“You loved him once, Violet,” Emily said quietly. “Don’t you want to fight for it, rather than play foolish games?” She paused, then added in a small voice, “I would.”

Violet looked at her friend, who had spent the past five Seasons catering to the whims of her foolish parents, who had watched both of her dearest friends marry while she remained, as ever, Lady Emily Turner, the prim, proper, and terribly virginal marquess’s daughter. And Violet realized in a sudden moment of clarity that in Emily’s eyes, it must seem extremely foolish of Violet to have allowed a great love match to wither and die. If only repairing the damage were so simple. If only it were as easy as walking up to her husband one morning and declaring a truce.

But it wasn’t. It was not just the four years of silent meals and stiff conversations that divided them, but the knowledge Violet held, deep within herself, that her husband didn’t trust her—her love, her faith in him, her knowledge of her own heart.

However, she said none of this. Instead, she said simply, “It’s too late, Emily. I can’t mend four years of damage. But I can show the man that I’m not something to be casually discarded.”

“Ah,” Diana said, as though something had become immediately clear to her. “Are you going to become enceinte?”

“Considering we don’t share a bedchamber anymore, I’m not sure how I’d go about doing so.”

“Oh, Violet, you can be frightfully naive for a married woman,” Diana said impatiently. “I didn’t mean that Audley would be your partner in this endeavor. I was thinking more of planting a cuckoo in the nest.”

“You want her to take a lover?” Emily hissed, looking about frantically as though the walls had ears—which, considering the number of servants in the house, it was entirely possible that they did.

“She’d hardly be the first unhappily married woman of the ton to do so,” Diana said. She shrugged. “I’ve been thinking of taking one myself.”

“Diana . . . you . . .” Words seemed to fail Emily entirely, and she subsided into a sort of distressed sputtering.

“Diana, please do stop trying to shock Emily,” Violet said.

“It’s not my fault that her virgin sensibilities make it so easy.” Diana leaned back against the settee. As ever, she managed to make bad posture look seductive in a way that Violet could never quite manage.

“In any case, Diana, your husband is dead, so I daresay the circumstances are a bit different.” Seeing Diana open her mouth, no doubt with some new scheme to share, Violet waved her to silence. “I do appreciate your . . . er . . . helpful suggestions, but I have something else in mind already.”

“Oh?” Diana sat back up again. “Do tell.”

And, leaning forward conspiratorially, Violet did.

Four

James was having an extremely dissatisfying day.

For the second morning in a row, he had left the house early, before Violet was awake, assuming she had little desire to see him at the breakfast table in light of their most recent conversation. Although, he reminded himself firmly, it was his bloody breakfast table, and he could damn well use it as he saw fit, whenever he very well pleased.

In theory.

In practice, he was more or less hiding from his own wife. It was thoroughly embarrassing. Discretion was the better part of valor and all that rot, though, and he found the idea of another argument in the same vein as their last one to be extremely trying.

Yes, better to give her a few days to cool off before resuming the normal froideur of their dinners. Dinnertime in the Curzon Street house tended to be just shy of unbearable, in truth. Nothing terribly outrageous, of course—no blistering rows or other such unseemly displays of feeling. They were English, for God’s sake. But the reality was somehow worse—sitting across the table from Violet, always painfully beautiful in her evening gowns, her low-cut bodices a hellish temptation for a man who’d had nothing more than his hand for company in bed these past four years. And the silence—the silence was the worst. Violet, who could rarely cease her chatter long enough to take a breath, so full of life and ideas and curiosity about everything, everywhere—to sit across from her in silence was worse than any argument could have been.

The only thing that made these dinners tolerable was the strength of his cellars, in truth—if he one day squandered his entire fortune on rare vintages, he would lay the blame entirely at Violet’s feet. One could not sit across from her in silence without fortification.

With that less-than-pleasing thought in mind, James had spent yesterday and much of today meeting with his man of business and his solicitors. This was the aspect of owning the stables he had once enjoyed the most—the horse chatter at Tattersalls, less so. He loved to ride—loved the feel of being on horseback, loved the clarity of mind his morning rides afforded him—but he wasn’t the sort to willingly spend an hour debating the merits of a particular filly. However, of late, even the cool logic of the Audley House finances had lost its appeal. What had once been satisfying—taking a task assigned to him by his father and performing it better than the duke could possibly have expected—had lost some of its allure as time wore on. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone—not when he had fought with Violet so often over this very issue—but he was beginning to wish the stables occupied rather less of his time.