Page 79 of More or Less a Countess
For Nick to come back to England at last only to find himself wed to a lady he believed loved another, and to be trapped with her in a crumbling estate that should have been his brother’s…
Dear God, what had she done?
“I love him, Lady Westcott, more than I ever thought I could love anyone. Please.” Violet clutched at the hand in hers, her heart fluttering with panic. “I have to fix this. Tell me how…tell me what to do.”
Lady Westcott’s eyes were glistening with tears. “Oh, my dear. If you were any other lady I’d say there’s nothing you can do, but you’re special, Violet, and Nicholas feels that in you just as surely as I do. He’s different with you, you see. If there’s a lady in England who can help Nicholas find his way, it’s you.”
“Me?But I don’t…how, my lady?”
She wasn’t special, and she never had been. She wasn’t a seductress or a belle, or some irresistible beauty like Lady Uplands. She wasn’t charming, and she hadn’t the first idea how to tease or flirt or coax a man with soft words and beckoning smiles. She was awkward, impatient, and abrupt. As far as London society was concerned, she’d never been anything more than an oddity, tedious at best and mad at worst. She was a bluestocking, with ink stains on her hands and dust in her hair, and—
She was a bluestocking.
Violet went still, her gaze finding Lady Westcott’s.
Of course. She was a bluestocking, and bluestockings had something better than charm, or beauty, or a perfect flirtatious smile.
Knowledge.
She didn’t ask herself whether it would be enough.
Itwould, because it had to be.
Violet gathered the sketches together and shoved them back into her sketchbook. “I have an idea.”
Lady Westcott’s lips curved in a hopeful smile. “What will you do?”
Violet squeezed Lady Westcott’s hand, then rose and walked to the door. “The only thing I know how to do, my lady.”
No one saw her as she made her way down the grand staircase and slipped into the library. She closed the door behind her, and immediately erupted into a sneezing fit that left her nose red and her eyes streaming with tears.
When she could see again, the first thing Violet noticed was the dust. It covered every surface, and no doubt lingered between every page of the thousands of books on the tall mahogany shelves. It looked as if the servants had simply closed the room after the family left, and hadn’t set foot in it since.
Well, that wouldn’t do, but at the moment the dust wasn’t her first concern. Nick was, and as every bluestocking worth that title knew, a good plan always began with a visit to a library.
She might not be a belle, and she might not know how to charm, seduce, or court her husband, but she could use the talents shedidpossess to help him set Ashdown Park to rights again. She’d read about modern farming practices, and she’d accumulated other bits of knowledge in her studies that might prove useful. If Nick could make this place his home again—if he could see it ashisand not as a legacy he’d stolen from his dead brother, then perhaps he could begin to see himself as more than just a lesser version of Graham.
As more than just The Selfish Rake.
Violet took a determined step toward the first set of shelves. A book on estate management might give her some ideas, and something about how to organize servants, and how to care for a grand manor house, as well.
Violet sneezed again, and drew her sleeve across her eyes to clear them. Itwasa great pity no one had ever thought to write a book on how to court one’s husband. Perhaps one day she’d write one herself, but until then…
She’d never let a little dust stop her before.
* * * *
By the time Violet finished in the library, peeked into every neglected corner on the ground floor of Ashdown Park, and filled five pages with scribbled notes, the sun had risen and was doing its best to emerge from a sky full of dark December clouds.
She was ready for Nick.
She soon found out, however, Nick wasn’t ready for her.
For her, or anyone else.
Violet spent over an hour pacing from one end of her bedchamber to the other, tensed for any sound on the other side of the connecting door, but there was nothing but tomb-like silence.
She managed to hold off for a second hour, then a third, and then, overcome with impatience, she finally rang the bell for Bridget.
