She gave an unladylike snort, which should have been wildly unattractive but somehow wasn’t.

“It is rather hard, you see,” he said with what he considered to be admirable patience, “to keep track of with whom, precisely, one’s friends are corresponding when one is unconscious.”

Her eyes narrowed further, a sure sign of trouble, but James didn’t care. He felt reckless, alive, the way he always had when they had argued during the first year of their marriage. The way he hadn’t felt in years.

“So you really were injured, then?” she asked skeptically, and James expected he only had moments before she turned to call for a physician to perform a full physical examination to verify his claim.

“I was,” he said hastily, hoping to avoid such an occurrence—he’d had quite enough of physicians in the past day. “Your father’s new stallion threw me from the saddle and knocked me unconscious.” He should probably have been embarrassed to admit it, but he wasn’t—he was a good horseman under ordinary circumstances, but that horse was deranged.

“And once you regained consciousness, it didn’t occur to your friend”—she pronounced the word as she might say your pet cockroach—“to alert me to the fact that you were not, in fact, steps away from death?”

“I can’t really say,” James said, trying to suppress his own irritation and not entirely succeeding, “as I know nothing about what possessed him to write to you in the first place.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew they had been a mistake. Violet’s eyes flashed, and he had to resist the urge to take a step back.

“Oh, of course,” she said in a lethally quiet voice. “How silly of someone to alert a wife to her husband’s possible demise. How ridiculous!” She cackled, the sound totally foreign compared to her usual laugh—not that her laugh was a sound James had heard much over the past four years.

“I merely meant he shouldn’t have alarmed you unnecessarily,” he said impatiently, waving his hand dismissively. “There was no need to worry you without cause.” He spared a moment’s thought for the very appealing fantasy of choking Penvale. It seemed a fair payment.

“And if he hadn’t written to me,” Violet said heatedly, “I expect I never would have heard about this little accident at all! Which is exactly how you’d like things, I expect. You’d never imagine my delicate female sensibilities could possibly handle the trauma.” Her voice was so sharp that he was half surprised the words didn’t draw blood as she flung them at him.

“There’s nothing to tell!” James said, belatedly realizing that he had raised his voice. He cast a glance around and was relieved to note that no one in the inn yard—with the irritating exception of Jeremy and Penvale, of course—was paying them much heed. Clearly the grooms and travelers had better things to do with their afternoon than gape at a pair of bickering aristocrats. James agreed, considering that he himself had better things to do than be one of the aforementioned bickering aristocrats.

Violet crossed both of her arms over her chest in a way that managed to do extremely distracting things to her bosom. James spared a moment to be grateful that she was not wearing a more revealing frock, if only for the sake of his ability to concentrate.

“How often has this happened to you, then?” Violet asked, eyeing him with great scrutiny. “If you’re in the habit of receiving head injuries without informing me, should I assume this is an everyday occurrence for you?” She spoke as though he had asked the bloody horse to throw him.

“This is the first time it has happened in recent memory, madam,” he said through gritted teeth, his arms stiff and straight at his sides as he fought against his sudden desire to give her a good shaking. He made an effort to lower his voice, if only for the sake of making himself unintelligible to a certain viscount and marquess a few feet away.

“I’m not sure I believe you,” Violet said with a delicate sniff. “And if this isn’t the first such accident you’ve had, who knows what sort of damage you’ve done to your mental capacity?” She gave him an assessing look. “I mean . . . should I really trust you with the family finances, James, if it’s possible that you’ve gone soft in the head?”

James’s hand flexed of its own accord, but somehow, miraculously, his voice was still even. “I believe, my lady, that my mental state remains as undiminished as it ever was.”

Violet arched a dark brow. “I will, of course, take you at your word, since I have no other choice . . .” She trailed off, an expression of carefully calculated skepticism on her face that spoke volumes. It was a look, he knew, that was calibrated to annoy him—and it worked. He hated that she knew him so well; he hated that he had once allowed her to get close enough to him to now use this knowledge as a weapon.

“Damn it, Violet,” he began.

“I don’t want to hear anything else from you,” she said, and looked over his shoulder at Jeremy and Penvale. “Penvale,” she called, raising her voice slightly, “next time he’s enough of a fool to climb onto the back of a horse that my father told me just last week was unbreakable, please wait to notify me until you’re certain about whether he’ll live or die. I should hate to make a habit of exhausting the horses unnecessarily in mad dashes across the country.”