“What?” Papa’s enraged bellow shook the glass in the morning room windows.

Julia calmly related the intelligence that Mr. Finchley had provided to her yesterday. “The scandal will doubtless make all the papers. Gossip will be unceasing. Only imagine.”

Papa’s face went from white to blood red. He moved to rise. “The treacherous dog!”

“Eustace,” Mama warned. “Your heart.”

Papa didn’t heed her. He was too caught up in Mr. Micklethwait’s betrayal. “The man assured me his firm’s reputation was beyond reproach. To think that he would expose me to gossip by association—”

“Quite.” Julia advanced on her father. “Which is why you’re going to cease employing them to meddle in my affairs. You’re going to write out a letter to Hoares this very instant, instructing them to release my funds.”

“Impudent girl!” Mama cried.

“Or you can accompany me there yourself,” Julia said, undaunted. “It’s up to you, Papa.”

Her father at last seemed to register the sincerity in her voice. To understand she would not bend or break. That she would not be bullied.

He sank back into his chair with a rattling sigh. “Would that I’d had a son,” he muttered impotently. And then: “Tell the maid to fetch me my writing box.”

A half hour later, Julia emerged victorious from the morning room, her bonnet in hand and her father’s letter to the bank tucked safely in her reticule.

Triumph surged within her breast.

She’d done it. She’d actually won. And she hadn’t needed Anne or Jasper or even Mr. Finchley to do it for her. She’d faced it herself, and she’d prevailed.

Though she hadn’t been completely alone. Not in spirit.

She’d been strengthened by the support of her friends, and by the love of her husband. People who cared for her and accepted her exactly as she was—an odd, anxious, romantic-minded bluestocking who preferred the safety of novels to the uncertainty of real life.

At least, she had done.

But not anymore. Now, she longed for a happily-ever-after of her own. It didn’t matter that Jasper had deceived her about his past. Or rather, it did, but it wasn’t the sum total of her feelings for him.

Real life was more complicated than that. And real love was more complex still. It wasn’t faint or feeble. It was rich and nuanced and strong. So relentlessly strong. It had to be. Human beings were fallible. They stumbled and fell. They made mistakes. Love didn’t crumble in the face of those errors. It held fast and true.

An ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.

Julia couldn’t articulate it as well as Shakespeare, not even to herself. She wasn’t the writer in the family. For that, she needed her husband. He would understand precisely what she was feeling in this moment. She desperately wished he was here.

And miraculously . . . there he was.

As she approached the top of the curving oak staircase, she saw him standing in the entrance hall below—tall, dark, and menacing—looming over the unfortunate footman who had answered the door. “I ask you again,” he growled, “where is my wife?”