“There’s nothing to tell!” James said, belatedly realizing that he had raised his voice. He cast a glance around and was relieved to note that no one in the inn yard—with the irritating exception of Jeremy and Penvale, of course—was paying them much heed. Clearly the grooms and travelers had better things to do with their afternoon than gape at a pair of bickering aristocrats. James agreed, considering that he himself had better things to do than be one of the aforementioned bickering aristocrats.
Violet crossed both of her arms over her chest in a way that managed to do extremely distracting things to her bosom. James spared a moment to be grateful that she was not wearing a more revealing frock, if only for the sake of his ability to concentrate.
“How often has this happened to you, then?” Violet asked, eyeing him with great scrutiny. “If you’re in the habit of receiving head injuries without informing me, should I assume this is an everyday occurrence for you?” She spoke as though he had asked the bloody horse to throw him.
“This is the first time it has happened in recent memory, madam,” he said through gritted teeth, his arms stiff and straight at his sides as he fought against his sudden desire to give her a good shaking. He made an effort to lower his voice, if only for the sake of making himself unintelligible to a certain viscount and marquess a few feet away.
“I’m not sure I believe you,” Violet said with a delicate sniff. “And if this isn’t the first such accident you’ve had, who knows what sort of damage you’ve done to your mental capacity?” She gave him an assessing look. “I mean . . . should I really trust you with the family finances, James, if it’s possible that you’ve gone soft in the head?”
James’s hand flexed of its own accord, but somehow, miraculously, his voice was still even. “I believe, my lady, that my mental state remains as undiminished as it ever was.”
Violet arched a dark brow. “I will, of course, take you at your word, since I have no other choice . . .” She trailed off, an expression of carefully calculated skepticism on her face that spoke volumes. It was a look, he knew, that was calibrated to annoy him—and it worked. He hated that she knew him so well; he hated that he had once allowed her to get close enough to him to now use this knowledge as a weapon.
“Damn it, Violet,” he began.
“I don’t want to hear anything else from you,” she said, and looked over his shoulder at Jeremy and Penvale. “Penvale,” she called, raising her voice slightly, “next time he’s enough of a fool to climb onto the back of a horse that my father told me just last week was unbreakable, please wait to notify me until you’re certain about whether he’ll live or die. I should hate to make a habit of exhausting the horses unnecessarily in mad dashes across the country.”
She stepped neatly past James as she spoke, taking quick, tidy steps toward her—his, damn it!—carriage.
“London to Kent isn’t across the country!” James called after her in frustration, unable to remain silent but equally unable to muster a better parting shot than that. “And you didn’t even make it halfway!”
Violet spared him one last, scornful look over her shoulder before climbing into the carriage and disappearing.
“Not your best effort, old chap,” Jeremy said, having appeared at James’s side as he watched Violet walk away. “Bit embarrassing, really.”
“Get in the carriage,” James demanded. “Then take me to London, and never speak of this again.” He paused a moment, considering. “Actually, first, get me a damn drink.”
“That,” said Jeremy, clapping him on the shoulder, “is the most sense you’ve made all day.”
Three
By the time her carriage rolled to a halt in front of their house on Curzon Street late that evening, Violet was so tired that the edge had worn off her anger. The events of the day floated through her mind as she made her way into the house and then up the stairs toward her bedchamber, but she couldn’t focus on any of them. While her conviction that she was in the right had not weakened in the slightest, she found herself so exhausted that she cared little for anything beyond the prospect of a bath, followed shortly by bed.
The next morning, however, Violet awoke feeling considerably more energized. She could tell by the light streaming through the windows that it was not terribly late, and after she had rung for Price and sat down at her dressing table to brush her hair, she found herself wondering whether she would find her husband at the breakfast table.
If he had returned home at all, that was. She assumed he had, but he might have been so irritated after their meeting at the coaching inn that he returned to Audley House.
Not that the man had any cause to be annoyed, Violet fumed. It had been infuriating enough when he’d accepted the stables as a wedding gift from his father without so much as a word to her until several days into their marriage, and worse still when she’d discovered that on days he spent at the stables or holed up in his study going over the figures, he met her at the dinner table in a prickly mood. Previously, however, her frustration had only ever slid into true anger when he tried to insist to her that the work he did at the stables was for her, for them—as though only he was aware of what she truly wanted.
She could not, no matter how many times they squabbled about it, understand why he dedicated such obsessive attention to the running of the stables at Audley House. To be sure, she knew her husband enjoyed a good ride in the park or across his estate as much as the next man, but James was not naturally inclined to spend an afternoon at Tattersalls eyeing and endlessly debating the latest horseflesh. And while he was undoubtedly excellent with figures—and had indeed seen revenues from the stables increase under his stewardship—she could not understand why he refused to hand over some of the responsibility to others, and any debate with him on the subject tended to only provoke her ire.
However, the events of yesterday had proved nothing if not her husband’s unique ability to send her rage spiraling to new heights. She would have admired him for it had she not been so preoccupied by her desire to stab him with a fork in a delicate area. Repeatedly.
Cutlery-related violence, however, could not be enacted without the presence of its victim, and by the time she had dressed and descended to breakfast, James had apparently left. It was only after discreetly inquiring of Price as she was dressing that Violet had learned that he had in fact returned home the night before. She didn’t know why she had expected this morning to be any different than usual. She frequently took breakfast in bed in order to reduce the number of times she and James must meet across a table in a given day, and even when she did come down, he often departed before her for his morning ride in Hyde Park. He liked to ride early, well before the fashionable hour at which the ton descended upon the park in hordes.
Once upon a time, Violet had accompanied him on some of those rides—she could remember vividly the peculiar quality of the light on the trees on those mornings, and the crispness of the air cutting through the warmth of her riding habit. The strength of the horse beneath her, and the strange elation, sense of life, that came from being out and about when much of the world—or, rather, much of their world—still slumbered, recovering from the previous evening’s excesses.