To Have and to Hoax(41)
“I would be most gratified,” he said, enunciating every word clearly, “if you would tell me, in clear and concise fashion, what the hell is going on.”
“Allow me to assist you, then,” came an amused voice from behind them, and James and Penvale turned. Belfry was leaning in the doorway at the entrance to the room. He was clothed in a simple shirt and breeches, a scarlet banyan completing the ensemble. His dark hair was tousled, and his eyes were bleary. He had the look of a man who had recently awoken from a rough night—and who had enjoyed every minute of it.
“Belfry,” James said shortly.
Belfry offered him a bow that went beyond the bounds of what politeness required and veered dangerously close to mockery. One of James’s palms curled into a fist at his side, but he was resolved, as always, to keep his temper, at least until he gained the information he sought.
After that? Well. He made no promises. Every gentleman had his limits.
“I’m touched by your eagerness to call upon me,” Belfry said, pushing off from the doorjamb and sauntering into the room. “But I must ask whether it was necessary to do so at such an hour.” He paused at the sideboard, considered the decanter sitting there, then seemed to think better of it and continued his progress into the room.
“I can assure you, Belfry, I’d rather be anywhere than here at the moment,” James said shortly. “But, you see, when a man discovers another man visiting his wife in her bedchamber, he suddenly finds himself with some questions that need answering.”
“Does he?” Belfry flung himself onto a chaise. “I should think that it would all be rather obvious.” He did not smile, but James suspected that Belfry was trying to bait him.
“Why did you call upon my wife?”
“Why does a man ever call upon a lady?”
“Give it up, Belfry. You gave me your damned card. A man caught out in an improper liaison doesn’t usually leave behind his calling card.”
“Did I?” Belfry widened his eyes, and tapped his chin. “Must have been a mistake on my part.”
Keeping one’s temper was all very well, but there were times, James decided in an instant, when action was called for. He crossed the room in three great strides and seized the fabric of Belfry’s banyan, hauling him into a sitting position upon the chaise. James leaned close, his eyes locking with the other man’s.
“Tell me what is afoot,” he said with deadly calm, “or I shall ask you to meet me with pistols at dawn.”
“I believe, as the challenged party, I would have the right to select the weapon,” Belfry said, but when James’s grip tightened, he sighed. “All right, let me go, you bloody madman.” He slumped back against the chaise when James loosened his hands, and surveyed James with some degree of irritation.
“I was invited, apropos of nothing, to dine with your friend here”—Belfry jerked his chin in Penvale’s direction—“at his sister’s house. I accepted. At said dinner party, your wife requested that I show up at your home disguised as a physician and make some sort of dark prognosis. I declined, naturally. She was persistent. I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you?”
It did not.
“Not having any desire to remain trapped at that dinner table for the rest of my natural life, I eventually agreed, provided she and Lady Templeton agreed to attend a show at the Belfry. I’m trying to attract a more respectable clientele.”
“Why did you give me your card, then?” James was genuinely curious. “I wouldn’t have recognized you under all that fur you had plastered onto your face.”
“I dislike being managed by women,” Belfry said, crossing one knee over the other. Even clad in a banyan, barefoot, dark hair mussed, he looked like a prince.
“I strongly advise you not to marry, then,” James suggested.
“No need to tell me that,” Belfry said with a thin smile. He gave James an assessing look. “I also thought, based on your reaction to my news, that your wife might have rather misjudged you.”
“What do you mean by that?” James asked. It was galling to have a man he barely knew making judgments about the state of his marriage. Belfry merely smirked.
“What are you going to do, Audley?” This was Penvale, who was eyeing James warily. As well he should be, considering the role he had played in this entire bloody mess. “Speak to Violet, I hope?”
James gave him a tight grin. “Something to that effect.”
Cataloguing a library from the confines of a bedchamber was no easy task, Violet reflected. She had thought that after the excitement of last night’s outing, a day of relapse might be called for, and had thrown herself into the role with great enthusiasm, especially since it had given her an excuse to revoke the invitation to tea she had extended to her mother the day before. She’d had all of her meals delivered to her chamber on trays, and had spent no small amount of time selecting the most innocent-and virginal-looking of her chemises—invalids, of course, being entirely excluded from the realm of earthly pleasures. She had braided her hair, then unbraided it, allowing it to flow over her shoulders in dark waves. She had practiced her cough several times, until she thought that she had it calibrated to a perfect degree of frailty.
And then she had taken to her bed and rung for Price. She did not think she was imagining the look of weary resignation that flickered over her maid’s face when she repeated her request of the day before. Violet supposed Price had better things to do than spend her day hauling small stacks of books up and down the stairs. However, she—Violet—also had more important work to do than reading improper novels in bed, and to do this work, she needed Price’s assistance.