“Good lord!” Diana said, springing up suddenly. With a few quick strides, she crossed to where Violet was standing and snatched the letter from her. Scanning it quickly, she gave an unladylike snort. “Typical of my brother. Just enough information to thoroughly worry you, but nothing that might actually be of use.”

Violet barely heard her. “I must go,” she said, scarcely aware of the words leaving her mouth. “I must go to Brook Vale.”

Brook Vale was a picturesque village in Kent and the seat of the Duke of Dovington, the title that was currently held by James’s father. Although Brook Vale Park was the family seat, James had been bequeathed Audley House, on the opposite side of the village, upon his marriage to Violet. The house itself was of modest size when compared with the country estate of the duke, but Audley House’s true value was in the attached stables, which were spectacular, stocked with a host of steeds of impressive bloodlines, contenders in all the major races each year. James’s not-insubstantial annual income, an inheritance from his mother, was heavily augmented by the sale of those horses, the fees paid by other owners for the right to breed with his stallions, and race winnings.

It was all, on the surface, an entirely advantageous arrangement.

Violet hated those stables’ very existence.

“Now wait, Violet—”

Violet ignored Diana. “I must depart at once. What if James is still unconscious? Or—or—” She couldn’t bear to give voice to her thoughts in that instant—it was utterly impossible to think of her maddening, energetic husband as being anything other than in the best of health. She glanced up at Emily, who was studying her with a compassionate gaze.

“Of course you must go,” Emily said briskly, standing up. She rang for Wooton, who reappeared a moment later.

“Wooton, Lady James must depart at once for Audley House,” Emily announced.

“Indeed, my lady?” Wooton inquired, casting a look in Violet’s direction that in a less well-trained butler would have been characterized as inquisitive.

“Yes,” Violet managed. “It would seem that Lord James has had some sort of riding accident, and I would like to go see him immediately.”

Wooton’s impassive expression was betrayed by a slight furrowing of the brow—tricky to notice in such a heavily wrinkled face—that seemed to indicate concern. “I will have Price prepare a trunk for you immediately, my lady.”

“Thank you, Wooton,” Violet said distractedly, and turned back to Emily and Diana. “If you’ll excuse me, I should like to speak to Price myself, inform her that I only need the barest necessities—”

“Of course,” Emily said calmly, taking two steps forward to seize Violet’s hand. “Dear Violet, do send word as soon as you know more about Lord James’s condition.”

“I’m certain he’s fine,” Diana said, then added with an attempt at her usual humor, “After all, I know I’ve heard you lament his hard head in the past.”

“Thank you,” Violet said, attempting a smile and managing no more than a wobble of the mouth. “I’m certain it’s—well—” For once, words failed her, and she could do no more than bid her friends farewell and make her way to her bedchamber.

Once she arrived there, she found Price, her lady’s maid, in a frenzy of activity, flitting about with various articles of clothing in her hands.

“Only pack for a couple of days, Price,” Violet said upon entering the room. “If Lord James is well, I shall return to London immediately, and if not . . .” She trailed off, then shook her head vehemently, trying not to dwell on the prospect. “If his condition is serious, I will send word for more of my things to be sent along posthaste.”

“Yes, my lady,” Price said, bobbing a curtsey and resuming her frenetic pace. Violet retreated to her neatly made bed, upon which she lay down in the precise center, staring up at the canopy above. She was conscious as she never had been before of the rhythm of her heart in her chest, its pace still accelerated even as she lay entirely still. She couldn’t remove the image from her mind of James lying in the mud, a horse’s hooves dancing precariously near his head.

That head of his—one she had held in her hands, and kissed, and, more recently, wanted to scream at until her throat was raw—contained everything that made him James. Those green eyes, capable of conveying or masking great feeling, as he wished. The mouth she had kissed so many countless times in their first year of marriage, and not at all since then. And that mind—that clever, infuriating mind. She was angry with him—she had been angry with him for years. But she was not prepared for how devastating she would find the prospect of any harm befalling him.

In the first year of their marriage, before their awful falling-out, she’d pleaded with him to be careful at the stables—he enjoyed riding, but the attention he devoted to Audley House’s stables verged on obsessive, a product of his desire to prove himself to his father, and the idea of him injuring himself for such an absurd reason had worried her as much as it had irritated her. He had largely ignored her concerns, refusing to delegate tasks at the stables that could easily be performed by a groom, and spending long hours poring over the books despite having a perfectly competent steward in his employ. She’d tried to bite her tongue at times, not wishing to nag, but there had been occasions when she could not resist raising the issue—after a week that involved two separate trips to Kent to check on the stables, for instance, or a morning when he appeared wearily at the breakfast table after working late into the night.