Christ. It was going to be that sort of day. First Jeremy last night, now West—he supposed that once he’d dealt with his brother, he should take himself upstairs and submit to whatever verbal lashing Violet was no doubt saving for him. Might as well get it all over with at once. At least this time, he was the one sitting behind the desk.
“West,” he said, rising respectfully—West was, after all, still his elder brother, and a future duke at that. “What can I do for you?”
“What is this nonsense I’m hearing about you at my club?” West demanded, crossing to the sideboard where James kept a decanter of brandy and several cut-glass tumblers. He raised the decanter, uninvited, and poured himself a healthy splash. He did not ask James if he cared for a drink as well.
“I’m not entirely certain I know what you mean,” James said, though he in fact had a fairly good idea.
“It seems that you had a lengthy conversation with Lady Fitzwilliam in the park yesterday,” West said, his fastidiously correct use of Sophie’s title making the words sound extra stiff.
“Do you have spies?” James asked.
West looked at him sharply over the rim of his glass as he took a sip of his drink. “The fact that I’ve already heard of this should indicate how much gossip there has been, James. I’m not some old biddy swapping the latest news over tea, you know. But a man displaying blatant interest in a woman who is known to be linked to his best friend—”
“Not widely known, I shouldn’t think,” James muttered, watching his brother closely. It was clear that his suspicions had been correct—West likely knew every move Lady Fitzwilliam had taken in the years since they’d been close, even if he hadn’t so much as uttered her name.
“Widely enough,” West replied curtly, clearly in no mood for splitting hairs. “James, I know that we’ve not been on the best of terms these past years”—an understatement, James thought, but West always had been polite—“but as your brother, I can no longer sit by and watch you make a mess of your life.”
“Funny,” James said acidly. “You didn’t seem to mind overmuch when Father made a misery of it time and time again.” This was a slight exaggeration—James hadn’t been abused or mistreated, merely neglected. Now, as an adult, he realized that he had been rather lucky, all in all. As a boy of six, or eight, or ten, however, he’d been unable to see anything except a father whose love and attention were reserved solely for the elder brother he rarely saw, so much time did West spend in the duke’s company.
“I have never claimed that Father was a particularly good parent,” West replied, his eyes focusing intently on James.
“In fact, as I am certain you know, I do my best to avoid speaking to him whenever possible,” West continued, his eyes never leaving James’s. “So if you’d stop bloody punishing me for the fact that he’s a piss-poor father, then perhaps we could have a proper conversation.”
“I’m not punishing you for that,” James said sharply. “You were a boy, you couldn’t be expected to stop his favoring you. But I don’t have to forgive you for meddling in my life as an adult.”
“If you’re referring to that bloody row we had—”
“What else would I be referring to?” James asked, exasperated. He was rapidly reaching the limits of his patience—it had hardly been a restful twenty-four hours.
“—then I don’t know how else to make you see reason. You’re being a fool, and you’ve been a fool for the past four years.” West downed the rest of his drink in a single gulp, then crossed the room and set the empty tumbler down on James’s desk with a decisive clunk.
“I told you this four years ago, and I shall say it again today,” West said, leaning forward to fix James with his penetrating gaze. James, for all that he was a grown man of eight-and-twenty with a wife and a home of his own, felt very much like a younger brother in that moment. “You have made an utter mess of what started off as a brilliant marriage. You’ve allowed Father to guide everything you have or have not done for the entirety of your adult life, and you’re making yourself miserable in the process. I don’t mind much what you do with your own life—I can’t very well stop you, though I do pity poor Violet. But leave Sophie out of this.”
James barely managed to keep his expression neutral at the sound of West voicing Lady Fitzwilliam’s name, nor did he miss the emotion in his brother’s voice.
“Furthermore, you might consider the fact that I’m your brother, and it’s permissible for me to have opinions about how you conduct yourself, and how you go about your life. You don’t have to agree with me, or listen to me, but I’m allowed to voice them nonetheless. It’s part of loving someone, James.” He paused for a moment; when he spoke again, he had gotten himself under control, and his voice was once again cool and regulated. “When you’re ready to act like a man and not a child, you know where to find me,” West finished, tucking his hat under his arm and pulling on first one glove, then the other. “Until then . . .” He trailed off, clearly unsure how to conclude this heartwarming interlude of brotherly affection. “Until then,” he repeated, more firmly this time, before striding from the room as abruptly as he had materialized, scarcely seeming to lean on his cane at all.
James sank back into his chair as West departed, thinking longingly of the virtues of a lengthy tour somewhere without wives, friends, or brothers. Somewhere remote. The Far East, perhaps. Or New South Wales. A criminal colony seemed preferable to London at the moment.
He glanced down at the papers spread across his desk, the numbers swimming before his eyes, and groaned softly. If he ever had a son, he decided in that moment, the first piece of fatherly advice he would ever give him would be to never marry. Wives were too bloody distracting.
“My lord?”
James looked up, startled. As if summoned by his thoughts, his own wife hovered in the doorway. He rose instantly, and she took a couple of steps into the room. She was dressed in a morning gown of white lawn, her hair slightly disheveled. He wondered if she had any idea how utterly tempting she looked standing there, her cheeks flushed, dark tendrils of hair curling about her face. Her gown was modest, but it somehow only made James more tempted to reach for the bodice, to tug it down and follow its path with his lips.
Forcing his unruly thoughts into order with some difficulty, he said, “Violet? Can I help you?”
“I saw that West was here,” she said, walking toward one of the windows that bracketed James’s desk. “It was an unusual enough occurrence that I thought to see what he wanted.”
She spoke as though the answer he gave was not of terribly great interest to her, but he had one of the flashes he’d had of late—moments where suddenly he was twenty-three all over again and her every word and thought was visible to him, a book that only he could read. At the moment, she was desperately curious, but trying very hard not to show it.
It was all going according to plan—even West’s visit, unexpected (and rather unpleasant) as it had been, could serve its own purpose.
“He just stopped by to say hello,” James said, walking out from around the desk. Violet had stopped directly in front of the window, squinting into the late morning sunlight as she stared into the garden. She pretended not to notice his approach.