He glanced at the edge of the bed. “May I?”

Her pulse accelerated. “Yes, of course.”

The mattress dipped under his weight as he sat beside her. “Tell me. Are you certain this is still what you want?”

Julia was conscious of her maid hovering nearby. It didn’t stop her from answering honestly. “It is.”

He leaned into her, as if drawn by some hidden magnet. His voice deepened. “And am I still what you want?”

She stared up at him. Neither of them had made any declarations to each other. No professions of love or even affection. But yesterday morning, he’d told her that she’d been his first choice among all the other heiresses on the marriage mart.

A dubious honor. He was a fortune hunter, after all. Still, it must have cost him to admit it, knowing she was poised to elude him.

The least she could do was acknowledge her own feelings.

“You are,” she said. “I wouldn’t have proposed marriage to just any gentleman.”

A spark of silver fire flashed in his eyes.

She would have liked to revel in it for a moment; the heat of that look. To bask in the knowledge that he was pleased—quite visibly pleased—that she wanted him.

Instead, like any earnest fool, she felt herself compelled to continue. “I only wonder why you didn’t tell me you called on my father yesterday.”

Just like that, the fire in his eyes flickered out. His gaze was once again as coolly unreadable as the ice over the surface of a frozen pond. Something dangerous lurked beneath. What it was, she couldn’t tell. But the fact that he’d put up his guard made her draw back from him.

“Do you deny it?”

“I have no reason to deny it,” he said brusquely. “It’s not a secret.”

Julia was no good at sparring at the best of times. Now, faint and clammy from blood loss, she felt herself even less so. She could only wait for him to explain on his own, hoping he would choose to be honest with her.

She looked at him in silent expectation.

A muscle tensed in Jasper’s jaw. “I asked his permission to court you. He refused me. That’s all there is to it.”

“Oh.” She fell quiet again.

“You don’t wish to inquire after his reasons?”

“I suspect I already know them,” she said.

When last she’d talked to her father, he’d remarked on the favorable location of Lord Gresham’s house in reference to Belgrave Square. “An easy distance,” he’d called it. As if residential proximity were all that mattered in a future husband. And to him, likely it was. Naturally, he wouldn’t consent to her being courted by someone who would take her away from London.

“I would have mentioned it,” Jasper said, “but there’s been no opportunity.”

“You might have told me last night in the Claverings’ garden.”

“To what end?”

“It would have explained why you didn’t seek me out at the start of the evening. Why you suddenly turned your attentions to Miss Throckmorton. That was the reason, wasn’t it? Because my father refused your suit?”