The Belle of Belgrave Square (Belles of London #2)(77)

This wasn’t a conversation he’d anticipated having so soon after their arrival. But like much in his cursed postwar existence, the unpleasant reality of it was unavoidable. The best he could hope for was that, in divulging some semblance of the truth, he wouldn’t hurt Julia in the process.

He approached her slowly, conscious of the fact that it may be too late. That she may already be hurt. “Her name was Dolly Carvel.”

“Is she buried in your garden?”

Bloody hell. Is that what Daisy had told her?

Not that it wasn’t the truth.

“She is,” Jasper said.

“I see.”

He sat next to her in the window seat, far enough away that he could look her in the eye. “You don’t,” he assured her. “There’s no way you possibly could.”

It was the wrong thing to say. That much was evident immediately.

Julia’s beautiful face hardened, twin spots of color rising in her cheeks. “I’m not entirely ignorant, you know. Even though I’ve never been anywhere or done anything. Even though you’re the first gentleman I’ve kissed.”

“That isn’t what I—”

“You loved her. You told me so last night at the inn.”

What?

Jasper opened his mouth to deny it, only to close it again. He belatedly recalled his admission to her as he’d brushed her hair. Good God. She’d assumed he was talking about his mistress.

Of course she had.

He’d been too caught up in his own painful memories to recognize it. And now it was too late. There was no way to correct her misapprehension. Not without divulging more than he was able. But he had to say something.

“I never meant—”

“What I hadn’t realized,” Julia went on, heedless of his protestations, “was that it was the kind of grand passion Heathcliff had for Cathy. Something that transcends a person’s death.”

Jasper choked back what would have been an exceedingly ill-timed laugh. “This isn’t Wuthering Heights. If it were any novel, it would be . . .” He struggled to come up with a comparable title and failed. “Blast it all, Julia, this is real life! There’s nothing romantic about it.”

“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.”