Page 84 of To Have and to Hoax
“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 knowwhy.”
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.”
“And that day,” she said softly, understanding. “That day, when you overheard me in conversation with your father—when we were discussing what he and my mother orchestrated—”
“I should never have jumped to conclusions,” James said swiftly. “There’s no excuse—none at all—but all I can say is that it confirmed everything I had been led to believe about life until that point. That if I loved something, it wouldn’t last. You had given me no reason at all to distrust you, and I still instantly believed the worst of you. You seemed too good to be true—and there you were, proving my point.”
“I hate your father,” Violet said with quiet intensity, and there must have been something in her voice that had never been there before, because James drew back slightly, a look of surprise in his eyes. “I hate what he did to you. And to West,” she added, because she didn’t think James’s elder brother had had much easier a time of it.
“I went to see West before I followed you, too,” James said.
“Good heavens, did you pay a call on everyone in London?” she asked teasingly, and was pleased when she was rewarded with a slight curve of his lips.
“No, only those with the surname Audley,” he said, squeezing her hands gently. “Some families take tea together, but the Audleys go in for angry confrontations instead.”
“Please don’t tell me you and West quarreled again,” Violet said warily. The rift between James and his brother had gone on for much too long, as far as she was concerned—and it was all the more frustrating since, as best she could tell, there was no real cause for it. They had quarreled in the past, it was true, but never out of proportion to other brothers. Never so badly as she and James had quarreled during the first year of their marriage, even.
“No, nothing of the sort,” James assured her. “I had rather the same conversation with him I’m having with you now.” He shot her a wicked grin, and her insides grew heated in a way that only he could cause. “Without some of the displays of affection, of course.”
“I should hope so,” she sniffed, and he laughed out loud at that, the sound of it sweeter to her ears than any music she had ever heard. She could have listened to him laugh forever.
“Violet, please tell me what I have to do to win you,” he said, all laughter leaving his voice as quickly as it had arrived, replaced instead with a tone of stark desperation. He dropped her hands, reached up to seize her face, rising up on his knees so that he could press his forehead to her own, her entire world becoming the green of his eyes.
“I’ve been a fool, I don’t deserve you—but I want to. I would do anything, truly, if you would only trust me with your heart again.” His voice cracked, but he continued speaking. “I love you so much—I want to have children with you, raise them with all the love that West and I never had. I want to embarrass them when they’re older, when their father can’t stop sweeping their mother off to darkened corners for scandalous embraces. I want everything I didn’t think I could have—and you’re the only one I want it with. So please—please. Tell me what to do.”
Violet realized that she was crying, and didn’t know how long she had been doing so. James leaned forward to taste one of her tears, his tongue darting out to stop its progress down her cheek.
“You don’t need to do anything,” she whispered, trying to steady her voice into something calm, strong, when she felt as though she were about to burst into a million pieces, radiant joy and a desperate urge to weep fighting a battle within her. “You followed me here. You didn’t let me walk away again. You fought for us,trustedus.”
