To Have and to Hoax

by Martha Waters

  “You seem to be making quite a habit of that,” Violet said sweetly.

  Ignoring her, James continued addressing her mother. “If I am not mistaken, you were informing Violet of the ways she has failed as a wife.”

  “Indeed I was,” Lady Worthington replied frostily. “And you should be thanking me for it, sir. If someone does not bring her back in line, how can you ever expect her to provide you with an heir?”

  James turned to Violet.

  “Darling, have you noticed our parents seem to have a particular fixation with your breeding organs?” James asked. Violet bit her lip to keep from laughing at the aghast look on her mother’s face.

  “Lady Worthington, please allow me to make something abundantly clear,” James continued. “Any fault in my marriage lies entirely at my own two feet. Your daughter is not perfect, but she is perfect for me—and she has made me a better man than I would ever have managed to be without her. I only hope she can ever forgive me for taking such a damned long time to fully appreciate her.”

  Lady Worthington was gaping at him, but he evidently was not done yet. “My wife and I have rather pressing matters to discuss at the moment, so I am going to have to cut short your tea. But please believe me when I say this: neither one of us will ever walk through this doorway ever again if you do not learn to treat your daughter with the respect she deserves.”

  Any comment Lady Worthington might have wanted to make was forestalled by James reaching down, seizing Violet about the waist, and lifting her bodily from the settee. He executed another polite bow and then, without further preamble, took Violet by the elbow and steered her rather firmly toward the door.

  Violet waved cheerfully at her mother on the way out, then paused, some of James’s infectious recklessness spreading to her as well.

  “By the way, Mother,” she said casually, “you might want to begin keeping a closer eye on the Times from now on. Any letters published under the name of Mr. Viola were written by me, and I’m sure you’ll disagree with every single word.” Relishing the look of abject horror on her mother’s face, she allowed James to lead her from the room.

  Outside, James tossed her perfunctorily into the carriage before climbing up behind her and pulling the door shut.

  “If you are attempting to win my favor, this is hardly the way to go about it,” Violet said huffily, blowing a stray curl out of her face. “I believe you treat hounds with more courtesy than that.”

  “Would you mind ceasing to speak for more than three seconds?” James asked pleasantly.

  Violet opened her mouth and then deliberately shut it again and settled back into her seat. As soon as she ceded the space between them, James leaned forward, somehow taking up more room than it seemed logical that he should.

  “In response to your earlier question,” he said in a conversational tone, “no, I have not come to some sort of glorious, earth-shattering conclusion in the past couple of hours. I’ve merely followed you to explain to you what I had already worked out.”

  Violet arched a brow. “James, you lied to me this morning.”

  “Afternoon, technically.”

  “The point remains.”

  “I know,” he said quietly, and all hint of jesting was immediately absent from his voice. “I lied to you because I was afraid that you would still think I was having my actions dictated by my father. Violet, I had already realized that I should have trusted you all along—I didn’t want my discussions with him, and with Jeremy, to complicate things.”

  “You should have trusted me to understand that,” she said, her voice equally quiet. “I was mistaken four years ago when I did not come to you immediately with what I’d learned of our parents’ scheming—not,” she added severely, “as mistaken as you were in not believing me when I tried to explain the situation to you—”

  “I know that,” he said quickly. “And I’m sorry.”

  “But I understand the instinct nonetheless.” She sighed. “I need to know you’re not going to let your father come between us ever again. I need to know I’m not going to receive notes about your nearly killing yourself on the back of a horse, just to spite your father. I need you to think of me, of us, before anything else.”

  “I was an ass today,” he said, and then his mouth quirked up at the sides. “Not just today, if we’re really being honest with each other, I suppose.”

  “Indeed,” she said, lifting her chin.

  “Violet.” All at once, his voice was deadly serious once again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t trust you to… to…” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated; the result was curls that were even more disheveled than they’d been a moment before. “I didn’t trust you to trust me that I trusted you.”

  Violet blinked. “I’m sorry?”

  James appeared to be running his words back through his mind, then nodded once, apparently satisfied. “I believe I had the right of it, actually.”

  Violet couldn’t help smirking. “It sounded peculiarly appropriate.”

  “As convoluted as we deserve?” He grinned at her, and the sight was devastating.

  “We did rather make our own beds, didn’t we?” She couldn’t stop herself from smiling back this time.

  “Do you know,” he asked conversationally, “that I’m fairly certain that at some point in the past fortnight I uttered the sentence ‘She doesn’t know I know she knows I know’?”

  “I would mock you,” Violet said gravely, “but I’m fairly certain I did the same.” She paused, considering. “Changing the pronouns about, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  They sat there for a moment, grinning idiotically at each other, and it was all Violet could do to refrain from reaching out and smoothing those tousled curls. She felt as though she were standing on the edge of a precipice, hand in hand with James, ready to jump—but he’d not yet shown her the wings they’d need to fly. She wanted to jump so desperately—and yet.

  And yet.

  So, schooling her voice into a calmness she didn’t feel, rearranging her face into an expression of polite interest, she said, “I’m sorry—you were saying?”

  His own grin faded as hers did, but if a laughing James was dangerous, so, too, was the model that replaced him—gazing at her steadily, unblinkingly, his eyes full of some emotion that she recognized and yet was still afraid to believe.

  “I paid my father a visit this afternoon, after you left,” he said steadily. Violet tried her hardest to give nothing away, to keep her face an impassive mask. She wasn’t entirely certain she was successful. “I told him I was giving Audley House back to him.”

  Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t this.

  “What?” she shrieked, nearly toppling off the carriage seat in her surprise. James reached out a hand to steady her, and without even realizing what she was doing, Violet laced her fingers through his.

  James’s brow creased in concern. “I—I didn’t think you’d mind,” he said, sounding uncertain. “I’ll buy you another house in the country if you wish. Our income will be reduced without the profits from the stables, but we’ll still be very comfortable, and I’m certain we can find something you’ll like just as much.”

  Violet reached out and placed her palm over his mouth, ceasing the flow of words. Silenced, he stared at her, then slowly arched an eyebrow in inquiry.

  “I don’t mind about the house,” she said, slowly and clearly, and watched the lines in his forehead smooth out again. “I just want to know why.”

  She started to remove her hand, but he caught it with his free hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. Her skin burned beneath his lips.

  “I was doing it for all the wrong reasons,” he said quietly.

  “The stables?”

  He nodded. “I wanted to prove something to my father. I was so angry with him—I’ve always been so angry with him. It’s exhausting, and it’s not worth it.”

  “I understand why you hate him,” Violet said, turning her face slightly
so that her cheek rested against his palm. “You don’t have to forgive him—I wouldn’t ask that of you.”

  He slid one thumb down her cheek, the smallest caress—and yet her entire body was suddenly covered in gooseflesh. How was it possible to simultaneously find a person to be entirely comforting and completely disconcerting at the same time?

  “Violet,” he said, and she was suddenly certain that he had never before said her name in precisely this tone of voice. “I don’t hate him—I just don’t bloody care anymore.” His casual profanity thrilled her, singing to something deep and primal within her. “I told him I’d be happy to work as his partner, his equal, but that I didn’t want all the responsibility anymore. I don’t want anything he can give me, and I don’t care what he thinks about that fact. He’s controlled everything about my life—even when I thought I had escaped him, when I thought I didn’t care about him anymore, I still let him poison the most important thing in my life.”

  He sank to his knees in the limited space between the seats in the carriage, both of her hands still clasped in his own.

  “Violet, I love you. I will always love you. I fell in love with you approximately two minutes after I met you, and I’ve never stopped. The past four years…” He paused, his throat working. “They’ve been hell,” he said simply after a moment. “I will do anything—anything—to make you believe I trust you. To make you trust me again with your heart. Our marriage, it is…” Another pause. This broken, clumsy speech was more precious to her than any smooth monologue could ever have been. “I do not care about anything else in my life so much as I care about repairing our marriage. These past two weeks have been the best fortnight of the past four years.”

  “Really?” Violet asked, somehow managing to find her voice, though it was a bit more hoarse than she was accustomed to sounding. “I thought you’d spent the past fortnight wishing to strangle me.”

  “I did,” he said promptly, startling a laugh out of her. “I’d rather spend my days arguing with you than in calm conversation with anyone else in the world.”

  As romantic declarations went, Violet wasn’t entirely certain anyone else would have found it completely satisfactory—but to her, it was perfect.

  “Oh, James,” she whispered, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to his forehead.

  “I should be thanking you,” he said, speaking more quickly now, as though worried that the words building up inside him would somehow vanish if he did not immediately give them voice. “You made me realize how afraid I’ve been all these years.”

  “Afraid?” Violet asked uncertainly, her throat feeling oddly tight.

  “I was afraid of other people, afraid that none of them could be trusted, afraid that even you, you who told me you loved me—that you could be lying, or you could be taken from me somehow.”

  “And that day,” she said softly, understanding. “That day, when you overheard me in conversation with your father—when we were discussing what he and my mother orchestrated—”

  “I should never have jumped to conclusions,” James said swiftly. “There’s no excuse—none at all—but all I can say is that it confirmed everything I had been led to believe about life until that point. That if I loved something, it wouldn’t last. You had given me no reason at all to distrust you, and I still instantly believed the worst of you. You seemed too good to be true—and there you were, proving my point.”

  “I hate your father,” Violet said with quiet intensity, and there must have been something in her voice that had never been there before, because James drew back slightly, a look of surprise in his eyes. “I hate what he did to you. And to West,” she added, because she didn’t think James’s elder brother had had much easier a time of it.

  “I went to see West before I followed you, too,” James said.

  “Good heavens, did you pay a call on everyone in London?” she asked teasingly, and was pleased when she was rewarded with a slight curve of his lips.

  “No, only those with the surname Audley,” he said, squeezing her hands gently. “Some families take tea together, but the Audleys go in for angry confrontations instead.”

  “Please don’t tell me you and West quarreled again,” Violet said warily. The rift between James and his brother had gone on for much too long, as far as she was concerned—and it was all the more frustrating since, as best she could tell, there was no real cause for it. They had quarreled in the past, it was true, but never out of proportion to other brothers. Never so badly as she and James had quarreled during the first year of their marriage, even.

  “No, nothing of the sort,” James assured her. “I had rather the same conversation with him I’m having with you now.” He shot her a wicked grin, and her insides grew heated in a way that only he could cause. “Without some of the displays of affection, of course.”

  “I should hope so,” she sniffed, and he laughed out loud at that, the sound of it sweeter to her ears than any music she had ever heard. She could have listened to him laugh forever.

  “Violet, please tell me what I have to do to win you,” he said, all laughter leaving his voice as quickly as it had arrived, replaced instead with a tone of stark desperation. He dropped her hands, reached up to seize her face, rising up on his knees so that he could press his forehead to her own, her entire world becoming the green of his eyes.

  “I’ve been a fool, I don’t deserve you—but I want to. I would do anything, truly, if you would only trust me with your heart again.” His voice cracked, but he continued speaking. “I love you so much—I want to have children with you, raise them with all the love that West and I never had. I want to embarrass them when they’re older, when their father can’t stop sweeping their mother off to darkened corners for scandalous embraces. I want everything I didn’t think I could have—and you’re the only one I want it with. So please—please. Tell me what to do.”

  Violet realized that she was crying, and didn’t know how long she had been doing so. James leaned forward to taste one of her tears, his tongue darting out to stop its progress down her cheek.

  “You don’t need to do anything,” she whispered, trying to steady her voice into something calm, strong, when she felt as though she were about to burst into a million pieces, radiant joy and a desperate urge to weep fighting a battle within her. “You followed me here. You didn’t let me walk away again. You fought for us, trusted us.”

  “I will never, ever let you walk away again,” he said, and even through her tears she could see the intensity of his gaze, could read the truth in his eyes. “I want to be the man who deserves you, because you deserve everything.”

  “We deserve each other,” she said, and leaned forward to kiss him gently. The kiss slid from loving to heated in the space of a heartbeat, his head tilting slightly to give him a better angle, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips until she parted her mouth to allow him entry.

  He broke the kiss with a muffled noise that sounded like a half laugh, half groan, but he did not remove his hands from where they cupped her cheeks. “I want to promise you things—everything,” he said heatedly, his breathing gratifyingly unsteady. “It has to be different this time.”

  “It will be,” she said with a certainty that she had never thought to feel about him ever again. “We understand each other now.”

  “You helped me understand myself.” He placed another soft kiss on her lips. “I promise never to take someone’s word over yours ever again.”

  “I promise not to let you walk away from a fight again,” she replied, then kissed the tempting expanse of his throat, just visible above his collar.

  “I promise never to walk away again.” He slid his hand down from her cheek in a slow, loving caress along her neck to her breast, cupping its weight in his hand, rubbing his thumb across the peak. He paused, thoughtful. “And I promise to tell you the next time I’m in a riding accident.”

  Violet snorted. “Better yet, why don’t you promise to avoid getting in a riding accident i
n the first place?”

  James grinned at her. “Fair enough.”

  “I promise never to pretend to be dying to extract revenge for an argument,” Violet continued, then leaned forward and made short work of unbuttoning his shirt.

  “I promise never to pretend you’re actually dying and keep you bedridden for days on end.” His thumb continued its gentle pressure, and he stole another kiss.

  “I promise never to cough significantly in an attempt to gain your sympathy.” She loosened the collar of his shirt enough to drag her lips along his throat.

  “I promise never to flirt with another lady as an act of revenge against your revenge.” His hand left her breast to join his other hand in reaching around her, undoing the buttons of her frock with practiced ease.

  “I promise to support you, whatever you should decide to do with regard to your relationship with your father. And West, too.” She drew back from kissing him, her tone not as light. The look in his eyes was all she needed to see—the gratitude, the love.

  “I promise never to spend a silent breakfast with you ever again,” he said quietly, and the underlying message was crystal clear. They would never again allow their fears, their mutual uncertainties, to come between them.

  “I promise never to depart in a huff in a carriage again,” she said, deliberately lightening the tone. “Or at least, not to my mother’s house.” She gave him a saucy smile and slid her hands inside his shirt, running her palms over the smooth heat of his bare skin.

  “I promise to follow you every time,” he said, a wicked glint in his eye as he undid the last of her buttons and reached up to ease her dress down over her shoulders and down to her waist. “And I promise to ravish you in the aforementioned carriage once I catch you.” He leaned down to place a heated kiss at the spot where chemise met bare skin, sending a shiver coursing through Violet.