She stared at him. “My father refused you?”
“I told you he did. We discussed it yesterday.” He scanned her face, frowning with concern. “Don’t you remember?”
“Of course, I remember.” She hadn’t been that ill. “You didn’t say anything about my dowry.”
“I assumed it was obvious. Without your father’s permission, there’s no money at all. ‘Not a farthing,’ I believe is the way he put it.” Jasper grimaced. “Not the most flattering experience of my life. But his meaning was quite clear.”
Julia recalled Jasper’s question to her yesterday as she’d lain propped up in her bed. “What if there were no money?” he’d asked. “What if there was only me?”
She hadn’t taken him seriously. She’d long accepted that she had nothing but her dowry to recommend her. That she wasn’t good enough or worthy enough on her own. It had seemed an incontrovertible fact. In response to it, she’d constructed three failed seasons’ worth of defenses.
The truth finally began to penetrate them.
She didn’t dare believe it. “Do you mean to say that . . . you married me with no hope of receiving my fortune?”
“I did.”
“But what about the house? The children? You need money for repairs and—”
He shrugged. “I shall find another way. It won’t be easy, I know, but . . .” A rueful smile touched his scarred lips. “I had to have you.”
Julia shook her head in disbelief. She was too stunned to speak. Too altogether astonished by the revelation, and all its various implications, to move or even to breathe.
He had truly taken her in her underclothes. Not only undressed, but penniless as well. Her fortune had had nothing to do with it. It was only her. Because he’d wanted her. Because he’d chosen her for herself alone.
A great swell of emotion clogged her throat.
“Oh.” The word emerged in a broken whisper. “Oh, I had no idea. I thought . . . I thought you only wanted my money.”
His brows lowered. “Why the devil would you think that?”
“You said so yourself. That you must needs marry an heiress. I knew once you learned my dowry was greater than Miss Throckmorton’s you would renew your addresses. It’s why I mentioned it when I proposed to you.”
Jasper looked vaguely appalled. And worse. He seemed to have gone a trifle pale.
All at once, he surged up from his seat. The floor of the carriage rocked beneath his booted feet as he crossed the small space to sink down at her side. He caught her gloved hand tight in both of his. “Julia . . .” He stared down at her intently. “Don’t say you thought we were going to be rich.”
“We are rich.”
He brought her hand to his lips, pressing a hard kiss to the leather-clad crease of her thumb. “Yes,” he admitted grudgingly, “I suppose we are. Rich in blessings. And we have our health and—”
“I was talking about the money,” she said. “We’re rich in money.”
Jasper went still as stone, even as his gaze sharpened to a razor’s edge.
“My dowry is one hundred thousand pounds altogether,” she informed him, “but only fifty thousand of that comes from my parents.” Her chin lifted with a hint of pride. “The other fifty thousand belongs to me.”
* * *
Jasper had had no idea. Not even the smallest suspicion. Not even when he’d noticed the discrepancy between the amount Julia was reported to be worth and the amount she’d claimed to be worth herself.
A fifty-thousand-pound discrepancy.
He felt as though she’d struck a blow straight to his solar plexus. As devastating a hit as when she’d proposed to him. Indeed, for all she was sweet and dainty, his new bride had the lethal repertoire of a bare-knuckle boxer.
It occurred to him that he may have misunderstood. It wouldn’t be at all surprising, not after the restless night he’d had. With Julia next to him, he’d scarcely managed to sleep a wink.
Though blushingly shy when awake, his wife was a menace while sleeping. No sooner had she nodded off, than she was pressing herself against him, seeking his warmth. At various times throughout the night, her arm had been flung around him, her head burrowed in his chest, and once, much to his alarm, her leg had even insinuated itself between both of his.
She was a soft, feminine armful. All voluptuous curves, silken hair, and delicately perfumed skin.
He’d spent most of the night so painfully aroused he couldn’t think straight.
Rising at dawn, he’d found himself in a devil of a mood. Keeping his promise to her was never going to be easy. But after that experience, it would be well-nigh impossible. He wanted her like mad—physically, emotionally. In every way he could have her.
And yet, as close as she’d been to him, as close as he still hoped they might be, there were pieces of himself he could never share. He knew, with a miserable certainty, that in every way that mattered, he was destined to be a stranger to her.
Recognizing that fact had made him as cross as a wounded bear.
And now this.
“Did you say fifty thousand pounds?” he asked.
She nodded. “My great-aunt Elinore left it to me. She was widowed young, and had no children of her own. I believe she felt sorry for me.”
“Fifty thousand pounds,” he repeated, rather stupidly.
“She felt very sorry for me,” Julia amended. “When I was a little girl, she came to stay with us for a short time. My parents had me in bed with leeches and mustard plasters for the whole of her visit. Aunt Elinore had words with them about it. I never saw her again. She died the following year. That’s when I learned she’d left me all her money. I keep it in Hoares Bank in Fleet Street, the same place my father keeps his accounts. It’s how I bought Cossack. How I buy all the things that are important to me.”
He continued to stare at her, still holding her hand in both of his. Would she never cease surprising him? “Julia . . .”
“It isn’t as much as one hundred thousand pounds, I know. But it’s still sizable. There are other young ladies on the marriage mart with dowries no larger than ten or twenty thousand, and they’re considered great catches. But fifty—”
“It’s enormous,” he said.
A faint line of worry creased her brow. “Is it enough for your purposes?”
He kissed her hand once again, holding it to his lips. “You’re enough for my purposes. Even without the money.”