She asked him to step back a bit from the stables; she told him he had nothing to prove to his father. He, however, insisted that he wished to make a success of the stables for her sake, for the sake of their future children—which inevitably led to a quarrel. A quarrel followed shortly by a reconciliation, but still, a quarrel. Even now, Violet’s hackles rose at the memory of this—of his inability to trust her to know her own mind. His inability to trust that she would love him even without the income of the (wildly lucrative, it must be said) stables.

And, of course, at the time, James had spent far less time at the stables than he did now.

Furthermore, given the current state of noncommunication between them, it had been a long time since Violet had reminded him to be careful.

Four years, if one wanted to be precise.

Violet could, in truth, offer the exact date of her last conversation with James before the event that had come to be known, in her head, as The Argument. She gave it the honor of capital letters because although it was not by any stretch the first argument they’d had in their marriage, none of their previous spats had rivaled it for passion—or for lasting damage.

She could still remember lying in bed with him that last morning, her head resting on his bare shoulder as his arm curved around her back, keeping her tucked firmly against his side. She had revisited the memory of that morning so many times that it was growing frayed at the edges, some of the details becoming confused in her mind—had it really been raining, or was the sound of raindrops a detail that she had fabricated?

In any case, she had learned from nearly four years of experience that to dwell too long upon this was to sink into melancholy. Which brought her back to her present circumstances: lying on her bed, contemplating a man who could, at this exact moment, very well be—

No. Violet quite simply refused to even consider it. James was fine—he had to be fine—because if he wasn’t, that would mean that the past four years would be the end of their story, not a mere rough stretch in the middle. And somewhere, deep down, without even admitting it to herself, Violet had always assumed it would be the latter.

So, instead of allowing herself to grow maudlin, she allowed herself to grow angry. Here she was, about to tear off after a man who would barely speak to her, who had injured himself by taking a foolish, unnecessary risk—something she had asked him repeatedly to refrain from doing. Something he did to prove himself to a man whose good opinion, in Violet’s mind, was scarcely worth having.

Who was she, after all, to demand such a sacrifice? Merely his wife, of course. And now she was the one about to be inconvenienced by a day of travel, all because her tiresome husband wouldn’t listen to her. If he was not dead of some horrid head injury, she had half a mind to give him one herself once she arrived.

And with that comforting thought, she rose from the bed and made ready to depart.

Two

Lord James Audley had a devil of a headache.

“Of course you do,” Viscount Penvale said from his spot across from him at the breakfast table at Audley House. “You were knocked unconscious by a fall from a horse yesterday. Even your thick head can’t bounce back from that so quickly.”

“True, true,” added the Marquess of Willingham, himself seated a few chairs down from Penvale, busily applying liberal amounts of jam to a piece of toast. “Especially when you’re not as young as you once were, old boy.” Apparently satisfied with his jam-to-bread ratio, he shoved half the piece of toast into his mouth with considerable enthusiasm.

James divided a glare between the two of them, stirring milk into his tea with more vigor than was strictly necessary. “I’m twenty-eight,” he informed them icily, setting aside his spoon. “And last I checked, Jeremy, you had two months on me—do I detect the sound of your own ancient bones creaking?”

“Can’t say I hear it myself,” Willingham—Jeremy—said cheerfully around his mouthful of toast.

“In a bit of a temper this morning, are we?” Penvale asked, applying himself to an egg with great interest. “Not greeting the world with our usual sunny disposition?”

“We,” James pronounced through gritted teeth, “were knocked unconscious yesterday, and awoke in a sickbed, where we had weak tea forced down our throat. And we still feel as though a blacksmith is hammering away at our skull. So we”—he speared a sausage with great force—“are not, perhaps, in the mood for your chatter this morning.”

A rather gratifying silence fell at this announcement, during which time James chewed his sausage. Although he wished for few of his father’s personality traits, the Duke of Dovington’s ability to silence a room was one he was grateful for. Even his very closest friends knew better than to poke at him when he addressed them in that tone. Long experience had taught Penvale and Jeremy that doing so would yield no information, and could even, on rare occasions, end in fisticuffs.

“So, back to London today, Penvale?” Jeremy asked, carefully ignoring James as he spoke.

“Quite. You as well?”

“I thought so.”

“I’m coming, too,” James said, setting down his fork with a clatter. He managed to avoid wincing at the sound, but only just.

“I thought you planned to stay for another few days,” Penvale said cautiously.

“I did,” James replied, reaching for his teacup. “But I want to tell Worthington in person that his damned horse is probably going to murder the next person who attempts to ride it.”