An Independent Woman. Candace Camp
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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