To Have and to Hoax(53)
“I see,” Jeremy said, and James rather thought Jeremy did see, and that he pitied him. It was galling. However, they were Englishmen, and Englishmen certainly didn’t sit about discussing their feelings, of all things. “So your new scheme is to pant over every widow you see until your wife becomes so enraged that she murders you in a jealous passion?” He lifted his glass to James in a mocking tribute. “Congratulations. I’ve no doubt the drama they pen about you will be performed before generations to come.”
James took a hearty sip of his drink. “I’ve no plan at all,” he admitted, dropping back into his chair. “Unless you consider needling her until she admits she’s been lying to me a plan.”
“You’ve likely caused a fair bit of gossip, and likely gained nothing for it,” Jeremy pointed out. “We were hardly the only people in Hyde Park today. There were plenty of witnesses to you making an ass of yourself.” He took a sip of brandy. “Don’t you think it would be easier to just speak with her?” Jeremy’s voice was uncommonly serious, his gaze direct. In that moment, he looked every inch the marquess, and not at all like the Jeremy that James had known for fifteen years—the devil-may-care rogue, the second son without a whit of responsibility. In the nearly six years since Jeremy’s brother’s death, James had seen flickers of this—hints of the man that Jeremy could perhaps be, if he were ever to dedicate his thoughts to matters more weighty than which young widow of the ton was the most desirable at any given moment. Usually, he found these glimpses comforting, an indication of the person that James had always known lurked within Jeremy, underneath all the flash and charm and merrymaking.
At the moment, however, he just found it dashed inconvenient, as he was the one bearing the brunt of Jeremy’s attention.
“It’s been four years,” James reminded him. “I’m not sure we’ve much to say to one another after four years.” A more accurate statement would be that they had entirely too much to say to one another after four years, but he didn’t feel like sharing that sentiment with even his closest friend.
Jeremy opened his mouth, then closed it again. James could see the internal struggle taking place, could see how desperately Jeremy wished to ask questions. Seeming to give up the battle, he said, “If you would just tell me what your argument was all about—”
“No,” James insisted, and something in his tone must had been thoroughly convincing, because Jeremy fell silent at once, which was entirely unlike him. James had no desire to discuss the events of that day, to share the conversation between his father and Violet that he had overheard. And he didn’t care to pause long enough to examine why exactly he was so bent upon keeping the details of that day locked up within himself. A small voice in the very corner of his mind, one that was easily silenced, whispered that he feared someone telling him that he had been in the wrong four years ago. That was a possibility that he did not wish to consider. Because if he had been, then Violet’s anger with him was every bit as justified as his with her. Perhaps even more so.
No. He could not bear to think on it. He merely avoided speaking of that day because no man liked to admit that he had been out-maneuvered. And four years ago, he had learned that the circumstances of his marriage had involved a good deal more maneuvering than he’d had any notion of.
“Fine,” Jeremy said, settling even deeper into his chair like a petulant child. His posture was beginning to rival Penvale’s for lazy indolence. “But you’re being a bloody idiot, and I begin to wonder that Violet hasn’t left you and taken up with the first dashing Italian to waltz across the Channel. For Christ’s sake, Audley, do you know that Penvale and I didn’t realize that you and Violet had stopped speaking for months after it happened?”
James frowned. “That can’t be true.”
“It’s true,” Jeremy said firmly. “We knew you were drinking yourself into a stupor on a nightly basis, but we’d no notion of the reason until Penvale finally resorted to asking that sister of his”—Jeremy said the word sister the way he might have said succubus—“and she told him what was afoot.”
“It was none of your concern,” James said.
“If you treat Violet this way, it’s no wonder the two of you can barely hold a cordial conversation these days.”
“Jeremy, enough.” James suddenly felt a great deal more sympathy for the men who had challenged Jeremy to duels in the past. It was an appealing thought at the moment.
“Suit yourself, Audley,” Jeremy said in a way that made James somehow feel that he had come out on the losing end of this conversation. “But I warn you, the gossip will continue if you keep this madness up.”
James waved a hand dismissively. “There’s nothing to gossip about,” he said impatiently. “I hardly think a single conversation in the park is enough to whip the ton into a frenzy.”
“Ha,” Jeremy said, in the dark tones of a man who had had more than one irate husband threaten him with pistols at dawn after hearing the latest on-dit whispered in a ballroom. “You were practically falling all over yourself. And in front of me, no less.” He attempted an air of wounded outrage, largely unsuccessfully.
“Might I remind you, Willingham,” James said, and Jeremy looked up sharply at that—James almost never used Jeremy’s title—“that I have known Lady Fitzwilliam longer than you have, and quite possibly better.”