To Have and to Hoax(33)

“But—”

“If you’re determined to risk your wife’s reputation rather than have any sort of honest conversation with her, then I suppose, for the sake of the family, I shall have to join you to control the damage.” And with that, he made an unhurried exit.

“Bastard,” James muttered, staring after him a moment before dropping back into his chair.

Jeremy watched West’s exit from the room with interest. “How does he manage to make a limp look so elegant?” he wondered aloud to no one in particular.

“Shall I cripple you, to give you some practice?” James asked pleasantly.

“If this is what marriage does to a man’s temper, I shall continue to avoid it,” Jeremy shot back.

James sank back into his chair and generously refilled his glass from the bottle of Madeira at hand. He took a healthy sip.

“What are you going to do, Audley?” Jeremy asked more quietly, his tone uncommonly serious.

James rolled his head to the side to look at his friends. “I’m going to play her game,” he said decisively, taking another sip from his glass. The room was beginning to look fuzzy around the edges, and he knew he would have a devil of a headache in the morning, but he couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment. “And if that requires going to Julian Belfry’s bloody theater, then so be it.”

There was nothing, Violet reflected the following evening, quite so satisfying as a well-thought-out plan, executed perfectly.

Or so she imagined. She would not know from personal experience. Her own plan, as it were, was proving to be slightly more frustrating than anticipated.

She had awoken that morning, eager to feign a brilliant recovery from the previous day’s illness, but no sooner had she rung her bell to summon Price than she received a visit from her husband. Unlike the previous afternoon, however, he had not lingered; he had merely hovered in the doorway, informing her that he was leaving for his morning ride and that he had given strict instructions to the servants to ensure that she remained abed all day.

“To preserve your strength,” he said solemnly, and then had departed, so quickly that the pillow she had flung to the floor in consternation and the unladylike oath she had uttered had been observed by no one.

The day that had followed had been dissatisfying, to put it politely.

To put it impolitely, she had felt like throwing herself out the bloody window.

One day in bed, particularly when one is, in fact, in the pink of health, is tiresome; two days confined are nearly intolerable. Prior to her “illness,” she had been engaged in cataloguing the complete contents of the library in preparation for a complete reorganization. She couldn’t very well spend her entire day on a ladder in the library, but she had already read all of the most recent editions of the periodicals to which she subscribed and written enough letters to the editor that she felt a satisfying sense of accomplishment, and yet still the hours stretched ahead of her. She picked up and set aside a dozen books in turn. She even, in a fit of desperation, penned a note to her mother, inviting her to tea the following day. And still, it was only midmorning.

Deciding there was only so much one could tolerate, she rang for Price. At the request she made, her lady’s maid’s calm demeanor slipped for a moment—but only a moment. She then offered a curtsey and a calm “Yes, my lady,” as though this request were nothing out of the ordinary. Violet, pleased, leaned back against her pillows and waited.

By late afternoon, she had a pleasing routine worked out. Price would bring her a stack of books—only a few at a time, in case she were observed by Wooton or one of the footmen—and Violet, using the makeshift desk she had created for herself (her tea tray, cleared of its china), would scribble away at the stack of papers that currently comprised her catalogue. While she was working, Price would remove any books with which she was finished, return them to the library, and reappear with a fresh stack. It was perhaps not ideal, but it was certainly better than twiddling her thumbs and reading Pamela for the tenth time.

At some point in the afternoon, she detected voices in the entryway downstairs, and she leapt to her feet, nearly upsetting her ink bottle in the process. She shoved the catalogue, pen, and ink back into her bedside table drawer, but what to do with the books? They wouldn’t fit, and judging by the pace of the footsteps, she had no time to scamper to her desk, which she had resisted using in the event that a maid came in unannounced and should see her sitting there rather than languishing piteously in her bed. She didn’t think James would stoop so low as to have the servants spy on her, but she supposed she couldn’t be too careful. Lacking any other options, she buried the remaining three books underneath her pillows and flung herself back into bed, noting with satisfaction that she had managed to avoid any ink splotches. She picked up the closest thing to hand—the Lady’s Monthly Museum, which she had left nearby to be utilized in the event of just such an emergency—and affected an air of great interest in its contents as she heard a firm knock at her door.

“Enter,” she called, idly flicking a page. She avoided looking up, leaning forward to focus on the rather maudlin bit of poetry on the page before her.

There was a rather loud throat-clearing from the direction of the doorway.

Violet turned another page.

“Violet.”

She looked up innocently.

“Yes?”