Page 43 of To Have and to Hoax
“Not widely known, I shouldn’t think,” James muttered, watching his brother closely. It was clear that his suspicions had been correct—West likely knew every move Lady Fitzwilliam had taken in the years since they’d been close, even if he hadn’t so much as uttered her name.
“Widely enough,” West replied curtly, clearly in no mood for splitting hairs. “James, I know that we’ve not been on the best of terms these past years”—an understatement, James thought, but West always had been polite—“but as your brother, I can no longer sit by and watch you make a mess of your life.”
“Funny,” James said acidly. “You didn’t seem to mind overmuch when Father made a misery of it time and time again.” This was a slight exaggeration—James hadn’t been abused or mistreated, merely neglected. Now, as an adult, he realized that he had been rather lucky, all in all. As a boy of six, or eight, or ten, however, he’d been unable to see anything except a father whose love and attention were reserved solely for the elder brother he rarely saw, so much time did West spend in the duke’s company.
“I have never claimed that Father was a particularly good parent,” West replied, his eyes focusing intently on James.
“In fact, as I am certain you know, I do my best to avoid speaking to him whenever possible,” West continued, his eyes never leaving James’s. “So if you’d stop bloody punishing me for the fact that he’s a piss-poor father, then perhaps we could have a proper conversation.”
“I’m not punishing you for that,” James said sharply. “You were a boy, you couldn’t be expected to stop his favoring you. But I don’t have to forgive you for meddling in my life as an adult.”
“If you’re referring to that bloody row we had—”
“Whatelsewould I be referring to?” James asked, exasperated. He was rapidly reaching the limits of his patience—it had hardly been a restful twenty-four hours.
“—then I don’t know how else to make you see reason. You’re being a fool, and you’ve been a fool for the past four years.” West downed the rest of his drink in a single gulp, then crossed the room and set the empty tumbler down on James’s desk with a decisive clunk.
“I told you this four years ago, and I shall say it again today,” West said, leaning forward to fix James with his penetrating gaze. James, for all that he was a grown man of eight-and-twenty with a wife and a home of his own, felt very much like a younger brother in that moment. “You have made an utter mess of what started off as a brilliant marriage. You’ve allowed Father to guide everything you have or have not done for the entirety of your adult life, and you’re making yourself miserable in the process. I don’t mind much what you do with your own life—I can’t very well stop you, though I do pity poor Violet. But leave Sophie out of this.”
James barely managed to keep his expression neutral at the sound of West voicing Lady Fitzwilliam’s name, nor did he miss the emotion in his brother’s voice.
“Furthermore, you might consider the fact that I’m your brother, and it’s permissible for me to have opinions about how you conduct yourself, and how you go about your life. You don’t have to agree with me, or listen to me, but I’m allowed to voice them nonetheless. It’s part of loving someone, James.” He paused for a moment; when he spoke again, he had gotten himself under control, and his voice was once again cool and regulated. “When you’re ready to act like a man and not a child, you know where to find me,” West finished, tucking his hat under his arm and pulling on first one glove, then the other. “Until then . . .” He trailed off, clearly unsure how to conclude this heartwarming interlude of brotherly affection. “Until then,” he repeated, more firmly this time, before striding from the room as abruptly as he had materialized, scarcely seeming to lean on his cane at all.
James sank back into his chair as West departed, thinking longingly of the virtues of a lengthy tour somewhere without wives, friends, or brothers. Somewhere remote. The Far East, perhaps. Or New South Wales. A criminal colony seemed preferable to London at the moment.
He glanced down at the papers spread across his desk, the numbers swimming before his eyes, and groaned softly. If he ever had a son, he decided in that moment, the first piece of fatherly advice he would ever give him would be to never marry. Wives were too bloody distracting.
“My lord?”
James looked up, startled. As if summoned by his thoughts, his own wife hovered in the doorway. He rose instantly, and she took a couple of steps into the room. She was dressed in a morning gown of white lawn, her hair slightly disheveled. He wondered if she had any idea how utterly tempting she looked standing there, her cheeks flushed, dark tendrils of hair curling about her face. Her gown was modest, but it somehow only made James more tempted to reach for the bodice, to tug it down and follow its path with his lips.
Forcing his unruly thoughts into order with some difficulty, he said, “Violet? Can I help you?”
“I saw that West was here,” she said, walking toward one of the windows that bracketed James’s desk. “It was an unusual enough occurrence that I thought to see what he wanted.”
She spoke as though the answer he gave was not of terribly great interest to her, but he had one of the flashes he’d had of late—moments where suddenly he was twenty-three all over again and her every word and thought was visible to him, a book that only he could read. At the moment, she was desperately curious, but trying very hard not to show it.
It was all going according to plan—even West’s visit, unexpected (and rather unpleasant) as it had been, could serve its own purpose.
“He just stopped by to say hello,” James said, walking out from around the desk. Violet had stopped directly in front of the window, squinting into the late morning sunlight as she stared into the garden. She pretended not to notice his approach.
“Did he, now?” she murmured skeptically, not removing her gaze from the window, even as James took several steps closer, crowding her. “Odd, isn’t it? He’s not been in the habit of paying you calls much of late.”
“I always thought you liked West,” he said, watching her profile, gilded by sunlight. He told himself that he was staring to make her uncomfortable, but the truth was she was so lovely that he could not possibly have brought himself to look away. “I should have thought you’d be pleased that he paid a visit.”
She did look up then, and he mentally congratulated himself on a well-placed hit. “Idolike West,” she said, her eyes sparking, and as she met his gaze full-on, he realized that he might have made a slight miscalculation. He’d meant to needle her, annoy her, but always maintain the upper ground—and yet, when she was looking at him like that,reallylooking at him without any of the distance that had spread between them, it was all he could do to keep his hands at his sides, to resist the temptation to reach out, pull her to him, and kiss her senseless.
She, however, seemed oblivious to his internal struggle, because she was still, as usual, speaking.
“But I don’t believe for a second that his visit today was at all coincidental.” A moment of silence fell, during which she glared at him furiously and he tried desperately not to notice the interesting things her angry breathing did to her bosom. It was covered in fabric, to be sure, but it was still moving in a very distracting fashion.
“What do you mean?” he managed.
“You know precisely what I mean,” she said with quiet derision, and this was when James knew that she was very angry indeed. Angry Violet became noisy. Even angrier Violet became alarmingly quiet. “I am certain West stopped by because he heard of that shocking display in the park with Lady Fitzwilliam yesterday, and if you think for a second that I am going to allow you to ruin a respectable woman’s reputation—”
“She’s carrying on with Jeremy,” James felt compelled to point out, though he knew that he hadn’t much of a leg to stand on in terms of the rightness and wrongness of the matter. “Not exactly a pillar of respectability himself, you know.”
“He has been uncommonly discreet,” Violet said tersely. “I’ve heard only the slightest whisperings of any carryings-on between them—yesterday was the first time I’ve ever even seen them together. So please do not try to convince me that the lady’s reputation was already in tatters. Jeremy has done nothing to ruin her, and has indeed gone out of his way to ensure that no damage has been done to her social standing. Whatwillruin her, however, is your making a spectacle of yourself in Hyde Park.”
