To Have and to Hoax(43)
“Sheep?” James said blankly.
“Yes, sheep,” she said with greater enthusiasm. If she was going to do the thing, she might as well get into the spirit of it. “You know, about hip height? Very woolly?”
“I understand what a sheep is,” James said. Violet could practically see him grinding his teeth. “How, precisely, is this a source of comfort for you in your moment of need?”
“Sheep remind me of my childhood,” Violet said mournfully. She heaved a great sigh, one that might have been more convincing had James not been perfectly well aware how eager she had been to escape her mother’s clutches at the age of eighteen. “It wasn’t all lovely, of course, but there were moments . . . walking through the gardens with Roland when he was a baby . . . seeing the sheep dotting the hills behind the house . . . all that baa-ing . . .” She trailed off, staring into the middle distance with a wistful expression.
“So adorable. So pudgy. With such fluffy hair.” She sniffled.
“The sheep?” James asked.
“No, Roland!” Violet said with indignation. “He’s a bit of a rotter as far as brothers go, especially now that he’s at Oxford, but he was a darling baby.”
This was in fact something of a stretch. Roland had been a very red, very fussy, very smelly baby. Violet, however, smiled a watery smile at her husband, as though barely able to refrain from bursting into tears.
James regarded her as though she’d entirely taken leave of her senses—which, Violet was forced to admit, was not an unfair reaction to the past three minutes of conversation.
“Well,” he said as though he’d come to some sort of decision, placing the book down on the bedside table. “It is clear that you shouldn’t leave this bed anytime soon.”
“Er,” Violet said, her mind racing. The words she was thinking at the moment were decidedly unladylike.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked, reaching behind her to plump her pillows. Violet caught her breath at his proximity—he hadn’t touched her, and yet he was so close to her that if she were but to lean forward a hairsbreadth she could press her lips to the underside of his jaw. That decidedly unhelpful thought sent her heart racing once again. His scent was stronger at such close range, and she recalled how in the early days of their marriage she could tell as soon as he entered a room, no matter how crowded—as though she were somehow more attuned to his scent than to anyone else’s. At first, she had thought it rather odd; after a while, however, it had merely been comforting, to look up in a room full of people and find his gaze unerringly, see those green eyes seeking out her own.
It had all been so . . . lovely. There was a great sense of peace that came from the knowledge that there was one person above all others who was always on her side.
Until, of course, he hadn’t been.
Until he had chosen to believe the worst of her, of her motives for marrying him.
Until he had added her name to the long list of people that he could not trust. She understood to a certain extent why he had such difficulty trusting others—a childhood with the Duke of Dovington would have that effect on many men, she suspected. What she could not understand was why she had not been worthy of his trust. Why, four years ago, he had allowed a single argument to do such damage to a marriage that had been—to her, at least—so precious.
Her usual surge of anger came upon her, and she embraced it, finding it a relief after a few days spent in James’s company, during which her defenses had lowered infinitesimally. This anger was a welcome reminder that before her was the man who had made her fall head over heels in love with him—and then pushed her away just as abruptly, making the past four years a misery.
Well, she was finished with all of that. She refused to allow one person to be the sole keeper of her happiness a moment longer.
So she would cough, and she would wheeze, and she would bring him to his knees—and then she would move on with her life.
It would be a bit easier to do so, of course, if the close proximity of his forearms to her person did not send her into a fit of swooning, but she was determined to be stronger than this traitorous body of hers.
Beginning now.
“I am quite comfortable, thank you,” she said, a note of steel in her voice, and reached out with one hand to grasp one of his arms. “My pillows are entirely satisfactory.”
“Of course,” he murmured, the very picture of solicitousness as he withdrew his arms from behind her. The welcome space that was created between them was erased a moment later, however, when he sat back down on the edge of the bed. Mercifully, he managed to avoid either of the other two books that were somewhere under the bedspread.
“Did you require something else from me, husband?” she asked sweetly.
He raised an eyebrow; it made creases in his forehead that she found annoyingly endearing, and she quickly drew her eyes away from that treacherous terrain. She could afford no skin-wrinkle-induced moments of weakness.
“I am merely here to ensure that you are as comfortable as possible, in your weakened state. Especially as it seems that your mind may be going.” Something about the way he said the word comfortable sent a shiver down her spine, despite the fact that the look on his face was one of bland concern. It was distracting—she realized that he was still speaking to her, though she hadn’t been attending anything he’d said.