“Yes,” she said, giving another small cough. “I’ve been feeling a bit poorly since my return from the country”—she, at least, made no effort to disguise the note of reproach in her voice—“but I’m certain it’s nothing to worry overmuch about. I shall be right as rain in another day, I expect.”

James gazed at her intently, pondering—it was unlike Violet to admit to illness until she was delirious with fever. She shifted in her chair as he continued to look at her, her cheeks flushing slightly, causing the book on her lap to fall to the floor with a soft thud.

“What are you reading?” James asked, hastening to pick up the volume before she could lean down to do so for herself. He straightened and flipped the book in his hand so that he could peer at the spine. He read the title, then flicked an amused glance at his wife, whose cheeks appeared to be reddening further.

“Childe Harold?” he asked, handing the book back to her. “Please correct me if my memory is failing me in my advanced age, but did you not once call Byron a ‘floppy-haired fool’?”

“I may have,” Violet admitted, setting the volume aside on the small table next to her chair. “But I thought I might as well see what all the fuss is about. It’s quite good, actually,” she said reluctantly, rather as she might admit that Napoleon’s coat was attractive. “Though I still think he’s a bit of an idiot. All that carrying on with Caro Lamb.” She sniffed disdainfully, and James had to suppress an urge to grin.

“I think he’s rather an idiot myself,” James said, and Violet’s gaze met his, and for a moment it was as though no time had passed. She was enjoying herself—for a moment, just a moment, he could see it plain as anything. There was the look in her beautiful brown eyes that he used to see each time they really got into it about history or literature or anything else they used to debate—the keen interest, the intelligence that polite society found unseemly in a woman. It was one of the things James loved best about her.

Had loved best.

That sobering addendum brought him back to himself, and to his reason for looking in on her. “If you are fit enough to discuss Byron, then I suppose I can rest easy that I don’t need to summon a physician for you?”

“Oh!” Violet said with a start, and an odd expression crossed her face, though it was gone before James could identify it. “No! That is, yes. That is . . .” She waved her hand, clearly attempting—unsuccessfully—to appear casual. “I shall consult a physician if I am not feeling better soon. You need not concern yourself, my lord.”

And just like that, the distance was back between them. For a moment, as they had discussed Byron, it had felt like it used to, before everything went wrong in their marriage. But just as quickly, with the words my lord, the past four years reinserted themselves. And it was all the more frustrating for the fact that, for a moment, he’d forgotten how things stood.

“Very well,” he said impatiently, angry at her for ruining the moment—for ruining things in the first place, he thought furiously. “If you have no need of my assistance, then I shall take my leave of you.” He hated the sound of his own voice when he was speaking to her, sometimes—never did he sound like so much of a prig as when he was conversing with his own wife.

He reminded himself, as he so often did, that he was not the party at fault in this mess—he had reacted as any man would have upon learning his own wife had manipulated him in so appalling a fashion. The fact that he had to remind himself of this fact at all was itself a dangerous sign—for a good while after their last, final argument, he’d been too angry to think clearly. He’d never needed reminding then.

“I require nothing of you,” Violet said softly, in response to his last statement. And for a moment James wanted to shake her, to demand that she ask something, anything of him—he was her husband, after all, for better or for worse.

But, of course, he could not say that to her. So instead he bowed, and said nothing more at all.

Violet’s plan was proving to be more complicated than she had anticipated.

“Of course it is,” Diana said impatiently the next day as she, Violet, and Emily reclined in Diana’s barouche outside Gunter’s. “I do believe my exact words to you when you confessed this idea were, ‘Have you lost your mind?’ ”

“And I assured you that I had done no such thing,” Violet said, pausing to take a bite of her ice. It was a warm day, and Berkeley Square was packed with carriages and curricles full of other ladies similarly enjoying ices in the sunshine. Violet spotted at least three different clusters of ladies that she knew, but she did no more than nod in acknowledgment upon catching their eyes. She did not wish to be disturbed.

“However,” she conceded, “this is presenting some difficulties. Do you think your physician would be willing to lie to the son of a duke?”

Diana and Emily both blinked at her, Emily with a spoon suspended halfway to her mouth.

“It’s just that if I’m going to maintain this ruse, I’ll eventually need a physician to say that I’m truly ill, and I know James’s physician won’t do it. So I need to find someone else.”

“And you don’t think he’ll find it suspicious that you’re suddenly consulting a different physician?” Emily asked skeptically.