“Don’t be absurd. You know which of my conditions I’m willing to give up.” She listed closer, confessing to him despite her blushes. “I want to be with you.”

His chest constricted. Just like that the anger evaporated. In its place was a swell of longing so acute it closed his throat. He covered her hands with his, squeezing them tight. “Then be with me. Never mind my secrets. They’ve nothing to do with how we feel about each other.”

“But they do,” she insisted in the same softly earnest voice. “I can’t give myself to you if I don’t know who you truly are.”

Jasper recoiled. Cold water be damned. This time, he felt as though she’d struck him with the bucket itself.

His hands fell from hers as his blood turned to ice. “You know who I am. You know the very worst of me.”

“I don’t know what you’re doing in the tower all day.” She straightened her fingers on his chest, smoothing the wrinkles she’d created in his waistcoat. “Some of the villagers have been putting it about that you’re a forger.”

“What?”

“The boys have heard their schoolmates say so. And they’re inclined to believe them. They’ve no other explanation for your being cloistered in the tower every morning.”

Jasper scowled. “Hardholme is populated by fools with nothing but baseless gossip to entertain them. The boys know better than to believe anything they hear there.” He pulled away from her. It took all his strength to do so.

Her eyes followed him, a stricken expression in her gaze. “Now you’re angry with me.”

“I’m not angry.” He raked his hand through his hair. “If you must know . . . I’m bloody tempted to give you want you want.” He glared at her, wanting her so much it hurt to look at her. “Tell me, is this the only secret you demand of me? Some proof that I’m not forging documents up there?”

“I don’t believe you’re a forger,” she said. “And I don’t demand anything.”

He scoffed. If she were any other lady, he’d accuse her of attempting a variety of blackmail. One of his secrets in exchange for the right to bed her? An unscrupulous bargain.

But Julia wasn’t some calculating Delilah. She was his wife. His sweet, vulnerable—and quite virginal—romantic-minded little wife. A lady who, having heard about his history in the Crimea and his even worse history with Dolly and the children, had every right to suspect him of continued villainy.

And her suspicions weren’t far wrong.

But perhaps . . .

Perhaps there was a way he could satisfy her without putting anything else at risk. Another portion of the truth, whittled to suit the situation, carved clean of the darker truth to which it belonged.

Jasper didn’t like it. He didn’t like any of it. But what other choice had he?

“I can’t think,” he said. “Not with this visit to York hanging over my head.”

Her face fell. “Of course. That must come first.”