To Have and to Hoax(92)

James paused a moment, surprised at the realization that he could indeed, without much difficulty. “You’re a good friend, Jeremy,” he said, preparing to turn and leave. “I just wish sometimes you’d take things a bit more seriously.”

“But then—”

“I forgive you,” James said simply, and did not miss the look of relief he saw on his friend’s face just before he turned and left the room.





Fifteen


Violet was in her bedchamber when James returned home.

“Is she ill?” he asked Wooton, though he wasn’t quite able to muster up the appropriate note of husbandly anxiety to inject in his voice. So help him, if Violet were playing the consumptive again—

“I don’t believe so, my lord,” Wooton said, holding his hands out for James’s hat and gloves, which he had practically torn off in his haste. James tossed them to his butler without a second glance and began bounding up the stairs three at a time. He reached the second floor and began striding down the hallway to Violet’s door, at which he did not hesitate to knock firmly.

There was a brief pause, then the muffled sound of footsteps. The door opened, revealing Violet’s startled face.

“James—”

He stopped the rest of her words with his mouth. While not particularly effective as a method of silencing Violet indefinitely, it certainly worked in the short term—and had various benefits to himself as well.

He half expected her to shove him away, after their less-than-warm parting of the evening before, but she responded to him like kindling to a flame. He felt her softening, melting into his arms, her mouth opening under his with a soft sigh, and he suddenly found himself being kissed with an ardor equal to his own. Violet’s arms came up around his neck, her fingers plunging into his hair, and it was all he could do not to groan at the sensation, instead merely wrapping an arm around her waist and hauling her closer.

He managed to drag his lips away from hers and began planting a series of openmouthed kisses down her neck, the sound of her ragged breathing sparking his own desire even further. He felt as though he were on the verge of crawling out of his own body, so great was his need to possess, consume. Could this possibly be normal? Would this feeling never fade? Would he never be able to kiss his wife and not feel as though he were about to burst into flame?

With a herculean force of will, he managed to halt the southerly progress of his mouth, lifting his head and placing a last, more gentle kiss upon her lips. He took a step back, releasing her waist, and she opened her eyes after a moment, blinking at him in such adorable befuddlement that he was unable to resist bestowing another kiss upon her. This one would have escalated in a similarly amorous fashion had James not used both hands to bodily lift Violet away and set her down a foot or two away from him.

“Did you have an actual purpose in calling?” Violet asked casually. Her cheeks, however, were still flushed, and there was a slight hitch to her voice.

James opened his mouth, a dozen different explanations and justifications running through his head, competing for the opportunity to spill out of his mouth, and yet, in the end, the only two words to emerge were the most important ones:

“I’m sorry.”

Had he been a younger, more foolish man, he might have expected these two words to work like some sort of magic spell or healing balm, causing his wife to hurl herself into his arms, weeping copiously, rending his garments, and extracting promises from him to never allow them to be parted in such a fashion again. James could not deny that this vision had its own certain appeal, but, at the end of the day, he had married a flesh-and-blood woman, Violet, his Violet, with her quick temper and grudges and all the rest, and so he experienced a surprising sense of relief that she did nothing of the sort. Instead, she merely arched her brow and said, “I suppose you’d better sit down. This might take a while.”

She turned then, allowing him to follow her deeper into the room. She took a seat in one of the armchairs before the fireplace, gesturing for him to occupy the one opposite, which he did once she had been seated. He took this opportunity to take a proper look at her. She was wearing a morning gown of pale blue muslin, simply cut, beautiful against her fair skin. She looked a bit tired, the slight traces of dark shadows the only flaw to her lovely face, and he wondered if her night’s sleep had been as hard-won and troubled as his own. Her hair was slightly disheveled, no doubt a product of their entanglement a moment ago.

He thought that she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Fortunately—as was so often the case with Violet—before he could begin any truly maudlin reflections on her visage, involving pained metaphors or, God forbid, some mangled bits of Shakespeare, she spoke.

“So,” she said, her voice businesslike, “when you say you are sorry, do you mean generally or specifically?” She folded her hands neatly in her lap and shot him a politely inquiring look.

James felt as though he were back at Eton, sitting for an exam for which he hadn’t fully prepared. “Specifically? No, generally?” He resisted the temptation to clutch at his own hair. “What the devil are you talking about?”

“Well,” Violet said, “I was merely curious as to what you were apologizing for. Are you apologizing for our rather heated exchange last night, or for your actions over the past two weeks, or—”