And with that simple sentence, Juliana was unable to breathe. Her mother had just renounced a decade of marriage, a husband, a life in Italy.
And her own daughter.
In front of a dozen others who would not hesitate to recount the tale.
Juliana closed her eyes, willing herself to remain calm.
Focusing on her breath, rather than the fact that her legitimacy had, with a few words from a long-forgotten woman, been thrown into question.
When she reopened her eyes, it was to meet the one gaze she did not wish to find.
The Duke of Leighton was not looking at her mother. He was watching Juliana. And she hated what she saw in his normally cold, unreadable amber eyes.
Pity.
Embarrassment and shame coursed through her, straightening her spine and reddening her cheeks.
She was going to be ill.
She could not remain in the room a moment longer.
She had to leave.
Before she did something thoroughly unacceptable.
She stood, pushing back her chair, not caring that ladies did not leave the dinner table midmeal, not caring that she was breaking every rule of this ridiculous country’s ridiculous etiquette.
And she fled.
The dinner party disbanded almost immediately upon the arrival of the Dowager Marchioness or Signora Fiori or whoever she was, and the rest of the attendees had made hasty retreats, ostensibly to allow the family time and space with which to address her devastating arrival, but much more likely to have been in the foul hope of spreading their first-person accounts of tonight’s dramatics.
Simon could think only of Juliana: of her face as she listened to her mother’s high-pitched cackle; of her enormous, soulful eyes as the wicked woman had made her scandalous pronouncement that she was not a Fiori, but a St. John; of the way she’d left the room, all square shoulders and straight spine, with stunning, remarkable pride.
He watched the other guests’ conveyances trundle down the street, listening with half an ear as the Duke and Duchess of Rivington discussed whether or not they should remain or leave their family in peace.
As they climbed into their coach, Simon heard the duchess ask quietly, “Should we at least look in on Juliana?”
“Leave her for tonight, love,” was Rivington’s idiotic reply before the door closed, and the carriage set off in the direction of their home.
Simon clenched his teeth. Of course they should have sought out Juliana. Someone had to make sure that the girl was not planning a midnight return to Italy.
Not him, of course.
He climbed up into his own coach—full with the memory of her on another scandalous evening.
She was not his concern.
He could not afford the scandal. He had his own family to worry about. Juliana was fine. Would be, at least. The woman had to be impervious to embarrassment by now.
And if she wasn’t?
With a wicked curse, he rapped on the ceiling of the coach and instructed the coachman to turn around. He did not even question his destination.
She was in the stables.
There were several stableboys loitering outside, and they came immediately to their feet at the sight of the Duke of Leighton. He waved them back and entered the building, thinking of nothing but finding her.
He did not hide his footsteps as he made his way down the long row of stalls to where she was, following the soft whispers of Italian and the smooth rustle of her clothes.
He stopped just outside the stall door, transfixed by her.
Her back was to him, and she was brushing her horse with a hard-bristled brush, each short, firm stroke coming on a little puff of breath. Periodically, the mare would shuffle and lean toward her mistress, turning her head for extra attention. When Juliana stroked the animal’s long, white muzzle, the horse was unable to contain its pleasure, nuzzling Juliana’s shoulder with a snort.
Simon could not blame the animal for preening under the affection.
“She did not even know I was there,” Juliana whispered in Italian as she worked her way down the mare’s broad back. “And if I hadn’t been, if I’d never come here, she would not have acknowledged her time with me at all.”
There was a pause, the only sound the light rustle of her bold, silk gown, entirely counter to her soft, sad whisper, and his heart went out to her. It was one thing to be deserted by a mother, but what a crushing blow it must have been to have her mother reject the life they had shared?
The sound of the brush slowed. “Not that I care if she acknowledges it at all.”
He heard the lie in the words, and something deep in his chest constricted, making it difficult to breathe.
“Perhaps now we can return to Italy, Lucrezia.” She put her forehead to the high black shoulder of the horse. “Perhaps now Gabriel will see that my staying was a terrible idea.”
The whispered words, so honest, so rife with sorrow and regret, were nearly his undoing. From the moment he’d met her, he’d thought she enjoyed the scandal that followed her everywhere. Thought she embraced it, invited it.
But as he stood in this darkened stable, watching her brush her enormous horse, dressed in a devastatingly beautiful gown and desperate for some way to escape the events of the evening, Simon was overcome with a single realization.
Scandal was not her choice.
It was her burden.
Her bold words and her brave face were not borne out of pleasure but out of self-preservation.
She was as much a victim of circumstance as he was.
The awareness hit him like a fist to the gut.
But it changed nothing.
“I would not place a wager on your brother allowing you to leave,” he said in Italian.
Juliana spun toward him, and he registered the fear and nervousness in her wide blue eyes an instant before it was gone, replaced with irritation.