An Independent Woman Read online

  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 w
oman 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 he
r 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.