With a sinking feeling of dread, James turned to see—of course it was Violet. She was standing in the doorway of the inn, dressed in a plain frock for traveling, her hair in slight disorder, as though she had dressed in a great hurry that morning. No doubt she had, he reminded himself, given that she had received a letter informing her—well, James didn’t know what precisely Penvale had written in that blasted letter, but he had no doubt that whatever it was had been sufficient to cause concern.

Her face was very pale as she stood there, staring at him, her brown eyes wide, dark tendrils of hair framing her face in a way that he found enticing rather than unkempt. It made him, entirely inappropriately, wish to kiss her.

But then, James always wished to kiss her. The kissing had never been the problem. It was the talking that seemed to give them trouble.

He took a step forward, dimly registering that she was likely in a state of shock at seeing him so suddenly standing before her, healthy and well, when Penvale’s missive had doubtless made it sound as though he were knocking at death’s door.

“Violet,” he said, and as he heard his own voice, he registered that the note of hesitation it contained made him sound stiff.

“You . . . Penvale’s note . . .” She seemed to struggle for words, unusual for a woman who loved to talk as much as Violet did. Never mind that she didn’t share most of her words with James anymore; he still heard her sometimes, as he passed by the drawing room while she had her friends to tea, chattering away much as she ever had. He was always torn, on those occasions, between the desire to smile at the familiar sound of her voice and the desire to punch something.

The course of true love ne’er did run smooth, naturally, but James rather thought that his path had been unnecessarily choppy. When sitting through a particularly icily silent meal, he thought of another set of famous words more applicable to his life.

Marry in haste, repent at leisure.

These thoughts—or fragmented versions of them—flitted through his mind in an instant as he watched Violet make a valiant effort to regain her composure. She looked weary and shocked and travel-mussed, a far cry from the oh-so-elegant young miss he had met on that balcony five years ago, and yet she was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He tried to hate her for it, but couldn’t quite get there.

A moment later, however, hating her seemed to require considerably less effort, given that she recovered enough to take several rapid steps forward, raise her hand, and slap him across the face with impressive force.

“Jesus—” He bit off the rest of what would have been a truly foul curse and raised a hand to his cheek, which felt hot beneath his fingers. His wife was not a terribly physically imposing woman, but she was stronger than she looked. “Violet—”

“How dare you,” she said, her voice shaking with more emotion than he had heard from her in quite some time. “How dare you stand there so . . . so . . .” She seemed to struggle to find a word to adequately convey the severity of his crime.

“Healthily?” he asked acidly, lowering his hand from his still-smarting cheek. “I do apologize, my dear wife, if my continued existence proves an inconvenience to you.”

Her eyes flashed dangerously. “What’s inconvenient is receiving a note from your friend over there . . .” She jerked her head in the direction of Penvale; James risked a quick glance over his shoulder, and saw both Penvale and Jeremy watching himself and Violet with a mixture of amusement and apprehension. James was touched by their concern for his continued well-being, as it was a concern he shared quite earnestly.

Violet was speaking again. “. . . making it sound as though you were about to be laid out in a coffin. And when you consider that I’ve been expecting to receive a note like this every time you set foot in those blasted stables, climbing on top of some horse you’ve no business sitting on, it’s not surprising that I was a touch worried.” Her voice was positively dripping with scorn. It seemed she was not yet finished. “And yet, when I hasten to your side, what do I find in the midst of my journey but you, my allegedly ailing husband, standing before me as though you haven’t a care in the world?” James opened his mouth to respond, but closed it again hastily. It was common knowledge that it was best not to interrupt Violet in the midst of one of her rants.

“In fact,” she continued, “if we hadn’t happened to be at this inn at the same time, I would have arrived at Audley House to find it empty! Is this your idea of a joke? Have you decided to up the ante beyond merely ignoring me, and are now going to start sending me on wild-goose chases across all of England instead?”

She fell silent, breathing heavily in a way that was most distracting to any man with a measure of appreciation for the female bosom—and James was certainly such a man. He determined, after a moment, that she expected some sort of response from him at last.

He was silent a moment longer, not because he had nothing to say, but rather because it was so difficult to know precisely where to start. Should he begin by pointing out that making it a quarter of the way from London to Kent could hardly be counted as a journey across Eng land? Or perhaps by drawing her attention to the fact that, as far as the art of ignoring one’s spouse went, he was merely an amateur aping the true master who sat across the table from him at dinner each night?

In the end, however, he chose to begin with the most obvious point. “I didn’t know Penvale sent you the blasted note.”