what she wished him to do, if only so that she might have the pleasure of defying him.
“Not at all,” he said, kicking one heel up to rest upon his desk. “I am merely going to come with you.”
Less than an hour later, James found himself cantering down Rotten Row, Violet at his side. It was not yet the five o’clock hour, meaning that the park wasn’t bursting with aristocrats out to see and be seen the way it would be in a couple of hours, but the weather was fine enough that they were far from alone. Since entering the park, James had seen several acquaintances—men he knew from his club on horseback, married couples in phaetons, and a few clusters of ladies on foot, tiny dogs accompanying them, led by their footmen, of course, not by the ladies themselves.
He and Violet had been largely silent for the duration of their ride, offering little comment other than a few stilted remarks about the weather and their pace. It was so easy, when they were together, for him to weaken, to soak in the simple enjoyment of being in her company once more. But then there would be a moment like this, in which she stifled a cough in her sleeve that he was almost certain was feigned, and he would recollect all at once the game that was afoot, and he would be awash in anger once more. Anger and disappointment—disappointment that she was lying to him again, that she was proving to be just as deceitful as he had accused her of being all those years ago.
No, he amended. That wasn’t fair, either. He’d been very angry that day, had felt very betrayed, and he’d be the first to admit—though never had he admitted this to Violet, he realized—that he’d spoken too harshly. Once his anger had cooled, he’d realized that he’d reacted somewhat out of proportion to the facts. On the day of their argument, he had learned that she had been involved in her mother and his father’s plot to meet him out on that damned balcony at that long-ago ball.
And it had stung—still did sting, if he were being entirely truthful. He had worked hard for his entire adult life, which at that point was admittedly relatively brief, to distance himself from his father, to become an independent man, in control of his own life and destiny. And yet, in a matter of such importance as his marriage, he had been manipulated like a pawn on a chessboard. But now, with some distance, he could admit that his accusations of Violet that day—that she was a conniving girl who’d married him for his position—had been unfair. She had been eighteen, in her very first Season, and he knew from personal experience how domineering Lady Worthington could be. It stung that he had been deceived in such a fashion, but it was not so unforgivable as he had once believed.
No, what was unforgivable was her refusal to admit to her own complicity. She had first disavowed any knowledge of his father and her mother’s scheme, before changing her story, claiming that she’d scarcely known about their ruse longer than he had. By that point, her words hadn’t mattered; he didn’t trust her to tell him the truth, and even if she were being honest now, the fact remained that she had still kept her knowledge secret from him, no matter the duration of her deception—and that her first instinct, upon being accused of doing so, was to lie. That was what maintained that rift between them, as far as he was concerned. Perhaps he was a fool, but he believed that by the time they had wed, Violet had truly come to love him—no one was as good an actress as all that. And he thought that he could have forgiven her for betraying his trust—once. But when she had lied in the face of discovery, had denied all knowledge of their parents’ plotting—that was what he could not forgive.
And that was why this fresh deceit of hers, with its bloody coughing and swooning and malingering, was so damned irritating.
And he was determined to get even.
“Is Willingham planning to host his hunting party next month?” Violet broke into his thoughts, not looking at him as she spoke, keeping her attention focused firmly ahead of her. This gave James the luxury of admiring her profile, which was so lovely it made his heart clench. Her cheeks were