“I agree with Emily,” Diana said unexpectedly. “It’s been four years of this nonsense, and I’ve held my tongue”—Violet snorted—“for the most part,” Diana added hastily, “but if you’ve now stooped to the level of childish tricks, then I think this has gone on quite long enough.”
“You don’t understand—” Violet began, but Diana cut her off.
“Of course we don’t,” she said severely. “Because you’ve never told us anything about what this foolish argument was about in the first place.”
This was, in fact, the truth. In the days following that horrible morning, Violet had been too distraught to say much of anything to her friends. She’d been sleeping in her own bedchamber for the first time in her marriage, and she missed James’s warm presence beside her in the bed at night. She missed his surprise midday arrivals at the house, the feeling of his strong arms unexpectedly sliding around her as she sat reading or writing in the library, the scratch of stubble as he pressed a warm kiss to her neck. She missed the heat of his kisses, the feel of his bare skin sliding against her own.
She had even missed their arguments, infuriating as they were. Marriage to James was many things, but placid was not always one of them. They had quarreled frequently during their first year of wedded bliss—so frequently she thought bitterly in those long days immediately after their separation, that she ought to have seen this coming. And yet, they had always made up—often in spectacularly enjoyable fashion. Until now.
In short, she was miserable. And by the time she became slightly less miserable, and began to just get on with it, she had no desire to discuss the events of that day. Every time she thought about it she felt hurt and betrayed all over again, the sting of James’s lack of trust in her, his inability to overcome the first instance of his faith in her being tested, as biting as it had been on that first morning, and the thought of sharing the story of their argument sounded as appealing as pouring lemon juice onto a paper cut. Meaning that no one—not her two closest friends, not her mother (perish the thought), no one—knew the reasons for her falling-out with James. Except, she supposed, for James’s father. He’d likely worked it out quite easily. But since she, like James, made it a practice to have as little contact with the duke as possible, it was never a subject that had been broached.
“I don’t wish to discuss it,” Violet said, her voice sounding stiff even to her own ears.
“But, Violet, it’s been four years now,” Diana protested. “If you’d just tell us what the bastard’s done, I should feel much better able to adjust my own behavior accordingly. I never know whether I should be moderately cold or if I should give him the cut direct. I shall feel wretched if he’s done something beyond the pale and I’ve been making polite conversation with him for years.”
“Carry on with your conversations,” Violet said, cutting off Diana’s flow of chatter once the latter paused for breath. Avoiding Diana’s hawkish gaze, she instead looked at Emily, who was surveying her with a peculiar expression on her face, one that she hoped very much wasn’t pity.
“You loved him once, Violet,” Emily said quietly. “Don’t you want to fight for it, rather than play foolish games?” She paused, then added in a small voice, “I would.”
Violet looked at her friend, who had spent the past five Seasons catering to the whims of her foolish parents, who had watched both of her dearest friends marry while she remained, as ever, Lady Emily Turner, the prim, proper, and terribly virginal marquess’s daughter. And Violet realized in a sudden moment of clarity that in Emily’s eyes, it must seem extremely foolish of Violet to have allowed a great love match to wither and die. If only repairing the damage were so simple. If only it were as easy as walking up to her husband one morning and declaring a truce.
But it wasn’t. It was not just the four years of silent meals and stiff conversations that divided them, but the knowledge Violet held, deep within herself, that her husband didn’t trust her—her love, her faith in him, her knowledge of her own heart.
However, she said none of this. Instead, she said simply, “It’s too late, Emily. I can’t mend four years of damage. But I can show the man that I’m not something to be casually discarded.”
“Ah,” Diana said, as though something had become immediately clear to her. “Are you going to become enceinte?”
“Considering we don’t share a bedchamber anymore, I’m not sure how I’d go about doing so.”
“Oh, Violet, you can be frightfully naive for a married woman,” Diana said impatiently. “I didn’t mean that Audley would be your partner in this endeavor. I was thinking more of planting a cuckoo in the nest.”
“You want her to take a lover?” Emily hissed, looking about frantically as though the walls had ears—which, considering the number of servants in the house, it was entirely possible that they did.
“She’d hardly be the first unhappily married woman of the ton to do so,” Diana said. She shrugged. “I’ve been thinking of taking one myself.”
“Diana . . . you . . .” Words seemed to fail Emily entirely, and she subsided into a sort of distressed sputtering.
“Diana, please do stop trying to shock Emily,” Violet said.
“It’s not my fault that her virgin sensibilities make it so easy.” Diana leaned back against the settee. As ever, she managed to make bad posture look seductive in a way that Violet could never quite manage.
“In any case, Diana, your husband is dead, so I daresay the circumstances are a bit different.” Seeing Diana open her mouth, no doubt with some new scheme to share, Violet waved her to silence. “I do appreciate your . . . er . . . helpful suggestions, but I have something else in mind already.”
“Oh?” Diana sat back up again. “Do tell.”
And, leaning forward conspiratorially, Violet did.
Four
James was having an extremely dissatisfying day.
For the second morning in a row, he had left the house early, before Violet was awake, assuming she had little desire to see him at the breakfast table in light of their most recent conversation. Although, he reminded himself firmly, it was his bloody breakfast table, and he could damn well use it as he saw fit, whenever he very well pleased.
In theory.
In practice, he was more or less hiding from his own wife. It was thoroughly embarrassing. Discretion was the better part of valor and all that rot, though, and he found the idea of another argument in the same vein as their last one to be extremely trying.
Yes, better to give her a few days to cool off before resuming the normal froideur of their dinners. Dinnertime in the Curzon Street house tended to be just shy of unbearable, in truth. Nothing terribly outrageous, of course—no blistering rows or other such unseemly displays of feeling. They were English, for God’s sake. But the reality was somehow worse—sitting across the table from Violet, always painfully beautiful in her evening gowns, her low-cut bodices a hellish temptation for a man who’d had nothing more than his hand for company in bed these past four years. And the silence—the silence was the worst. Violet, who could rarely cease her chatter long enough to take a breath, so full of life and ideas and curiosity about everything, everywhere—to sit across from her in silence was worse than any argument could have been.