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.