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