James sank back into his chair as West departed, thinking longingly of the virtues of a lengthy tour somewhere without wives, friends, or brothers. Somewhere remote. The Far East, perhaps. Or New South Wales. A criminal colony seemed preferable to London at the moment.

He glanced down at the papers spread across his desk, the numbers swimming before his eyes, and groaned softly. If he ever had a son, he decided in that moment, the first piece of fatherly advice he would ever give him would be to never marry. Wives were too bloody distracting.

“My lord?”

James looked up, startled. As if summoned by his thoughts, his own wife hovered in the doorway. He rose instantly, and she took a couple of steps into the room. She was dressed in a morning gown of white lawn, her hair slightly disheveled. He wondered if she had any idea how utterly tempting she looked standing there, her cheeks flushed, dark tendrils of hair curling about her face. Her gown was modest, but it somehow only made James more tempted to reach for the bodice, to tug it down and follow its path with his lips.

Forcing his unruly thoughts into order with some difficulty, he said, “Violet? Can I help you?”

“I saw that West was here,” she said, walking toward one of the windows that bracketed James’s desk. “It was an unusual enough occurrence that I thought to see what he wanted.”

She spoke as though the answer he gave was not of terribly great interest to her, but he had one of the flashes he’d had of late—moments where suddenly he was twenty-three all over again and her every word and thought was visible to him, a book that only he could read. At the moment, she was desperately curious, but trying very hard not to show it.

It was all going according to plan—even West’s visit, unexpected (and rather unpleasant) as it had been, could serve its own purpose.

“He just stopped by to say hello,” James said, walking out from around the desk. Violet had stopped directly in front of the window, squinting into the late morning sunlight as she stared into the garden. She pretended not to notice his approach.

“Did he, now?” she murmured skeptically, not removing her gaze from the window, even as James took several steps closer, crowding her. “Odd, isn’t it? He’s not been in the habit of paying you calls much of late.”

“I always thought you liked West,” he said, watching her profile, gilded by sunlight. He told himself that he was staring to make her uncomfortable, but the truth was she was so lovely that he could not possibly have brought himself to look away. “I should have thought you’d be pleased that he paid a visit.”

She did look up then, and he mentally congratulated himself on a well-placed hit. “I do like West,” she said, her eyes sparking, and as she met his gaze full-on, he realized that he might have made a slight miscalculation. He’d meant to needle her, annoy her, but always maintain the upper ground—and yet, when she was looking at him like that, really looking at him without any of the distance that had spread between them, it was all he could do to keep his hands at his sides, to resist the temptation to reach out, pull her to him, and kiss her senseless.

She, however, seemed oblivious to his internal struggle, because she was still, as usual, speaking.

“But I don’t believe for a second that his visit today was at all coincidental.” A moment of silence fell, during which she glared at him furiously and he tried desperately not to notice the interesting things her angry breathing did to her bosom. It was covered in fabric, to be sure, but it was still moving in a very distracting fashion.

“What do you mean?” he managed.

“You know precisely what I mean,” she said with quiet derision, and this was when James knew that she was very angry indeed. Angry Violet became noisy. Even angrier Violet became alarmingly quiet. “I am certain West stopped by because he heard of that shocking display in the park with Lady Fitzwilliam yesterday, and if you think for a second that I am going to allow you to ruin a respectable woman’s reputation—”

“She’s carrying on with Jeremy,” James felt compelled to point out, though he knew that he hadn’t much of a leg to stand on in terms of the rightness and wrongness of the matter. “Not exactly a pillar of respectability himself, you know.”

“He has been uncommonly discreet,” Violet said tersely. “I’ve heard only the slightest whisperings of any carryings-on between them—yesterday was the first time I’ve ever even seen them together. So please do not try to convince me that the lady’s reputation was already in tatters. Jeremy has done nothing to ruin her, and has indeed gone out of his way to ensure that no damage has been done to her social standing. What will ruin her, however, is your making a spectacle of yourself in Hyde Park.”

She paused for breath, and James, suddenly feeling like a rather great ass, opened his mouth to reply. Violet, however, had not finished speaking her piece.

“Furthermore,” she continued, her gaze still holding his own, “the state of the lady’s reputation is really a bit beside the point. The fact is, she is a person in her own right, and not an object of revenge. Did you spare a moment’s consideration for that small fact? Did you even for a moment stop to think that she might have some rather strong feelings on being treated in such a fashion?” Her voice never rose louder than her normal speaking volume, but James felt every word like a physical blow.

She paused, eyeing him from head to toe. Her gaze was like a hot poker on his skin. “No,” she said dismissively. “Of course you didn’t. You are a man, and she is merely a woman.”