Page 20 of To Have and to Hoax
If James made any reply, he was not conscious of it; indeed, he could hear nothing over the sound of the roaring in his own ears, as he all at once felt unsteady on his own feet. He reached out, for the first time in his life, for something to lean on. He, who prided himself on relying on nothing and no one, found himself grasping the banister quite gratefully, clinging to its reassuring firmness and strength. He felt an uncharacteristic wish to turn to someone, to seek their reassurance that all would be well. And yet, the idea of actually doing so—whether that someone be his brother, or Penvale and Jeremy, or even the presumably knowledgeable physician before him—felt so foreign to him as to be inconceivable.
Vaguely, he became aware that Briggs was staring at him, an unreadable expression upon his face; as James took a second look at said face, something niggled at the back of his mind, something familiar, just out of reach.
“I will take my leave of you now, my lord,” Briggs said, his voice sounding as though it were coming from a great distance. “I have another pressing appointment, and I must not keep the lady in question waiting. But I should be happy to answer any of your . . . er . . . questions at a later date. Let me give you my card.”
Briggs fumbled in his case, extracting a card and pressing it into James’s unresisting fingers. With a last long, concerned glance and another bow, he made his departure.
The sound of the door closing behind Briggs had the effect of bringing James back to himself; he was suddenly moving, without recalling instructing his feet to do so, crossing the brief space of the entryway, Wooton opening the door even as he approached. He stood, blinking in the sunlight, opening his mouth to shout after Briggs—but Briggs was gone.
Or, rather, Briggs as he had been a moment before was gone. In his place, striding away down Curzon Street, was a man holding a set of false whiskers in one hand, a physician’s case in the other, energetically making his way toward a waiting carriage.
James glanced down at the card in his hand, and his suspicions were confirmed. The elaborately engraved card readLORD JULIAN BELFRY.
Violet heard the footsteps on the stairs and sprang into action. She tightly screwed on the lid to her ink bottle and wiped her pen with a handkerchief, then hastily shoved both, along with the sheet of paper upon which she had been writing, into a drawer of her bedside table. She had just flung herself back against her pillows, folding her hands calmly atop the blankets that covered her, when she noticed an alarming splotch of ink on her index finger. She rolled over and frantically opened the drawer once more, grabbing the ink-stained handkerchief and scrubbing at her finger. She had, after all, supposedly just been examined by a doctor while lying docilely abed, and therefore could not afford any suspiciously fresh ink spots—the result of a highly emotional letter to the editor ofAckermann’sRepositoryabout a planned exhibition of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum.
Shoving the handkerchief under her pillow, she forced herself to recline calmly, as any true invalid would. She had been lying abed in a state of some anxiety for quite a while now; Lord Julian had arrived that morning, as they had arranged, and lingered in her room until James returned home. He had brought along a sheaf of papers, which Violet thought might have been a script, and had spent a quiet few hours perusing them, occasionally muttering to himself. She had written three letters, read a volume of scandalous poetry, read the latest issue ofAckermann’s Repository, and begun writing another letter. It was exactly what she would have been doing on any other day, but being forced to do it from the confines of her bed—since she had to keep up appearances, for the sake of any servants who might wander in—had made it inexpressibly more tedious. It had never occurred to her how dull a life of espionage must be at times, and she was very grateful that James had returned home early today.
Lord Julian had sprung into action as soon as they’d heard James’s voice downstairs—they had kept her bedchamber door cracked for just this purpose—and had vanished out the door, false whiskers in place, before Violet could offer so much as a thank-you.
She hadn’t been able to catch any of the conversation downstairs, had heard only muted male voices, but she heard James’s footsteps now, loud and clear, and it occurred to her that she would recognize his tread anywhere. She knew the precise weight of his footfalls, the length of his strides, and she tried not to contemplate the number of evenings she had lain abed, listening to those footsteps passing by her bedroom door on the way to his own.
Her own door flung open with a bang, not at all like the quiet knock he had offered just days before. She firmly resisted the temptation to fuss with her hair. She was supposed to beill, for heaven’s sake.
James stalked into the room, reaching behind himself to shut the door, thankfully with less force than he had employed in opening it. His dark hair was in slight disarray, as though he had run a hand through it roughly, as she knew he was wont to do when frustrated or upset. She felt a sudden, piercing desire to smooth it for him, and her heart clenched at the thought, even as she gave herself a stern mental shake. She was supposed to be punishing the man, not soothing him.
There was an odd look on his face as he approached her bedside—assessing. He seemed to be sizing her up, perusing her from head to toe and back again. His green eyes were glittering, and there was more color in his cheeks than usual. She lifted her chin, waiting for him to speak first, and casually laced her hands so that the telltale ink-stained finger was hidden.
“Why the devil was there a physician leaving the house as I arrived?” he barked, coming to a halt approximately a foot away from her. “Wooton said he had been here for some time.”
“You asked me to speak to a physician,” Violet replied.
“I suppose it was too much to ask that you perhaps inform your husband before doing so?” He phrased it like a question, but did not wait for a response before halving the distance between them and seizing her hand. Most unfortunately, it was the hand with the ink-stained finger.
“I wasn’t aware that such courtesies were expected between us these days,” she said, hoping to distract him from the noticeable dark stain. His only reaction was an involuntary squeezing of the hand he now held firmly between his. Ornotso involuntary, as it transpired. He flipped her hand over so her palm faced upward atop his own and began poking at it with no great finesse.
“Might I ask what you are doing?” she asked, reining in her temper with some effort. The pokes were not as gentle as they might have been. And was the ink stain visible? From this angle, likely not—but she thought it best to bring an end to these proceedings as quickly as possible.
“Checking your pulse,” came the curt reply, as the hand palpitations continued.
“I think you’ve missed it a bit,” she said dryly, as his hand inched up her inner arm.
“Yes, well, I’m not a trained physician.” Was it her imagination, or was there extra emphasis on those last words?
“I know,” she said, yanking her arm out of his grasp. “That’s why I consulted one.”
He paused a moment, eyeing her, his expression inscrutable. She thought longingly of the days when his every thought and idea had seemed to rest openly on his face when he looked at her, secrets that were hers for the taking laid bare. The fact that he hid so much of himself away from everyone else had made it feel even more special, like a gift he offered to her alone.
“And what did this physician have to say, precisely?”
She looked at him for a long moment—hadn’t Lord Julian spoken to him? Had something gone amiss downstairs? She thought quickly, then hedged. “He had a good many things to say.”
“What sorts of things?” he asked with deadly calm, sitting carefully down on the edge of her bed. The bed was large enough that he still was not touching her, but she braced herself with one hand to ensure that she did not accidentally roll toward the depression he had created.
“Well,” she said, drawing the word into several syllables, “he seemed very interested in my lungs.”
“In your lungs, or the breasts that cover them?” he asked darkly.
Violet sputtered.
