He gently took her hand. It was warm and silky soft, and so damnably small in comparison to his own. A surge of protectiveness tightened his grip.

Miss Wychwood’s lashes stirred. Her eyes opened slowly. She looked up at him, brows drawn in confusion. “Captain Blunt,” she murmured. “Is it really you?”

“It is,” he said.

And he felt, all at once, the full impropriety of being here.

Good Lord. What must she be thinking? To wake seeing his battle-scarred face looming over her? In her bedchamber of all places. A room into which no gentleman unrelated by blood or marriage would ever dare enter. Not even if a lady was at death’s door.

But she wasn’t dying.

He saw that now. She was only drained and weak. Urgently in need of the restorative power of sleep, just as her maid had insisted.

And what had he done?

He’d traveled here at breakneck speed, bribing his way into her rooms like some desperate character from a penny novel.

“Forgive me,” he said gruffly. “I heard you were ill. I had to come.”

“I’m not ill. Just . . . tired.”

“Of course. I’ll leave you to rest.” Rising from the chair, he loosened his grasp, expecting her to withdraw her hand. She didn’t. Quite the reverse. Her fingers curled around his with a trust that entirely disarmed him.

“Please don’t go,” she said.

His chest constricted with emotion. He sank back into his seat. “I won’t. Not if you don’t wish me to.”

She was quiet, lids heavy as he held her hand. He began to think she was nodding off again, when her lashes lifted and her eyes lit on something to his right.

Jasper followed her gaze to the round bedside table. It was stacked with books. Five of them altogether, bound in familiar green cloth. He might have seen them on his approach to the bed if his attention hadn’t been fixed solely on Miss Wychwood.

Looking at them now, a strange sense of rightness came over him. As if the hand of destiny had reached out across time and space, bringing him to this moment. For an instant, he could almost believe in fate.

“My J. Marshland novels,” she said.

“So I see.” He turned back to her. Somehow, he managed a smile. “Have you finished them already?”

“Not yet. After Dr. Cordingley’s visit . . . I haven’t felt much like holding a book.”

Jasper’s expression sobered. “Why did your parents summon him?”

She lifted her shoulder in the barest suggestion of a shrug. “I said I was poorly. It wasn’t serious, but . . .”

“He bled you. Twice.”

“He thinks I read too many novels.” She cast a rueful look at the stack of books on her bedside table. “Perhaps I do.”

Jasper’s temper flickered. “No one with any sense believes that reading novels promotes illness in women. Not anymore.”

Granted, it had been a popular belief once. One predicated more on the fear that novel reading would take time away from a woman’s household duties than on the fear that the content of the novel would do her actual harm. That hadn’t stopped physicians, quacks, and writers of dubious medical tracts from attributing all manner of illnesses—both mental and physical—to the overstimulation provided by a good work of fiction.