should be wasted by gulping.” Violet raised her eyes, risking a glance at him. His green eyes were blazing, his face still slightly damp. She curled her free hand at her side, resisting the temptation to retrieve her handkerchief, to wipe his face for him.
“But watering the rug with it is a good use instead?” He drained the rest of the contents of his glass.
Violet snorted. “Don’t be absurd. I think your face absorbed the entire brunt of it.”
He sighed, then set his now-empty tumbler on a side table nearby. “I suppose I deserved it.”
“Yes,” Violet said, sniffing and taking yet another sip. She could feel herself relaxing slightly as the brandy burned through her, her limbs feeling looser, her spine losing some of its indignant stiffness. Her anger, however, remained. The act of throwing the drink at him—something she had fantasized about more than once during long, silent dinners over the past four years—had taken the edge off of her immediate fury, but somehow she now felt even worse.
“You deserved that and more,” she said, setting her glass down, the drink inside only half finished. She wondered for a brief, wild moment what her mother would think of this scene: her daughter—the daughter of an earl!—not just drinking strong spirits but hurling them into her husband’s face. She made a mental note to save this story in case her mother tried to detain her overlong at tea this afternoon—though, late as she would likely be at this point, she’d be lucky to get a word in edgewise around the tongue-lashing she was sure to receive.
“I’ve been acting like a child these last weeks,” she said frankly, because she might have been many things, but she also always tried to be fair. “I deserved any tricks you played on me, because I was being foolish. I was angry with you, and I wanted to teach you a lesson, and I went about it the wrong way. It was childish, and I apologize.”
James arched a brow, looking mildly stunned. She might have considered herself an eminently fair person, but apologizing didn’t come easily to her, and admitting she was wrong—about anything—was even harder.
“You don’t need to apologize,” he said after a moment’s silence. “I believe that responsibility lies solely with me.”
She could see that he was working himself up to a proper apology—one that she would likely love to hear, one that would make her soften in the face of his regret, of his nearness, of the very fact of him being James. And this was something that she could not do.
That she would not let herself do. Not when he had claimed to be ready to put their troubles behind them, and then lied to her face half an hour later. He hadn’t explained anything of his discussion with his father in the park; he hadn’t even mentioned anything about Jeremy’s involvement in their parents’ scheme, whatever that might have been. If these events were what had led to his apology this morning, then he had been lying when he said he trusted her, because he was still taking the word of everyone else above her own. It had hurt when he had done so four years ago, and it still stung now, even as it infuriated her.
In short, nothing had changed; she would not let him weaken her with whatever apology he intended to offer her now.
So again, she spoke. “You’re going to apologize now, I know. But I don’t want you to.”
His brow furrowed. She wanted to smooth it, to run her thumb down the skin, feeling its warmth and firmness, watching his expression change from one of concern to something else entirely. And yet, she did not.
She could comfort this man—this infinitely precious man—over and over, but doing so would not solve their problems.
At this point, only he could solve them.
“I love you,” she said simply, and felt as though a weight had been lifted from her chest, so light did she feel with this unburdening of the truth. She felt as though she had carried these three small words around with her every day for the past four years, that they had grown heavier each day for being unspoken.
“I love you,” she repeated, feeling almost giddy, and she saw him open his mouth, perhaps to speak these same words back to her, and again she forestalled him, knowing that allowing him to do so would weaken her resolve. “But I don’t want to hear what you