Well, maybe he didn’t understand. He looked astounded at her sudden reaction and rubbed his injured foot absently behind the calf of his other leg.

Julia struggled to keep from melting back against him. Even flabbergasted, he was the most beautiful person in the world to her, and she wanted to jump into his arms again and never leave.

She turned her thoughts back to the issue at hand with an effort and tried to glower at him, waiting for a response.

“What are you talking about?” James still looked thunderstruck, but at least he put down the foot Julia had stomped on. “I never sent you any letter. All I got was one from your aunt, saying that I shouldn’t call on you or write to you ever again. I didn’t think you had changed your mind about me, but I thought she had been humiliated by the public attention to our, ah, time together, and wanted to keep us apart.”

Now it was Julia’s turn to be shocked. “She sent what? Impossible. I sent you a letter, telling you to please come for me, for I thought we should be married at once. And,” she added with embarrassed primness, “because it was what I wished for anyway.”

They stared at each other, equally confused and hurt, and then they both spoke at once.

“But it bore her seal—”

“It wasn’t your handwriting, but you had sealed it—”

And then, together: “How could you ever think I would send such a thing?”

They glared at each other for a few seconds, and then James’s mouth quivered. Julia saw his stern expression crack, then warm into a smile, and then he was laughing, and she was laughing right along with him.

He gathered her into his arms again and dropped a kiss onto the top of her head. “Obviously we have a few things to straighten out,” he said, “but I’m just so happy to see you, I can’t help myself.”

He tipped her head back and kissed her gently, with the uncertain tenderness of a man who isn’t sure whether he has been forgiven. And Julia — the dutiful daughter of the former Elise Crawford, who had compromised herself into gaining the marriage she longed for — took James’s face in her hands and kissed him back with a fervor that assured him that not only had he been forgiven, but they had a lot of catching up to do.

James broke off the kiss after a long, heated moment. “My God.”

He stepped back and reached a hand out to Julia. “We’d better have a seat and talk things over before we go on like that. I’m about two seconds away from losing all control, and I know that’s not what you need right now.”

Julia allowed him to show her into a chair, but she couldn’t resist asking, “What would happen in two more seconds?” She thought she might know the answer, and it brought an impish smile to her face.

He shook his head at her in amazement. “If you keep looking at me like that, you’re going to find out.”

Julia covered her mouth, but was unable to suppress a laugh. “Does it involve being unclothed?”

James looked at her sharply. “Yes,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “Extremely unclothed.”

Julia’s face flushed warm; the heat spread, light and tingling and aware, through her whole body. To be with James again, in that so intimate way — was that why, once again, she had come to his house?

Perhaps it was, in part. Now that she was thinking of it, she longed to see him again, naked and proud, and she longed to have him touch her and wake those primal, ecstatic feelings.

But they did have other things to talk of; James was right. How had their letters gone awry?

With an effort on both of their parts, they turned their attention from the sensual to the logical, figuring out the timeline of messages sent, messages received, visitors, and departures. For the most part, it was a calm process, except for when Julia described for James the contents of the letter she had sent, and the one she had received back in his name.

“My dear,” he whispered, reaching for her hands. “My poor love. You sent me that, and you got back — what did it say? No, never mind; don’t think of it. If I’d truly gotten the message you sent, I wouldn’t have been able to stay away from you for a second.”

He drew his chair nearer to her, his expression urgent. “I wasn’t yet dressed at the time your message came, but if I’d seen it, I would have sprinted over in my dressing gown, special license in hand.” He sat back to smile at her wickedly. “As soon as we were married. . well, there would have been less to take off that way.”

Julia smiled back at him, but absently; she was still trying to sort out the chain of events in her head. What had happened to her letter? It must have gone astray sometime while he was upstairs. It was the only possibility.

“Oh, no,” she realized with dawning horror. “It was your mother.”

“What?” James looked confused.

“It was your mother,” Julia repeated more firmly, beginning to feel angry. “It had to be. Don’t you see? She was alone for what, fifteen or twenty minutes? She must have intercepted my message, and. .” She thought for a moment. “I believe Aunt Estella had enclosed my letter in an extra sheet of paper for privacy, since I wrote so large that I covered both sides of the paper.”

She was unable to keep all of the bitterness out of her voice as she recalled that measure, intended to be so helpful. “Your mother must have broken off the seal when she saw who it was from, read my letter, and used the blank sheet with the seal to write one of her own.”

James shook his head. “No, that can’t be. I’m sure it wasn’t her handwriting.”

They both looked crestfallen for a moment. Then James snapped his fingers, seized by a sudden memory.

“She had her lady’s maid with her,” he recalled. “Some poor creature who was probably terrified of her. She must have had the maid write the letters for her.”

James looked so livid as he said this that Julia felt a bit nervous — not for herself, but for Lady Matheson, should that unfortunate viscountess happen to cross her son’s path. He rose from his chair and began pacing around the room — Julia knew that urge well — kicking at the legs of every chair in his path, and muttering something about Matheson House and eviction.

It was rather amazing, actually, but the angrier he seemed, the calmer Julia began to feel. Her anger, her sense of having been wronged, began to melt away. What, after all, had she lost? Merely a couple of days with James, and perhaps the good opinion of people she didn’t care about anyway, and might never meet again in her life. But what had the viscountess lost? In her desperate attempt to control her son, to bring him to heel and accept a bride of her own choosing, she had lost his trust. Perhaps forever.

The poor woman was almost to be pitied. Did she really think her stratagem would hold? That they would make no attempt to contact each other? That they would be so hurt they would stay apart?

No, that was too ridiculous. Although now that she thought about it, there was still one question that remained unanswered.

“James.” Julia seized his hand and arrested him in his chair-kicking path around the room. “James, it doesn’t matter. It didn’t work, don’t you see? She couldn’t keep us apart.” She stroked his arm, loving the feel of his muscles leaping beneath her touch. “Here I am. Here I am with you.”

As he stared at her, trying to calm himself enough to listen, she drew a deep breath of her own. She had to have him answer that one last question.

“I do want to know, though,” she asked in a small voice, “why didn’t you come for me? After you knew what had been printed about us, why didn’t you try to come for me or contact me in any way?”

He sat down, hard, in the chair across from her again. “But I did,” he said urgently. “I came as soon as I could herd my blasted mother and that damned prosy baronet out of my house,” he said, without the slightest touch of filial respect.

“I don’t know what business he thought it was of his, but he honestly seemed to think he was being helpful, and he said he was going to speak with you, too. And my mother was even worse. Gad, the woman simply wouldn’t leave. She was clinging to my hand and telling me about how lonely she was, and how glad she was to be having coffee with me.”

He snorted in disgust. “It was all a pack of damned lies, designed to keep me there with her until you had gotten discouraged and left.”

The fact that this was exactly what had happened did not decrease Julia’s feeling of sympathy. She had won; she could afford to be generous.

“Likely she did mean what she told you,” she murmured, breaking into James’s angry reflection. “I think she must be a very lonely woman. Although she probably did time her revelation for that very reason, to keep us away from one another. There’s no denying that was her purpose for coming. Well, maybe not precisely her original purpose, but she certainly seized the opportunity when it arose.”

James merely looked skeptical at Julia’s placating words, then explained further what had happened. He had gone by the Grosvenor Square address as soon as he could, but the knocker was already off the door. Sheepishly, he admitted, “I pounded on it anyway. And. . and I shouted for you.”

“You did?” Julia was delighted by this mental image. “I imagine you entertained the whole square.”

“Probably I did draw rather a lot of attention,” James granted, “but I didn’t even notice. Once I was sure you weren’t there, I thought maybe you — or at least your aunt — really had meant what was said in that letter I received.”

“That your mother had forged.” Julia was unable to refrain from correcting him.