Jasper didn’t need to ask what she meant.
When signing the register, she’d mistakenly used her new name: Julia Blunt. The curmudgeonly vicar had immediately stricken it out, commanding her to sign with her maiden name. Julia had done so, but not before one of the servants muttered the two damning words: Bad luck.
“You’re not superstitious?” Jasper asked.
“Not any more than reason,” she replied. “But one doesn’t wish to start one’s married life under a cloud.”
“There are no clouds today,” he said.
Julia waited in the carriage while he procured their tickets and found a porter to see to their luggage. As she gazed out the window, her heart beat like a drum. He was right. The sky was clear and cloudless, a blue so bright it almost hurt her eyes.
She wasn’t going to be afraid. This was an adventure. The adventure she’d dreamed of all her life. Any doubts she had were probably only because she was so exhausted from Dr. Cordingley’s treatments.
Thank heaven for Jasper.
He didn’t carry her from the coach, but he kept an arm about her waist, strong as an oaken band, steadying her as they crossed the crowded smoke-filled platform to board the first-class railway carriage.
Their compartment was empty. It was also rather luxurious, paneled in gleaming polished wood, with a carpeted floor, shuttered windows, and racks fixed overhead to store their parcels.
“Do we have to share it with other passengers?” Julia asked as Jasper guided her to one of the thickly padded upholstered seats. There were four of them altogether, a pair on either side facing each other.
“I doubt it. There aren’t many leaving for Yorkshire at this time of day.” He sank down next to her. “Consider it a wedding gift. I don’t expect we’ll be traveling first-class again anytime soon.”
Outside, a shrill whistle cut through the noise from the platform. The conductor shouted something unintelligible, and then, with a great heave of machinery, the train ground into motion.
Julia’s stomach lurched. The fastest she’d ever gone was on a galloping horse in Hyde Park. The train was exponentially faster. It rolled out of the station in a cloud of smoke and steam, gaining speed with every second.
Soon, King’s Cross was far behind them.
Jasper removed his hat and unbuttoned his coat, making himself comfortable in his seat.
Julia waited to follow suit. Only when the danger of a stranger entering their compartment seemed unlikely did she risk removing her bonnet. Her hair was pressed all out of shape, stray tendrils escaping from her silken hairnet to curl about her face. She smoothed them back from her brow with a trembling hand.
“I’ve never traveled first-class,” she confessed. “Or any class for that matter. This is the first time I’ve been on a train.”
Jasper frowned at her. “You never said anything.”
“I assumed you knew.” She turned back to the window. “I haven’t ever been out of London before. So far, all my travels have been in my imagination.”
Outside, the scenery whipped by at an alarming rate, the hustle and bustle of London rapidly giving way to an ever-increasing emptiness. She’d known it would to some degree. The outskirts of town, and the environs beyond it, were naturally less vibrant than the heart of the city. Nevertheless, seeing the familiar landscape slip away made her insides quaver as surely as the motion of the train.
Dropping her gaze, she withdrew a book from her reticule, anxious for the comfort of its pages.
Jasper stilled, his scarred face inscrutable. “Another Marshland novel.”
Julia felt a trace of self-consciousness. She supposed a married lady shouldn’t be reading a novel on her first journey alone with her husband. The pair of them were meant to be holding hands and cuddling, even kissing perhaps, taking full advantage of their private compartment.
But she and Jasper hadn’t married out of any romantic attachment. He required her fortune to repair his estate, and she required his name to buy her freedom. That was the sum total of their agreement.
Never mind that he’d kissed her in the Claverings’ garden. Or that he’d rushed to her bedside today, holding her hand and pressing his lips to her knuckles like a man very much in love.
He didn’t love her.
And what she felt for him was likely fueled as much by her own romantic longings as reality.
She had no wish to make a fool of herself.
“You always speak his name as though you don’t approve of him,” she said.
Jasper’s cool gray eyes were impossible to read. “I don’t disapprove of him. I just wonder why you bought so many of his books all at once.”
“Because I’ve fallen behind on reading him over the years. And because you have an interest in his work. I thought I had better catch up if you and I were to have anything to talk about.”
“We have other things to talk about,” Jasper said irritably, only to fall silent as she cracked open her novel and turned to the folded page that marked her spot.
She’d begun reading it last night before bed and had only got through the first few chapters. Thus far it was a poignant tale, if not a fast-paced one, filled with love, and loss, and unrequited longing. The perfect read to calm her jittery nerves.
“I thought you were going to sleep?” Jasper said after a time.
“I couldn’t,” she replied. “Not yet. I’m far too anxious.”
An understatement.
Seated beside her new husband on a train hurtling rapidly toward her equally new life, Julia felt on the razor’s edge of panic. She didn’t know anything about men except what she’d read in books. She didn’t know anything about being a wife or a mother.
“Bridal nerves?” Jasper’s deep voice was a husky inquiry, as gentle as his touch when he’d last held her hand.
“A little,” she admitted, glancing up from her book. “I hope the children will like me.”
“I like you,” he said.
She met his eyes, her heart thumping. “You’re not having second thoughts?”
“If I am, they aren’t about you.”
She hesitated to ask. “What, then?”
His frown deepened. “Until today, I’ve only ever been truly selfish once in my life. Things didn’t go quite the way I expected them to.”
Julia didn’t understand. “Are you saying that marrying me was selfish?”
“Of course it was,” he answered. “I told you. I like you, Mrs. Blunt. The children will like you, too, once they get to know you.”