To Have and to Hoax(42)

And so Violet had set to work again. However, the work gave her less satisfaction than it had done before. Productivity was all well and good when one had the freedom to roam about the house when necessary; after hours and hours of nothing but books, papers, and a tea tray for company, she was growing a bit . . . well . . . restless. She was discovering that there was a vast difference between being an invalid when one was truly ill and being an invalid in the full bloom of health. And while some society ladies did nothing more strenuous than lift a teapot each day, Violet was not one of them. A day in bed did not suit her, to say nothing of three days in bed in a row.

In a brief moment of weakness, she wondered if this plan of hers was not, in truth, an entirely disastrous idea. James was proving overall to be a less doting and devoted attendee at her sickbed than she would have wished. In her mind, she’d had vague fantasies of a dimly lit room, herself lying prone beneath the bed linens, her face pale. Sitting at her bedside was the worried husband, a tragic, romantic figure who clutched her hand and mopped her brow and proclaimed that she had never been more beautiful than she was in that precise moment, at the point of expiring.

Of course, Violet found upon closer examination of this fantasy that neither participant remotely resembled herself or James. Which, in turn, might explain why none of this was going precisely to plan.

It was as she was pondering how soon would be too soon to appear downstairs, fully clothed and miraculously on the mend, that there was a light tapping at her bedroom door. She started at the sound.

“Bugger,” she muttered. She had been so engrossed in her fantasies of freedom that she hadn’t heard footsteps approaching in the hallway. While Violet rather prided herself on never losing her head, there was no denying that there was a slight panic to her motions as she hastily yanked a blanket over the books on her tray, just as the door opened and James walked in.

Violet’s heart—treasonous organ that it was—immediately picked up its pace. Why, oh why, did he have to be so handsome? He was dressed in fawn-colored breeches and a dark blue coat. His dark curls were slightly mussed, as though he’d been outdoors. It was as though, whenever he walked into a room, something primal within her cried out to him, and some part of him answered.

It was, as ever, thoroughly unnerving.

And, most unsettling of all, at the moment his full attention was focused entirely on her.

With effort, she resisted the urge to pull the bedclothes up to her neck. She was a married woman, she reminded herself, not an innocent girl of sixteen. There was no need to cower in the presence of a man—not just any man, but her husband. He had, after all, seen her naked on any number of occasions. Recalling the rather large number of such occasions—and the creative locations in which some of them had occurred—brought warmth to her cheeks, which she hoped James would mistake for fever.

Wait. Was fever a symptom of consumption?

Drat. She had no idea.

“Violet,” he said, bowing slightly before shutting the door behind him.

“James.” She watched warily as he approached the bed with purpose. He reminded her of a graceful predator in the wild, stalking his prey. A lion, perhaps, or a tiger. There was something catlike about his movements.

“When I returned home and Wooton informed me that you were ill once again, I knew I must come see you immediately.” He stopped at her bedside, close enough for her to catch a whiff of his scent—a combination of sandalwood and soap. She tried not to admire the way his coat fit across his broad shoulders. “How are you feeling?” He reached out and seized her hand, and she allowed herself one moment of weakness in which to savor the warmth of his grasp, the comfort it conveyed.

“A bit better,” she said weakly, then coughed. “Certainly less poorly than I was feeling this morning.” She smiled at him, allowing the corners of her mouth to tremble a bit, as though she were merely putting on a brave face. This was not entirely an act—she had risked death by boredom today, which she felt was brave in its own way.

“Good, good,” James muttered, though Violet was not certain he had listened to her words as carefully as he ought. There was something rather . . . odd . . . in his eyes, and he was lavishing a perhaps undue amount of attention upon the hand he held so tightly in his own. It was a bit disconcerting, after the woefully inadequate displays of concern he had offered until this point. Violet was immediately suspicious.

He sat down beside her on the bed, then immediately leaped to his feet once more. Violet watched him, perplexed, before she realized the cause of his sudden motion: the feeling of several sturdy leatherbound books beneath the bedspread. He reached underneath the counterpane and retrieved one of the offending volumes.

“Er,” Violet said.

He quirked an eyebrow at her.

“You see,” she said, improvising hastily, “I felt my mind growing—er—disordered, and so I felt that reading something familiar and comforting might make me less confused.” It was, as even Violet would admit, not her best work. She was supposed to have consumption, for heaven’s sake; she wasn’t a mad old maiden aunt who wandered about the house at all hours of the night in confusion.

“I see,” James said, then peered at the spine. “And you found Agricultural Innovations of Shropshire, 1700–1800 to be just the sort of comfort read you were looking for?”

Drat. “Er,” Violet said again, thinking quickly. “I thought it might include some sheep.”