Page 49 of To Have and to Hoax
“You knew precisely how to manipulate me.”
Violet and the duke both turned, startled, to the doorway, where James had appeared silently. Violet had been so caught up in the duke’s tale that she hadn’t noticed any noise from the mews heralding his return. She had never seen James look like this before—he was very still, his broad-shouldered form filling the doorway. His eyes were flicking back and forth between herself and his father, as though he couldn’t quite decide whom to focus on. After a moment, however, his gaze settled on the duke.
“Well, congratulations, Father,” James said, strolling into the room with a sort of studied casualness that Violet could see instantly was an act. “You win. You found me a bride with impeccable lineage, and you managed to keep your little secret until after all the papers were signed.” He continued to advance toward the duke, not stopping until he was only a couple of feet from his father. “You haven’t quite succeeded in your aim, though, since we’ve yet to provide you with an heir. Which I surmise is the reason you came to sniff around my wife today.” There was the slightest tremble in his voice, which Violet recognized as a sign of just how angry he was.
The duke’s expression grew hard as he surveyed his younger son. “Don’t make a scene, James. If you can’t keep your emotions in check, I don’t think there’s any point in my lingering.” He rose, making as if to step past James, but James blocked his progress.
“I will never provide you with an heir,” he said quietly, and while Violet knew—sheknew—that it was just his anger speaking, the words were still like a dagger to her heart. Those were her future children he was disavowing. She knew he didn’t mean it, but that didn’t mean she wanted to hear it. “So your bloody scheme was all for naught.” He took a step closer to his father. “Now get out of my house.”
“You don’t mean he thought you were involved somehow?” Sophie’s brows knit together, and her tone of offended outrage on Violet’s behalf was obliquely comforting.
“I mean precisely that,” Violet said. “I made things worse because I panicked a bit, initially.”
The door had scarcely closed behind the duke when James turned to her. She wasn’t sure what she hoped to see in his eyes—understanding, perhaps? A sense of shared anger? Love? Whatever she was looking for, she didn’t find it, seeing instead a look of profound betrayal in those familiar green eyes.
“James,” she said quickly, before he could speak, “I knew nothing about this.” This wasn’t, of course, entirely true—she had known for close to two days, without telling him. But she was so eager to distance herself from their parents’ actions that she spoke without thinking.
“Yes, you did,” he said quietly. “I heard you. You just told him you’d been discussing it with your mother.” His voice was relatively calm, but she could hear the accusatory note to it.
“I tried to tell him I’d only learned of it a couple of days prior,” Violet said now. “But he . . . he didn’t believe me. He couldn’t fathom that I wouldn’t have come to him directly upon learning of such a thing, and so he assumed I must have known for far longer—perhaps even been involved from the very outset.” Her mind glossed over the memories of the hour that had followed the duke’s departure that morning. There had been words—angry words—so many of them that they blended together in her mind, leaving only the impression of hurt feelings and a sense of irreparable damage done.
One sentence, however, stuck out in unfortunately vivid detail.
“I should have known better. What well-bred miss would go out onto a balcony with Jeremy, of all people? It’s asking to be ruined.”
And the worst of it was, even the memory of that still stung. Because shehadgone out onto that balcony with Jeremy—not because she was part of the ludicrous scheme that her mother and James’s father had cooked up, but because she had been eighteen and curious. And James had made the entire thing feel cheap and sordid.
That was one of the many things about that morning she could not forgive. Most of all, she could not forgive him for his distrust in her—she who had never given him any reason to doubt her. She who had just this once spoken overly hastily—who had just this once, and never before, kept information from him, and always with the intention of telling him the full truth. She who had entrusted her entire heart to him and had felt free, for the first time in her life, to be her true, honest self, without feeling the need to suppress any of the things about herself that her mother had insisted were so entirely unsuitable. For him to repay her by losing faith in her at the first provocation was a betrayal that she had at the time considered unforgivable.
Then there was the fact that when she had stormed out of the room in a fury, he had not followed. Had never followed. Had obviously not considered their marriage worth fighting for.
“Well,” said Sophie, finishing the last of her brandy in one healthy and entirely improper gulp, “that is quite the tale.”
“Isn’t it just,” Violet said, not managing to sound quite as matter-of-fact as she might have desired in that moment. To tell the truth, while unburdening herself of this story certainly made her feel lighter, somehow, it also made her feel rather glum.
Silence fell for a moment. Violet, lost in thoughts of that day four years past, watched as Sophie turned her empty tumbler in her hand, the crystal catching the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows. It was a small room but cozy, clearly well cared for. Violet wondered how many solitary hours Sophie had whiled away in here since her husband’s death. She wondered if she ever got lonely. She then reflected—rather grimly—that her own existence over the past four years hadn’t been that different from that of a widow, considering the amount of time she spent in her husband’s company.
The thought was thoroughly galling.
Violet sat up straighter in her chair, her mind working more quickly now. What a fool she had been, she realized all at once. She was twenty-three years old and she had a husband she had once adored, who was living in the same house with her, eating at the same table, sleeping in a bedchamber that shared a connecting door with her own, and yet they barely even spoke. Sophie, meanwhile, lived here in this house, her days only slightly more solitary than Violet’s own, but her parting from her husband had not been due to any lasting argument, but rather to the permanent separation of death.
She thought of that note from Penvale from the week before, and imagined an alternate scenario—one in which she had made it all the way to Audley House, only to find James dead. She thought of never being able to speak to him, touch him, kiss him again—and she felt empty. As if some critical, nameless part of her had died as well.
She had enacted this ruse to punish him for his neglect, for his distrust of her—and perhaps she had succeeded on some level. But she saw now—as perhaps she should have seen all along—that she had really done all of this because she still loved him, and she thought there was something between them worth fighting for.
Oh, to be sure, she was still thoroughly angry with him. He was still in the wrong when it came to their dispute the day of his father’s visit—but perhaps instead of waiting four years for an apology, she should have taken that step forward to bridge the divide herself. She had been soangryat first, expecting him to take the first step, to grovel at her feet. And when that hadn’t happened . . . she had done nothing.
She had done nothing to save their marriage, the relationship most precious to her. He had made a mistake, to be sure—one he still owed her an apology for—but she knew the man she had married. She knew how reluctant he was to entrust his heart to another. And she could imagine the sense of betrayal he must have felt that day, the entire foundation of his marriage having been proved to be based on his father’s duplicity. She could imagine how it must have hurt him, to think that anything about her feelings for him might have been duplicitous, too.
He had been in the wrong, there was no doubt—but he was still worth fighting for.Theywere still worth fighting for.
Sophie was staring at her curiously. Violet realized how long the silence had lingered between them and smiled apologetically.
“I’m sorry. I was woolgathering.”
Sophie waved a hand dismissively. “As was I. You gave me rather a lot to ponder, I must confess.”
“I seem to have givenmyselfrather a lot to ponder.” Violet paused, then plunged on, an idea already taking form in her mind. “I felt rather foolish when I came here with my original intent.”
