Julia had no sooner pondered the question than a creak sounded on the threshold. Jasper’s deep voice followed, sending a jolt of alarm through her.
“Care to tell me what you’re doing in here?”
* * *
Jasper already knew what she was doing. It was abundantly clear. She was reading his blasted unfinished manuscript. A novel that was due to Bloxham on the first of next month.
And not one of Jasper’s better efforts, either.
He was in no mood for a confrontation. Not tonight. Not when he hadn’t yet washed and changed his clothes. There had been no opportunity. On returning to Goldfinch Hall this evening, tired and irritable from his journey to York, he’d found his family in the drawing room, lingering over the cold remnants of their tea.
Only Julia had been absent.
It hadn’t taken much for Alfred to blurt out her whereabouts. “She’s in the tower.”
As if that revelation hadn’t shocked Jasper enough, Charlie had then proceeded to shock him even more by confessing his own part in the break-in.
“It’s my fault,” he’d said. “I took the key and went in on my own. You can’t blame Julia. She only stayed to clean up the mess I made of your papers.”
But that wasn’t all she’d been doing up here.
She faced him now, blue eyes wide as saucers. “Jasper. You’re back.”
“As you see.” He entered the room, shutting the door behind him. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Ah yes. As to that . . .” She moistened her lips. “Forgive me. I know I’m not supposed to be here, but you left your keys behind and I’m afraid my curiosity—”
“There’s no point in protecting Charlie,” Jasper said crossly. “He’s already confessed to what happened.”
She blinked. “Did he? How brave of him.”
“Yes, it was, rather. I suspect he was trying to protect you from me.” Jasper scowled at the very notion of it. As if he was some unreasonable brute who might harm his own wife! “But that’s beside the point.”
Her brows lifted in question. “Which is?”
“You’re still here,” he said. “And you’re not putting away Charlie’s mess. You’re reading my private papers.”
Rising from his chair, Julia set the papers in her hands down on the desk in a neat stack. Her movements were precise, as if she was taking time to formulate the right words.
He waited for her to speak, his heart beating like a bass drum. She was the one in the wrong. She’d broken his rules. Violated his trust. But it was Jasper who felt as though he’d committed a crime.
He’d kept something important from her. Something as intrinsically a part of him as she was becoming herself.
“Why didn’t you tell me your pen name was James Marshland?” she asked.
His pen name.
Of course that’s what she would think.
Perhaps the situation wasn’t as dire as he’d feared.
He ran a hand over the back of his neck. He was covered in soot from the railway station at Malton. The platform had been filthy with it, and now so was he. He felt himself at a distinct disadvantage.
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“No more than it is for any romance novelist, surely. Most ladies who write novels do so using a pen name. I wouldn’t think it was any different with a gentleman. Certainly not one with your reputation. But that isn’t what I asked.” She held his gaze. “I asked why you didn’t tell me.”
He exhaled a heavy breath. “I was going to tell you.”
She looked doubtful.
“It’s the truth.” This was to have been his concession. The secret he gave up to her in order to make something normal of their marriage. He’d spent most of the railway journey back from York determining how best to explain it to her.
Not that any of that mattered now.
“Why didn’t you?” she asked. “You might have done so the day we married. We were talking about your novels on the train. You could have told me easily.”
“There’s nothing easy about it,” he said. “My writing is personal to me. Something private that’s mine alone.” He moved to his desk, gathering up the rest of his manuscript and returning it to the drawer. He slammed the drawer shut. “I’ve been doing it since I was a lad. It’s not anything I’ve ever wished to share with anyone.”
“I see.”
He turned back to her. “You don’t. I can tell by your face. You’re hurt.”
“Not hurt, no, but . . . I wish you hadn’t let me run on giving my opinions about your books as if we were talking about a stranger. When I think of all I said—”
“I told you. I value your opinions.”
“I would that you’d valued my confidence a little more,” she said. “That you’d trusted me.”
He leaned back against his desk, half sitting on the edge of it. He regarded her with a frown, uncertain of what he could say to make things right. In real life, he was rarely as eloquent as the heroes in his novels. The more deeply he felt something, the less he could articulate it. With Julia, he’d increasingly found himself reduced to grunts and growls.
“Does anyone else know?” she asked.
“No one,” he said.
“Mr. Bloxham must. It’s why you were at his shop that day, wasn’t it? To discuss something about your novels?”
“It was.” He’d managed to get fifty pounds out of the man in unpaid royalties for The Fire Opal. “But you’re wrong. He doesn’t know they’re my books. To him, I’m merely the author’s proxy.”
Julia’s expression of doubt lingered. “He doesn’t know you’re James Marshland?”
Jasper shook his head. “When he bought my first book, we corresponded by post. It was the same with my subsequent novels. I only visited him in person after I returned from the war.”
He’d had no choice. There had been no other way to arrange for payment on his previous works, or to negotiate sales of future ones.
Julia came to stand in front of him. Her full skirts bowed against his legs. “Are you ashamed of the stories you write?”
“No.”
“You shouldn’t be. Your writing is beautiful. And I’m not just saying that because I’m your wife. I told you as much before I knew Marshland’s novels were really yours.”