An Independent Woman

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.”