Page 74 of The Belle of Belgrave Square

She was out of bed the moment Mrs. Finchley took her leave.

Mary helped her to wash and dress, muttering all the while about the scandal and the shame of the situation.

As if Julia didn’t know her reputation was hanging in the balance.

Were she not so tired, she might have been in danger of working herself up into a state.

As it was, by the time Jasper returned, she was able to greet him with relative calm. Clothed in a soft day dress of violet-dyed wool, her hair brushed and rolled into a silken net at her nape, she was propped up against the same pillows as when he’d left her.

His brows lowered. “You’re even paler than you were before,” he said. “I trust Mrs. Finchley didn’t vex you overmuch?”

“Not at all.” Julia had found the solicitor’s auburn-haired wife to be rather nice—though the lady had asked quite a few pointed questions. Understandable, Julia supposed, given the circumstances. “Have she and her husband gone?”

“They have, thank God.” Jasper’s gaze drifted over her, his expression at once both protective and possessive. “You’re dressed.”

Heat coiled in her belly. Goodness. The way he looked at her.

“I rather thought I should be,” she said. “I’m afraid the effort’s quite worn me out.”

“So I see.”

Her heartbeat quickened as he approached the bed. He looked so dark and forbidding. So impervious to all sentimentality. And yet . . .

This was the same man who had kissed her so passionately in the Claverings’ garden. The same man who had scooped her up in his arms and carried her away from Belgrave Square like a knight in shining armor.

He glanced at the edge of the bed. “May I?”

Her pulse accelerated. “Yes, of course.”

The mattress dipped under his weight as he sat beside her. “Tell me. Are you certain this is still what you want?”

Julia was conscious of her maid hovering nearby. It didn’t stop her from answering honestly. “It is.”

He leaned into her, as if drawn by some hidden magnet. His voice deepened. “And am I still what you want?”

She stared up at him. Neither of them had made any declarations to each other. No professions of love or even affection. But yesterday morning, he’d told her that she’d been his first choice among all the other heiresses on the marriage mart.

A dubious honor. He was a fortune hunter, after all. Still, it must have cost him to admit it, knowing she was poised to elude him.

The least she could do was acknowledge her own feelings.

“You are,” she said. “I wouldn’t have proposed marriage to just any gentleman.”

A spark of silver fire flashed in his eyes.

She would have liked to revel in it for a moment; the heat of that look. To bask in the knowledge that he was pleased—quite visibly pleased—that she wanted him.

Instead, like any earnest fool, she felt herself compelled to continue. “I only wonder why you didn’t tell me you called on my father yesterday.”

Just like that, the fire in his eyes flickered out. His gaze was once again as coolly unreadable as the ice over the surface of a frozen pond. Something dangerous lurked beneath. What it was, she couldn’t tell. But the fact that he’d put up his guard made her draw back from him.

“Do you deny it?”

“I have no reason to deny it,” he said brusquely. “It’s not a secret.”

Julia was no good at sparring at the best of times. Now, faint and clammy from blood loss, she felt herself even less so. She could only wait for him to explain on his own, hoping he would choose to be honest with her.

She looked at him in silent expectation.