he cares about.” He was speaking more slowly. “And, yes, you’re right—he can be stubborn when he’s made up his mind. He is a little stodgy; no doubt the mathematics were a little much for him. But he’s fair. He’ll change his mind, once he realizes…”
“Sebastian,” she said slowly, “what are you planning?”
“Well.” He shrugged. “I don’t really need the money, but someone was willing to pay fifty thousand pounds for my idea. He thinks it has no value. What if I make him see he’s wrong?”
She stared at him.
And he grinned. “Yes,” he said. “That’s right. What if I gave Benedict’s precious Society my idea?”
Chapter Eleven
THE NIGHT AIR IN LONDON WAS COOL, if not clean. Sebastian had managed to make it through the evening without embarrassing himself. But it had been close, damnably close. He’d managed to take his leave of her, to make it halfway through that dark gap between their garden walls before he’d stopped and leaned against the brick in utter gut-clenching agony.
The moon was full, spilling a narrow corridor of light onto his face, so bright in the darkness that it almost hurt his eyes.
He’d seen Violet focused on a subject before. When she was, she was vibrant and full of color. He’d seen her excited about a talk Sebastian was going to deliver, about a paper they were writing, about an experiment she was trying to untangle and understand. This, though, was the first time he’d seen the full weight of her attention concentrated not on her words flowing through him, but on him directly.
You’re not a stupid fribble, Sebastian. You’re a clever man who happens to have a wicked sense of humor.
They’d sketched a brief plan. At the end, she’d nodded. “This can’t just be about proving something to Benedict,” she told him. “It’s about determining whether your brother is being ridiculous. If this turns out as we hope, and he can’t accept it, you’ll know that the fault is not in you.”
And somehow, with those words, his world realigned. He wasn’t a court jester who could make others laugh. He was more.