Praise for the novels of Candace Camp

“…entertaining, well-written Victorian romantic mystery.”

—The Best Reviews on An Unexpected Pleasure

“This one has it all: smooth writing, an intelligent story, engaging characters, and sexual tension that positively sizzles.”

—All About Romance on Swept Away

“Camp brings the dark Victorian world to life. Her strong characters and perfect pacing keep you turning the pages of this chilling mystery.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub on Winterset

“From its delicious beginning to its satisfying ending, [Mesmerized] offers a double helping of romance.”

—Booklist

“Camp shows the ability of love to help people overcome something out of the ordinary.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub on Mesmerized

“A smart, fun-filled romp.”

—Publishers Weekly on Impetuous

“One of Camp’s best.”

—Publishers Weekly on Indiscreet

“Candace Camp is renowned as a storyteller who touches the hearts of her readers time and time again.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub on Impulse

“…will leave you breathless with laughter and eagerly anticipating the next mishap.”

—Affair de Coeur on Suddenly

An Independent Woman
Candace Camp

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

JULIANA HAD NOT EXPECTED to see him again.

She had heard that Nicholas had come into the title and returned to England, which had surprised her. All her life, she had thought that it was Nicholas’s uncle who was the heir, not him. Certainly, no one had ever treated him like the future earl. She had assumed that their paths would never cross. After all, he was an earl now, and wealthy, and she was a paid companion to a woman who moved only on the edges of that rarefied circle of society to which he belonged.

There had been an instant, when she had first heard the murmurs of Nicholas’s return from America and his sudden elevation into the inner sanctum of polite society, that she had thought with an upsurge of an almost painful excitement that she would see him once more. Time, and an application of reason, had led her to realize that was unlikely.

Even though they had once been close, it had been many years ago. If he even thought of her, it would be only as a dim memory from his past, a person from a time and place he doubtless recalled with little fondness. Her time at Lychwood Hall had been unhappy, but his had been even bleaker. Juliana suspected that he had done his best to put the past behind him. He would not seek her out. Only a foolish romantic would hope that he would.

And there was little chance that they would accidentally run into each other. Her employer, Mrs. Thrall, however much she might like to think she was a member of the upper echelon of London society, was in reality a very small fish swimming in the outer, eddying rings of that pond. The family was at best acceptable country gentry come to the city, and it was only the undeniable beauty of Clementine, Mrs. Thrall’s daughter, that got them any sort of notice.

Tonight, however, the Thralls had received an invitation to Lady Sherbourne’s ball, a huge crush of an affair, so large that it pulled in many lesser members of Society. Juliana understood that it was only the sheer numbers of invitees that had made it possible for them to be here. Mrs. Thrall, of course, did not. She had been crowing for the past week about Lady Sherbourne having taken them under her wing.

Because of the size of the party, Juliana had harbored a small flicker of hope, barely acknowledged, that Lord Barre would appear. But she had not really believed it, deep down. After all, from the gossip she had managed to glean, sitting quietly listening to Clementine and her giggling friends, Nicholas rarely attended any party. His reclusive-ness, of course, simply added to his mystique.

But there he was. Juliana looked up from her perusal of Clementine sweeping around the floor in the arms of one of her many admirers, and there, standing at the top of the wide staircase leading down into the ballroom, was Nicholas Barre.

Her heart skittered in her chest, and for an instant, she felt as if she could not breathe. He was handsome, more handsome even than she remembered—filled out now into a man, with broad shoulders that needed no extra padding from his tailor, and long, muscled legs. He stood, looking out coolly over the mass of people below him, confidence, even a certain arrogance, stamped on his features. His hair was thick and a trifle shaggy, jet-black in color and falling carelessly beside his face. His eyes appeared as black as his hair, accented by the straight slashes of his black brows.

He did not look like other men. Not even the black formal coat and snowy white shirt could camouflage the hint of wildness that clung to him. Wherever he went, Juliana thought, he must immediately be the center of attention. She wondered if he was aware of that.

Perhaps he had become accustomed to it. He had always been one set apart. Dangerous, they had called him. And wicked. Juliana suspected that the same appellations were still directed at him.

She realized suddenly that she was staring, and she glanced quickly away. What was she to do? She swallowed hard, her hands curling into fists in her lap.

She remembered the last time she had seen him—the planes and angles of his face stark white in the moonlight, his eyes great pools of darkness. He had been only sixteen then, leanly muscular in a way that suggested the powerful male body he would grow into. His hair had been longer and unkempt, tousled by the wind and his impatient fingers. There had been a hardness to his face even then, a certain wariness that bespoke much about his past.

Juliana had clung to him, holding his arm with both hands as though she could make him stay, her twelve-year-old heart breaking within her. “Please,” she had begged. “Don’t go….”

“I can’t, Jules,” he had replied, frowning. “I have to go. I can’t stay here anymore.”

“But what will I do?” she had asked plaintively. “It will be so horrid here without you. No one but them…” Her voice invested the word with disgust.

“You’ll be all right. You’ll get through it. They won’t hurt you.”

“I know,” she had whispered, tears filling her eyes. She knew that no one ever harmed her as they did him. There were no angry cuffs of the hand, or days spent without meals or companionship, alone in her room, as there were for Nick. But the thought of life without him beside her was dull and flat, almost unbearable.

From the time she and her mother had come to Lychwood Hall when she was eight, Nicholas had been her only friend, her closest companion. They had been drawn together naturally, the two outsiders on the Barre estate, disdained by Nicholas’s aunt and uncle and their children. Charity children, both of them, and often reminded of it, they had formed a firm alliance, closer than a boy of twelve and a girl of eight would normally have been. And if, as he had grown up, racing toward adulthood, he had moved farther from her in interests and activities, there had always remained that special bond between them.

“Can’t I come with you?” she had asked without hope, knowing that his answer would be a refusal.

He shook his head. “They’d come after me for sure if I took you with me. This way, perhaps, I have a chance of getting away from them.”

“Will you come back? Please?”

He had smiled then, a rare wondrous smile that few besides her had seen. “Of course. I’ll make lots and lots of money, and then I shall come back and take you away. You’ll be rich, and everyone will call you ‘my lady.’ And Seraphina will have to curtsey to you. How’s that?”

“Perfect.” Her heart had swelled with love for him even as she knew, deep inside her realistic soul, that he was unlikely to return, that he would disappear from her life just as her father had.

“Don’t forget me,” she had said, swallowing her tears, refusing to act like a baby in front of him. She reached up, taking the simple leather thong from around her neck, and held it out to him. A gold signet ring dangled from it, simple and masculine.

Nicholas had looked at her in surprise. “No. Jules—that was your father’s. I can’t take that. I know how much it means to you.”

“I want you to have it,” she had replied stubbornly. “It’ll keep you safe. Take it.”

Finally he had taken it from her hand. Then, with a last halfhearted smile, he had vanished into the night, leaving her alone in the darkening garden.

She had not seen him again for fifteen years.

Juliana cast another glance toward the top of the staircase. Nicholas was no longer there. Cautiously she looked around the room, but she could not spot him anywhere in the crowd. She returned her gaze to her lap, wondering how she could manage to get out of here without his seeing her.

Her stomach was twisted into knots, partly with excitement, but mostly with fear. She did not want him to see her, did not want to have to face the fact that he might snub her…that he might not even recognize her.

Nicholas Barre had meant too much to her for her to bear a snub. She had loved him as only a child can love. After he ran away from the estate, she had not let her memories of him fade. For a long time she had held his promise in her heart, hoping he would reappear and take her away—from her mother’s sadness, from Crandall’s cruelties and Aunt Lilith’s petty sniping, from Seraphina’s casual assumption that Juliana was there to do whatever she asked. As Juliana had grown into womanhood, it had been Nicholas’s image that had fueled her adolescent dreams, becoming the hero on a white charger who would come riding up to Lychwood Hall and sweep her up before him on his horse, carrying her away from the life she disliked and bestowing upon her his name, as well as fabulous jewels and fashionable clothes.

Of course, she had not been so foolish as to keep those dreams long. She had grown up and had made her own life. Long ago she had stopped believing—and then finally stopped even wishing—that Nicholas would return and seek out his childhood friend. Even when she had heard that he had returned to London from whatever far-flung place he had been, she had not thought he would come for her…or at least she had firmly squashed the little germ of an idea before it even grew full-size in her mind.

After all, when he had promised to return, they had been of more or less equal station—unwanted relatives, living on the Barres’ charity—or, at least, so she had thought. But now he was Lord Barre and reportedly quite wealthy in his own right, as well as having inherited his grandfather’s estate. It would be foolish in the extreme, she knew, to even hope he would look her up. Promises made at the age of sixteen rarely lasted.

She had experienced the bitter reward of being proved right. It had been two months since she had heard that Nicholas was in London again, and he had not come to her. She was too realistic to think that if he ran into her tonight, he would greet her with cries of delight. Heavens, he probably would not even recognize her as the child he had once known.

But Juliana did not want to have to face that situation. She did not want to see him look at her with the blank expression of lack of recognition. Worse, she did not want to see him see her, recognize her, and then turn away, not acknowledging the bond. Almost as bad would be having him converse with her with the stiff formality of a stranger, or the faintly harassed look of someone caught in a social situation he wished he could get out of.

She must get away from the party, she thought, but that was far more easily said than done. Mrs. Thrall had hired her as a companion primarily because she wanted help watching over her lively, headstrong daughter. Clementine was both beautiful and spoiled, accustomed to getting her way. She was also foolish enough to think that she could ignore the dictates of Society. Unwatched, she was likely to flirt more than was considered proper, or to dance with the same bachelor more than twice. Juliana had even once caught her attempting to slip out an opened French door into the darkened gardens beyond with an ardent suitor.

And since Mrs. Thrall was a rather indolent woman, she used Juliana as Clementine’s primary chaperone. Mrs. Thrall liked to think that this tiresome duty was a gift she bestowed upon her companion, pointing out to Juliana how nice it was that she got to attend all these balls. Frankly, Juliana would have preferred spending the evening curled up with a book or playing games with the Thralls’ younger—and far more likeable—daughter, Fiona. It was no pleasure to sit, as plainly dressed as a wren among peacocks, against the wall with the mothers and wallflowers, watching people dance and enjoy themselves.

Mrs. Thrall would be highly displeased if Juliana were to plead a headache or other illness and wish to leave the party, and she certainly had no desire to listen to her employer complain that she was attempting to ruin the grandest ball of her daughter’s career. Moreover, she had little hope that Mrs. Thrall would send her home, even with a lecture. She was far more likely to tell Juliana to simply bear up like a proper British gentlewoman…and then send her off to fetch a cup of punch.

The best course, she thought, would be to simply keep her eyes glued on Clementine. That way her gaze could not happen to meet Nicholas’s, and she would be able to avoid seeing the expression that would come over his face. It was unlikely that Lord Barre would look over at the duennas watching their charges, and even if he did, if she was not watching, at least she would not know if he then turned away without speaking.

“Juliana?” A deep masculine voice cut through the air, filled with surprise and—surely she could not be mistaken—delight, as well.

Juliana’s head snapped up. Despite the years between them, she knew the voice immediately. Nicholas Barre was walking rapidly toward her, a smile lighting his handsome face.

“Nicholas!” The word came out breathlessly, and without realizing it, Juliana rose to her feet.

“Juliana! It is you!” He stopped in front of her, so tall she had to tilt her head back to look up at him, his dark eyes alight, a smile curving his full, firm lips. “I can scarcely believe it! When I think of all the time that I have looked for you…” He reached out his hand and, somewhat shakily, she gave hers to him.

“I—I’m sorry. I should say Lord Barre,” she went on hastily.

“I beg you will not,” he replied. “I would think you no longer counted yourself my friend.”

Juliana blushed, unsure what to say. She felt unaccustomedly shy. Nicholas was at once so familiar and so different, the traces of the boy still evident in the man, yet far removed from what he had once been.

“I am surprised you recognized me,” she told him. “It has been so long.”

He shrugged. “You have grown up.” His eyes swept briefly, almost involuntarily, down her form. “Still, your face is much the same. I could scarcely forget it.”

There was a loud, admonitory clearing of a throat from the chair beside Juliana, and she started. “Oh, I am so sorry. Lord Barre, please allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Thrall.”

Juliana half turned toward her employer. “Mrs. Thrall, Lord Barre.”

The middle-aged woman simpered, extending her hand to Nicholas. “Lord Barre, what a pleasure. No doubt you wish to meet Clementine, but I am afraid she is out on the dance floor. Her dance card is always full, you know.”

“Mrs. Thrall.” Nicholas gave the woman a polite bow, his dark eyes summing her up quickly before he turned back to Juliana. “I hope that you will give me the honor of a waltz, Juliana.”

Juliana knew that her employer would doubtless frown on her shirking her duty in that way, but she wanted quite badly to accept his invitation. She never got to dance at any of the parties they attended; she could not count the number of times she had sat, toes tapping, heart aching, watching the other couples swirl merrily around the floor.

“I would love to,” she said recklessly, then turned toward her employer. “If you will excuse me, Mrs. Thrall.”

She expected at best a scowl from the other woman, with a deferred lecture about the impropriety of her taking to the floor with young bachelors when she should be overseeing Clementine. But she hoped that Mrs. Thrall would not have the gall to flatly refuse, right in front of one of the peers of the land.

To her surprise, the older woman smiled benignly at her and said, “Yes, of course. That sounds like an excellent idea. No doubt Clementine will be back when you return.”

Nicholas bowed toward Mrs. Thrall and extended his hand to Juliana. She took it, letting him lead her out onto the dance floor, struggling to control the happy excitement fizzing within her.

“Who the devil is Clementine?” he murmured, bending his head closer to hers.

Juliana could not suppress a giggle. “She is Mrs. Thrall’s daughter. She is making her debut this year.”

“Good Gad, another one,” he commented darkly.

Juliana, more accustomed to listening to the gushings of the besotted suitors of Clementine Thrall, could not help but feel a small spurt of amusement.

Nicholas turned to her, putting his hand lightly on her waist and taking her other hand in his. She felt a little breathless, her nerves jumping with excitement, as the music began and they swept out onto the floor. There had been few times when Juliana had waltzed—there had been no Season in London for her, and paid companions were rarely asked to dance—and she was eager, yet scared that she would make a mistake.

For the first few moments she was too aware of following the steps to pay much attention to anything else, but gradually she gave herself up to the rhythm of the music and found herself swirling about the room quite easily. She cast a glance up at her companion. It seemed like a dream, she thought, to be here with Nicholas after all these years.

As if he had read her thoughts, Nicholas said to her, “You know, I’ve had the very devil of a time trying to find you.”

“I’m sorry,” Juliana replied. “I did not realize you were looking for me.”

“Of course I was. Why would I not?”

“It has been a long time,” she replied. “I was only a child when you left.”

“You were my only friend,” he told her simply. “That is difficult to forget.”

His words were true, of course. When she had met him, she had thought that he was the most alone person she knew. At twelve years of age, his reputation as a rebel and troublemaker was firmly established, and even then, there had been a certain hardness in his face that closed out others. But Juliana, herself feeling cast adrift in the world after the death of her beloved father, had felt an affinity with the dark, brooding boy. She had glimpsed in his onyx eyes a lurking loneliness, a vulnerability, that had spoken to her.

“We were the outcasts of Lychwood Hall,” she agreed now, keeping her voice light.

“I told you I would come back, you know,” he reminded her.

“So you did.” And she had lived on it for years, she thought, until she had grown old enough to be wiser. “But I did not hear from you.”

“I was not a very good correspondent,” Nicholas admitted wryly.

Juliana chuckled. “That, sir, is an understatement of the grossest sort.”

“I did not want them to know where I was,” he said, shrugging.

“I know.” Even as a child, she had understood that. “I never expected you to write,” she told him honestly.

“Somehow I thought you would still be there,” he went on.

“At Lychwood Hall?” Juliana asked, surprised.

“Foolish of me, I know. Of course you wanted to get away from them, too.”

“My mother died while I was away at school with Seraphina,” Juliana told him. “After that, there was little to hold me there.”

“I inquired there after you,” he went on. “My uncle is dead now, but my aunt replied. She told me you had gone abroad to live several years ago, and she did not know where you were.”

Juliana raised a brow. “Her memory must be shockingly short, then. I have been back in England for some years now. I send Aunt Lilith a courtesy note every year at Christmas.”

“I suspected her lack of knowledge was terribly convenient. I set my business man to looking for you. Of course, I told him you were in Europe, so it is little wonder that he got no results.” He gave her a quizzical look. “If you have been in London, why have I not seen you anywhere?”

Juliana smiled faintly. “Companions, I’m afraid, are rarely seen.”

“Companion?” Nicholas frowned. “You? Juliana, no…”

“What would you have me do?” Juliana lifted her chin a little defiantly. “I had to make my way in the world somehow, and I did not like the idea of being a governess. My sewing is not good enough to make a living as a seamstress. And call it unseemly pride, but I did not want to seek employment below stairs.”

His mouth tightened. “Don’t be absurd. None of those positions are worthy of you.”

“I could not remain living on Trenton Barre’s charity. Surely you, of all people, can understand that. You set out on your own. So did I.”

“It is different for a woman,” he pointed out.

“Alas, I am quite aware of that. There are very few ways by which a female can support herself—and even fewer that are considered respectable,” Juliana replied tartly. “Believe me, I would much rather have done something exciting—or even just somewhat interesting. Women, however, are given little choice in the matter.”

He smiled a little. “I had forgotten how fiery you can be about one of your causes. Nay, please, do not bristle at my words. I meant no criticism. I am very glad of your passion and dedication. After all, I was once one of your causes.”

Juliana relaxed, smiling. “No, ’tis I who should apologize. You expressed only concern about me, and I became as prickly as a porcupine. I am well aware that I cannot change the world. I am also well aware that none of the fault lies at your feet.”

“I wish that I had known. I should have. I should have realized.”

“And what could you have done?” Juliana asked him, her tone light and teasing.

“I should have helped you. I should—” He stopped, unexpectedly at a loss.

“You see? It was not in your hands. If you are going to say that you would have sent me money to help me live, I am sure you can see that that would scarcely have been considered proper. I should not have cared for any of the labels given to a woman who lives off a man’s largesse.”

“None would dare think that of you,” Nicholas said decisively.

Juliana chuckled. “I am glad you think so. In any case, there is no reason to feel sorry for me. My life has been mostly pleasant. I was companion for several years to a most intelligent and generous woman, Mrs. Simmons, until she became too frail to live alone and moved in with her son and family. She treated me more like a niece or a ward than an employee. I dined with her and slept in a very nice room, and in return I had to do little more than spend several hours a day in enjoyable conversation and help her keep track of her correspondence. We traveled to the continent—and I can tell you that it was far more enjoyable than when I accompanied Seraphina and Aunt Lilith on their tour after she finished school.”

Nicholas winced. “I should think so. That sounds more like torture than travel.”

“Yes, and all the more so given that Aunt Lilith kept reminding me of my good fortune in being given the opportunity to broaden my horizons with them.”

“No good deed is left unheralded with them,” Nicholas agreed.

“It is so good to talk to you!” Juliana blurted out. “No one else would understand exactly how it was. How obligated one was made to feel for every mouthful of food and every stitch of clothing.”

“And how ungrateful you were for the wonderful opportunity of being allowed to associate with them,” he added.

“Just so.” Juliana smiled at him.

It was odd, she thought, that she should feel so instantly comfortable with him again, as if all the years that had separated them meant nothing. He was once again Nicky, her protector against Crandall’s mean tricks and bullying tactics, her confidant and friend.

And yet, at the same time, she was very aware of how different it all was. They were no longer children. He was a man now, large and hard and almost overpoweringly masculine. Being swept around the room in his arms was a far cry from sitting beside him on the bank of the brook, dangling their bare feet in the water. There was an elemental excitement in being so close to him, feeling his hand spread upon her waist. She could not help but think that he was virtually a stranger to her now, someone whose thoughts and deeds she had no knowledge of, whose past fifteen years were a mystery to her.

The music finally swept to a close. They stopped and stepped apart. Juliana looked up at Nicholas. She was a little breathless, and she knew it was not just from the exertion of dancing.

He offered her his arm, and they walked back to where Mrs. Thrall sat waiting for them. Juliana saw with a flicker of irritation that Clementine now stood with her mother. The girl was the picture of English beauty—dainty and dimpled in her demure white ball gown, blue-eyed and blond-haired, her dewy complexion touched with soft pink color along her cheeks.

Men were drawn to her china-doll loveliness, and Clementine had achieved a certain success this Season. However, she had not yet caught the eye of any titled gentleman, and Juliana suspected that she and her mother were hoping to correct that omission right now. Mrs. Thrall had obviously been gleeful at meeting Lord Barre, and Juliana felt sure she had drawn her daughter off the dance floor so that she could meet Nicholas when he brought Juliana back to her seat. One glance at the young gentleman waiting with them, scowling, confirmed Juliana’s suspicion.

“Juliana!” Mrs. Thrall said, beaming at Juliana as if she were her dearest friend. “And Lord Barre. Please allow me to introduce you to my daughter Clementine.”

Clementine looked up at Nicholas with a fair semblance of girlish shyness, dimpling into an enchanting smile. “My lord. ’Tis a pleasure to meet you.”

Juliana clenched her teeth, somewhat surprised by the stab of dislike she felt for the girl.

“Miss Thrall.” Nicholas smiled and bowed to Clementine, casting a glance and a nod toward the young gentleman behind her.

Clementine opened her fan and plied it gently, gazing limpidly at Nicholas over the top of it.

Nicholas turned back to Juliana. “I hope you will allow me to call on you, Miss Holcott.”

Juliana smiled. “Of course—that is, I mean…” She turned toward Mrs. Thrall. “If you will permit it, madam.”

“Of course, of course.” Mrs. Thrall bared her teeth in a smile so wide it was almost frightening. “We would be honored for you to visit our house.” She told him the address, adding with a deprecating titter, “Not the most fashionable address, I fear. “Tis Clementine’s first Season, you know, and I did not realize how far in advance one must let a house to obtain a truly good address.”

“I am sure that the presence of such fair ladies makes any place fashionable,” Nicholas replied diplomatically.

Clementine and her mother simpered at this remark, and Juliana was aware of a strong and no doubt childish resentment. Nicholas was hers, she wanted to cry out.

But, of course, that was absurd. Nicholas was not, could not be, hers.

Nicholas took his leave of them, with a bow and impartial smile to them all. As soon as he was out of sight, Clementine and her mother swung to Juliana.

“You did not tell me you knew Lord Barre!” Mrs. Thrall exclaimed, her tone a mixture of accusation and delight.

“I was not sure he would remember me,” Juliana replied. “It has been many years since we have seen one another.”

“But how do you know him?” Clementine pressed, moving closer to Juliana and turning her back rudely on the young man who stood with them.

“We were friends as children,” Juliana explained. “I…lived near his family.” It was, she thought, too complicated to explain the relationship between them, and, moreover, she had little desire to expose her history to their curiosity.

“It is generous of him to seek you out,” Mrs. Thrall went on, unaware, as she usually was, of the rudeness of her words.

Juliana, accustomed to the petty stings of being employed as a companion, ignored the disdain inherent in the other woman’s words. “He is a generous man,” she allowed dryly.

“Of course, he doubtless wanted to meet Clementine,” the older woman went on placidly, explaining the oddity of a nobleman acknowledging someone of as little status as Juliana. “It is quite fortuitous, really, that he knew you and could gain an introduction.”

Juliana swallowed her anger, looking away from her employer. She reminded herself that Mrs. Thrall was a woman of little sense and a deficient upbringing. She did not mean to be rude and hurtful—frankly, Juliana thought, she did not consider Juliana’s feelings enough to intend to hurt her—and she did not know what she was talking about. Nicholas had come over because he was glad to see her, not because he wanted to meet Mrs. Thrall’s daughter.

But as the evening wore on and Juliana watched Clementine flirt with her bevy of admirers, and take to the floor time and again to dance, her certainty began to erode. The girl was obviously devastatingly appealing to men, whereas she herself…

She looked down at her plain dark gown and sighed. She was dressed like a governess, her hair pinned into a plain knot. A companion was not paid to attract attention—especially in this case, where Mrs. Thrall would have squelched any semblance of a beauty that might compete with her own daughter. How could any man’s eyes not be drawn to Clementine rather than to her?

CHAPTER TWO

JULIANA FOUND HERSELF brooding over the matter the rest of the evening. She did not believe that Nicholas had merely used her to get an introduction to Clementine. But she was realistic enough to think that he must have noticed the girl’s beauty when he was introduced to her. Nor could she help but wonder if his desire to call on her had as much or more to do with Clementine’s appeal as with his friendship with Juliana.

It wasn’t that she thought Nicholas was interested in her in a romantic way, she told herself. She had long ago given up those girlhood dreams. She was a grown woman and well aware that she did not even know the man; all she had known was the boy. But he had been very dear to her at one time; it hurt to think that his motivation for calling upon her might be only interest in the silly but beautiful Clementine.

All the way home, Mrs. Thrall and her daughter pelted Juliana with questions about the handsome and highly eligible Lord Barre. How old was he? Did he have a London residence? Was he as wealthy as everyone said?

“He is thirty-one. But as to the rest, I really don’t know,” Juliana replied, gritting her teeth. “We did not speak about any of those things while we were dancing. And I have not seen him since we were young.”

“They say he is fabulously wealthy,” Clementine said, her eyes shining.

“I heard that he made a fortune in the China Trade,” Mrs. Thrall said. “Not an occupation for a gentleman, of course, but, then, his lineage is impeccable.”

“And the fortune is great,” Juliana murmured.

“Exactly,” Mrs. Thrall agreed, nodding her head, blissfully unaware of any sarcasm in Juliana’s words.

“I heard he made his money in smuggling during the War,” Clementine put in. “Sarah Thurgood says her aunt told her that he was a spy, as well.”

“Did she say for which side?” Juliana asked.

“No one knows,” Clementine told her, her eyes wide. “He is reputed to be a very dangerous man.”

“Very wild in his youth,” Mrs. Thrall added knowledgeably.

“He has been much maligned,” Juliana started hotly. This was the sort of statement she had heard about Nicholas from the time she met him.

“Everyone says…” Clementine began.

“Everyone doesn’t know him!” Juliana snapped.

“Really, Juliana…” Mrs. Thrall gave her a dark look.

Juliana stifled her anger. Her quick tongue was what had most often gotten her into trouble as a paid companion. It had been a hard lesson, but over the years she had learned not to argue with her employers.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” she said now. “I did not mean to contradict you. It is just that I know Lord Barre has often been adjudged much more wicked than he really is.”

Mrs. Thrall smiled at her in a condescending way that made Juliana’s fingers curl into fists in her lap. “You must take my word for it, my dear, as one who knows a bit more about the world than you—where there is smoke, there’s fire.”

Fortunately, Juliana’s ready sense of humor came to her rescue, overcoming her anger. The woman stated the old adage as if she were imparting the greatest wisdom.

“Of course,” Juliana choked out, and pressed her lips together to keep from chuckling. What did it matter, anyway, what someone as foolish as Elspeth Thrall thought about Nicholas Barre?

She settled into her corner of the carriage, only half listening to Clementine chatter on about what dress she should wear on the morrow and what hairstyle would look best. When they reached the house, she went upstairs to her bedroom, a small, sparely furnished room at the end of the hallway closest to the servants’ stairs. As a genteel companion, she was not tucked away in an attic room with the servants, but her bedchamber was hardly what one could consider comfortable. Juliana thought with some longing of her accommodations when she had lived with Mrs. Simmons.

Ah, well, she reminded herself, even a small room and putting up with employers like Mrs. Thrall was preferable to continuing to live on the charity of Lilith and Trenton Barre.

With a grimace, Juliana began to undress, her mind going back to her life at the Barre estate. She supposed it was seeing Nicholas tonight that made her think of it, for she had managed to bury such memories long ago and normally did not even think about that time.

Juliana had been eight years old when her beloved father, the scholarly youngest son of a baron, had died. She remembered lying in her bed at night, listening to the soft sounds of her mother weeping in the room next door. Juliana had been too frightened to cry herself.

Overnight, her world had been turned upside down. Not only was her father gone, but the smiling, warm mother she had known all her life was gone, as well, replaced by a pale, sad, anxious woman who paced the floors, twisting her handkerchief between her hands when she wasn’t collapsed on the sofa or her bed, crying. First the maids had left, and then, finally, their housekeeper, and angry men had come knocking on their door at all hours. Those visits invariably left her mother crying.

Finally they had left the small house in which they had lived all Juliana’s life, packing only their clothes and her mother’s jewelry, and moved into a set of rooms in a house where several other people lived. Her mother, Diana, spent her time staring dully out the window and writing letters. Periodically Diana would take out her small jewelry box and open it, then search through the contents, finally selecting a set of earrings or a bracelet. She would leave their rooms, admonishing Juliana to be quiet, and return a few hours later, her eyes red and a bag of sweets for Juliana in her hand.

Only years later had Juliana come to understand the terror that her fragile, pretty mother had faced—a woman with a young child and no money or skills, eking out a living for them by selling her small stock of precious jewelry, aware that before long this source of money would run out, too, and they would be left utterly penniless. The family’s sole source of money had been a small trust left to her father by a grandmother, added to by the small sums of money he brought in from his scholarly articles. Both incomes had died with her father.

One day a tall dark-haired man had come to visit them. He had spoken briefly to Juliana’s mother, who began to cry, sitting down on a chair. Juliana had run to Diana, furious with the man for hurting her mother.

But Diana had reached out an arm and encircled Juliana, pulling her close, and said, “No, no, darling. This is Cousin Lilith’s husband, and he has saved us. They have very kindly invited us to live with them.”

The next day they had traveled to Lychwood Hall in a post chaise, with Trenton Barre riding alongside the coach. Lychwood Hall had been a grand and imposing place, built of gray stone, with alternating narrow strips of black slate. Fortunately Juliana and her mother were not to be living at the estate house itself, but in a smaller cottage on the grounds. Juliana found the cottage rather cheerless and cold, but her mother simply said over and over again how wonderful it was that they had found a home.

Diana had explained to her daughter that her cousin, Lilith, had married Trenton Barre, and that the couple were not only giving them a house in which to live but were also generously allowing Juliana to be educated with their own children at the main house. Carefully she had instructed her daughter on how she was to act around the Barre family—always polite and respectful, never contradicting them or making herself a nuisance in any way. They were there on the Barre family’s sufferance, she had told Juliana, and Juliana must always remember that. She was to play with the Barre children, but only if asked to, and she was to let them have their way in all things, whether in play or at work in school.

Such admonitions grated on Juliana, who had always had a mind of her own. It galled her to be a “charity case,” and the idea of having to always give in to another’s wishes appalled her. However, because of her desire to please her mother and ease her obvious anxiety, she had promised to follow her orders. Then she had been taken over to meet the Barres, who by that time had assumed somewhat legendary proportions in Juliana’s childish mind.

Lilith Barre was an icy blonde, attractive in a long, slender way most unlike Juliana’s small, curvaceous mother. She did not seem, Juliana thought, the sort whose lap one could climb onto to lean one’s head against her shoulder. And she certainly did not display any sort of affection for either Juliana or Juliana’s mother. The young girl found it hard to believe that she was related to them in any way.

Lilith looked at Juliana in a cool, assessing way, then instructed one of the maids to take the child up to the nursery to meet the governess and the other tutors.

The governess was a woman who seemed to be of varying shades of gray, from her iron-colored hair to her charcoal-hued dress. She was, she told Juliana, Miss Emerson, and these were Master Crandall Barre and Miss Seraphina Barre.

Crandall was a sturdy boy a year or two older than Juliana, with a haughty expression and cold dark eyes. “You’re another poor relation,” he had announced and stuck out his tongue.

Juliana, unused to other children, had been rather shocked, but she gave him the polite curtsey her mother had taught her and turned to his sister. Seraphina was about Juliana’s age and took after her mother in looks, tall for her age and slender, with long blond hair carefully woven into braids and coiled on her head.

“Hullo,” Seraphina said in a rather friendlier manner than her brother. “Mummy said that you would play with me.”

“Yes, if you’d like,” Juliana had replied, relieved that this girl, at least, did not seem to actively dislike her as her brother did.

Juliana’s eyes had gone past the two children to another boy who slouched against the bookcase behind him, his hands thrust into his pockets and a closed, sullen look on his face. He was a few years old than Juliana, with thick black hair, messily tumbled about his face, and black eyes. He looked at Juliana without expression as Juliana studied him curiously.

“Hullo,” she had said finally, intrigued by the boy, who seemed to her much more interesting than the other two. “I am Juliana Holcott. Who are you?”

“What do you care?” he had replied.

“Nicholas!” the governess exclaimed.

“He lives with us,” Seraphina volunteered.

“He’s an orphan,” Crandall had added with a sneer.

The boy cast a dark look at Crandall but said nothing.

“He is Nicholas Barre,” the governess had explained to Juliana. “The children’s cousin. Mr. Trenton Barre is his guardian. Mr. Barre is, as you know, a most generous man and kindly took him in after his parents’ sailing accident. However, your question was quite rude. You must learn to mind your tongue.”

Juliana had looked at the woman in surprise, saying, “But how else was I to learn who he was?”

Miss Emerson had frowned at her and cautioned her once again to curb her tongue. Juliana, remembering her mother’s strictures, had swallowed her protest. She had glanced over at Crandall, who was smirking at her, then at Nicholas, who was watching her impassively.

They had begun their schoolwork. Juliana, whose scholarly father had taught her in the past, found their schoolwork easy enough and frankly boring. When Miss Emerson read to them from a book that Juliana herself had already read, it had been a struggle to keep her eyes open. A glance across the table told her that Nicholas, head down on the table, was not even pretending to listen. Juliana secretly wished she could be so bold.

Later in the afternoon, as Miss Emerson stood at the chalkboard on the wall, writing math problems, Crandall squirmed and twisted in his chair, obviously bored. After a moment he pulled out the contents of one of his pockets; then, after putting the rest back in his pocket, he picked up a small, smooth stone. Looking around, he noticed Juliana watching him, and he grinned, waggling his eyebrows at her, then turned and lobbed the pebble at the governess. The small stone missed her, cracking into the blackboard, and Miss Emerson jumped in surprise.

The governess whirled around, her eyes blazing. “Nicholas! That was a dangerous thing to do. Hold out your hands.”

She marched across the room to him, grabbing up her ruler.

“I didn’t do it!” Nicholas shot back furiously. “It was Crandall.”

“And now you are adding lying to your sins?” the governess asked. “Hold out your hands this instant.” She raised her ruler.

“I didn’t do it!” Nicholas repeated as he rose to his feet and faced their teacher pugnaciously.

“How dare you defy me?” Miss Emerson cried, looking a little frightened. “Go to your room.”

“But he’s telling the truth,” Juliana protested. “It was Crandall who did it. I saw him.”

Nicholas’s cold dark gaze turned to Juliana. The governess whirled to look at her, too, her face alight with anger.

“Don’t lie to me, young lady,” she told Juliana sternly.

“I’m not lying!” Juliana exclaimed, incensed. “I don’t lie. It was Crandall. Nicholas didn’t do anything.”

Her words seemed only to infuriate the woman even more. “Has he corrupted you already? Or are you simply of the same sort of seed? No doubt that is why you, too, have been cast upon the world. Having to depend on others’ generosity…”

Tears sprang into Juliana’s eyes, and she was filled with a desire to fling herself at the woman, kicking and hitting.

“It’s a good thing we don’t have to depend on your generosity,” Nicholas told the governess, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “It’s clear you haven’t any.”

“Go to your room. Right now. Let’s see how defiant you are tomorrow after no supper tonight.”

“That’s not fair!” Juliana cried.

“And you, miss, will go stand in the corner until I tell you otherwise. I suggest you think over your actions just now and ask yourself whether a proper lady would say and do the things you just did.”

Nicholas strode out of the schoolroom and into a small room adjoining it, slamming the door behind him.

Juliana took up her place in the corner, and later, when Miss Emerson allowed her to return to her lessons, she kept her mouth shut and ignored Crandall’s smug looks. During luncheon, she sneaked a few bits of food into her pocket. Later, when the children were supposed to be reading but Miss Emerson had nodded off in her chair and the others had taken the opportunity to lay their own heads down on their desks to nap, Juliana crept over to Nicholas’s door and eased it open.

Nicholas was standing on a chair, gazing out the high window, and he whipped around at her quiet entrance. Frowning, he hopped lightly down from the chair and came over to her.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in a none-too-friendly whisper. “The Dragon’ll punish you if she catches you.”

“She’s asleep,” Juliana whispered back, reaching into her pocket, then pulling out the napkin and passing it across to Nicholas.

He looked down at the roll and ham that Juliana had secreted there. He looked up at her questioningly. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I thought you would be hungry,” she replied simply.

He looked at her for another moment, then began to eat.

“You shouldn’t do that, you know,” he told her.

“Give you food?”

He shrugged. “And contradict the Dragon. Crandall is always right, you see. And I am always wrong. That is the way to get along at Lychwood Hall.”

“I don’t understand. That’s not fair.”

Again he shrugged, the look in his eyes far older than his years. “Doesn’t matter. That’s how it is.” He jerked his head toward the door. “You’d better go now.”

Juliana nodded and crossed the room quietly. As she reached for the doorknob, Nicholas said quietly, “Thanks.”

Juliana turned and smiled at him. He had smiled back at her, that rare, sweet smile that transformed his face. In that moment, the bond between them was formed.

The lessons Juliana learned on the first day were confirmed in the days that followed. Crandall and Seraphina Barre were never wrong and never punished. Nicholas was invariably held to blame for whatever misdeed occurred.

Juliana complained to her mother about the governess’s unfairness, but her mother shook her head, the anxious frown that was becoming more and more familiar to Juliana forming on her forehead.

“Don’t argue with your governess,” Diana warned Juliana. “Obey her and be a good girl. Do you really think she would act that way on her own? She is hired by Mr. Barre. She would never do anything to cross him. No one here would.”

Juliana had not understood at first exactly what her mother meant, but the very mention of Trenton Barre’s name was enough to still her protests. Juliana found him to be a frightening man—quiet and calm, not a man who raged, but with a cold, flat look in his eyes that could quell anyone. Even Crandall’s whining and tricks would stop short when his father turned that gaze on him.

Nicholas was the only person who would face his uncle’s gaze, his back straight and his head raised, even when he knew that his “impertinence” would inevitably lead to a caning in Trenton Barre’s study.

Juliana had never understood where Nicholas found the courage. However able she was to fight back with Crandall or to stand up to Miss Emerson’s strictures, her spirit always quailed in front of Trenton. Though she called Mrs. Barre “Aunt Lilith,” as Nicholas did, she found herself unable to address Trenton as anything but “sir.” He dropped by their cottage periodically on a courtesy call, and Juliana dreaded the times when he came. Her mother would call her in to greet Mr. Barre, and she would have to join them in the parlor and give him a polite curtsey. Juliana was rarely able to lift her head and look him in the eye, which he seemed to find amusing, and as soon as he waved her away dismissively, she fled to her room and shut herself in for the remainder of his visit.

She knew her mother worried about these visits; she could see the tension in her mother’s face when she heard his voice at the front door. Diana would look Juliana over anxiously, tugging at her braids and retying their bows, smoothing down her skirts, and Juliana was certain that her mother was afraid she would embarrass her or offend Mr. Barre somehow.

When Juliana complained about having to make her polite appearance, her mother would rebuke her. “Don’t say that. The Barres have been very generous to us. We have nowhere to go if they don’t let us stay here. You cannot offend Mr. Barre. And, please, do not say anything to him about that wicked boy.”

“Nicholas is not wicked! It is Crandall who’s the wicked one.”

But the sight of her mother’s pale face, stamped with anxiety, would make her stop. She schooled herself to be polite and endured her hours with Seraphina and Crandall.

At the time, Juliana had not thought about why the Barres had been so generous as to take her in. She had simply accepted it as a part of her life. As she grew older, though, she had wondered at Trenton and Lilith’s generosity. They were not kind-hearted people, by any means, and while it was little enough expense for them to allow Juliana and her mother to live in the empty cottage on the estate, even such a small act of kindness seemed out of character for them. She had once asked her mother about it, but her mother had looked pained and a little frightened, as she always did when their precarious position at the Barre estate was discussed, and had told Juliana that she should not question their good fortune.

Looking back on it years later, when she was grown and had moved away, Juliana decided that Lilith and Trenton had invited them to live on the estate only because it would have looked bad in the eyes of Society if they had callously left a penniless, widowed cousin to starve. She was certain that their actions were not from some sudden upsurge of human generosity. And, when she found out that it was really Nicholas who would inherit the estate, with his uncle merely holding it in trust for him, Juliana realized that even that bit of generosity had been out of Nicholas’s pocket, not their own.

During those first few years at Lychwood Hall, it was only her friendship with Nicholas that made her life bearable. Even though he had been four years older than she, he had allowed her to tag along after him, and he had more than once protected her from Crandall’s malicious words and pinches. Even though Crandall could ensure that Nicholas would be punished for anything he did or said, still Crandall was scared of him. There was something about Nicholas’s cold, implacable stare that made Crandall back down.

With Nicholas as her ally, Miss Emerson and the Barre children could be ignored. Even the fact that her mother never regained her once-happy personality could be endured.

It had devastated her when Nicholas left. Juliana had understood it, of course. His life was miserable at Lychwood Hall. He wanted to return to Cornwall, where he had lived as a boy with his parents. But his departure had left her chilled and alone.

Now, after all these years, Nicholas had come back. She could not help but wonder what impact his return would have on her life. Juliana sat down on the side of her bed, frowning. She picked up her hairbrush and began to brush out her hair as she thought.

Obviously Mrs. Thrall and Clementine thought that they could use her friendship with Nicholas to snare Clementine the Season’s prize marital catch. Juliana sincerely hoped that her old friend would not be foolish enough to be taken in by Clementine’s beauty. But neither was she so naive as to revive her own long-moribund dreams of love and marriage.

Indeed, she was not sure what she hoped for with Nicholas. She only knew how delightful it had felt to sweep around the dance floor in his arms, how her heart itself had seemed to warm at his smile. And, for the first time in a long time, she was looking forward to the morrow with excitement.

JULIANA WAS IN the sitting room early the next afternoon, embroidering fine stitches on a handkerchief, when the parlor maid announced the arrival of a visitor for her. Juliana took the engraved calling card and stood up, her heart picking up its beat, as the maid ushered Nicholas into the room.

“Nicholas!” She could not stop the delighted grin that spread across her face.

“Juliana.” He crossed the room and took the hand she extended. “You look surprised. Did you think I would not come?”

“Of course not. I just…” She gave a little shrug. She could not really explain her surprise and pleasure that he had found calling on her important enough to do it so soon after seeing her last night. “Please, sit down.”

She sat back down on the sofa, and Nicholas took the chair across from her. His tall, masculine presence somehow made the rather small sitting room seem even more cramped. Juliana was aware of a flutter of nerves in her stomach. She looked at him, suddenly unsure of what to say.

He removed his gloves, and she noticed the ring on his right hand, a plain gold signet ring. It was small and simple; she had not noticed it the night before. But now she stared at it, recognizing the ornate H engraved upon it.

“My father’s ring!” she said in amazement.

“What?” Nicholas followed her gaze down to his hand. “Oh, yes, it is the ring you gave me when I left.”

“You kept it all this time?” Strangely, she felt her throat close with tears.

“Of course.” He grinned. “It’s been my good luck charm.”

Juliana swallowed hard. She felt inordinately pleased to learn that he had kept the memento of hers close to him for so long, yet at the same time she felt uncomfortable.

“I—it has been so long, I scarcely know where to start,” she told him with a little laugh. “Where did you go? What have you been doing? The town is full of rumors about you, you know.”

He made a wry face. “And what do they say about me?”

“Oh, that you have been everything from a smuggler to a pirate to a spy. I suspect that the truth was probably something more prosaic—a sea merchant, perhaps.”

His dark eyes lit with amusement. “All of them, perhaps, have some truth to them. Although I do not think I have ever actually stopped a ship and demanded chests of gold and gems.”

“How disappointing,” Juliana commented. “I shall not let all the young girls know. It will quite spoil the picture they have built up of you.”

“Please,” he said in a heartfelt manner. “I wish you would spoil their view of me. I should very much like to go somewhere without finding an empty-headed chit and her odious matchmaking mother determined to cast their lures at me.”

“There is little hope of that,” Juliana retorted. “You are reputed to be quite wealthy. And with a title, as well…I am afraid you will find your path quite littered with them until you finally decide to marry one of them.”

“Never,” he remarked, with a grimace.

“Then I should warn you that you should not linger here,” Juliana went on.

Nicholas’s dark brows rose, and then understanding dawned in his eyes. “The blond girl?”

Juliana nodded. “Clementine.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but just at that moment, as if the conversation had called them, there was the sound of hurried steps outside, and Mrs. Thrall swept into the room.

“Lord Barre! What a delightful surprise! I am so sorry I was not here to greet you when you arrived.”

With a rueful glance at Juliana, Nicholas stood up and made a polite bow. “Mrs. Thrall. We were just speaking about you.”

The woman tittered, casting a flirtatious look at him. “Flatterer! I’ll warrant I know who it is you are interested in seeing, and it is not me. Don’t worry. Clementine will be down in a moment.” She turned toward Juliana. “Juliana, dear, why don’t you ring for tea? Let’s have it in the drawing room.” She turned back toward Nicholas with a smile. “It is much roomier, my lord. I cannot imagine what Juliana was thinking of to receive you in here.”

Nicholas cast an indifferent glance around the room. “I was more interested in talking to Juliana than in the room.”

“Prettily said, sir, but, still, I think we will find it more pleasant to converse in the front room.”

There was little to do except go with Mrs. Thrall as she ushered Nicholas out of the room and down the hallway to the more formal drawing room at the front of the narrow house. Juliana rang for tea, as her employer had requested, and sat down, resigned to having her chat with Nicholas spoiled.

Clementine came rushing in a few minutes later, breathless and attractively flushed, and Juliana noted that she had paused to put on a different dress than she had been wearing earlier, and tie a new blue ribbon through her curls.

“Lord Barre!” She came forward and dropped him a pretty little curtsey, extending her hand and smiling at him. “I was so surprised when Mama told me that you had come to call on me.”

Nicholas raised one brow at this bit of news. “Actually, I called on Miss Holcott.”

Clementine’s eyes widened a bit at this unexpected rebuff, but her mother jumped in to cover her momentary silence.

“Yes, we were so surprised to hear that dear Juliana was acquainted with you,” Mrs. Thrall said. She wagged a playful finger at her employee. “Such a naughty girl you are, keeping your news a secret.”

Juliana was tempted to reply that who she knew or didn’t know was no business of Mrs. Thrall’s, but Nicholas intervened, saying smoothly, “No doubt Miss Holcott did not deem knowing a reprobate like me worthy of your attention, madam.”

Mrs. Thrall’s response to this was a shrill whinny of laughter. “Oh, you…” She snapped open her fan and covered the lower half of her face in a girlish way that looked bizarre, given that she was well into middle age.

Clementine, annoyed at not being the center of attention for so long, jumped back into the conversation. “Your life must have been so fascinating,” she said to Nicholas, gazing at him with wide, limpid eyes. “You have seen so many places. I can scarce imagine what you must have done.”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Thrall agreed. “You must tell us about your travels, Lord Barre.”

Juliana could envision the woman storing up tidbits to drop into her future conversations. “As Lord Barre was saying to me the other day…” or “Lord Barre told me he found India quite…”

She glanced at Nicholas, whose expression indicated that he had little desire to conduct a travelogue for Mrs. Thrall and her daughter. He glanced toward Juliana, then turned back to Mrs. Thrall, saying, “You must forgive me, madam. I am afraid I haven’t time to stay and chat. I just came by to invite Miss Holcott to come riding tomorrow in my curricle.” He looked over at Juliana. “If you would like to, I could come by in the morning.”

“That would be lovely,” Juliana replied quickly, not even looking toward Mrs. Thrall for permission. She was not about to let the woman ruin another visit with Nicholas by giving her a chance to thrust Clementine into their party.

“Excellent.” Nicholas rose to his feet. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must take my leave of you ladies. Mrs. Thrall. Miss Thrall.” He sketched a brief bow in their direction. “Miss Holcott.”

“My lord.”

Clementine stared after Nicholas as he left the room, too astonished for a moment to even say anything. Then she whirled around to face Juliana, her face contorting with anger. Juliana had a sudden, wicked desire that the girl’s suitors could see her as she looked now.

“No!” Clementine exclaimed. “You cannot go. I won’t allow it.”

CHAPTER THREE

JULIANA’S BACK stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”

“Mama!” Clementine whirled around to face her mother. “You cannot allow Juliana to go with Lord Barre. I should be the one to ride in his curricle.”

It took all Juliana’s strength of will not to snap at the girl that she was the one Lord Barre had invited, not Clementine.

“Oh, no, dear,” Mrs. Thrall assured her. “Don’t you worry about that. Of course he had to invite Juliana. It would not do for a young girl like you to ride out with a man alone. You have to have Juliana as a chaperone.”

“No, I don’t,” Clementine insisted. “It’s perfectly all right for a lady to go for a ride in a vehicle with a gentleman alone, especially an open-air one like a curricle. Juliet Sloane told me ladies and gentlemen do it all the time.”

Her mother looked uncertain. “Well, I know that it’s unexceptionable for older ladies and gentlemen, but a girl your age, new to the Town, I’m not sure….”

She glanced toward Juliana. “What do you think, Juliana?”

“I think that it scarcely matters in this instance, since Lord Barre has already invited me to ride with him.”

“That’s true.” Mrs. Thrall brightened. “And you can count on it, Clemmy, that if as highborn a gentleman as Lord Barre asked Juliana to come along, as well, then that is the way it should be.”

Juliana had to grind her teeth together to keep from pointing out that Lord Barre had not invited Clementine along at all. It galled her to think of the tiresome girl inserting herself into her ride with Nicholas. She would chatter and giggle and flirt like mad, and Juliana would have no more chance to chat alone with him than she had had today. It was, she thought, the outside of enough. But she could scarcely tell her employer that her daughter was not welcome to come with them. Mrs. Thrall would all too likely forbid Juliana to go, as well.

Clementine pouted for a few minutes, flashing a look of intense dislike in Juliana’s direction, until finally Mrs. Thrall suggested that the two of them go to a millinery shop and purchase a fetching new bonnet for Clementine to wear on the ride tomorrow. Juliana, she said, could take Fiona to the bookshop, as the tiresome girl had been begging to go.

Mrs. Thrall would have been surprised to learn that Juliana much preferred doing almost anything with her younger daughter Fiona than with Clementine or her mother. Fiona, at thirteen, had a livelier wit and more charming personality than Mrs. Thrall and Clementine combined. Juliana had spent a great deal of time with the girl, as Mrs. Thrall found Fiona’s questions tiring and her interests peculiar, so she often shoved her younger daughter off into Juliana’s capable hands.

Fiona, it turned out, was finding Clementine as obnoxious today as Juliana. “If I hear one more word about Lord Barre, I think I shall scream,” she told Juliana as they strode up the street in the direction of the bookshop.

Juliana glanced down at the young girl and smiled. Fiona’s coloring was much like her sister’s, her hair pale blond and her eyes blue, but there the resemblance ended. Fiona was already as tall as her petite sister and showed no signs of stopping growing yet. Her face was squarish in shape, with a firm chin, and none of the soft, dimpled look for which Clementine was well-known. In sharp contrast to Clementine, her blue eyes were sharp and gleaming with intelligence.

“She has done nothing but talk of the man the whole day,” Fiona went on in irritation. “How handsome he is, how wealthy he is, how respected his name is.”

“Lord Barre is a…remarkable man,” Juliana told her.

The younger girl made a face. “No one could be the paragon that Clementine describes.”

Juliana chuckled. “Well, that is probably true. But he is a friend of mine. We grew up together, and long ago he was the best friend I had.”

“Really?” Fiona looked up at her in astonishment. “You are friends with the man Clemmy is going to marry?”

Juliana raised one brow skeptically. “Is that what she said?”

“Oh, yes. She said he would be head-over-heels about her in a few days.” Fiona grimaced. “And she’s usually right about men, even if she is abysmally ignorant about everything else. Men seem to be disgustingly taken with her.”

Juliana automatically started to remind Fiona that she should not talk so disparagingly about her sister. But on second thought, she decided that it was wrong to reprimand the girl for speaking the truth. “I’m not sure that she will have the usual success with this one.”

The evening before Juliana had wondered if Nicholas might become attracted to Clementine’s beauty. He had, after all, smiled and conversed with her. But his actions today had left little room for misinterpretation. He had left, pleading lack of time, shortly after Clementine had entered the room and taken over the conversation, and, whatever Mrs. Thrall might choose to think about Nicholas’s invitation, he had not included Clementine in it. Mrs. Thrall and her daughter might be able to arrange it the next morning so that he had to take Clementine along, but Juliana was quite certain that he had not intended for Clementine to go.

Juliana, too, had seen Clementine wrap men around her finger, and she could not say with certainty that she might not be able to eventually work her wiles on Nicholas, but she did not think it would be easy.

“That would be wonderful,” Fiona said, grinning. “He must be smarter than most of the men Clemmy sees.”

“Yes, I rather think he is. Nicholas was always perceptive.”

“How did you know him?”

“He was orphaned and had to live with his uncle. My mother was a cousin to his uncle’s wife, and we lived in a cottage on the estate. Nicholas and I formed a—well, a sort of alliance of outcasts.”

“Why was he an outcast? I mean, he is a lord now,” Fiona pointed out.

“It was odd,” Juliana agreed. “He wasn’t treated like a future lord. I never even realized until I heard that he’d come into the title that he was the heir. His grandfather was ill and lived in Bath, and Nicholas’s uncle was his guardian. The way everyone acted…well, I never asked, but I assumed that his uncle Trenton was the one who would inherit the title and the estate, and that after him, Trenton’s son Crandall would. Trenton Barre ran the estate for his father, and everyone acted as if he were the lord and master.”

“Why?” Fiona asked.

“Trenton Barre was a tyrant. I think probably everyone was too scared of him to cross him. There were people—some of the servants and some of the farmers who lived around there—who were nice to Nicholas. But in a secretive way, not in front of his uncle. I never understood why Uncle Trenton disliked Nicholas so. Now I can see that it was because he knew that Nicholas would inherit the title, not him or his son. It must have galled him terribly to know that one day he would have to turn over the estate he ran to Nicholas. That he would have to call him ‘my lord.’”

“Well, he can’t have been terribly smart. I mean, wouldn’t it have been better to be kind to him? Maybe then he wouldn’t have had to lose everything when Lord Barre came into the title.”

“I don’t think Uncle Trenton thought that way. It seemed to always be all or nothing with him. He had to be in command. I think he viewed the estate as his and hated Nicholas for being a reminder that it really was not.” Juliana shrugged. “At any rate, he didn’t have to see Nicholas succeed to the title. He died several years ago.”

“It sounds as if he was a terrible man,” Fiona commented.

“He was. I was glad I was in Europe with Mrs. Simmons at the time he died and couldn’t be expected to return for the funeral. I would have found it difficult to honor him.”

They walked on in silence for a few more minutes, and then Fiona said, “Well…if Lord Barre is a friend of yours, then I suppose I cannot dislike him. As long as he does not fall in love with Clementine, that is.”

“Yes,” Juliana agreed. “I think that I would have a hard time liking him, too, if he did that.”

Fiona began to talk about the book she had just finished reading, and Juliana listened to her chatter, her mind only partly on what the girl was saying. The rest was occupied with mentally sorting through her small wardrobe, trying to find a dress that was not horribly dull to wear on her ride the next morning.

That, she soon realized, would be an impossible task. All her dresses were plain and sewn of sensible fabrics in dark shades of gray, blue and brown, chosen for their durability and practicality, with an eye to giving Juliana the appearance of dull reliability that people sought in a paid companion. Companions, after all, were not usually hired in the hopes that they would be entertaining and interesting people to have around. They were there to provide a certain respectability for a woman on her own, or to fetch and carry and respond to someone’s boring conversation with apparent interest.

Juliana found that she could not bear to appear the next morning looking dowdy, so that evening she took out her best bonnet and re-attached the saucy little cluster of cherries that she had removed from it in order to dress it down. There was little she could do to the dress to improve it other than add a small ruffle of lace around the modestly high neck and long sleeves.

She thought of sitting beside Clementine, who would be wearing a doubtlessly fetching new hat, and she could not help but feel a stab of jealousy. She had spent her life around people who had more than she did, and Juliana thought that she had done very well at not feeling envious. She had always tried to think instead of the graces of her life—good health and reasonably attractive looks, and her ability to make her own way in the world without being at the mercy of others, as her mother had been. She was free and had at least a small amount of savings, and she had made some very good friends in her life. These things were much more than some people had, she knew, and she normally felt grateful for them and did not hunger over what others possessed.

But this time she could not shrug off the black resentment that crept over her as she thought of Clementine wedging her way into this moment that belonged to Juliana. Clementine would talk and preen and spoil the moment. There was nothing she could do, however, except hope that Clementine would, in her usual way, be so late that they could leave without her.

Unfortunately, the next morning Clementine was in the sitting room ready to go only minutes after Juliana. She was flushed with excitement, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks rosy, looking, Juliana had to admit, quite lovely. And the hat she had bought yesterday was indeed fetching, a chip straw with a shallow brim that showed her face to full advantage and tied with a great blue satin ribbon that accentuated the blue of her eyes.

When Nicholas was announced a few minutes later, he strolled into the room, his eyes sweeping over Clementine and her mother. “Mrs. Thrall. Miss Thrall.”

His gaze came to rest on Juliana, and a faint smile lightened his dark visage. “Juliana. Are you ready?”

“Yes.” Juliana rose, glancing toward Clementine, who also stood up.

“My lord,” Clementine said, smiling prettily and coming forward, reaching out to tuck her hand into his arm. “I am all aflutter. Is your curricle terribly high-seated? I shall be quite frightened if it is.” She let out a little chuckle, inviting him to share in the amusement of her charmingly silly feminine fear.

Nicholas looked back at her, his face wooden, and did not move to extend his arm to her. He said only, “I am sorry, Miss Thrall, there must have been some sort of misunderstanding. My invitation this morning was for Miss Holcott.”

Clementine’s jaw dropped at the obvious snub, and Juliana had to press her lips together tightly to keep a smile from forming on them.

Mrs. Thrall, too, stared in astonishment, but she recovered more quickly than her daughter, saying, “I—I presumed it was a general invitation. After all, it is scarcely proper for a gentleman and lady to jaunt about the city alone in a carriage.”

Nicholas turned his flat dark gaze on the older woman. “It is gratifying that you are so concerned about Miss Holcott’s good name, madam, but I assure you, it is perfectly acceptable. It is an open carriage. And quite small. I fear only two people are able to ride in it at a time, which is the reason that my invitation was specifically to Juliana.”

Mrs. Thrall could think of no reply, but simply stood, looking at him. Nicholas seized the opportunity to turn and offer Juliana his arm. Juliana hurried forward and tucked her hand through his. She was not about to dawdle and give her employer time to recover her wits and forbid her to go.

Nicholas was apparently of the same mind as she, for he swept her down the hall and out the front door at a fast clip, scarcely giving Juliana even a moment to appreciate the gleaming new yellow curricle before he handed her up into it. Taking the reins from his groom, who had been walking the horses to keep them warm while he was inside, Nicholas climbed up onto the seat next to Juliana.

“Abominable woman!” he exclaimed, slapping the reins to set the horses in motion.

Juliana let out a laugh of delight at having eluded Mrs. Thrall’s schemes. There would be the devil to pay when she got back, no doubt, but for the moment, she did not care. It was too wonderful to be out with Nicholas, free for the next hour, perched in a vehicle that was the height of fashion, and from which she had a wonderful view of all the hustle and bustle of London. Juliana set her hat firmly on her head, tied the ribbon beneath her chin and looked over at Nicholas with a smile.

Nicholas grinned back. “How the devil did you wind up with those two, anyway?”

Juliana shrugged. “It isn’t always easy to find a position as a companion. People usually want someone older than I am and more…well…”

“Unattractive?” Nicholas hazarded a guess.

Juliana cast him a sideways glance, smiling. “Why, thank you, sir.” Was she actually flirting with Nicholas? Somehow she could not bring herself to care about that, either. “But I was about to say ‘obsequious.’”

He let out a bark of laughter. “I can see that you have not changed. I cannot picture you at someone else’s beck and call. How did you ever seize upon the idea of being a companion?”

“It seemed a natural avenue, after living with Seraphina and your aunt Lilith all those years,” Juliana replied. “They sent me to finishing school with Seraphina.” She remembered her mother’s pleasure at Juliana’s being given the opportunity to go to a good school for girls, something they obviously could never have afforded. But she, of course, had known the reason behind Trenton and Lilith’s apparent generosity.

“They needed someone to keep an eye on Seraphina and make sure she didn’t get into any trouble. Which was not an easy task, I can assure you. Seraphina was just as flighty and silly a young woman as she was as a child. And then, after we finished, Seraphina had a tour of the continent. The war was over by then. So, again, I went along to help, and when that was over, I saw that I was amply prepared to be a companion. I knew all about fetching and carrying, and listening to boring conversation and flattering someone.”

“Did Aunt Lilith turn you out?” he asked, a dangerous note in his voice.

“Oh, no. I could have stayed. I didn’t flatter myself that Aunt Lilith liked me, but she would have liked my help in getting Seraphina through her debut, and she would not have wanted the gossip about her throwing a poor young girl upon the world. But I could not stand living in that prison any longer, and with my mother gone, there was really no reason to. Lilith was just as happy that I decided to leave, I think. If I had stayed, she would have had to bring me out, as well, at least in some small fashion, and that would have galled her.”

Juliana did not add that Crandall had begun to change his tactics when she grew up, from pulling her hair and playing mean tricks on her to trying to corner her in the library and sneak a kiss, or run a caressing hand over her body. His pursuit had been one of the major reasons that she had been determined to leave Lychwood Hall. Aunt Lilith, she thought, suspected that something was going on, but Lilith had been convinced that the situation was the other way around, even accusing Juliana on one occasion of trying to ensnare her son.

“So Aunt Lilith wrote a letter of recommendation for me, and I set out on my own. It took a little while, but then someone hired me to take care of his aging mother.” She also did not add that that bit of employment had ended when the man who had hired her showed up at the door of her bedroom one night, drunk and leering and making fumbling advances to her. “After a time I met Mrs. Simmons, and it was actually quite pleasant after that.”

Nicholas frowned. “I dislike your being at that Thrall woman’s beck and call.”

“Nor do I like it,” Juliana agreed candidly. “However, it is a price that I am willing to pay for my freedom. At least this is a straightforward business transaction. I am not dependent on anyone’s charity.”

Nicholas had maneuvered through the streets as they talked, and they had reached the sylvan paths of Hyde Park, where there was far less traffic, and he could relax and turn his attention away from controlling the horses. He looked over at Juliana.

It was still a little something of a surprise to him each time he looked at her. He had known she would be older, of course, though he had been able to recognize the child he had known in her face. But still, somehow, it was disconcerting to see the woman she had become, the sweetly familiar face of his childhood turned into a beauty.

Hers was not the pale, insipid beauty of one such as the Thrall girl, whom Nicholas found crushingly boring. Juliana’s beauty lay not just in her thick dark-brown hair, sternly constrained in a firm knot at the base of her neck, although it was the sort of hair that made a man’s fingers itch to pull out her pins and release it in a luxuriant tumble around her shoulders. Nor was it only the well-modeled features of her face. Hers was a beauty that shone out of her lively gray eyes and blossomed in the smile that curved her lips, a loveliness born of strength and personality, and the multitude of small things that made Juliana uniquely herself.

He knew her, and yet he did not know her, and he found the combination compelling. Gazing at her now, Nicholas was aware of a sudden desire to lean over and kiss that softly curving mouth, to taste what he was sure would be the piquant sweetness of her lips.

His eyes darkened, straying to her mouth, and it was only with some inner firmness that he was able to pull his gaze away. He stared straight ahead above his horses’ heads for a few moments, pondering the instant of desire that had just flashed through him. This was not the sort of feeling he should be having about Juliana, he told himself.

She was the beloved companion of his childhood, the girl who had provided the only warmth he had known after his parents’ deaths. He had been eager to find her when he returned to England, but it had been the eagerness of an old close friend…of a brother, say. He loved her, he thought, as much as he found himself able to love anyone, but it was a small, pure, uncomplicated love, a deep fondness for a childhood memory.

Yet here Juliana was, not at all a memory, looking very much like a desirable woman, and the feeling that had just speared through him was not years-old devotion but the swift lust of a man for a woman.

The feeling shook him. It seemed perverse to experience this sort of sensation about someone almost a sister to him. Had any other man expressed feeling such a thing for her, he would have taught him a quick, brutal lesson.

This unexpected desire was certainly not something upon which he could act. Juliana trusted him; he could never take advantage of her, even in the smallest way. There were many, he knew, who considered him unscrupulous, even wicked, and he admitted that he was not a good man. But he would never do something so dastardly as to take advantage of Juliana’s kind feelings for him.

Moreover, aside from the importance of not violating Juliana’s trust in him, there was the matter of her reputation. She was a lady, and her reputation must be above reproach. It was even more imperative that nothing besmirch her name, given that she had to make her own way in the world. It was far too easy for even unproved black marks to attach to the reputation of a woman who had no family to protect her and no high name to bolster hers. He could and would, of course, defend her name, but it was a sad truth that merely the defense of a man of his uncertain reputation would probably only damage her name further.

Nicholas knew, therefore, that he could not even pay her particular attention without causing scandalous talk about her. He should not call on her too often nor take her out on the dance floor more than every once in a while. It would have been more politic, he was sure, to have taken the annoying Thrall chit with them today in a larger vehicle. It would have deflected attention from Juliana onto Clementine, and he frankly had little regard for whether tongues wagged about that girl. However, he had selfishly wanted Juliana all to himself, at least this once.

There were far too many looks being cast in their direction from the carriages and riders they passed, and Nicholas knew that the gossip circuit would soon be buzzing about the woman with whom Lord Barre had been seen in the Park. He would have to refrain from going out riding with Juliana again for a week or two, and it would be wise not to even call on her again for a few days. Nicholas despised having to kowtow to such arbitrary constraints, but he could not jeopardize Juliana’s reputation.

Juliana, looking up at Nicholas, had seen the subtle change in his face, the way his eyes flickered involuntarily to her lips. Her breath had caught in her throat, and her stomach had tightened. He was about to kiss her, she had thought.

Then he had looked abruptly away. She relaxed, not quite sure whether she felt relief or disappointment. Indeed, she was not quite certain anything at all had happened. Had she mistaken the look in his eyes?

Surely she was not wrong. There had been a spark, an infinitesimal tightening of his face, and something inside her had responded. She could not deny that response—eager, yet also a trifle wary, a tingle of warmth that moved through her with the speed of lightning. It had all been faster, more subtle, than thought. Instinctive, but beyond doubt.

She cast another sideways glance up at Nicholas. He was staring straight ahead, his jaw set. She wondered what he thought, what he felt. Had he regretted that momentary impulse? With a certain disappointment, she realized that he probably had. Why else would he have turned away so abruptly?

It was a lowering thought. If he had felt a flash of masculine interest in her, he had clearly and immediately regretted it. He was right, of course. Even though they had once been close, she was clearly someone whom he would not think of courting and marrying. The difference in their stations in life was now vast. All she could hope for was friendship from him, and desire would only hinder that.

He had been correct, and if it wounded her pride a little, that was simply something she would have to get over. It wasn’t, she reminded herself, as if she had wanted him to kiss her. He was, after all, virtually a stranger to her after all these years. And she was much too mature and practical now to give weight to the romantic adolescent dreams she had had about him. It did not matter that she had felt some sort of reaction when she thought he was about to kiss her, that there had been a flash of warmth in her midsection and a sudden tingling awareness of seemingly every inch of her skin. Why, she was not entirely sure whether what she had felt had been eagerness or fear.

And whatever she might have felt, she was, after all, the master of herself and her emotions. A kiss would have been highly improper, and she was glad—yes, glad—that Nicholas had turned away without giving in to his impulse.

Still, she could not help but be very aware of Nicholas now—of his warmth, his size, his very presence beside her on their high perch. She looked up at his face, sharp in profile, his skin taut across the slicing arc of his cheekbones, the only softening feature the thick brush of his lashes.

He must have felt her gaze upon him, for he turned his head toward her. Juliana glanced quickly away, a blush rising in her cheeks at having been caught staring at him. She would hate for him to think that she was overly bold.

Her eyes strayed to his hands, large and firm on the reins, encased in supple kid driving gloves. She remembered the touch of his hand on her waist as they danced, warm and strong. There was something about the memory of his touch that made her a trifle breathless.

A breeze caressed her flushed cheeks and lifted a few stray tendrils of her hair. She felt as if her skin was more sensitive than normal, more alive to the warmth of the sun or the brush of air against it.

Juliana clasped her hands in her lap and looked down at them. These sorts of thoughts would never do, she told herself. And Nicholas would think her a tongue-tied dolt, the way she was sitting here, saying nothing.

They passed an open landaulet, occupied by two middle-aged ladies who eyed them sharply. Juliana felt sure that by this evening, the word would be all over fashionable society that Lord Barre had driven out in the Park this morning with an unknown girl—and one of such plain dress and demeanor, too.

“They will be gossiping about you, you know,” she told him. “It will cause great speculation that you are with a female whom none of them recognize.”

Nicholas shrugged carelessly. “They always gossip about me. Or, at least, that is what people tell me. The good thing about it is that I never hear it.” He glanced at her. “Will it bother you?”

She smiled at him. “Oh, no. As I said, they won’t know who I am. And even if they did…as you said, I won’t hear it. What worries me more is what Mrs. Thrall will say when I return.”

“Perhaps I should come in with you. A few minutes spent with that tedious girl might improve her mood.”

“No, I shan’t ask you to subject yourself to that.” Juliana smiled. “I am sure that you will find yourself plagued by having to talk to her far more times than you will wish—that is, I mean, if you intend to call at the house again.” She stumbled to a halt, realizing that all unintentionally she had put herself forward, assuming that he intended to continue his visits with her. “I’m sorry. I have put you in an awkward position. Aunt Lilith always told me I was far too blunt in my speech.”

“Nonsense. I find plain speaking refreshing. Of course I intend to call upon you again…even if it does mean having to put up with the Thrall women.”

“Do not come too often,” Juliana warned him.

He lifted his brows, amusement touching his dark eyes. “Do you find my presence so tedious?”

“No.” Juliana chuckled. “Of course not. But Mrs. Thrall and Clementine will be convinced that you are madly in love with her if you call very often.”

“Perish the thought,” he responded. “Although…mayhap I could use her as a ruse. That way ’twould do no harm to your reputation if I called upon you often.”

Juliana was aware of a twinge of jealousy at the thought of Nicholas pretending to court Clementine. “Yes, but then you would be expected to propose to Clementine or else be considered a cad.”

He shrugged. “I have been considered far worse things. Indeed, I have done far worse things.”

“If you think that, then you have not spent day after day in conversation with Clementine.”

Nicholas laughed. “Ah, Juliana, I cannot tell you how relieved I am that you have not grown up to be dull.”

Juliana could not help but smile. “And I am glad to be around someone with whom I need not rein in my tongue.”

“I suspect that in the Thrall family, much of what you say is not even understood.”

“No, Clementine has a younger sister who is quite bright. Her name is Fiona, and I cannot imagine how she came to be in that family.”

“Is there a Mr. Thrall?”

“Oh, yes, but he had the good sense to remain in Yorkshire during Clementine’s Season.”

“Then perhaps that is where this Fiona gets her intelligence.”

“You are probably right.”

They continued to chat in this light way as they made their way through the Park. They passed a number of other people, some in vehicles, others on horseback. It was the fashionable thing to ride in the morning—though how so many of them managed to be up by this hour after the late nights at various parties, Juliana was not sure. Some of the people nodded to Nicholas or spoke to them. Others clearly hoped to catch his eye and perhaps receive a nod from him.

“A number of people seem to want to know you,” Juliana remarked.

“It is remarkable how popular a title makes one,” Nicholas retorted.

“Oh, it takes more than a title,” Juliana said. “Money helps.”

Again his grin flashed, softening the hard lines of his face. Neither of them was aware of how others’ interest in Juliana’s identity was heightened by the look he turned toward her.

“Cynic,” Nicholas told her. “Don’t you know that you are supposed to protest that it is my wonderful qualities that others admire?”

“It has been my experience that most people never bothered to look for your wonderful qualities,” Juliana answered truthfully. “I am sure none of these people are aware of them, either.”

“Indeed, I think you were always my only champion.”

“Not much of one, I’m afraid. I never managed to save you from punishment, as I recall.”

He shrugged carelessly. “No one could have, much less a nine- or ten-year-old girl. My fate was sealed the day my father and mother died.”

“Your grandfather could have taken you in,” Juliana pointed out. “He should have taken an interest in you, at least.”

“His only interest was in his various aches and pains, real or otherwise. There may have been some estrangement between him and my father. I don’t remember visiting him or his coming to us before my parents died. The first time I remember seeing him was at my parents’ funeral, and then he turned me over to Uncle Trenton. And from my uncle’s reports of me, I feel sure he felt little desire to see me.”

“Twas no excuse,” Juliana maintained stoutly.

He looked at her, his dark eyes unreadable. “I think that you don’t remember me as I was. You were a better friend to me than I deserved.”

“Nonsense,” Juliana retorted. “I knew you were not a saint. You were quite often sullen, and you were rude to our governess and frequently bloodied Crandall’s nose.”

“Ah, then you do remember.”

“Yes. I also remember that few people deserved having their noses bloodied as much as Crandall. He was a vile boy who grew up into a vile young man. And Miss Emerson was not merely strict, she was unkind. Perhaps you should have been less hard on Seraphina. She wasn’t really mean, I think, merely selfish and silly. But how could you not have hated your uncle? He was a terrible man. When I heard that he died, I can tell you that I felt not the slightest bit of regret.”

“Nor did I.” He slanted a smile at her. “Are we villains together, then?”

“I think not. Merely human.”

“You do not know what else I have done,” he reminded her, watching her steadily. “It’s been many years that I’ve been gone.”

Juliana looked into his eyes, deep and black, and she saw in them, as she had seen those many years ago, a terrifying aloneness. Impulsively, she put her hand upon his arm, saying, “I think that whatever you have done, Nicholas, you did because you had to.”

“And does that make it right?”

“I don’t know. But I think it means you do not have a wicked heart.”

He gazed at her for a long time, unspeaking, and the lines of his face softened subtly. He shifted the reins to one hand and placed his free hand over hers on his arm. For a moment they remained that way, unspeaking, and then he moved, letting his hand fall away.

“And your heart, I think, is a generous one,” he said lightly, and the moment was past. “Now, we had best get you home before your Mrs. Thrall starts breathing fire.”

Juliana’s hand tingled where his hand had touched it, and her cheeks were suddenly warm. It took a great deal of restraint not to lay her other hand on the spot where he had touched her; such a gesture would, she was sure, reveal too much of what she was feeling. She wished, with an intensity that both surprised and shook her, that he had not taken his hand away. That he had, instead, leaned closer to her and kissed her.

Juliana pressed her lips together tightly and directed her gaze out onto the street—anywhere but at Nicholas. He considered her a friend. She could not let him know that what she felt for him was something different.

CHAPTER FOUR

WHEN JULIANA RETURNED to the house, she found Fiona loitering in the hallway just inside the front door. The girl had obviously been waiting for her, for she turned to her with a sigh of relief and, taking her hand, pulled Juliana into the empty front drawing room. Juliana opened her mouth to ask the girl what she was doing, but Fiona held her finger to her lips, glancing upstairs in a rather dramatic fashion.

Fiona closed the door behind them softly and turned to face Juliana. “You had best stay out of Clementine’s way. She has been storming about the house for the past hour, ranting about you. She’s in a rare snit.”

“Oh, dear.” Juliana sighed. She had thoroughly enjoyed the ride alone with Nicholas, but as she had expected, she would have to pay for it now.

“What happened? She talks as if you’d ruined her life,” Fiona remarked. “It’s much worse than when I lost her favorite comb last month.”

“I’m afraid that Lord Barre took me for a ride in his curricle without inviting Clementine to come along.”

Fiona let out a laugh. “Is that it? I wondered what she was talking about. She kept saying you had stolen something from her, but I knew you wouldn’t have done anything like that.”

Juliana grimaced. “I suppose I’d best go face the music.”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you. I’ve always found it’s better to let her calm down a bit. She’ll still be quite angry, but she’ll be less likely to slap you. Why don’t we go for a stroll?”

Juliana was frankly tempted, but she replied, “No. Better not get you into trouble, as well. But I appreciate the forewarning.”

She left Fiona and went out into the hall, starting toward the rear sitting room. Fiona was doubtless right about giving Clementine a chance to calm down, and while Juliana was not about to hide from the girl, it only made sense not to provoke her.

However, Clementine apparently heard the sound of Juliana’s footsteps on the floor, for she appeared at the head of the stairs. “There you are!”

“Hello, Clementine,” Juliana said pleasantly, nodding to her.

“How could you?” Clementine exclaimed.

“I am afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Juliana replied calmly. “Why don’t we retire to the sitting room and talk about it?”

“Talk about it? Talk about it?” Clementine’s voice dripped disgust. “Do you think that you can try to steal Lord Barre from me and then make it all right by talking about it?”

Juliana kept a firm grip on her own temper, saying, “Clementine, I assure you that I did not try to steal Lord Barre from you.”

“What else would you call it?” Clementine retorted, color flaring in her cheeks. “You cut me out! You—”

“I did no such thing, I assure you. Lord Barre explained that there was room for only two in his curricle, and—”

“And I should have been the one to go with him.” Clementine clattered down the stairs, stopping on the second step from the bottom—acting from, Juliana presumed, a desire to loom over her, since she was taller than the girl.

“Lord Barre invited me,” Juliana pointed out. “I could scarcely have made him take you instead.”

“You connived against me. You inveigled him into inviting you.”

“Clementine, please calm yourself. This is nonsensical,” Juliana protested.

Clementine’s mother came down the stairs like a battleship in full sail, and Juliana turned toward her. “Mrs. Thrall, I—”

The older woman held up her hand peremptorily, saying, “Don’t think you can get around me, now, miss. You have overstepped your bounds, and that’s clear.”

“I beg your pardon?” Juliana had not expected Mrs. Thrall to be pleased with her, but this patently unreasonable charge got her back up.

“I’ll not have you working your wiles on men while you’re under my roof, I’ll have you know.”

“What?” Juliana stared at her employer, too stunned to think how to reply to this.

“Oh, don’t think I don’t know what you’re about,” Mrs. Thrall told her, nodding her head. “Clemmy is too innocent and naive to realize what you’ve been up to, but I’m not. I know what you did, how you seduced Lord Barre into taking you out alone—the promises you must have made. Where did you go while you were out?”

“How dare you?” Juliana shot back, her face utterly pale except for two furious spots of color that flared in her cheeks. “You have no reason to say such things about me! I would never—”

Mrs. Thrall waved away Juliana’s protests. “Oh, I know all right. Why else would a man choose to invite you and not my Clementine? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the lures you were casting out…the sort of enticements that no man, even a gentleman, could resist. And I won’t have it, miss, not in my household, with two impressionable young girls here.”

“Mama! No!” Fiona gasped from where she stood at the doorway to the drawing room, watching the scene unfold before her.

Juliana stalked forward to Mrs. Thrall, towering over the squat woman. She had managed over the years to hold her temper under all sorts of provocation, but this accusation was too much for her.

“There has never been the slightest stain on my name,” Juliana said fiercely, her voice trembling with the force of her indignation. “My reputation is unblemished.”

“Hah!” Clementine responded. “Mama has the right of it. You knew that he admired me, and you seduced him into taking you for a ride.”

“Don’t be any more foolish than you already are, Clementine,” Juliana snapped, the words tumbling out of her. “Nicholas did not admire you. He didn’t even know who you were. He was my friend from many years ago, and he asked me to go out with him in his curricle because he wanted to talk with me. And he did not ask you to go because he didn’t want you to. Not every man in the world is going to fall at your feet.”

Before Clementine could do anything more than gape at her, mouth opening and closing like a fish, Juliana swung toward her mother. “And as for casting out lures or staining her precious reputation, I would suggest that you look toward your daughter first. Clementine is an outrageous flirt, and I have to keep my eye on her the entire time at every ball to make sure she does not slip out onto the terrace with any man who asks her. If you don’t put some reins on her, she is going to come a cropper, and I can assure you that if she makes a serious misstep, she will be ruined in Society. And no amount of beauty will overcome that. However attractive she might be, any closer acquaintance with her will show just how spoiled, selfish, vain and foolish Clementine is, with the result that over the course of time, a great number of her conquests will drop away. If you expect her to marry well, you had better make sure that she is the sort of girl that a gentleman’s mother will accept as a daughter-in-law, not just the sort of beauty that callow youths dangle after.”

Juliana stopped and drew a long breath, a great sense of calm falling over her. She realized that she had doubtless just lost her position there, but she could not regret it…at least, not just yet. She was too filled with a sense of well-being at having at last been able to express her true feelings.

“Leave this house!” Mrs. Thrall rasped, rage suffusing her face. “Right now! Do you hear me?”

“Gladly,” Juliana responded, stepping around the woman and starting up the stairs.

“And don’t expect any reference from me!” Mrs. Thrall called after her.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Juliana continued up the stairs and down the hall to her room. Behind her, she heard Fiona run past her sister and mother and up the stairs after her.

“Miss Holcott! Wait!” Fiona called.

Juliana turned at the door of her room and looked back at the girl. She felt a twinge of regret when she saw Fiona’s unhappy face.

“Please do not leave, Miss Holcott,” Fiona went on, drawing close to her.

“I am sorry. I have no choice. I’m afraid your mother has let me go.” Juliana turned the doorknob and went into her room.

Fiona trailed after her. “She is just angry. She will calm down, and then I am sure she will regret it.”

“I’m not so sure, after what I said.” Juliana looked down at Fiona, then sighed and said, “I am sorry. I should not have said what I did about your sister.”

“No.” Fiona stood and watched as Juliana opened the small chest at the foot of her bed and began to fill it with clothes from her drawers. “I am afraid you are right. Clementine is a very silly creature, and quite selfish. And you should not have to endure her scolding you because Lord Barre did not fall at her feet. I hate to see you go.”

“I shall miss you, as well,” Juliana assured the girl honestly, then went over to curl an arm around Fiona’s shoulders affectionately. “Perhaps your mother will let you visit me sometime.”

“Perhaps,” Fiona replied doubtfully. “Where will you go?”

Juliana realized that she had not even thought about where she would go or what she would do now. She had indeed acted hastily. Still, she could not regret it.

“I think I will go to my friend’s house. Eleanor Townsend—well, Lady Scarbrough now, since she has married. Here,” she said, turning and taking a pencil from her pocket, and a piece of paper from one of the dresser drawers. “I shall write down her address for you, so that you may come to see me. We went to school together, and she has always extended me an open invitation to stay with her.”

It did not take long to pack her belongings, and Juliana was soon ready to leave. She rang for a footman to carry down her trunk, then turned and hugged Fiona goodbye.

The girl’s eyes filled with tears, and Juliana felt a tug at her own heartstrings. Even though she had been here only a few months, she had developed a deep fondness for Fiona.

“I will come see you,” Fiona promised, her voice muffled against Juliana’s shoulder. “Even if I have to sneak out of the house.”

“Don’t get into any trouble,” Juliana told her. She knew that the “right” thing to tell the girl was to obey her mother, but she was also quite sure that Fiona was far smarter than Mrs. Thrall and better able to judge what should be done.

Juliana left quickly after that, picking up her small bag and going lightly down the backstairs to bid farewell to the household staff. When she came around to the front of the house, she found that the footman who had carried her trunk downstairs had already hailed a hack for her and strapped her trunk on the back of it. He helped her up into the cab, closing the door after her, and the vehicle rattled off.

Here she was, once again, without employment and with no prospect of any. Juliana leaned back with a sigh against the seat, and for the first time in the last two hours thought about her situation.

It was then that she realized Nicholas no longer knew where she was.

CHAPTER FIVE

LADY SCARBROUGH’S HOUSE was an elegant white Queen Anne-style mansion that took up a good third of one of the most fashionable blocks in Mayfair. As Juliana climbed down from the carriage, she heard the driver let out a low whistle, and he hopped down to get his money, tipping his hat to her more respectfully than he had when she got into his vehicle.

While he removed her trunk from the back of the cab, Juliana walked up to the door and used the large brass knocker. The door was opened a moment later by a short, square man with the misshapen ears and oft-broken nose that betokened a bare-knuckle fighter. He was not the sort of person one expected for a footman and even less for the butler who ran the household, but Juliana knew that was his position. Like many of her friend Eleanor’s employees, he was unorthodox, competent and intensely loyal.

“Miss Holcott!” he said now, his rough face lightening into a grin. “It’s good to see you. Miss Eleanor will be so happy. Come in, come in.”

“Hello, Bartwell,” Juliana replied, following him inside and handing him the small bag she carried. “Sorry to arrive on the doorstep this way. I hadn’t time to send Miss—I mean, Lady Scarbrough—a note.”

“Never worry about that, miss. There’s always a room ready for you,” he assured her, then turned to say to a young man approaching them from the rear of the house, “You, Fletcher, get the young lady’s trunk and take it up to the blue bedchamber.”

Like Bartwell, Fletcher was dressed in neat black and white, but he did not wear livery, another oddity of Eleanor’s servants. They were a mixture of nationalities, Bartwell American like Eleanor herself, as was Eleanor’s personal maid, while Fletcher and most of the other servants were English, and the cook was decidedly French.

The servants were not the only oddities about Eleanor’s household. She was in the habit of helping others—indeed, there were some caustic souls who deemed her an inveterate meddler—and she had in the course of the past few years acquired two orphaned children, one an energetic young French girl named Claire and the other an American lad named Seth, as well as a young woman from India whom Eleanor had rescued from being thrown on a funeral pyre along with her dead husband, and who had become the children’s nanny. Her business manager was a well-spoken black man whom Eleanor’s father had bought out of slavery and sent to school. It made for a lively and sometimes noisy household, but everyone in it was devoted to Eleanor.

“Miss Eleanor is in her study,” Bartwell told her. It was clear, Juliana thought, that despite her marriage to Sir Edmund, Eleanor would never be Lady Scarbrough to Bartwell, but always the Miss Eleanor she had been since he had been employed by her father when Eleanor was only a child. “Would you like me to take you to her, or would you prefer that I show you to your room, so that you may freshen up?”

Juliana replied that she would see Eleanor first, feeling it incumbent upon her to at least go through the formality of asking to stay, even though she knew her friend would never think of refusing her hospitality.

She and Eleanor had been friends for twelve years, and despite the different paths their lives had taken and their frequent separations, their friendship was still as fast as it had been from the first. They had met at the finishing school to which Juliana had been sent with Seraphina Barre. It had been the intention of Seraphina’s parents that Juliana watch over the girl, helping her with her studies, as she often needed, and making sure that she didn’t get into any scrapes. Seraphina had accepted Juliana’s help as her due, but she had not considered her a bosom friend. That position was reserved for other girls of similar wealth and consequence.

Juliana was, therefore, left largely alone at the school by Seraphina and her group, as well as by most of the other students. All were aware that Juliana’s friendship would do nothing to improve their position in Society. But she had quickly become friends with another girl who was also considered an outsider. Eleanor Townsend, although very wealthy, was an American and, according to the general opinion at the Miss Blanton School for Girls, decidedly odd. Juliana, of course, had liked her immediately.

As Bartwell led Juliana down the hall to Eleanor’s study, she heard the sound of a piano being played, the music ending abruptly, starting again hesitantly, then stopping.

“Sir Edmund is in the music room,” Bartwell explained in an aside. “Composing.”

Juliana nodded. She did not know Eleanor’s husband well. Eleanor had married him only two months earlier, in a small wedding that Juliana had attended. He was a slender, quiet man who seemed, as best Juliana could tell, to live on the periphery of Eleanor’s life. When she had called at the house since the marriage, Sir Edmund had usually been sequestered in the music room or upstairs in his bedroom, nursing another of the coughs and fevers that apparently plagued him. He was a musical genius, Eleanor had assured her, and Juliana sometimes wondered if Eleanor had not married him simply to make sure that his life was properly managed, allowing him to occupy himself with his music and not worry about other, lesser, things such as food or medicine or bills being paid.

Managing things was, after all, what Eleanor did best.

Bartwell tapped on the study door, then opened it at Eleanor’s reply. “Miss Holcott is here to see you, ma’am.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.