And with that, she fled.
Chapter Seventeen
VIOLET THOUGHT.
She thought about kissing Sebastian as she fled to the upstairs room that had been set aside for her use. She thought about kissing him as she called for her maid. Louisa undid her buttons, but Violet could only think of the warmth of his hand on her shoulder. That wall that she’d built, the one she’d used to protect herself for so long—it had been breached. There was no safety any longer.
She called for a bath, and when it came, she sent her maid away.
She thought about his lips on hers when she stepped into the large copper tub filled with steaming water. She thought about his hands, the faint dusting of dark hairs that brushed the backs of them. She thought about them drifting over her thighs.
And she thought about what Sebastian looked like when he wasn’t smiling—darkly intent on her, as if she were all that mattered. She swallowed and shifted, and when she rubbed the soap between her hands and washed her legs, she didn’t feel her own skin. In her imagination, she felt his.
The liquid heat of the water surrounded her—almost too hot to bear, the way she liked it. She lathered the soap into a frenzy of suds and then slipped beneath the heated surface, holding her nose as she went under. It didn’t help. The water was like a full-body embrace. It made her aware of her skin, so aware of Sebastian.
He probably wasn’t where she’d left him. He’d have gone to change. He might take a bath of his own.
Not good to think of him unclothed. Very not good.
Thinking, Violet realized, wasn’t doing any good. Thinking was treacherous. Her thoughts wandered into his room, into his very bath. She imagined herself wrapped in nothing but a towel, opening his door and tiptoeing in…
Thinking wasn’t the answer. It wouldn’t do.
Not thinking had served her as well as anything could. “You idiot,” she admonished her body. “You don’t want this. This could kill you.”
She washed her hair and made herself think cold, rational thoughts. She thought about all the cats she had ever owned, and how many of them had had four versus five or six toes. She scrubbed between her toes and thought about the process for creating cold-pressed soap. And when those things didn’t help, she got out of the warm bath and stood in the cold air and made herself remember a set of autopsy woodcuts reproduced in one of the articles she’d read. 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.
She nodded, in control of herself finally.
She called for her maid. When Louisa dressed her again—in a high-necked long-sleeved gown of dark purple with gloves to match—Violet had no errant thoughts. She was better, entirely better. She’d talk to Sebastian. She’d apologize—after all, she ought not to have taken his hand or turned to him. She shouldn’t have almost-kissed him. She certainly should not be having these thoughts.
She would apologize, and they’d go back to being friends. All the stupid flapping valves in her heart could keep on flapping, for all Violet cared. The heart was a muscle like any other muscle in her body.
She was manicured and coiffed. Her maid gave her gown one last brushing. And then she brought out the mirror-stand. No longer homely, Violet once again qualified as barely handsome. As much as she could ever hope for. She stared at herself in the mirror. Her mirror-eyes glinted at her.
It’s not selfish to want to be held.
“You be quiet,” Violet told herself.
“Your pardon? Your ladyship, I didn’t say anything.”
Violet waved a hand in apology. “I was talking to her,” she said, extending a finger to the mirror.
“Oh, then. That’s all right.” Louisa bobbed. “Will there be anything else?”
Violet shook her head and went in search of her best friend.
She would have to tell him something. The problem was that he knew her too well. None of her lies would work on him.
I may have given you the wrong impression, but actually, I don’t want to kiss you. It’s just an unfortunate muscular tic, an involuntary twitch of the heart.
Yes, well, remember how we’re friends? What good friends we are! How lovely is it to have a good friend, someone you don’t want to kiss!
No good. He’d know she was lying.
I do want to kiss you, but it seems like an awful idea.
I do want to kiss you, but I’m scared.