It was this enticing thought that was occupying most of his mental energy when he was dragged out of the reverie by the sound of Jeremy’s voice.
“West! Fancy a drink, old chap?”
James raised his head. Sure enough, his elder brother stood before them, regarding James in particular with an expression that was a mixture of amusement and disapproval.
“West,” James said shortly.
“James,” his brother replied. “Rough evening?”
“Not at all,” James said coldly, sitting up straighter in his chair.
West raised an eyebrow. James returned the gesture.
He could remember happier days, when conversations with his brother had not always felt like some sort of silent battle. When they’d been children, the duke had largely ignored James, focusing his attention and energies on his eldest son and heir, West. The young Marquess of Weston, it was understood, was the one the family pinned its hopes on. The future duke and steward of the land. The continuation of a long line of dukes. It was West who spent long days riding about the estate with the duke, while James was left behind in the care of a nurse or, later, a tutor.
His father’s motives for favoring West had not been particularly clear at the time to a boy who had spent his entire life in a large house in the country without anything in the way of fatherly affection—and not much of the brotherly sort, either, given West’s frequent absence. He had been sent to Eton, where Jeremy and Penvale had become brothers of a sort to him, and it was only after he’d taken up residence in London after finishing university that he and West had formed any sort of friendship. As an adult, James had come to realize that in some ways he, and not his brother, had received the better end of the deal in regard to their father.
The aforementioned friendship had faltered when his marriage had. Immediately on the heels of his argument with Violet, James—admittedly in a rather prickly mood—had quarreled with West, ostensibly over the management of the Audley House stables, but more broadly over their father’s role in his life, his marriage, and his relationship with his brother.
Their conversations in the recent past had been less warm than they once had been.
“West, have you plans for tomorrow evening?” Jeremy asked, interrupting James’s line of thought.
West refocused his attention from his brother. “Nothing specific.”
“Come to the Belfry with us then. We’re bringing the ladies,” Jeremy added in a conspiratorial whisper.
West stilled, looking suddenly and without warning very ducal. His gloves, which he had been slapping lightly against one of his thighs, ceased moving, and everything about him—from his perfectly tied neckcloth to the shine on his shoes—screamed disapproval. “The ladies?” he repeated in a deceptively mild tone. He shifted the walking stick he had used ever since the curricle accident from his side to his front, bracing it with both hands.
“Just my sister and Violet,” Penvale added quickly, but this did not seem to mollify West in the least. His dark gaze left Penvale and Jeremy and refocused on James with greater intensity. James and his brother shared a striking physical resemblance: both were tall and broad of shoulder, with similarly disheveled dark curls and memorably green eyes. From a distance, the only difference between them was the slight limp that had plagued West’s gait since the age of twenty-four.
“How can you possibly be considering escorting your wife to a place like the Belfry?” West asked, giving James a glimpse of the formidable duke he would one day become. His voice was mild, and he was careful to speak quietly enough to ensure that no one beyond Penvale and Jeremy overheard them, but James could sense the anger lurking behind his words.
James rose, feeling this was a conversation for which he would like to be at eye level with his brother. “If you must know, my wife asked me to escort her,” he said evenly, hoping that he was giving nothing away through his tone. Other than Violet, West had always been the person best able to see through his cool demeanor.
“On friendly terms with her again?” West asked, arching a brow.
James’s fist clenched, but he merely said, “No.”
West broke first. “Do what you want, James.” He shifted his cane back into one hand and took a step back. “I assume this is the latest parry in your never-ending war.” He nodded at Jeremy and Penvale in turn and turned back to James for one final parting shot. “I suppose I shall see you at the Belfry tomorrow, then.”
“But—”
“If you’re determined to risk your wife’s reputation rather than have any sort of honest conversation with her, then I suppose, for the sake of the family, I shall have to join you to control the damage.” And with that, he made an unhurried exit.
“Bastard,” James muttered, staring after him a moment before dropping back into his chair.
Jeremy watched West’s exit from the room with interest. “How does he manage to make a limp look so elegant?” he wondered aloud to no one in particular.
“Shall I cripple you, to give you some practice?” James asked pleasantly.
“If this is what marriage does to a man’s temper, I shall continue to avoid it,” Jeremy shot back.
James sank back into his chair and generously refilled his glass from the bottle of Madeira at hand. He took a healthy sip.
“What are you going to do, Audley?” Jeremy asked more quietly, his tone uncommonly serious.
James rolled his head to the side to look at his friends. “I’m going to play her game,” he said decisively, taking another sip from his glass. The room was beginning to look fuzzy around the edges, and he knew he would have a devil of a headache in the morning, but he couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment. “And if that requires going to Julian Belfry’s bloody theater, then so be it.”
There was nothing, Violet reflected the following evening, quite so satisfying as a well-thought-out plan, executed perfectly.
Or so she imagined. She would not know from personal experience. Her own plan, as it were, was proving to be slightly more frustrating than anticipated.
She had awoken that morning, eager to feign a brilliant recovery from the previous day’s illness, but no sooner had she rung her bell to summon Price than she received a visit from her husband. Unlike the previous afternoon, however, he had not lingered; he had merely hovered in the doorway, informing her that he was leaving for his morning ride and that he had given strict instructions to the servants to ensure that she remained abed all day.
“To preserve your strength,” he said solemnly, and then had departed, so quickly that the pillow she had flung to the floor in consternation and the unladylike oath she had uttered had been observed by no one.
The day that had followed had been dissatisfying, to put it politely.
To put it impolitely, she had felt like throwing herself out the bloody window.
One day in bed, particularly when one is, in fact, in the pink of health, is tiresome; two days confined are nearly intolerable. Prior to her “illness,” she had been engaged in cataloguing the complete contents of the library in preparation for a complete reorganization. She couldn’t very well spend her entire day on a ladder in the library, but she had already read all of the most recent editions of the periodicals to which she subscribed and written enough letters to the editor that she felt a satisfying sense of accomplishment, and yet still the hours stretched ahead of her. She picked up and set aside a dozen books in turn. She even, in a fit of desperation, penned a note to her mother, inviting her to tea the following day. And still, it was only midmorning.