“The rain came so unexpected like, travelers come straight in off the road,” the man explained in a thick Yorkshire drawl. “We’ve only got the one spare room in the attic, and it ain’t fit for any but a single guest.”

Julia’s teeth were chattering.

“We’ll take it,” Jasper said.

He arranged for their baggage to be carried up, and ordered dinner to be sent in to them in a half hour’s time. Julia was in no state to sit up in the dining room, and he had no wish to expose her to such a rowdy group of people.

That didn’t prevent her from being curious. Cleaving to Jasper’s side as he spoke with the innkeeper, she gazed about in round-eyed wonder.

“I haven’t ever been out of London before,” she’d told him.

He couldn’t imagine how all this must seem to her. First the railway journey and the carriage drive, and now this. A busy coaching inn on the edge of a remote North Yorkshire highway.

Add to that the fact that she now had a husband, and he wouldn’t blame her if she fell into a fit of the vapors.

But she didn’t.

She was being extraordinarily good-spirited about the whole thing.

“Jasper,” she said as the innkeeper fetched them a key.

He bent his head to hers. “What is it?”

Her voice dropped to a bashful murmur. “I’m not certain I’m able to climb four flights of stairs.”

“There’s no question of you doing so.”

She bit her lip. “But surely you can’t—”

“Here you are, sir,” the innkeeper said. “The boy’s lit the fire and brought in your bags. All’s in readiness for you.”

Jasper accepted the key, and then, once again, picked his new bride up in his arms. She made a muffled sound of protest, burying her face into the curve of his neck as he carried her up the stairs.

“Hush,” he whispered to her. “It’s no hardship on my part, I assure you. Quite the contrary.”

“I’m mortified,” Julia whispered back. “What must everyone think?”

“They’ll think I’m an eager husband with a very fetching new bride.”

She groaned in embarrassment.

He wasn’t merely being gallant. It was no effort to convey her up the stairs to their attic room. Reaching the fourth floor, he found a single door at the end of a short passageway. He had to duck to carry her through it, knocking off his hat in the process. Only when they were safe inside, the door shut and locked behind them, did he set her down.

The room, though tidy, was ludicrously small, even by the standards of a modest coaching inn. Shadows cast by the flames from the newly prepared fire shifted over the slatted floor, the worn armchair by the hearth, and the washstand in the corner topped by a chipped porcelain bowl and pitcher.

A bed in an old iron frame stood at the center of the room. Made up with clean sheets and a patchwork quilt, it was barely big enough for one large-sized man, let alone that man and his wife. Unless, that is, the couple slept together with a particular degree of familiarity.