To Have and to Hoax(28)
She hadn’t been able to catch any of the conversation downstairs, had heard only muted male voices, but she heard James’s footsteps now, loud and clear, and it occurred to her that she would recognize his tread anywhere. She knew the precise weight of his footfalls, the length of his strides, and she tried not to contemplate the number of evenings she had lain abed, listening to those footsteps passing by her bedroom door on the way to his own.
Her own door flung open with a bang, not at all like the quiet knock he had offered just days before. She firmly resisted the temptation to fuss with her hair. She was supposed to be ill, for heaven’s sake.
James stalked into the room, reaching behind himself to shut the door, thankfully with less force than he had employed in opening it. His dark hair was in slight disarray, as though he had run a hand through it roughly, as she knew he was wont to do when frustrated or upset. She felt a sudden, piercing desire to smooth it for him, and her heart clenched at the thought, even as she gave herself a stern mental shake. She was supposed to be punishing the man, not soothing him.
There was an odd look on his face as he approached her bedside—assessing. He seemed to be sizing her up, perusing her from head to toe and back again. His green eyes were glittering, and there was more color in his cheeks than usual. She lifted her chin, waiting for him to speak first, and casually laced her hands so that the telltale ink-stained finger was hidden.
“Why the devil was there a physician leaving the house as I arrived?” he barked, coming to a halt approximately a foot away from her. “Wooton said he had been here for some time.”
“You asked me to speak to a physician,” Violet replied.
“I suppose it was too much to ask that you perhaps inform your husband before doing so?” He phrased it like a question, but did not wait for a response before halving the distance between them and seizing her hand. Most unfortunately, it was the hand with the ink-stained finger.
“I wasn’t aware that such courtesies were expected between us these days,” she said, hoping to distract him from the noticeable dark stain. His only reaction was an involuntary squeezing of the hand he now held firmly between his. Or not so involuntary, as it transpired. He flipped her hand over so her palm faced upward atop his own and began poking at it with no great finesse.
“Might I ask what you are doing?” she asked, reining in her temper with some effort. The pokes were not as gentle as they might have been. And was the ink stain visible? From this angle, likely not—but she thought it best to bring an end to these proceedings as quickly as possible.
“Checking your pulse,” came the curt reply, as the hand palpitations continued.
“I think you’ve missed it a bit,” she said dryly, as his hand inched up her inner arm.
“Yes, well, I’m not a trained physician.” Was it her imagination, or was there extra emphasis on those last words?
“I know,” she said, yanking her arm out of his grasp. “That’s why I consulted one.”
He paused a moment, eyeing her, his expression inscrutable. She thought longingly of the days when his every thought and idea had seemed to rest openly on his face when he looked at her, secrets that were hers for the taking laid bare. The fact that he hid so much of himself away from everyone else had made it feel even more special, like a gift he offered to her alone.
“And what did this physician have to say, precisely?”
She looked at him for a long moment—hadn’t Lord Julian spoken to him? Had something gone amiss downstairs? She thought quickly, then hedged. “He had a good many things to say.”
“What sorts of things?” he asked with deadly calm, sitting carefully down on the edge of her bed. The bed was large enough that he still was not touching her, but she braced herself with one hand to ensure that she did not accidentally roll toward the depression he had created.
“Well,” she said, drawing the word into several syllables, “he seemed very interested in my lungs.”
“In your lungs, or the breasts that cover them?” he asked darkly.
Violet sputtered.
His eyes, which had been fixed for a moment on the assets in question, flicked to her face. “What I meant to say,” he added hastily, clearly attempting to salvage the situation, “is that I can’t have a lecherous doctor treating my wife.”
Violet nearly snorted. Lord Julian had barely looked at her in the time he’d been in the room, so engrossed had he been in the script in his hand; he had occasionally summoned one of the servants to bring hot water or tea, for the sake of appearances, and had at one point taken a dramatic trip to the library to consult some sort of medical text. Or so he told Wooton, who had lurked in the hallway like an anxious mother hen. Violet had never seen him so fussed.
“I don’t think that Briggs had lechery in mind, my dear husband,” Violet said, resisting the impulse to bat her eyelashes at him. “He was rather elderly.”
“Was he?” James looked at her closely, and she felt that she was being tested, somehow, though she couldn’t quite tell what exactly he wished—or didn’t wish—her to say.
“He was,” she confirmed, her mind on Lord Julian’s absurd set of false whiskers. “You saw him, I trust? Or is your eyesight failing now, as your own age advances?” She was testing him, too, and she knew she shouldn’t, but something about him had always made her want to prod at his stiff exterior until it shattered. His jaw tensed and, glancing down, she saw his hand drumming a pattern on the counterpane, one of his few tells.