by Regina Darcy
Leaning forward in her seat, Julianna buried her face in her hands and attempted to control her breathing. She could not find a way forward in this matter, not when her uncle refused to consider her feelings and was quite determined that she should marry Lord Faversham.
She had heard the two of them talking, with Lord Faversham promising to give some sort of financial reward to her uncle for her hand in marriage. Given that her uncle had only just taken on the responsibilities as the new Viscount St James, Julianna had been quite unable to understand the pull of wealth, only to realise just how selfish and greedy her uncle truly was. He cared nothing for her or her future. He was driven to have as much as he could for himself, and that included selling her to the highest bidder.
“Now, miss,” her maid Florence murmured, coming into the drawing room and seeing Julianna so broken by her uncle’s words. “I’m sure it cannot be as bad as all that.”
Julianna sobbed quietly, comforted just a little by her maid’s words.
“I’m to take you to your room, miss,” Florence continued gently. “You’re to prepare yourself for dinner.”
Julianna looked up into Florence’s kind face but did not miss the anxiety lingering in her maid’s eyes. “He’s here, is he not?”
Florence hesitated for a moment before nodding. “Your uncle is to welcome Lord Faversham for dinner this evening, miss. That’s why he wants you ready.” Her eyes lingered on Julianna’s cheek, her face paling slightly. “Tell me he did not…?” She searched Julianna’s face, her eyes registering horror as Julianna turned her face away.
She did not want to speak of it now.
“I– I’ll get a cool compress for that,” Florence said with infinite gentleness. “Come now, miss. You must get to your room, else Lord St James will be angry.”
Resigning herself to the fact that she was going to need to do just as her uncle expected on this occasion, Julianna allowed Florence to help her to her feet and guide her towards the door.
“You are to wed Lord Faversham then?” Florence whispered, as Julianna began to walk towards the staircase that would lead her to the confines of her bedchamber.
“I am,” Julianna admitted dully. She could not think of any way to escape the prison that was slowly being built around her. “My uncle has decreed it, and therefore I must resign myself to it, I think.” Even as she said those words, a flame burst to life within her, sending her a sudden new resolve. “But I do not see how I can agree.”
Florence shook her head to herself as she watched her mistress climb the stairs hurriedly. “What is it you intend to do, miss?”
“I can continue to refuse to wed him,” Julianna said slowly, even as the maid hid a gasp behind her hand. “I know what my uncle will threaten and what he might even do, but how can I bear to marry a man such as Lord Faversham?” The thought of what Lord Faversham might do to her as his wife sent both a wave of revulsion and a cloying fear crashing over her. “I promised Mama that the love I saw so plainly between herself and my father was the same kind of love I would seek for myself,” she whispered, pushing open the door to her bedchamber. “She told me that, if only I would believe in it, then such a love would find me.” Sitting down carefully in a chair by the grate, she let her gaze rest absently on the small miniature of her mother on her dressing table.
“To allow my uncle to force me into matrimony will only make my life even more difficult than it is now.”
Florence looked troubled. “But your uncle might do worse to you than he has already done, miss,” she said gently, wringing out a cloth in the small basin of cold water she had brought in from the dressing room.
“What then?”
Julianna was forced to suck in a breath with the pain that radiated through her face as Florence pressed the cloth gently against her cheek. Her uncle’s blow had been harder than she’d realised.
“Then I must endure,” Julianna whispered, trying to find the courage deep within herself to continue standing against her uncle’s determination. "This is my life, my future. If I will not stand up for myself, then who will?”
Dashing away a wayward tear that had spilt from the corner of her eye, she grabbed her powder trinket and started to cover up the evidence of her uncle’s violence.
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