Page 157 of The Belle of Belgrave Square

His hands tightened on her arms. “Look at me.” He stared down at her, willing her to see him for who he really was. “You told me once that when you looked into my eyes you saw a different man. A better man. That’s who I am. Not Blunt, but me. I’ve been here all along.”

“Please let me go.”

“I won’t ever let you go.” Pulling her hard against him, Jasper covered her mouth with his.

Julia struggled with him for a moment before succumbing to his kiss. It wasn’t a wholehearted capitulation. She still strained to be free of him. Only her lips softened, yielding briefly beneath his in unwilling surrender.

She was damp and salty with tears, her tremulous breath mingling with his on a gasping sob.

He kissed her fiercely, desperately, so afraid of losing her that his own eyes smarted with the sting of it. “I love you,” he rasped against her mouth. “I love you. That’s the truth. The only truth that matters.”

“And I love you,” she admitted.

A tremor went through him. He closed his eyes, clinging to her tear-clogged words as if they were a lifeline on a stormy sea. His grip on her tightened so that he feared he might crush her.

It would be all right now. If she loved him, everything would be all right.

But it wasn’t all right.

Her body remained stiff in his arms.

“I love you,” she said again. “If I didn’t, perhaps all this would be easier to forgive.”

His eyes opened as understanding sank in. An unsettling chill stole the warmth from his blood. “Julia—”

“Let me go,” she said softly. “Please. I can’t think clearly when you’re near me.”

He reluctantly loosened his hold. When she withdrew from his arms, he felt a sickening sense of loss. She was slipping away from him and there was nothing he could do about it.

She stood out of his reach. Her habit was rumpled from his embrace, her ebony hair half falling from its pins. She looked as though she’d been mauled by a tiger.

Jasper regarded her with a brooding frown as she put herself to rights. “What can I do?”

“You can leave me alone,” she said.

He flinched.

“I need time to think.”

“How much time?” he asked.

She tucked her hair back into its silken net. Her hands were trembling. “The rest of the day for a start.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “That’s why I need time.”

It went against Jasper’s every instinct to allow it. He didn’t want to leave her alone—to give her a chance to formulate an even more damning opinion of his conduct. He wanted to hold her tighter. To overwhelm her with the strength of his feelings for her. To kiss her and make love to her and compel her forgiveness.

But forgiveness didn’t work that way.

It wasn’t something he could demand. It had to be given of Julia’s own free will—if it was given at all.

“Very well,” he said. “If time is what you require, time is what you shall have.” So long as you don’t leave me, he wanted to add.

But he didn’t.

He merely assisted her onto Cossack, and then, mounting Quintus, he rode away, back to Goldfinch Hall.