Читать книгу An Independent Woman - Candace Camp - Страница 9

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.