The Countess Conspiracy (Brothers Sinister #3)(55)

It would be…not the right thing to do, not when she was still this close to tears.

Instead, he took off his cravat and used it to wipe the rain from her face. “Lovely Violet,” he said. “Clever Violet. Beautiful Violet.”

She sighed and leaned against him.

“You came to me,” he said, “because you know I would never hurt you.”

She looked up at him, her eyes wide. Her hands were slowly unclenching, her breaths slowing to measured inhalations.

“And see?” He grinned at her. “I won’t.”

OF ALL THE WAYS THAT VIOLET had imagined she might start the morning after she admitted to Sebastian that she wanted him, waking up alone in bed was the possibility she’d never considered.

She sat up. Her head throbbed at the temples, as if she’d passed a night of wild abandon.

Instead, Sebastian had held her. He’d whispered to her. He’d told her jokes for forty-five minutes, until even she couldn’t keep from laughing, drunk on sorrow and confusion. And when the rain had faded to a patter, he’d rummaged through his things, given her his umbrella, and sent her home.

Alone.

Mystifying.

She’d undone his trousers. She’d told him in plain English that she fantasized about his touch. And he hadn’t even kissed her good night.

Perplexing.

It gave the morning a strange sense of normalcy, as if yesterday’s storm hadn’t really happened. As if she could relegate the memory of those messy, uncomfortable emotions to an outdoor shed where they might be stored indefinitely alongside all the other abandoned rubbish.

She dressed as she usually did. She breakfasted on toast and kippers without any change.

She went out to her greenhouse and found nothing changed—nothing to signify that last night had happened but for a little fog on the windows and the broken shards of the pots she’d overturned. The fog dissipated in minutes; the pots took a little longer to sweep up and discard.

It seemed ridiculous to pretend that her routine might continue, but nobody interrupted her, so she started planting the seeds she’d set to soak last night. The work was familiar and comforting, the soil nice and cool against her hands. The seeds she’d set out last night had swelled up plumply in the water; she gathered them up, one by one, and slipped them into tiny pots. Little by little, she lost herself in the act of planting.

She didn’t know how deeply she’d sunk into the activity until she was halfway through her seeds and it suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t turned around to get a pot for at least the last five minutes. She blinked at the hole she’d made in the soil, slowly coming back into herself, and looked up.

Sebastian was standing right next to her, holding out a little pot for her. He’d filled it with soil already.

All her confusion—that big tangled mass of emotion—returned and took up residence in her gut.

“Sebastian,” she said stupidly. “When did you arrive?”

“Fifteen minutes past.”

She made a face. “Did I greet you by any chance?”

He shook his head. “It’s not the first time you’ve done this, and it certainly won’t be the last.”

But there was a warm tone in his voice. It brought her back to the reality of things. He was standing close to her, so close that she could feel the warmth of his body. He held out the little pot once again and she took it.

Now that she was aware of him, she was very aware. Her fingers brushed the palm of his hand, warmth on warmth.

Nothing had changed between them. Nothing except a little knowledge: Now he knew that she wanted him. She wished she could bury that knowledge the way she buried the seed she held, piling it in dirt precisely a quarter of an inch deep. She wished that knowledge would only grow roots, hidden from the sunlight, and not leaves, leaves that insisted on stretching up into her conscious mind.

She glanced up at him nervously.

He knew that she wasn’t as indifferent as she’d pretended. He knew that she thought about kissing him. God, he probably knew that she was thinking of kissing him now.

There was a look in his eyes that had never been there before, something warm and unsettling. It made her fingers tangle together in knots. It made her want to turn and run away. His gaze dropped from her eyes to her mouth.

He knew. He knew what she was thinking. Involuntarily, she felt her tongue dart out and touch her lips in stomach-curdling awareness.

It was a matter of inches. His hand was free. He’d pull her to him and then…

Violet knew very little about the ways of rakes, but one thing she was certain of: Sebastian was going to kiss her. And she had no idea what she was going to do in response.

But he didn’t. He simply turned away and picked up another pot.

God, she wished she could have that lack of awareness back. She wished she had no idea that he was there, standing so close to her. Every time her back turned to him, she felt the hair on her neck rise in cold anticipation. Every time she took a plant from him, her fingers tingled where they brushed his skin.

He was going to kiss her.

She felt like a mouse waiting for the cat to pounce.

But this cat never pounced. He handed her pots. While she worked at planting them, he went and found her orangewood sticks. He labeled the seeds for her—he already knew her system—and made sure that each little pot was appropriately noted in her records.