The Countess Conspiracy (Brothers Sinister, #3)

by Courtney Milan

Violet thought wistfully of the parasol she’d left in the cloakroom—the lovely purple parasol with its demure ribbons and its pointed end. Useful for poking rude people, and fashionable, too.

“I do not use opium,” Sebastian continued. “Nor do I despoil my servants. I have never killed a man. I haven’t even wounded anyone seriously.

A sign on the door proclaimed: The countess is NOT to be bothered except in the cases of Death, Disembowelment, the Apocalypse, or the Arrival of her Mother.

“Violet, I played a role for you for five years. I bought a house near yours in London and installed gates by hand so we could talk about your work in secret. Don’t tell me that I’ve never given any indication that I loved you.”

A woman would have to be made of stone to resist an appeal like that, eyes like those—dark and luminous, shining into her own across the few feet that separated them. She was good at being made of stone. She imagined herself flint, hard enough to strike sparks.

So long as he held her marble, he held a possibility—the barest chance that there might someday be more for her. In some other place, some other Violet might get kissed. It was all she knew how to hope for—some other person’s happiness—but she hoped it with every wistful part of her heart.

The human heart, she admonished herself, was a disgusting organ, all ventricles and chambers and atria, a big ugly lump of muscle. The heart was one of the most disgusting pieces of meat in the body. Even the intestines were better looking. She wasn’t going to let something so ridiculous make her decisions.

A kiss was a beginning, not an end. Kissing was like opening a door onto a beautiful sunlit land and saying, “Don’t worry; you don’t have to venture outside.”

Her mother simply shrugged. “It’s the first rule. I protect what is mine.” She set her hand gently on Violet’s shoulder. “And you,” she whispered, “you’re mine.”