“Do you anticipate difficulties?”

“Given your bank’s silence? Yes, I do. Your father didn’t strike me as a man who enjoys being thwarted.”

“No. He isn’t.” Not that Julia had ever disobeyed before. There had been no reason to do so. Her own fears and insecurities had kept her a prisoner in Belgrave Square as surely as any rules her parents had set down. At the time, defying them would have meant defying her own inclinations.

She’d been too scared, too uncertain of her own value, to assert her right to happiness. Until Jasper, the only happily-ever-afters she’d ever contemplated had been the kind in novels.

Since leaving London, she hadn’t thought of her parents overmuch. She’d been too focused on regaining her strength and on acclimating to her new life. But she thought of them now—Papa wrapped in his blanket cocoon and Mama with her eyes streaming from camphor oil.

She felt a sharp twinge of guilt for abandoning them. It was all tangled together with her feelings of anger and hurt at how they’d treated her.

“I’ll have to go into York,” Jasper said as they approached the front steps of the Hall.

“When?”

“Sooner rather than later.” He didn’t look pleased at the idea. “If I leave first thing in the morning, I can catch the early train from Malton. I’ll be back by nightfall. Possibly sooner.”

Julia climbed up the moss-covered steps alongside him. “You must take as long as you require.”

“And leave you alone here overnight?” He flashed her a dark glance. “I don’t think so.”

“I won’t be alone. I’ll have Mr. Beecham and the children. And now Mr. Plimstock. I’ll be perfectly safe.”

He held the front door open for her, and she preceded him inside. It was darker and cooler in the entrance hall, the shadows drifting over their faces as the door shut behind them.

Jasper gazed down at her. “You’ll be alone,” he said. “In our bed.”

A shiver of awareness went through her. She took an unconscious step back; unaware she’d done so until she felt the stone wall behind her. “For only one night.”

“One night is too long to be without you.” He loomed over her, so close that the swell of her petticoats and skirts was pressed back against her legs. “You’re wrong, you know.”

“About what?”

“I don’t leave you each morning because I’m unhappy with you. I leave because I haven’t the strength to last a second longer. Any more time spent in our bed and you’d awaken to me doing this.” Bending his head, he caught her mouth in a scorching kiss.

Julia knees weakened. She reached for him instinctively, only to be swept up in his arms in a crushing embrace. “Oh,” she murmured. “Oh, I didn’t know.”

She felt him smile, his scarred lips moving over the curve of her own with delicious friction.

“Now you do,” he said, kissing her again.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, her mouth yielding to his on a sigh of pleasure.