“I know that,” he said quickly. “And I’m sorry.”
“But I understand the instinct nonetheless.” She sighed. “I need to know you’re not going to let your father come between us ever again. I need to know I’m not going to receive notes about your nearly killing yourself on the back of a horse, just to spite your father. I need you to think of me, of us, before anything else.”
“I was an ass today,” he said, and then his mouth quirked up at the sides. “Not just today, if we’re really being honest with each other, I suppose.”
“Indeed,” she said, lifting her chin.
“Violet.” All at once, his voice was deadly serious once again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t trust you to . . . to . . .” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated; the result was curls that were even more disheveled than they’d been a moment before. “I didn’t trust you to trust me that I trusted you.”
Violet blinked. “I’m sorry?”
James appeared to be running his words back through his mind, then nodded once, apparently satisfied. “I believe I had the right of it, actually.”
Violet couldn’t help smirking. “It sounded peculiarly appropriate.”
“As convoluted as we deserve?” He grinned at her, and the sight was devastating.
“We did rather make our own beds, didn’t we?” She couldn’t stop herself from smiling back this time.
“Do you know,” he asked conversationally, “that I’m fairly certain that at some point in the past fortnight I uttered the sentence ‘She doesn’t know I know she knows I know’?”
“I would mock you,” Violet said gravely, “but I’m fairly certain I did the same.” She paused, considering. “Changing the pronouns about, of course.”
“Of course.”
They sat there for a moment, grinning idiotically at each other, and it was all Violet could do to refrain from reaching out and smoothing those tousled curls. She felt as though she were standing on the edge of a precipice, hand in hand with James, ready to jump—but he’d not yet shown her the wings they’d need to fly. She wanted to jump so desperately—and yet.
And yet.
So, schooling her voice into a calmness she didn’t feel, rearranging her face into an expression of polite interest, she said, “I’m sorry—you were saying?”
His own grin faded as hers did, but if a laughing James was dangerous, so, too, was the model that replaced him—gazing at her steadily, unblinkingly, his eyes full of some emotion that she recognized and yet was still afraid to believe.
“I paid my father a visit this afternoon, after you left,” he said steadily. Violet tried her hardest to give nothing away, to keep her face an impassive mask. She wasn’t entirely certain she was successful. “I told him I was giving Audley House back to him.”
Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t this.
“What?” she shrieked, nearly toppling off the carriage seat in her surprise. James reached out a hand to steady her, and without even realizing what she was doing, Violet laced her fingers through his.
James’s brow creased in concern. “I—I didn’t think you’d mind,” he said, sounding uncertain. “I’ll buy you another house in the country if you wish. Our income will be reduced without the profits from the stables, but we’ll still be very comfortable, and I’m certain we can find something you’ll like just as much.”
Violet reached out and placed her palm over his mouth, ceasing the flow of words. Silenced, he stared at her, then slowly arched an eyebrow in inquiry.
“I don’t mind about the house,” she said, slowly and clearly, and watched the lines in his forehead smooth out again. “I just want to know why.”
She started to remove her hand, but he caught it with his free hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. Her skin burned beneath his lips.
“I was doing it for all the wrong reasons,” he said quietly.
“The stables?”
He nodded. “I wanted to prove something to my father. I was so angry with him—I’ve always been so angry with him. It’s exhausting, and it’s not worth it.”
“I understand why you hate him,” Violet said, turning her face slightly so that her cheek rested against his palm. “You don’t have to forgive him—I wouldn’t ask that of you.”
He slid one thumb down her cheek, the smallest caress—and yet her entire body was suddenly covered in gooseflesh. How was it possible to simultaneously find a person to be entirely comforting and completely disconcerting at the same time?
“Violet,” he said, and she was suddenly certain that he had never before said her name in precisely this tone of voice. “I don’t hate him—I just don’t bloody care anymore.” His casual profanity thrilled her, singing to something deep and primal within her. “I told him I’d be happy to work as his partner, his equal, but that I didn’t want all the responsibility anymore. I don’t want anything he can give me, and I don’t care what he thinks about that fact. He’s controlled everything about my life—even when I thought I had escaped him, when I thought I didn’t care about him anymore, I still let him poison the most important thing in my life.”
He sank to his knees in the limited space between the seats in the carriage, both of her hands still clasped in his own.
“Violet, I love you. I will always love you. I fell in love with you approximately two minutes after I met you, and I’ve never stopped. The past four years . . .” He paused, his throat working. “They’ve been hell,” he said simply after a moment. “I will do anything—anything—to make you believe I trust you. To make you trust me again with your heart. Our marriage, it is . . .” Another pause. This broken, clumsy speech was more precious to her than any smooth monologue could ever have been. “I do not care about anything else in my life so much as I care about repairing our marriage. These past two weeks have been the best fortnight of the past four years.”
“Really?” Violet asked, somehow managing to find her voice, though it was a bit more hoarse than she was accustomed to sounding. “I thought you’d spent the past fortnight wishing to strangle me.”
“I did,” he said promptly, startling a laugh out of her. “I’d rather spend my days arguing with you than in calm conversation with anyone else in the world.”
As romantic declarations went, Violet wasn’t entirely certain anyone else would have found it completely satisfactory—but to her, it was perfect.
“Oh, James,” she whispered, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to his forehead.
“I should be thanking you,” he said, speaking more quickly now, as though worried that the words building up inside him would somehow vanish if he did not immediately give them voice. “You made me realize how afraid I’ve been all these years.”
“Afraid?” Violet asked uncertainly, her throat feeling oddly tight.
“I was afraid of other people, afraid that none of them could be trusted, afraid that even you, you who told me you loved me—that you could be lying, or you could be taken from me somehow.”