Читать книгу An Independent Woman - Candace Camp, Candace Camp - Страница 9

LADY SCARBROUGH’S HOUSE was an elegant white Queen Anne-style mansion that took up a good third of one of the most fashionable blocks in Mayfair. As Juliana climbed down from the carriage, she heard the driver let out a low whistle, and he hopped down to get his money, tipping his hat to her more respectfully than he had when she got into his vehicle.

While he removed her trunk from the back of the cab, Juliana walked up to the door and used the large brass knocker. The door was opened a moment later by a short, square man with the misshapen ears and oft-broken nose that betokened a bare-knuckle fighter. He was not the sort of person one expected for a footman and even less for the butler who ran the household, but Juliana knew that was his position. Like many of her friend Eleanor’s employees, he was unorthodox, competent and intensely loyal.

“Miss Holcott!” he said now, his rough face lightening into a grin. “It’s good to see you. Miss Eleanor will be so happy. Come in, come in.”

“Hello, Bartwell,” Juliana replied, following him inside and handing him the small bag she carried. “Sorry to arrive on the doorstep this way. I hadn’t time to send Miss—I mean, Lady Scarbrough—a note.”

“Never worry about that, miss. There’s always a room ready for you,” he assured her, then turned to say to a young man approaching them from the rear of the house, “You, Fletcher, get the young lady’s trunk and take it up to the blue bedchamber.”

Like Bartwell, Fletcher was dressed in neat black and white, but he did not wear livery, another oddity of Eleanor’s servants. They were a mixture of nationalities, Bartwell American like Eleanor herself, as was Eleanor’s personal maid, while Fletcher and most of the other servants were English, and the cook was decidedly French.

The servants were not the only oddities about Eleanor’s household. She was in the habit of helping others—indeed, there were some caustic souls who deemed her an inveterate meddler—and she had in the course of the past few years acquired two orphaned children, one an energetic young French girl named Claire and the other an American lad named Seth, as well as a young woman from India whom Eleanor had rescued from being thrown on a funeral pyre along with her dead husband, and who had become the children’s nanny. Her business manager was a well-spoken black man whom Eleanor’s father had bought out of slavery and sent to school. It made for a lively and sometimes noisy household, but everyone in it was devoted to Eleanor.

“Miss Eleanor is in her study,” Bartwell told her. It was clear, Juliana thought, that despite her marriage to Sir Edmund, Eleanor would never be Lady Scarbrough to Bartwell, but always the Miss Eleanor she had been since he had been employed by her father when Eleanor was only a child. “Would you like me to take you to her, or would you prefer that I show you to your room, so that you may freshen up?”

Juliana replied that she would see Eleanor first, feeling it incumbent upon her to at least go through the formality of asking to stay, even though she knew her friend would never think of refusing her hospitality.

She and Eleanor had been friends for twelve years, and despite the different paths their lives had taken and their frequent separations, their friendship was still as fast as it had been from the first. They had met at the finishing school to which Juliana had been sent with Seraphina Barre. It had been the intention of Seraphina’s parents that Juliana watch over the girl, helping her with her studies, as she often needed, and making sure that she didn’t get into any scrapes. Seraphina had accepted Juliana’s help as her due, but she had not considered her a bosom friend. That position was reserved for other girls of similar wealth and consequence.

Juliana was, therefore, left largely alone at the school by Seraphina and her group, as well as by most of the other students. All were aware that Juliana’s friendship would do nothing to improve their position in Society. But she had quickly become friends with another girl who was also considered an outsider. Eleanor Townsend, although very wealthy, was an American and, according to the general opinion at the Miss Blanton School for Girls, decidedly odd. Juliana, of course, had liked her immediately.

As Bartwell led Juliana down the hall to Eleanor’s study, she heard the sound of a piano being played, the music ending abruptly, starting again hesitantly, then stopping.

“Sir Edmund is in the music room,” Bartwell explained in an aside. “Composing.”

Juliana nodded. She did not know Eleanor’s husband well. Eleanor had married him only two months earlier, in a small wedding that Juliana had attended. He was a slender, quiet man who seemed, as best Juliana could tell, to live on the periphery of Eleanor’s life. When she had called at the house since the marriage, Sir Edmund had usually been sequestered in the music room or upstairs in his bedroom, nursing another of the coughs and fevers that apparently plagued him. He was a musical genius, Eleanor had assured her, and Juliana sometimes wondered if Eleanor had not married him simply to make sure that his life was properly managed, allowing him to occupy himself with his music and not worry about other, lesser, things such as food or medicine or bills being paid.

Managing things was, after all, what Eleanor did best.

Bartwell tapped on the study door, then opened it at Eleanor’s reply. “Miss Holcott is here to see you, ma’am.”