JULIANA HAD NOT EXPECTED to see him again.
She had heard that Nicholas had come into the title and
returned to England, which had surprised her. All her
life, she had thought that it was Nicholas's uncle who was
the heir, not him. Certainly, no one had ever treated him
like the future earl. She had assumed that their paths
would never cross. After all, he was an earl now, and
wealthy, and she was a paid companion to a woman who moved
only on the edges of that rarefied circle of society to
which he belonged.
There had been an instant, when she had first heard the
murmurs of Nicholas's return from America and his sudden
elevation into the inner sanctum of polite society, that
she had thought with an up-surge of an almost painful
excitement that she would see him once more. Time, and an
application of reason, had led her to realize that was
unlikely.
Even though they had once been close, it had been many
years ago. If he even thought of her, it would be only as
a dim memory from his past, a person from a time and place
he doubtless recalled with little fondness. Her time at
Lychwood Hall had been unhappy, but his had been even
bleaker. Juliana suspected that he had done his best to
put the past behind him. He would not seek her out. Only a
foolish romantic would hope that he would.
And there was little chance that they would accidentally
run into each other. Her employer, Mrs. Thrall, however
much she might like to think she was a member of the upper
echelon of London society, was in reality a very small
fish swimming in the outer, eddying rings of that pond.
The family was at best acceptable country gentry come to
the city, and it was only the undeniable beauty of
Clementine, Mrs. Thrall's daughter, that got them any sort
of notice.
Tonight, however, the Thralls had received an invitation
to Lady Sherbourne's ball, a huge crush of an affair, so
large that it pulled in many lesser members of Society.
Juliana understood that it was only the sheer numbers of
invitees that had made it possible for them to be here.
Mrs. Thrall, of course, did not. She had been crowing for
the past week about Lady Sherbourne having taken them
under her wing.
Because of the size of the party, Juliana had harbored a
small flicker of hope, barely acknowledged, that Lord
Barre would appear. But she had not really believed it,
deep down. After all, from the gossip she had managed to
glean, sitting quietly listening to Clementine and her
giggling friends, Nicholas rarely attended any party. His
reclusiveness, of course, simply added to his mystique.
But there he was. Juliana looked up from her perusal of
Clementine sweeping around the floor in the arms of one of
her many admirers, and there, standing at the top of the
wide staircase leading down into the ballroom, was
Nicholas Barre.
Her heart skittered in her chest, and for an instant, she
felt as if she could not breathe. He was handsome, more
handsome even than she remembered — filled out now into a
man, with broad shoulders that needed no extra padding
from his tailor, and long, muscled legs. He stood, looking
out coolly over the mass of people below him, confidence,
even a certain arrogance, stamped on his features. His
hair was thick and a trifle shaggy, jet-black in color and
falling carelessly beside his face. His eyes appeared as
black as his hair, accented by the straight slashes of his
black brows.
He did not look like other men. Not even the black formal
coat and snowy white shirt could camouflage the hint of
wildness that clung to him.
Wherever he went, Juliana thought, he must immediately be
the center of attention. She wondered if he was aware of
that.
Perhaps he had become accustomed to it. He had always been
one set apart. Dangerous, they had called him. And wicked.
Juliana suspected that the same appellations were still
directed at him.
She realized suddenly that she was staring, and she
glanced quickly away. What was she to do? She swallowed
hard, her hands curling into fists in her lap.
She remembered the last time she had seen him — the planes
and angles of his face stark white in the moonlight, his
eyes great pools of darkness. He had been only sixteen
then, leanly muscular in a way that suggested the powerful
male body he would grow into. His hair had been longer and
unkempt, tousled by the wind and his impatient fingers.
There had been a hardness to his face even then, a certain
wariness that bespoke much about his past.
Juliana had clung to him, holding his arm with both hands
as though she could make him stay, her twelve-year-old
heart breaking within her. "Please," she had
begged. "Don't go...."
"I can't, Jules," he had replied, frowning. "I have to go.
I can't stay here anymore."
"But what will I do?" she had asked plaintively. "It will
be so horrid here without you. No one but them..." Her
voice invested the word with disgust.
"You'll be all right. You'll get through it. They won't
hurt you."
"I know," she had whispered, tears filling her eyes. She
knew that no one ever harmed her as they did him. There
were no angry cuffs of the hand, or days spent without
meals or companionship, alone in her room, as there were
for Nick. But the thought of life without him beside her
was dull and flat, almost unbearable.
From the time she and her mother had come to Lychwood Hall
when she was eight, Nicholas had been her only friend, her
closest companion. They had been drawn together naturally,
the two outsiders on the Barre estate, disdained by
Nicholas's aunt and uncle and their children. Charity
children, both of them, and often reminded of it, they had
formed a firm alliance, closer than a boy of twelve and a
girl of eight would normally have been. And if, as he had
grown up, racing toward adulthood, he had moved farther
from her in interests and activities, there had always
remained that special bond between them.
"Can't I come with you?" she had asked without hope,
knowing that his answer would be a refusal.
He shook his head. "They'd come after me for sure if I
took you with me. This way, perhaps, I have a chance of
getting away from them."
"Will you come back? Please?"
He had smiled then, a rare wondrous smile that few besides
her had seen. "Of course. I'll make lots and lots of
money, and then I shall come back and take you away.
You'll be rich, and everyone will call you 'my lady.'And
Seraphina will have to curtsey to you. How's that?"
"Perfect." Her heart had swelled with love for him even as
she knew, deep inside her realistic soul, that he was
unlikely to return, that he would disappear from her life
just as her father had.
"Don't forget me," she had said, swallowing her tears,
refusing to act like a baby in front of him. She reached
up, taking the simple leather thong from around her neck,
and held it out to him. A gold signet ring dangled from
it, simple and masculine.
Nicholas had looked at her in surprise. "No. Jules — that
was your father's. I can't take that. I know how much it
means to you."
"I want you to have it," she had replied stubbornly.
"It'll keep you safe. Take it."
Finally he had taken it from her hand. Then, with a last
halfhearted smile, he had vanished into the night, leaving
her alone in the darkening garden.
She had not seen him again for fifteen years. Juliana cast
another glance toward the top of the staircase. Nicholas
was no longer there. Cautiously she looked around the
room, but she could not spot him anywhere in the crowd.
She returned her gaze to her lap, wondering how she could
manage to get out of here without his seeing her.
Her stomach was twisted into knots, partly with
excitement, but mostly with fear. She did not want him to
see her, did not want to have to face the fact that he
might snub her...that he might not even recognize her.
Nicholas Barre had meant too much to her for her to bear a
snub. She had loved him as only a child can love. After he
ran away from the estate, she had not let her memories of
him fade. For a long time she had held his promise in her
heart, hoping he would reappear and take her away — from
her mother's sadness, from Crandall's cruelties and Aunt
Lilith's petty sniping, from Seraphina's casual assumption
that Juliana was there to do whatever she asked. As
Juliana had grown into womanhood, it had been Nicholas's
image that had fueled her adolescent dreams, becoming the
hero on a white charger who would come riding up to
Lychwood Hall and sweep her up before him on his horse,
carrying her away from the life she disliked and bestowing
upon her his name, as well as fabulous jewels and
fashionable clothes.
Of course, she had not been so foolish as to keep those
dreams long. She had grown up and had made her own life.
Long ago she had stopped believing — and then finally
stopped even wishing — that Nicholas would return and seek
out his childhood friend. Even when she had heard that he
had returned to London from whatever far-flung place he
had been, she had not thought he would come for her...or
at least she had firmly squashed the little germ of an
idea before it even grew full-size in her mind.
After all, when he had promised to return, they had been
of more or less equal station — unwanted relatives, living
on the Barres' charity — or, at least, so she had thought.
But now he was Lord Barre and reportedly quite wealthy in
his own right, as well as having inherited his
grandfather's estate. It would be foolish in the extreme,
she knew, to even hope he would look her up. Promises made
at the age of sixteen rarely lasted.
She had experienced the bitter reward of being proved
right. It had been two months since she had heard that
Nicholas was in London again, and he had not come to her.
She was too realistic to think that if he ran into her
tonight, he would greet her with cries of delight.
Heavens, he probably would not even recognize her as the
child he had once known.