The Countess Conspiracy (Brothers Sinister #3)(66)

When Lily said it would be selfish of Violet to ally herself with Sebastian, what did she mean?

My attendance at balls is more important than your happiness.

When Violet called herself selfish, that was what she meant—that she didn’t deserve the thing she wanted. Not happiness. Not recognition. Maybe not even her own life.

She touched her fingers to the mirror.

“Fundamentally unlovable,” she said aloud. That’s what she had told herself, what she’d resigned herself to. Someone fundamentally unlovable didn’t deserve…anything. She’d believed it so powerfully that she’d been unable to understand Sebastian when he said he loved her. When Jane had said we love you, she had actually shaken her head, unable to comprehend that it might be true: that people might know the truth about her and love her anyway.

The person who looked at her from the mirror seemed subtly different from the woman she’d seen reflected at her year after year. There was still no beauty to mask the intensity of her gaze, no little tricks to disguise who she was.

Selfish. She’d been hiding for so long that she hadn’t even seen herself.

She wasn’t unlovable. She wasn’t selfish. To admit that she wanted something, that she deserved to have it? To think that she might make a decision on the basis of her own desires, and not her fears for those around her?

Those thoughts sounded almost obscene.

Clever Violet. Lovely Violet.

Obscene, to imagine she was someone who mattered.

A knock sounded on the door. Violet had only begun to turn when it swung open and Sebastian stepped through. He took one look at her—at her flushed face, her disheveled hair. His lips quirked up in amusement.

But he didn’t make fun. “Violet,” he said instead. “I know that Bollingall might do for this matter, but his work is primarily done through a microscope.” He swallowed. “You’ll want someone else so that you can continue on with your work. I’ve started to make a list.”

Her head spun. “A list?”

“Yes. You’ll need someone who can work with you. Someone who will understand the science well enough to do a creditable job on the presentation. Someone who will respect you.”

“I don’t need a list,” she heard herself say. “I’ve already found someone.”

He tilted his head. “You have? You’re going to have Bollingall claim all the credit, then?”

Her heart pounded. Thump-thump-thump-thump, the beats running together until she could scarcely hear herself talk. “No.”

She knew she looked an absolute fright. Still, his gaze fixed on her as if she were beautiful.

Sebastian was handsome and rich and desirable. She hadn’t been able to believe that he loved her. She had done everything she could to convince herself that he didn’t. That she’d misheard. That what he felt was just friendship, that he couldn’t care for her the way he claimed he did. And yet every time she’d allowed herself to believe that, he’d gone and done something that exploded her theories.

He hadn’t taken her to bed. He hadn’t hurt her. He hadn’t even kissed her, because he thought it would cause her harm. His entire presentation on violets… She’d tried to figure out what it meant, but the best she had come up with was that it was a seduction.

It hadn’t been. It had been a love letter, and she couldn’t have understood it until this moment. She’d been unable to believe he loved her until she realized that she deserved to be loved.

She understood it now. She felt incandescent. And it didn’t matter how she looked or how frightful her hair appeared.

“This person,” Violet said with a little choke in her throat, “is perfect. This person knows my every thought. This person can explain what I’ve discovered in a way that everyone can understand.” She crooked her finger at him. “Let me show you.”

He looked at her warily. But despite the protest, he came toward her, step by step.

He’d slept as little as she. Still, his hair looked casually, perfectly disheveled. That dusting of dark stubble made him look like a scoundrel, but the look suited him. Through some strange alchemy, he still smelled good. It wasn’t fair how good he smelled—Sebastian intensified, a lovely musk that made her want to close her eyes and inhale. He advanced on her until he stood by her side.

“Violet,” he said softly. “I know what you’re going to say. You want me to do it. But…” He swallowed. “It hasn’t changed. Nothing has changed. I know how important this discovery is, but it ruins things between us, those lies.”

Violet took his hand and turned him toward the mirror. “I know who’s going to take credit for this discovery,” she whispered. And then she lifted her free hand and pointed at her own reflection, so terribly disarranged and yet so utterly right. “She is.”

He let out a breath into the silence that followed. Their eyes met in the mirror. Violet realized that she was still holding his hand, still touching him. That his fingers were warm against hers, that his body was close, so close to hers. It was a strangely, starkly intimate moment.

“Violet,” he whispered.

She had gone mad, and she steeled herself to hear all of the ways she was being a fool.

They’ll never let you present it.

Nobody will listen.

Think of what it will mean to your family.