“Well, you’ve had this very carefully planned out, haven’t you?” James muttered, bitterness lacing his voice. Then he tensed up and stared at her unblinkingly. “Haveyou been planning this for a while?”
“N-no!” she stammered.
“So you found a solicitor and had documents drawn up,andfound a place to stay, all in one day?” It was clear from his tone that he didn’t believe her. “I must say, Violet, I am disappointed. I believed what you told me the other night, that you regretted threatening me with an annulment and that you wanted to work on this with me. Now, to discover that you lied and saw a solicitor behind my back?—”
“No, James, I promise it wasn’t like that!” she exclaimed, but she knew there was no way to convince him otherwise. If she were in his place, she wouldn’t believe herself either.
James was shaking his head. “I suppose it is only logical. You were trying to wear me down into agreeing to the kind of marriage you wanted, but just in case, you built yourself an exit strategy. How very crafty, Violet. How very much like your father.”
Anger erupted in Violet’s chest. She stared at him, her mouth slightly agape. She couldn’t believe he had just said those words to her. After everything she had told him about her fears of being similar to her father, he threw it in her face.
She sat up straight and shot him the coldest, iciest glare possible. “I think it’s best if we stop speaking about this and you sign the papers,” she snapped. “After all, you got everything you wanted—a cold, emotionless marriage that allowed you to inherit the money your father withheld. And since ours was a marriage of convenience only, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble replacing me with someone else.”
James’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment, she thought he was going to yell at her.
Good! Show some emotions! Show me how sorry you are to have pushed me away!
But he didn’t yell.
“Give me the document,” he muttered, holding out his hand.
With shaking hands, she passed it to him. He looked down at it for what felt like a whole minute, then swallowed, reached for his quill, and scratched his signature on the bottom right corner.
“There you go,” he huffed, sliding the papers back to her. “You got your wish. Now take that and go. I expect you to be out of my house by evening.”
Violet’s fingers were cold and clammy as she reached forward and grabbed the papers. Not even looking at James, she shoved them back into the briefcase and stood up. Her legs shook as she walked to the door, and when her hand was on the handle, she paused, half expecting him to shout at her to wait, to chase after her, to fall down to his knees and beg her to stay.
But he didn’t. He said nothing as she turned the handle, stepped into the hall, and closed the door behind her.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“She left me,” James said aloud to the room, after his wife—his ex-wife? He didn’t know exactly how annulments worked—had left the study. “She left me.”
He needed to say the word out loud because he still didn’t believe it. Everything had gone wrong so quickly. One moment he was smiling at her, about to tell her that he wanted to try and make their marriage work, the next he was listening to her calmly explain that not only did she want an annulment, but she’d already had the paperwork drawn up.
“She was planning this!” he hissed. Speaking out loud seemed to be the only way to wrap his mind around it all. “She was planning this maybe from the very beginning, from the moment I said we would not have a real marriage.”
But why hadn’t she talked to him about it? Told him that she was so unhappy that she had to consider an annulment?
She didn’t trust me.
That was the only explanation.
She didn’t trust me with her feelings. Or she thought I might try to stop her. And damn right, I would have!
James dropped his head in his hands. No, he wouldn’t have stopped her, not if leaving was what she really wanted. Just as he hadn’t tried to stop her now, as she’d exited his life.
But maybe I would have tried harder to fix things.
He needed a drink. And then he needed to punch something. But most of all, he needed to speak to Nathan.
It didn’t take him long to get a horse saddled and ride back across town to his gentlemen’s club, where he knew his cousin would still be, drinking scotch.
Nathan did indeed indulge in the finer things in life. He was a man who liked to enjoy himself. And for the first time, James envied him for that.
He would never have allowed a vindictive father to ruin his chances at happiness.
The moment he entered the club and spotted Nathan across the room, James felt as if he was an iceberg that had just startedmelting. All the feelings he’d pushed away since Violet had said she wanted an annulment—all the feelings he’d tried to numb—suddenly welled up inside of him.
