“Did you teach them to swim?” Julia asked Jasper.

“I did.”

“Who taught you?”

He hesitated before answering. “My father.”

Julia knew better than to ask anything more. His parents were off-limits. That’s what he’d said before accepting her proposal.

“You’re to ask me no questions about my parents or about my time before the war.”

Perhaps he hadn’t got along with his mother and father. Perhaps the memory of them was as distasteful to him as his experiences in the Crimea.

“If you can call it teaching,” he added grimly.

She glanced up at him, surprised he was willing to say anything else on the subject. “What do you mean?”

“When I was a boy, he threw me off of the village pier. Sink or swim, that was his philosophy. There was no instruction connected with it.” Jasper stopped to set down their hamper on a shady patch of grass beneath one of the trees that curved toward the water. “Pity. The current was quite strong that day.”

“What did you do?”

“I nearly drowned. And then, after swallowing most of the lake, I managed to save myself.” A rueful smile quirked his mouth. “Sorry. That’s rather a poor tale to start your first day in the water.”

That wasn’t the reason she was frowning at him. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about your past.”

“I don’t.” His brows notched. “That is, I ought not. But sometimes, when we’re together . . . I have the urge to tell you things I shouldn’t.”

“Why shouldn’t you if you want to? No harm can come from confiding our secrets to each other.”

His smile broadened. “Do you have secrets, sweetheart?”

“Some,” she replied, on her dignity. “Every lady does. Though not as many as you have, I’d wager.”

“Not all my secrets are mine to tell.” At that, he shouted to Daisy, “Don’t go into the water in your boots!”

“I’m not!” Daisy stepped away from the water’s edge. “They’re only a little wet.”

“Come and change,” Jasper said. “Show your stepmama there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Daisy ran back to them. “Are you afraid?”

“Not so long as I have you and your papa nearby,” Julia said.

“There’s nothing at all to be afraid of here,” Jasper said. “The pond is quite safe.”

“I saw a snake in there once.” Daisy expanded her arms. “He was this big.”

Julia blanched. “There aren’t snakes in the water, are there?”

“There are not.” Jasper gave Daisy a stern look. “No more tall tales.”

“But I did see one,” Daisy insisted as Jasper helped her out of her pinafore and dress. She rested a hand on his shoulder as he crouched to remove her tiny boots. “And a frog, and a lizard. And once a great big crocodile.”

“A crocodile? In North Yorkshire?” Julia’s brows lifted. “My goodness. I wonder how he made it here all the way from the Egyptian Nile?”

“By steamer ship, of course,” Jasper said. “Then by rail.”