To Have and to Hoax(27)
“I’ve just been visiting her ladyship,” Briggs said after offering an exquisitely correct bow. There was nothing at all untoward in his behavior, so why did James, suddenly and without reason, wish to punch him in the face?
“Indeed?” James asked, arching a brow, pleased to hear that his voice sounded calm, regardless of his inner turmoil.
“Yes,” Briggs said, nodding. “She reports that she has been feeling poorly for some time now, and summoned me on the recommendation of her friend Lady Templeton.”
James relaxed his posture an infinitesimal amount; if Diana used the man, he must not be an utter quack.
“I was unaware that her ladyship was still unwell,” James said. “But I am glad she summoned you, regardless. Did you make any sort of diagnosis?”
“I am not precisely certain, my lord, and I of course do not wish to cause undue alarm—”
James’s stomach dropped unpleasantly. Violet was fine, he told himself; she was only three-and-twenty, for Christ’s sake. Nothing short of childbirth would slow her down—and that seemed an unlikely prospect at any time in the near future, given the current state of affairs between them.
“Out with it, man,” he said curtly, and even to his own ears his voice did not sound entirely steady.
“Yes, my lord,” Briggs said, bobbing another irritating bow. “I am not precisely certain, given her symptoms, but it did seem to me somewhat possible that her ladyship . . . well . . . her ladyship might be in the early stages of consumption.”
If James made any reply, he was not conscious of it; indeed, he could hear nothing over the sound of the roaring in his own ears, as he all at once felt unsteady on his own feet. He reached out, for the first time in his life, for something to lean on. He, who prided himself on relying on nothing and no one, found himself grasping the banister quite gratefully, clinging to its reassuring firmness and strength. He felt an uncharacteristic wish to turn to someone, to seek their reassurance that all would be well. And yet, the idea of actually doing so—whether that someone be his brother, or Penvale and Jeremy, or even the presumably knowledgeable physician before him—felt so foreign to him as to be inconceivable.
Vaguely, he became aware that Briggs was staring at him, an unreadable expression upon his face; as James took a second look at said face, something niggled at the back of his mind, something familiar, just out of reach.
“I will take my leave of you now, my lord,” Briggs said, his voice sounding as though it were coming from a great distance. “I have another pressing appointment, and I must not keep the lady in question waiting. But I should be happy to answer any of your . . . er . . . questions at a later date. Let me give you my card.”
Briggs fumbled in his case, extracting a card and pressing it into James’s unresisting fingers. With a last long, concerned glance and another bow, he made his departure.
The sound of the door closing behind Briggs had the effect of bringing James back to himself; he was suddenly moving, without recalling instructing his feet to do so, crossing the brief space of the entryway, Wooton opening the door even as he approached. He stood, blinking in the sunlight, opening his mouth to shout after Briggs—but Briggs was gone.
Or, rather, Briggs as he had been a moment before was gone. In his place, striding away down Curzon Street, was a man holding a set of false whiskers in one hand, a physician’s case in the other, energetically making his way toward a waiting carriage.
James glanced down at the card in his hand, and his suspicions were confirmed. The elaborately engraved card read LORD JULIAN BELFRY.
Violet heard the footsteps on the stairs and sprang into action. She tightly screwed on the lid to her ink bottle and wiped her pen with a handkerchief, then hastily shoved both, along with the sheet of paper upon which she had been writing, into a drawer of her bedside table. She had just flung herself back against her pillows, folding her hands calmly atop the blankets that covered her, when she noticed an alarming splotch of ink on her index finger. She rolled over and frantically opened the drawer once more, grabbing the ink-stained handkerchief and scrubbing at her finger. She had, after all, supposedly just been examined by a doctor while lying docilely abed, and therefore could not afford any suspiciously fresh ink spots—the result of a highly emotional letter to the editor of Ackermann’s Repository about a planned exhibition of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum.
Shoving the handkerchief under her pillow, she forced herself to recline calmly, as any true invalid would. She had been lying abed in a state of some anxiety for quite a while now; Lord Julian had arrived that morning, as they had arranged, and lingered in her room until James returned home. He had brought along a sheaf of papers, which Violet thought might have been a script, and had spent a quiet few hours perusing them, occasionally muttering to himself. She had written three letters, read a volume of scandalous poetry, read the latest issue of Ackermann’s Repository, and begun writing another letter. It was exactly what she would have been doing on any other day, but being forced to do it from the confines of her bed—since she had to keep up appearances, for the sake of any servants who might wander in—had made it inexpressibly more tedious. It had never occurred to her how dull a life of espionage must be at times, and she was very grateful that James had returned home early today.
Lord Julian had sprung into action as soon as they’d heard James’s voice downstairs—they had kept her bedchamber door cracked for just this purpose—and had vanished out the door, false whiskers in place, before Violet could offer so much as a thank-you.