Emily blushed. “He asked me to dance, and my dance card wasn’t full. It would have been the height of rudeness to refuse him.”
“Yes, of course,” Diana said with a grin. “I am certain that is the only reason you had for dancing with him—mere politeness.”
“Lord Julian would be an entirely unsuitable candidate for marriage—” Emily began, but Diana cut her off with an incredulous laugh.
“More unsuitable than Mr. Cartham from heaven only knows where? I think not.”
“And,” Emily continued, as though Diana hadn’t spoken, “he has given no indication that he has the slightest interest in matrimony.”
“Well, of course not,” Diana said impatiently. “Men never do have the slightest interest in matrimony, until they suddenly do.”
While Violet thought that Diana might be sticking her nose where it didn’t belong at the moment, even she was forced to privately acknowledge the truth of this statement. It had certainly proved true in her own case—James had once confessed to her that, prior to meeting her, he hadn’t thought to marry until he was thirty. Instead, they were five years into their marriage, and he still had yet to achieve that lofty age.
“I don’t wish to discuss this anymore, Diana,” Emily concluded, a note of steel in her voice that Violet thought Diana would be wise not to ignore. Diana evidently had thoughts along the same lines, because as they slipped into the ladies’ retiring room—which was mercifully unoccupied at the moment—she redirected her focus to Violet.
“You and Audley looked quite cozy,” she said, sinking down onto a settee in the small sitting room. Violet sat down next to her and set about unbuttoning her gloves. It had been quite warm in the ballroom, and the temptation of air—even the overheated air of this small, stuffy room—on her bare skin was too great to resist.
“We were waltzing,” she said shortly, stripping off first one glove, then the other. “Close proximity is one of the requirements of the dance, I believe.”
“I do not know what I did to deserve such vexing friends,” Diana announced to no one in particular. “It seems a cruel fate for one such as myself.”
Violet let out a rather unladylike snort and exchanged an amused glance with Emily.
“For your information,” she said, and Diana leaned forward eagerly, rather like a dog beneath a table hoping to receive scraps of food, “James and I were in the midst of a conversation that I think had real promise—until you and that brother of yours so rudely interrupted us.”
Diana moaned dramatically, flinging a hand to her forehead as she leaned back against the cushions of the settee. “I shall never forgive Penvale,” she said morosely. “Just think—if he had not been so determined to seize Audley for one of their masculine tête-à-têtes, you and Audley might have . . . I don’t know . . .” She trailed off for a moment, seemingly trying to think of some suitably scandalous behavior. “Kissed on the ballroom floor,” she finished dramatically.
“Are you sure you’re not thinking of yourself?” Emily asked innocently, calmly fanning herself. “That seems rather more your style than Violet’s.”
“The point is,” Violet said loudly, seeking to steer this conversation back on course, “I should rather like to continue that conversation. So I think I am going to do just that, if you will excuse me.”
She stood without awaiting a reply, shoving her gloves into her reticule rather than putting them back on—her mother would probably deliver an ear-blistering lecture at the sight of such impropriety, so Violet made a mental note to exert even more effort than usual to avoid her. She did not reenter the ballroom, since she knew James would not be there; instead, she continued down the hallway, peering into each room she passed until she spotted James and his friends—Penvale, Jeremy, Belfry, and, to her surprise, West—around a table littered with glasses.
She hesitated, unsure whether James would welcome the interruption—but at that precise moment West looked up, noticed her, and arched a brow.
Violet was nothing if not quick to respond to a challenge, and she did just that. “James,” she called, and the gentlemen looked in her direction as one, five heads craning around to register her presence in the doorway. There was a brief pause, then the cacophony of several chairs scraping the floor at once as their owners all rose respectfully.
“Please, do sit down,” she said, taking a couple of steps into the room. “I just wished to have a word with my husband, if you can manage without him.”
“Of course,” James said promptly, dropping his cards without a second glance at them and offering his companions the barest of nods before joining her.
“Is something wrong?” he asked in a low voice, taking one of her hands in his own. He looked intently at her face, and Violet quickly smiled to reassure him.
“Everything is fine,” she said. “I just wished to continue our conversation of earlier, and I didn’t really wish to wait. If you’d rather finish your card game, however . . .” She trailed off and tried to assume a nonchalant air. She disliked vulnerability, and had too little faith in the fragile peace they were forging to display any now.
In truth, however, his reply mattered a great deal.
“I think the cards can wait,” James said dryly, his mouth curving up a bit at the corners, and Violet felt a flash of warmth rush through her. James took her by the arm and led her from the room, then paused once they were in the corridor. “Do you want me to send for the carriage?” he asked. “Are you feeling unwell?”
There was a teasing glint in his eye. Violet let out a sickly cough without breaking eye contact with him. “My health is, of course, always delicate, but I think I can carry on.”
“I am delighted to hear it.” James led her across the hallway into a room directly opposite. He glanced in quickly, apparently ascertaining that it was empty, and then pulled Violet in behind him and shut the door. They were in the Rochefords’ library—it was dimly lit, but Violet could see floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and some rather uncomfortable-looking armchairs. She wandered deeper into the room, surveying the volumes on the shelves. They did not look heavily worn.
“I doubt we’ll be interrupted here,” she said, opening a book whose spine cracked with the motion—it had never been touched. “An excellent choice.”
“If memory serves, I recall it being little used,” James said from behind her, and there was a strange note in his voice—strange enough that Violet set the book back on the shelf and turned to look at him inquiringly. “Have you forgotten?” he asked quietly, taking a couple of steps toward her.
“Forgotten—oh!” Violet said, and it all came back to her in a rush, her cheeks warming. The year she and James had met, the Rochefords had held their ball much earlier in the Season, before Violet and James had married. They had been engaged at the time, and had managed to sneak away together to the Rocheford library, where they’d been slightly naughty on one of the window seats.
“I wonder if that window seat is still here,” Violet said, curiosity overtaking embarrassment, as it so often did with her.
“I can’t imagine they’ve torn out a window seat in a two-hundred-year-old room,” James said wryly, and followed her toward the windows in question. Violet could feel his presence behind her—the warmth of his body against her back raising the hairs at the nape of her neck and causing her arms to break out in gooseflesh.