In the dim light filtering through the library windows, Julia caught glimpses of titles she recognized, and many others she didn’t.

“Have you read them all?” she asked.

“Most of them, and some of them twice over.” Jasper’s arm came around her waist, his breath warm at her temple. “What do you think?”

She covered his arm with both of hers, leaning back against the hard wall of his chest. “I think,” she said in all solemnity, “I’m very much in danger of falling in love with you.”

Jasper’s eyes squeezed shut briefly at her words. She was jesting, he knew. It was about the books. Those were what she loved, not him. He nevertheless allowed the warmth of the sentiment to penetrate into his soul. For one fleeting moment, it filled up the emptiness inside of him, making him whole.

It didn’t last.

Julia stepped out of his arms almost immediately to inspect the bookshelves. “I wish Anne and Stella could see this. And Evelyn, too. We all of us adore novels.”

“Perhaps one day you can invite them for a visit.”

She glanced back at him over her shoulder. “You wouldn’t object?”

He shrugged. “Not if they don’t.”

A frown marred her brow as she resumed perusing the shelves.

Jasper wondered if it had occurred to her yet that her friends might not wish to visit her here. That, in marrying him, she’d ostracized herself from their society as surely as she had from her parents and every other fashionable connection in London.

She traced the spines on a row of books, her expression distracted. “I must write to Anne. She’ll be arriving back in London this evening. Heaven only knows what she might hear.”

Jasper could easily imagine.

By this time, Sir Eustace and Lady Wychwood would be aware of their daughter’s flight. Soon, news would filter throughout the fashionable world. There would be no keeping it secret, not when the Wychwoods’ servants and Ridgeway’s staff had all been privy to Julia’s abduction.

Doubtless her maid, Mary, had divulged the whole of it on returning to Belgrave Square.

Jasper fully expected that within a fortnight, he would have to contend with the consequences. The only question in his mind was how those consequences might present themselves.

He followed behind Julia at a distance. “There’s paper and ink in the desk. Write to whomever you like. I’ll see it’s posted.”

That seemed to alleviate her concerns—for the moment, at least. “Thank you,” she said.

“Of course.”

She resumed investigating his collection, stopping to withdraw a novel from one of the shelves. “The Cursed Veil.”

“A gruesome tale about a new bride kept prisoner in a haunted ruin.” He plucked the book from her fingers, returning it to the shelf. “Not the best story to begin your new life here.”

She gave him a speaking glance. A silent reminder that he’d promised not to restrict her reading.

“I didn’t say you couldn’t read it,” he said. “Only that it might not be an auspicious beginning.”