“You could have left. You could have gone away somewhere.”

“I could have,” he acknowledged. “Indeed, I planned to after I retrieved the boys from the workhouse. But Dolly was dying. And Daisy was so small and helpless. They had nowhere else to go and no one to look after them. I couldn’t bear the thought of Blunt’s cruelty claiming any more victims. Not if I could do something to help them.”

“They don’t know?” she asked.

“No one does.” He paused, a frown flattening his mouth. “Ridgeway suspects, but he’s not likely to share his suspicions. As for everyone else . . . I’ve been careful. I’ve had to be. If anyone found out the truth, it would mean losing the children. They’re the reason I stayed. The reason I’ve done all of this. I care for them now as if they were my own. It’s why I came to London to find a wealthy wife. It seemed the only way to save the estate and secure their futures. But I didn’t find what I was looking for. I found something else—something better. I found you.”

She blinked rapidly against an onslaught of tears.

He sank down in front of her, just as he had earlier in the library, except now there was a burning intensity in his gaze. “I didn’t marry you for the children or the estate or for anything to do with Blunt,” he said. “I married you for myself. My true self. I married you because I love you. That much you must believe.”

Julia looked back at him, her heart in her throat. “Are we married?”

Thirty-Five

Jasper flinched. He’d anticipated the question. That didn’t make it any easier to hear it. Crouched in front of Julia on the desolate moor, alone with her amid the rocky sandstone and the biting wind, he felt a building sense of desperation.

She was too quiet. Too stoic. Though tears brimmed in her eyes, she wasn’t crying and she wasn’t raging at him.

His deception had hurt her badly. He was only now beginning to realize how much.

“Of course we’re married,” he replied roughly. “You’re my wife.”

“I married Captain Blunt,” she said.

“Which is who I am now. Who I must be for all time.”

“But you’re not Captain Blunt. You’re James Marshland.”

Jasper’s chest contracted painfully. Many a time as he’d kissed her or made love to her, he’d have sold his soul to hear her utter his name. To call him James just once.

But not now.

Now it felt like an indictment.

“In spirit, perhaps,” he said, “but not in law.”

She shook her head. “Our marriage can’t be legal.”

“It is. I made certain of that.”

“How?”

He hesitated to explain, aware of how cold-blooded it would make him sound. “I made confidential inquiries before we married.”

She gave him a sharp look. “Inquiries of whom?”

He was quiet for a moment before admitting, “I consulted with Mr. Finchley the day he came to Ridgeway’s house.”