Page 104 of The Belle of Belgrave Square

“How well I know it.” She folded her arms, leaning back into the window seat as if to put an even greater distance between them. “You still might have prepared me. The very idea—”

“I warned you the children would say things,” he said. “And you promised—you promised—you wouldn’t ask me about my past. It was part of our agreement.”

Her blue eyes glistened with injury. “I’m not asking you anything.”

He scrubbed a hand over his jaw, bitterly conflicted, torn between six years’ worth of secrets and the powerful urge to alleviate the look of hurt in her gaze. A look that told him she was no longer certain of her place here, in his home—or in his heart.

But it wasn’t only that.

The truth was, he wanted to tell her. He wanted to tell her so damned much. Frustration welled within him, driving out the last vestiges of caution.

“Very well,” he said at last. “If you want to know about Dolly, I’ll tell you about Dolly.”

Julia’s stomach trembled with anxiety as she waited for Jasper to speak. It was all she could do not to pepper him with questions. But she recognized the danger in his mood.

Though it took an effort, she held her tongue.

At length, he began: “Six years ago, when I returned from the Crimea, I came here with the intention of settling down. I was still recovering from my injuries, and, ah, not entirely myself. Beecham was here. He had the management of the place. Other than that, I was alone. Until one day, a month after my arrival, Dolly appeared at my door, with a ten-month-old infant in her arms. She told me . . .”

Julia waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. He didn’t seem to know how. “Why do you hesitate?”

“Because,” he said, “what I’m about to tell you is going to make me sound more monstrous than anything you’ve heard about my reputation thus far.”

A stab of apprehension quickened her pulse. “It can’t be any worse than what I heard from Lady Heatherton.”

“It’s worse,” he said.

Raindrops streamed over the window glass in rivulets, obscuring the view of the overgrown garden below. A garden where, according to Daisy, the grave of Jasper’s much-beloved mistress was marked with a white marble angel.

He went on in a harsh undertone, as if he were admitting to something too shameful to express. “Dolly told me she’d surrendered Charlie and Alfred to the workhouse the previous year and that she’d be sending Daisy there, too, now she was weaned.”

The workhouse?

Julia’s blood went cold. “I don’t understand.”

“Dolly had been supporting herself and the children with her earnings from . . . from prostitution. That all came to an end when she contracted consumption. By the time she arrived here, she’d largely wasted away.”

Julia paled.

“She asked me to retrieve Charlie and Alfred,” Jasper said. “And she asked me to take Daisy in as well. So, I did. Dolly stayed here, too, for a time. It would have been cruel to deny the children her presence so close to the end. She was dead within a month. The church in Hardholme refused to bury her. They’re a pious lot in the village. Not overly keen on fallen women. Which is why I buried her here.”

Julia stared at him, her head spinning at the implications of what he’d confessed. Her heart was in similar turmoil. “How did she find herself in such circumstances? Your relationship with her was one of long standing. And recent, too, if Daisy’s age is any indication. Did you not provide for them?”

“I did not.”

“Why not?” She tried and failed to keep the edge of accusation from her words. “You’re their father.”

“Many gentlemen fail to provide for the children they sire outside of marriage. It’s no excuse, but . . .” A muscle worked in his jaw. “I was of a different mindset before the war. A different man.”

So he had told her in the Claverings’ garden. And so Julia had believed. She still wanted to believe it, quite desperately.

She searched his face. “And yet . . . when you returned, you didn’t seek them out. Dolly had to come to you. If you’d truly changed, why did you not go to her and set things right?”

A frown darkened his brow. His gaze dropped from hers. “I wasn’t well for a time. I was . . . confused.”

“And all the while the boys were in a workhouse? And Dolly was dying of consumption?” Julia’s chest ached with muted anguish. The truth did indeed make her new husband sound monstrous. “Oh, Jasper.”

He winced. Only this morning, she’d called him dearest.