They finally slowed to a walk as they approached the hills. It was colder here, wind whipping through the scattered trees and over the large piles of sandstone that littered the uneven ground.
Jasper rode up alongside her on Quintus, still silent.
She forced herself to meet his eyes. Her heart ached with the pain of his dishonesty. “The vicar’s son—the one you flogged when he tried to give bread to a dying man—the one who loved reading and writing novels. Was his name James Marshland?”
Jasper recoiled from her words as if she’d struck him.
It was answer enough, but Julia wouldn’t be satisfied until he admitted it in his own words. “Was it?” she asked again.
His face went pale, the raised ridge of his scar standing out in stark relief. “Yes,” he said hoarsely. “How—?”
“Anne brought a clipping from an old newspaper. She meant to show me how heroic you were during the war. It said you were the sole survivor of a brutal attack, where you dispatched a patrol of enemy soldiers and rescued vital intelligence. It also said that the first to die during the attack was your lieutenant, a vicar’s son named J. Marshland.” Her fingers tightened on Cossack’s reins. “It’s not your pen name, is it?”
“No. It isn’t.” Quintus stamped restlessly beneath him, tossing his head with impatience. Jasper made no move to quiet him. His attention was riveted to Julia’s face.
She was amazed at the steadiness of her own voice. “James Marshland truly did write all those books, didn’t he?”
“He did.”
“The Fire Opal and all the others I loved so much. All of them, right up until he died. Then you took over.”
Jasper’s gaze sharpened. Something flickered at the back of his frost-gray eyes, as if he understood a crucial fact he hadn’t before. It altered his demeanor. The color gradually returned to his face as he brought Quintus under sharp control.
“It’s why the style has changed,” she said. “You stole his name after the war. For money, I suppose.”
“Is that what you believe?”
“I can come to no other conclusion.”
Jasper was silent for a moment, as if calculating his response. “Would it be a crime?”
Julia’s lips curled in disgust. That he even had to ask! “To take advantage of a man who died serving under you? A man you treated abominably?”
“He was treated abominably,” Jasper said.
“By you,” Julia snapped back. “You’re the one who mistreated him. You said you regretted the past. That you were making amends for it. But you haven’t changed at all, have you? If you had, you’d never have stolen his work.”
“I’ve stolen nothing from him.”
“You’ve already confessed that you have. That the books were written by him. Now you’re passing them off as your own—and collecting his royalties, too! Have you no thought for his family?”
“Marshland had no family,” Jasper said. “He had no one on this earth.”
“Everybody has someone.”
“He didn’t. As for his royalties . . . there’s little enough to speak of. Hardly worth the grand deception you’re accusing me of.”
“It is a deception.”
“If it is, it harms no one.”
Julia could no longer keep her countenance. “It harms me! Can’t you see that? I’m the one you’ve deceived.” She trembled with hurt and anger. “What else have you lied to me about?”
Jasper didn’t answer. He only looked at her, his brows drawn in a brooding frown.
She averted her face, very much afraid there were tears in her eyes. “That’s how it is, then? I must wait for the truth to be revealed to me as it comes? Never knowing what evil surprise might lurk around the next corner and the next?”
Jasper moved Quintus closer to Cossack. “Julia—”
“Another mistress, perhaps? More children? Some additional cruelty you perpetrated against a soldier who couldn’t defend himself?”
“Good God. Is that what you’re afraid of? I don’t have any other mistresses or children. And I was never—” He broke off with a muttered oath. “Damnation, Julia, don’t make me have this conversation with you. You won’t like how it ends.”
Julia continued to stare out over the moors, refusing to look at him. Her throat was tight. She dashed her gloved hand over her cheek, brushing away a rogue tear.
Jasper made a husky sound of anguish. “Please don’t cry.”
She hardened her heart. She had to protect herself from being hurt.
Feeling Quintus edging closer, she was possessed by the urge to give Cossack a kick. To gallop away as fast as she could. She wasn’t crying, not yet, but if Jasper dared touch her, she feared the dam of her emotions would burst and she’d lose what little was left of her dignity.
He must have sensed her intention. In one decisive movement, he caught hold of Cossack’s reins.
She turned on him, lips parted in outrage. “How dare you—”
“You’re not going to run away from me,” he said gruffly. “Not here.” He dismounted from Quintus in one fluid movement and, catching her round the waist, lifted her from her sidesaddle. “Your horse would trip and you’d dash your head on the stones, then where would I be?” He set her feet down on the uneven ground, gripping her hard. “Don’t you know by now that I can’t live without you?”
Tears filled her eyes. “I wouldn’t fall off. I’m an excellent rider.”
“So am I,” he said gravely, his hands tight at her waist. “An excellent writer, that is.”
She stared at him.
He looked steadily back at her. He was white about the mouth. “You wanted the truth. There it is. J. Marshland isn’t my pen name. It’s my real name.”
She blinked. “What?”
“It was Captain Blunt who died at the fall of Sebastopol,” he said. “Captain Blunt who perished from a rifle shot to the face. I was the sole survivor of the skirmish—the man who routed the patrol of Russians. I had no one waiting for me at home. No one in this world. Neither had Blunt, or so he said. But he had something else. He had an estate. A remote property in Yorkshire he’d inherited, where he meant to retire after the war. A refuge, he called it.”
Julia shook her head in disbelief. It couldn’t be true.
Jasper went on relentlessly. “I told you when we married that I’d been selfish once before. It was the day I decided to take Blunt’s estate as my own. We were of a similar height and build, both of us with black hair and light eyes and great big Crimean beards. When I woke up in Scutari Hospital, they believed I was him. They spent the first weeks addressing me by his name. And I thought . . . why not? There was no one to stop me. No one who would be harmed. If Blunt died, the estate would revert to the Crown. So after I recovered and was fit enough to make the journey, I came back to England, I traveled here to Yorkshire, and I claimed Goldfinch Hall as my own.”