“Audley,” Jeremy said, and James nearly laughed out loud at the strangled note in his voice. “Are you feeling quite the thing?”

“Never better, I assure you,” James said cheerfully, allowing his thumb to stroke rather intimately across Lady Fitzwilliam’s palm before he released her hand. He would have felt like a cad had she not continued to regard him with that questioning, suspicious look of hers—the one that told him she was not at all fooled by his rather blatant attempts at seduction. “I don’t seem to have picked up Violet’s little malady, much to my relief.”

Next to him, Violet coughed. Unlike the noises she had been emitting of late, which James thought seemed carefully calibrated to achieve the perfect mix of frailty and feminine delicacy to play upon his sympathies, this was a violent cough indeed. More of a hack, really.

“Feeling all right?” he asked mildly once she had subsided.

“I was feeling considerably better five minutes ago,” she said with a bland smile.

“Must be all the fresh air,” James said wisely. “It might be a bit much for your fragile lungs.”

“In that case, my lord, I should be exceedingly grateful if you were to escort me home.”

“But of course,” he said gallantly. He turned back to Lady Fitzwilliam and Jeremy, who were both regarding him as they would a madman. An affable madman, perhaps, but still a madman.

“Jeremy, Lady Fitzwilliam,” he said, nodding to each in turn. “I’m afraid we must take our leave.” He reached for Lady Fitzwilliam’s hand once more, and she gave him a startled look as he bent down to press a quick kiss to the hand in question. “Lady Fitzwilliam,” he murmured in intimate tones—intimate tones still loud enough to carry, “it has truly been a pleasure. One I look forward to repeating very soon.” And with a cheeky grin, he turned his horse and took a few quick steps back to Violet’s side. “Shall we?”

She did nothing but nod tightly—and proceeded to ignore him for the entire ride back to Curzon Street. She also, James noticed, failed to cough once.

Nine

“Have you quite lost your mind?” Jeremy demanded.

It was later the same evening, and Jeremy and James were seated in Jeremy’s study—Jeremy at his desk, James lounging across from him in an armchair, brandy in hand. In truth, the study at Willingham House was not a room Jeremy frequented, and James was nearly certain that he had elected to receive him here as a show of authority. It would have been a more effective display if Jeremy had not looked so uncomfortable in the seat his father and brother had once occupied.

“Perhaps,” James said, tilting the glass in his hand so that the liquid within caught the last rays of summer evening light streaming in through the windows. “I assume you are referring to our meeting in Hyde Park?”

“Of course I bloody am!” Jeremy exploded. Jeremy was mild-tempered in the extreme—he was rather famous for it, in truth. The trait had served him well—it was impossible that one could sleep with as many men’s wives as Jeremy had without making some enemies, and James was certain that Jeremy’s famous charm and good cheer were the only reason he hadn’t yet been smothered in his bed.

“What the devil do you think you’re about?” Jeremy continued, sitting up straighter behind his desk. His own glass of brandy was sitting untouched before him—a sure sign of how deadly serious he was. “Fawning all over Sophie like that—and in front of Violet, no less?”

“I was under the impression—from you yourself—that you and Lady Fitzwilliam were ending your liaison,” James murmured.

“That’s not the bloody point,” Jeremy replied, which was his standard response in any situation in which he didn’t want to acknowledge the truth of someone else’s words. “I still want to know what the deuce you thought you were doing.”

James shoved his chair back and stood, suddenly unable to bear the thought of sitting still a moment longer. He’d been filled with a sort of frenzied energy ever since he and Violet had left the park. He’d been unable to settle to any single task at home, despite the numerous ones that demanded his attention, and hadn’t waited long before seizing his hat and gloves to visit Jeremy. Instead of calling for his horse or carriage, he’d walked to Jeremy’s house in Fitzroy Square, the exercise doing little to calm the jangle of his nerves.

Besting one’s wife, it seemed, was highly invigorating.

“I’m giving Violet a dose of her own medicine,” he said, pacing back and forth across the length of the room. Jeremy was a marquess, so his study was larger than most, despite how infrequently it was used, and yet James still felt caged.

Jeremy leaned back in his chair. “Don’t you think this has gone a bit far?”

“I apologized to her,” James said, stopping his pacing to look Jeremy directly in the eye. It felt odd to admit something so personal aloud, even to as close a friend as Jeremy. He was accustomed to keeping everything of real significance held tightly within him; discussing anything of his conversation with Violet made him feel strange, slightly uncomfortable in his own skin. And yet, as soon as the words were uttered, more followed, almost without conscious thought. “I apologized to her for the incident with the blasted horse, and she is still lying to me.”