“It’s after noon,” James felt compelled to point out.
“Regardless.” His father waved a dismissive hand.
“Riding clears my head.”
“Judging by what I’ve heard, it needs clearing.”
James clenched his jaw. “What, precisely, does that mean?” he asked, though he was fairly certain he didn’t want to hear the answer.
“I heard some rather interesting talk last night at my club,” the duke said casually as he spurred his horse into a gentle trot. “The general impression I received was that you and your wife have been making a spectacle of yourselves.”
“And that is your concern… how?” James asked tightly.
“You are my son,” the duke said, clearly enunciating each word, his voice taking on a sharp staccato rhythm. “If your brother is as… troubled as he claims, you will be responsible for providing an heir to the dukedom. What you do reflects on me.”
“Then perhaps,” James said, trying to keep the fury surging through him absent from his voice, “you should have considered that when you ignored me every single day for years.” The duke opened his mouth to respond, but James wasn’t finished yet. “Perhaps you should have considered that when you meddled in my life and hand-selected me a bride, assuming, I suppose, that I was too much of an idiot to accomplish the task myself.”
“And yet I heard no complaints from you about my selection,” his father said, his eyes on the path before them. “I rather think a thank-you is in order, all things considered.” He paused pointedly, then added, “Though I understand your marriage has been less than happy of late. But that is a fact, my boy, that has nothing to do with me.”
“It has everything to do with you!” James said, the resentment of all of his previous eight-and-twenty years—and most particularly the past four—boiling up within him. “My marriage—which is none of your concern, for the record—has had its rough spots only because of your interference. It is always you.”
The duke reined his horse in hard, causing the animal to buck before settling. When James followed in kind and looked at his father head-on, he saw the duke’s eyes were sparkling with anger, even as his countenance remained calm. Like father, like son.
“I have never understood, James, why it is that you think I have wronged you so terribly.” Even if James had not already been paying attention, his father’s rare use of his Christian name would certainly have attracted his notice. His father had called him Audley, just like everyone else, for as long as James could remember. “I am a duke. You are my son. You know precisely what that entails, what a reputation we have to uphold, and everything I have ever done to and for you has been in pursuit of that aim.
“You say I ignored you as a child. You might be correct. West is my heir; it was my duty to guide him to manhood, to make him understand the responsibility that would one day fall on his shoulders. I gave you tutors and riding lessons, I sent you to Eton and Oxford, and, when the time came and I realized the question of your marriage and children might have a rather greater bearing on the future of the dukedom than I had originally thought, I arranged them to my satisfaction. Although”—and here the duke smiled briefly—“I do not imagine how you think I possibly could have induced you to marry Violet Grey if she had not suited you. You are unlike me in many ways, but you do seem to have inherited my stubborn streak.”
James felt rather as though the ground were shifting beneath his feet. He had known—had always known—that his father did not favor West out of any greater sense of camaraderie with his brother, but to hear him state it so baldly did something strange to James.
He and West were the sons of one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the land; nothing could change that fact, or negate the numerous advantages it had always given James from the moment he had drawn his first breath. And yet, somehow, his entire life he had thought that his father’s disinterest in him, his refusal to see him as anything other than a spare, had determined the course of his life; this belief had made him distrustful, even resentful at times. But West, as the heir, had suffered their father’s attention; James, as the spare, had suffered just the opposite. The first time his father had tried to truly meddle in his life—with his arrangement of James being discovered upon that balcony in a compromising situation with Violet—James had been sent into a fury upon learning of it. He tried—and failed—to imagine what his life would have been like if his father had always paid him such attention.
He was certain he would not have liked it, whatever the result.
Furthermore, he was coming to realize, he had only himself to blame for the shambles he had made of his marriage. His father had meddled, it was true, but James couldn’t argue with the results—he had, after all, been besotted with Violet from almost the moment he’d first seen her. It was he who had cocked everything up upon learning of his father’s involvement in arranging their marriage—and why? All because any mention of his father made him lose all sense and reason.
He hadn’t trusted her. It was true. If Violet said she’d not known of the schemes surrounding their courtship, no doubt it was true; Lady Worthington was certainly conniving enough to hatch such a plan with James’s father without letting her daughter in on the plot.
So why had James been so quick to disbelieve her? Why had he not trusted Violet, his wife, the person he loved above all others?
Because in some part of his heart he was still the small boy watching from a window as his father and brother went out for rides without him. He was still that boy, unable to trust that anyone’s love for him was unconditional and true. And yet, James realized, he had not been that boy for a very long time. He had gone to school, met Jeremy and Penvale, discovered what a difference true friendship could make in a life. He had come down to London after university and had begun to forge a relationship with his brother outside of their father’s shadow. He had met Violet.
And yet, at the first whisper of doubt, he had become that boy once more—a boy in a large house full of rooms and no one within them to pay him any mind. A boy who at the first possibility someone might have betrayed him instantly believed it to be the case.
But that was not his life anymore. He would be damned if he allowed the distrust wrought in him by a childhood of neglect to write the course of his future. It was time he corrected the damage he had done, once and for all.
“I’ll thank you to not interfere in my affairs again,” James said shortly, his mind still working, weary of his father’s presence. “I’ve nothing further to say to you about this, or about anything else, really.” He gathered the reins in his hand, preparing to spur his horse to movement.
“If you’re still so upset about this,” the duke said before James could ride away, “I’m surprised you keep company with the Marquess of Willingham.” James froze, and a triumphant gleam appeared in his father’s eyes; the duke knew he had struck gold. “Next time you see him you might ask him how, precisely, it was that he so conveniently had lured the erstwhile Lady Violet Grey out onto a balcony just in time for you to rescue her.”
His father smiled his infuriating smile at him, and then nudged his horse into a trot, leaving James, gaping like a fool, sitting atop his stationary horse in the middle of Rotten Row.
* * *
The only thing to do was to take himself home, and so James did just that. The insinuation about Jeremy had been shocking, no doubt—he had always tried his hardest not to think about Jeremy and Violet together on that balcony, but when the memory did spring to mind, he waved it off as Jeremy being Jeremy. Now, however, James realized that it was in fact not at all like Jeremy. Say what you liked about the man—and people had on occasion had cause to say quite a bit—but he was careful in his selection of ladies. He tended to limit himself to opera dancers, actresses, widows, and unhappily married ladies with inattentive husbands. James had never seen him panting after an unmarried miss before or after that evening with Violet.
At the time, he hadn�
�t thought anything of it. Now, he wondered how he could have been such an idiot.
Jeremy would never have lured an eligible young virgin of marriageable age out onto a balcony—to do so and to be caught was to be forced into marriage, and if the Jeremy of eight-and-twenty was disinterested in matrimony, the Jeremy of five years prior would have shuddered at the very word. Clearly, there had been something else afoot. It was tempting to succumb to anger—James’s instinctive reaction to anything bearing his father’s fingerprints—but he was trying, if only belatedly, to learn to trust those around him, or at least give them the benefit of the doubt. He therefore resisted the temptation to bang down Jeremy’s door and present him with his accusations—and perhaps a fist to the jaw.
Instead, he rode back to the house at a feverish pace, and upon arriving, hopped off his mount and tossed the reins to a stable hand, entering the house directly from the mews and startling a scullery maid when he raced past her on the kitchen stairs. He found Wooton in the entryway, inspecting the banister railings with a white glove, in a move so entirely and stereotypically butlerish that James was, for an instant, seized with a mad desire to laugh.
“Is Lady James awake?” he asked without preamble.
Wooton straightened at the sight of him. “She is entertaining Lady Templeton and Lord Willingham with tea in the library,” said Wooton, and this piece of news caused James to freeze in the act of removing his gloves. “Shall I announce you, my lord?”
“No, thank you, Wooton,” James said, finishing the glove removal at a slightly less frenetic pace. “I’ll just surprise them, I think.”
“Very good, my lord,” Wooton said with a bow, and departed—off to do whatever mysterious things butlers did all day, that all together resulted in a quietly and efficiently run house. James set off down the hallway toward the library. He hadn’t counted on Violet having company, and particularly not on Jeremy being among said company. He supposed Jeremy had come in search of him and had stayed to converse with the ladies instead, though he reflected on the oddity of Jeremy paying a call just past noon; at this time of day, he was usually still abed (and frequently in someone else’s company).
It was strange, too, for Diana to be here this early—she kept fashionable hours, and James was certain he had heard her remark more than once on how odd she found Violet and James’s habit of early rising. He had a sneaking suspicion that Jeremy’s and Diana’s uncharacteristically early calls had something to do with the events of the previous evening; he and Violet had, after all, made rather a spectacle of themselves. He was sick of the games and the arguments and the interfering lunatics he called friends. He just wanted to have an honest conversation with his wife.
To be followed, preferably, by a lengthy interlude in bed.
This thought, in turn, conjured vivid memories of the events of the night before. Violet, her head tilted back wantonly, eyes shut, dark hair in disarray. The feeling of her hips tilting against his own in silent invitation. The heat and warmth of her as he had slid home, again and again and—
Christ.
How could he have ever thought than anyone other than Violet would satisfy him?
You didn’t, said the quiet, reasonable voice that occupied some small corner of his head. Not really.
And he knew it was true. Why else had he spent the past four years as chaste as a monk, in a house with a woman who loathed him? Because he’d never stopped hoping, never stopped wanting, even if he hadn’t been able to admit it, even to himself.
And that was the problem, really. Wasn’t that what Violet had been saying in her roundabout fashion last night? He’d loved her, but he’d lost faith in her at the slightest provocation. He’d let his past dictate his future, and he’d never done the slightest thing to fight for that future.
He was the son of a duke, and as such, he wasn’t accustomed to having to fight for much of anything. And when something didn’t come easily to him, he abandoned it.
Mathematics? Easy. Wedding Violet? Easy. Inheriting his father’s stables? Easy.
But moving past childhood hurts? His relationship with West? Marriage to Violet? More difficult. And so he’d never really tried.
And his life was undoubtedly emptier because of it.
So now it was time to do something about it.
The door to the library was cracked, and as James approached, he could hear voices filtering out. He reached for the doorknob, then paused as his brain registered what exactly he was hearing.
Violet was speaking. “… has gotten out of hand. James and I came to a similar conclusion last night, as a matter of fact.” James felt a flash of amusement at these words, his hand still hovering above the doorknob; Violet pointedly did not mention the manner in which they had come to an accord of sorts.
“I quite agree,” came Lady Templeton’s voice. “Which is why I say, abandon the sham illness and invite one of these—very willing—gentlemen into your bed.”
James froze, his arm still outstretched. What the bloody hell?
“You do realize that the man you’re speaking of deceiving is my closest friend, don’t you?” Jeremy asked, his tone casual; James thought that only someone who knew Jeremy well would have caught the note of anger running beneath the surface, and he felt a brief flash of gratitude for Jeremy, despite whatever mysterious dealings his friend might have had with his father five years past.
“I hardly think now is the time for you to try to claim the moral high ground about deceiving a man in his marriage, Willingham,” Lady Templeton said, her tone scornful.
“I say,” Jeremy said, and James knew instantly that Diana had gone too far, “I would like you to know that I have not once seduced a woman who was happily married, or whose marriage had ever been based on anything other than family connections or money.”
James heard the sound of a chair being pushed back against the floor, and he beat a hasty retreat before he quite realized what he was doing—he didn’t wish to be caught lurking outside the door eavesdropping on this conversation. He was irritated, even as he made his way back down the hall; he needed to speak to Violet, and he needed Jeremy and Diana to depart for him to do so. He supposed he could barge in and ask them to leave, but he didn’t particularly feel like managing the awkwardness that would doubtless ensue when they realized he’d overheard their conversation. He wasn’t concerned about Violet taking Diana’s advice—and the realization of that unquestioning trust made him feel nearly giddy—but he still thought his presence might be a bit de trop at the moment, and it hardly seemed like a good note on which to begin a discussion with Violet.
He felt like a five-year-old who had been caught spying on his parents, which was absurd—this was his house, for Christ’s sake. And yet, feeling like a fool, he did the only thing that seemed reasonable at the moment: he left again.
* * *
It was at his club that Jeremy found him.
“Awake rather early, aren’t you?” James asked, lowering the newspaper that he’d been staring at blankly for the past thirty minutes.
“Come off it,” Jeremy said, sitting down. “Did you overhear the entire bloody conversation, then?”
“Just a snippet,” James said, casting his newspaper aside with a sigh. He saw no reason to lie; he assumed, since Jeremy was here, that Wooton had told Violet that he’d been home, albeit briefly, meaning that his wife now knew precisely how much of an idiot he had acted.
“And you ran away.”
“I didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping and have Violet get the wrong idea,” James said, feeling more and more foolish by the moment.
“You might have avoided that possibility by not skulking in the hallway in the first place,” said Jeremy with great dignity. It was a bit galling to be condescended to by a man who had only recently had to leave a bedroom window by way of a rose trellis, and James told him so.
“Besides,” he added, “I’m the son of a duke, as my father reminded me just this afternoon. Ducal sons don’t
skulk.”
Jeremy straightened in his chair, his gaze razor sharp. “You saw your father today? Whatever for, old boy? Felt like beating your head against a brick wall?”
“It was unintentional, I assure you,” James said, rather testily. “I encountered him out riding in the park—the meeting was not coincidental, I think.” He hesitated a moment, then took the plunge. “Over the course of our rather enlightening conversation, he had some interesting things to say about you.”
“Did he?” Jeremy asked, suddenly very interested in the cuffs on his shirt.
“He did,” James confirmed, and after a moment during which he looked at Jeremy and Jeremy looked everywhere but at him, his friend raised his eyes and met James’s gaze full-on.
“He told you about the night you met Violet, then?” Jeremy asked directly.
“I’d really like to hear it from you.” James had learned—rather belatedly—his lesson about taking his father at his word.
Jeremy heaved a sigh and ran a hand through his hair. James couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen him look so uncomfortable; he had grown used to the lazy, always-slightly-drunken Jeremy, the womanizing good-for-nothing marquess who was amused by everything and moved by nothing. It was a very effective mask, but James hadn’t realized that it was almost too good; those were all parts of Jeremy, it was true, but he was more than the sum of his parts, and James wondered if perhaps he had forgotten this of late. He wondered if Jeremy had forgotten, too.
“You recall what it was like when I’d first inherited the marquessate?” Jeremy asked. He didn’t elaborate, but James nodded, understanding all that was implied. Jeremy’s father hadn’t left the marquessate destitute, but its coffers had been reduced by years of neglect and bad investments. Jeremy’s elder brother, who had inherited the title upon their father’s death when Jeremy was still at Eton, had managed, through some creative rearranging of accounts, to come up with the blunt to pay the death duties, but it had been a stretch. He had then spent his remaining capital at hand—almost all of the liquid funds the Overington family had left—on a series of costly improvements to the estate. These improvements had, over the past decade, yielded great results, and the estate was solvent once more—flourishing, even. But at the time, it had sharply limited the amount of ready funds—James could distinctly remember Jeremy grumbling at the reduction in his allowance.
To Have and to Hoax Page 27