Page 92 of The Belle of Belgrave Square

“Five miles of bad road. Carriage travel is difficult, but a horse and rider can manage it, even in this weather. Mr. McCready at the telegraph office will have sent someone.”

“Five miles isn’t such a great distance,” she said. “I’m surprised you’ve been unable to find any servants.”

“It isn’t only the distance that dissuades people from accepting regular employment at the Hall.”

Her brows lifted in question.

“There’s my reputation, for one,” he said. “And the children’s lack of legitimacy. And then there’s the house itself.”

She waited for him to continue, but he once again fell silent. He was in a grumpy, brooding frame of mind, more content to frown at her from across the carriage than he was to indulge her curiosity.

In the early days of their acquaintance, it might have put her off. Then, she’d been disposed to shrink from him the moment he looked in her direction. But not anymore. Not now she knew something of the man lurking beneath the beastly exterior.

“Lady Arundell claims it’s haunted,” she informed him. “And she’s not the only one who’s said so.”

A scowl darkened his brow.

Julia was undeterred. “Is it true?”

“It’s true that the Hall has a reputation.”

She looked at him expectantly.

He grudgingly continued, “It was originally owned by a family of Royalists who were executed during the Civil War. According to local superstition, some of them still walk the grounds.”

“Have you ever seen them?”

“Are you asking me if there are ghosts living at the Hall?”

Her mouth tipped at one corner. “Are there?”

Jasper surprised her with his answer. “Goldfinch Hall is haunted. But not by the kind of ghosts you imagine.”

Her attention was captured as surely as if he’d unveiled a new chapter in a serialized sensation novel. “What do you mean? What kinds of ghosts?”

“Old sins cast long shadows,” he said. “If the atmosphere at the Hall is unsettling, you can attribute it to that, not to any spectral presence.”

Her rapt expression faded. He wasn’t tempting her with a ghost story. His bleak sentiments were all too real. She regarded him with bewilderment. “You make it sound as though you’re unhappy there.”

He looked back at her steadily, his stern countenance belied by a gruff admission: “I’m not unhappy. Not now you’re coming home with me.”

His words settled inside her breast, glowing warm and bright, like a coal fresh from the fire.

Her smile returned slowly. “I do believe you mean that.”

“You can believe it,” he said. “If nothing else.”

“It isn’t only my dowry, then?”

He gave a humorless laugh. “If it were, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Wouldn’t we?” Julia’s smile turned quizzical. “I thought that was the most important quality in your prospective wife—the size of her dowry.”

“The size matters little if your father refuses to grant it to me.”

She stared at him. “My father refused you?”

“I told you he did. We discussed it yesterday.” He scanned her face, frowning with concern. “Don’t you remember?”