“Even when it comes to love?” he asked.

“If he’s experienced it himself, he may well write about it.”

He set his hand next to hers on the railing. Their little fingers nearly touched. “And if he hasn’t experienced it yet?”

“But he must have done to write about it so eloquently. If he is a man, I expect he’s suffered some terrible tragedy in love. How else could he explain what Sir Richard feels when Lady Elaine refuses his offer and marries another?”

“Anyone might feel the same who’s had something valuable slip out of their grasp.”

“Not something,” she pointed out with the apple-tart sternness of a schoolmistress. “A lady. The lady he’s loved the whole of his life.”

Jasper had to make an effort not to smile. For all she was shy and romantic-minded, Miss Wychwood had starch in her. “You didn’t find his constancy difficult to believe?”

“No. He was a knight, adhering to a code of chivalry. And anyway, it is just a novel.”

“A fantasy, then.”

“Unfortunately. Real men don’t go to such lengths for love. I daresay some never experience the emotion at all.”

His mouth hitched at one corner. “You’re well acquainted with gentlemen’s hearts?”

“Not personally, but I know plenty of ladies who are.” She paused, confessing, “When one isn’t comfortable talking in company, one learns to be a prodigiously good listener. I’ve heard the most dispiriting things as a consequence.”

Jasper could well believe it. If there was one thing he knew about ladies, it was that they talked freely among one another, often with a level of candor that would put most gentlemen to the blush. “I wouldn’t believe everything you hear.”

“Oh, I don’t. But I believe enough to know that real gentlemen are nothing like the heroes in novels. For one thing, they wouldn’t pursue a lady for as long as Sir Richard did, and with so little hope of having their feelings reciprocated.”

“No indeed,” he said quietly. “A real gentleman would respect a lady’s wishes and cease his pursuit.”

Understanding registered on Miss Wychwood’s face. A blush followed with it. But she didn’t look away from him. She held his gaze, her bosom rising and falling on a tremulous breath.

“He would leave her alone,” Jasper murmured. “Unless she’d changed her mind about him.”

Silence stretched between them. There was no muffled conversation from the other people on the balcony. No music drifting from the interior of the house. Only a thick band of tension, pulled so tight it felt as though it might snap at any moment and obliterate them both.

Jasper’s heart thudded hard. “Have you changed your mind?”

Miss Wychwood’s flustered gaze dropped to their hands, side by side on the railing. “I don’t know you well enough to say.” Her soft, halting words were husky as velvet. “I . . . I’d like to know you.”

Triumph surged through him. It wasn’t a full-throated endorsement of his intentions toward her, but by God, it was a start. “Then you shall,” he vowed.