Page 29 of The Belle of Belgrave Square

This was how he could help her. Not by holding her. Not by carrying her off to safety somewhere. But by talking to her. By engaging her on the subject she loved most.

“What did you think of it?” he asked.

She replied without hesitation. “I enjoyed it immensely.”

“You disagree with Marshland’s critics, then.”

“I suppose I must. Though I don’t know anything more about what the critics said than what the clerk at Bloxham’s told me. Something about the story being tripe or treacle?”

Jasper grimaced. “That about sums it up.”

She turned to face him. “You read Mr. Bilgewater’s column in the Weekly Heliosphere?”

“Sometimes.”

“And follow his recommendations?”

“The critics and I rarely agree when it comes to popular novels.” He regarded her in the light of the torch. “I’m more interested in what you think.”

Her eyes were wide and guileless, but her expression wasn’t without intelligence. Indeed, there was a kind of earnest passion in her gaze. The look of a true devotee of romance. “I told you,” she said. “I enjoyed it. Which should be evident enough, given how fast I finished reading it.”

“What did you enjoy about it?”

“So many things.” She warmed to the subject, more animated than he’d seen her all evening. “Mrs. Marshland’s work isn’t as thrilling as it once was, but her prose is beautiful. She writes with such a depth of emotion. As if she’s felt it all herself—the love and the yearning. Even the romantic disappointments. One can feel it right along with her.”

A surge of secret pride made him stand a little taller, a litter straighter, even as he leaned into her, craving more of her favorable opinions. He warned himself to tread carefully. Romance was a dangerous subject to discuss with a lady.

And not only romance.

“You assume J. Marshland is a woman.”

“Naturally,” she said. “No man could write about romance in such a way.”

“And yet . . . I’ve heard that Marshland is, in fact, a man.”

She drew back, skeptical. “Who says so?”

“I read it somewhere,” he said vaguely.

“Where?”

“I can’t recall. But it’s true nonetheless.”

Her soft mouth tugged into a frown. “Well . . . I don’t suppose it matters overmuch. A good writer is a good writer, no matter their sex.”

“Even when it comes to love?” he asked.

“If he’s experienced it himself, he may well write about it.”

He set his hand next to hers on the railing. Their little fingers nearly touched. “And if he hasn’t experienced it yet?”

“But he must have done to write about it so eloquently. If he is a man, I expect he’s suffered some terrible tragedy in love. How else could he explain what Sir Richard feels when Lady Elaine refuses his offer and marries another?”

“Anyone might feel the same who’s had something valuable slip out of their grasp.”

“Not something,” she pointed out with the apple-tart sternness of a schoolmistress. “A lady. The lady he’s loved the whole of his life.”

Jasper had to make an effort not to smile. For all she was shy and romantic-minded, Miss Wychwood had starch in her. “You didn’t find his constancy difficult to believe?”