A reasonable man might simply confront her with the facts as he understood them: she was not ill; she had somehow hoodwinked a dissolute aristocrat into pretending to be her doctor; this was all some sort of misguided attempt to get his attention. Well, if that was her goal, she had thoroughly succeeded; he had not spent so much mental energy on his wife in years. He had a sneaking suspicion that confronting her would lead to a screaming row, and he liked to at least understand what he was rowing about before getting himself ensnared in one.

He directed his coachman to an address on Duke Street. Marriage, he thought, with great disgust. It had its definite advantages, to be sure, but he was beginning to believe that even his favorite evenings spent in bed with Violet had not quite been worth all this trouble.

But then, there’d been that one occasion, on the dining room table . . .

Lost in happy reminiscences, he was at his destination before he’d expected, and mere moments later he found himself being shown into a masculine drawing room, with walls papered in dark burgundy and filled with heavy oak furniture, by a surprised-looking servant. James assumed the man’s confusion was owing to the unfashionably early hour but discovered, upon entering the room, that the servant’s surprise was likely due to the fact that, despite the hour, James was not Lord Julian’s first visitor of the morning.

“Penvale.” James’s voice was flat, but he found himself less shocked than he should have been. He waited for the door to close behind the footman, who had assured him that Lord Julian would be down shortly.

“Audley.” Penvale, who had been slumped in an armchair, stood up hastily. He pasted onto his face a look of practiced innocence, but James had known the man long enough to see through it. It was eerily reminiscent of the look Penvale had given the authorities at Eton upon being questioned about the sudden appearance of several impressively large toads in the bed of a particularly loathed classmate.

“Fancy seeing you here.” James strolled into the room, examining a painting of a horse rearing on its hind legs and trying to keep his temper in check. “I wouldn’t expect to find you out of bed at this hour—it’s not even noon yet.”

Penvale remained silent. James continued toward the fireplace, resting his arm upon the mantel above the empty hearth.

“I expect it would be too much of a coincidence for you to be paying a simple social call on Belfry at”—James checked the grandfather clock upon the wall—“ten past eleven in the morning.”

Behind him, Penvale heaved a great sigh. After nearly twenty years of friendship, James was familiar with that sigh, and felt a surge of triumph: it was a sigh of resignation.

“What do you want to know?”

James turned. Penvale glanced up at him.

“What the deuce is going on?” he demanded.

“I’m going to need you to be a bit more specific.” Penvale tugged at his collar.

“Well,” James said pleasantly, “let me see. Specifically, could you tell me why Julian Belfry showed up at my house masquerading as a physician, informed me my wife had consumption, and then departed?”

Penvale dropped back down into his seat. “When did you learn Belfry was the physician?”

“I don’t know,” James said, mock thoughtful. “Perhaps when he dropped his card into my hand upon departing?”

Penvale’s head shot up. “You knew it was him from the beginning? Why didn’t you say so yesterday?” He paused. “And what the bloody hell is Belfry playing at? Violet shall eviscerate him when she finds out.”

“I’ve little interest in understanding the workings of Julian Belfry’s mind,” James said shortly. “Though I’ve half a mind to call him out—the bastard visited my wife in her bedchamber. Christ.” He felt a surge of anger at the thought. A small, unwelcome part of him asked him what right he had to anger—after all, he’d spent the better part of four years doing his best to ignore Violet. Did that not mean he forfeited some of his right to husbandly outrage? “I’m more interested in learning what, precisely, my darling wife thinks she’s doing.” He speared Penvale with a glance. “And how it is that you’ve found yourself mixed up in it all.”

“The answer to that should be obvious.” Penvale’s tone was dark.

James hazarded a guess. “Your sister?”

“She wouldn’t leave me alone until I agreed to arrange a meeting between Belfry and your wife.”

“She’s your younger sister. I would have thought you could manage to outwit her now that you’ve achieved the age of eight-and-twenty.”

“That is mere proof that you don’t have a sister,” Penvale replied.

James began to pace. “So—and please correct me if I am wrong—you are telling me that you were bullied by a couple of young ladies.”

Penvale paused. James could practically see the wheels in his mind turning, weighing his options, the potential loss of dignity that would result from admitting to being bested by his sister and his best friend’s wife, and then—

“Yes,” Penvale said, more cheerfully now. “That’s about the shape of it.”

James resisted, with great effort, the urge to seize Penvale by the neckcloth and shake him. He had always thought that his distrust of others was a sign of his own strength; the relatively few people he allowed into his inner circle must somehow be inherently more worthy. But it had transpired that first Violet, and now Penvale, had lied by omission; he seemed to be a less astute judge of character than he had thought. And yet, the revelation of Penvale’s complicity in this wild scheme did not send him into the towering rage he might have expected; rather, the involvement of one of his best friends merely made him curious to learn more about what was afoot. For the first time, he wondered if a single lie was perhaps not the unforgivable betrayal he had once believed it to be.