A frown notched Jasper’s brow.

Bloody hell. This was his wedding night. A night he was meant to spend in that bed deflowering his new bride.

It wasn’t going to happen. Not yet. He’d promised her that. Nevertheless . . .

The bed was there, an almost taunting reminder.

Julia hadn’t noticed it yet. After being set down, she stood against him for a moment to get her bearings, head bent and gloved hands flat on his chest. Her bosom rose and fell rapidly, as if she had been the one to climb the stairs and not him.

Blood loss made one short of breath. Jasper recalled that much from his own experience. The saber cut to his face had bled like the dickens. In the aftermath of the skirmish, packed onto a ship with hundreds of other injured and dying soldiers, he’d made the brief voyage from Sebastopol to Constantinople, breathless and weak, falling in and out of consciousness, only to awaken boiling with fever in a bed at Scutari Hospital.

He didn’t know how much blood the doctor had taken from Julia, but he could well imagine how she must be feeling.

“Easy,” he murmured as he untied her bonnet. Removing it from her head, he tossed it onto the bed alongside his hat. Her cloak followed, then her gloves. She submitted to his ministrations without a word. “Would you like to sit down or lie down?”

“Sit down,” she said. “And then lie down.”

A smile tugged at his mouth. “Both, then.”

The chair was only a few steps away, but Julia made no move to go to it. She seemed reluctant to leave him.

He smoothed a hand over her rumpled hair, brushing it back from her face. It was one of the dozens of minor liberties he’d already taken with her—as tender as it was proprietary.

It should have been enough.

But this was the first time they’d ever been alone. Truly alone. There were no servants about. No riders on Rotten Row or party guests smoking on a balcony or encroaching at the edges of a darkened garden. For the first time, he had her all to himself, inside a bedchamber, behind a securely locked door.

And she was his wife.

He dropped his hand from her hair to cup her face, tipping it up to his. Her skin was satiny warm, her blue eyes burning bright in the firelight. “Julia.” His voice went gruff. “I mean to keep my promise to you about waiting to consummate our marriage. But it is our wedding night, and . . .”

A wash of rosy pink crept up her throat and into her face. “Yes?”

He moved the pad of his thumb over the slope of her blushing cheek in a slow caress. “I’d like to kiss you.”

Her lips trembled. She didn’t give him permission. Not with her words. But her arms slid up to wrap about his neck.

Heat surged through his veins as he felt the soft curve of her hand on the bare skin at his nape. She coaxed him to her. He needed little enough encouragement. Bending his head, he caught her mouth in a fiercely passionate kiss.