‘A bolder person would have got her own way without needing to run,’ Juno objected, so he had to push the tempting image of a young and dreamy-eyed Marianne aside to concentrate on Juno. Had she always been so resistant to praise and how could he not know something so important about his own niece?
‘I doubt it and stop finding yourself less than everyone else you know. There is no bravery in doing something you do not fear and I like you far better than the usual simpering debutante with an abacus where her heart should be,’ he said and at least Juno was never going to be the sort of ruthless husband hunter he had learned to avoid since inheriting George’s title and lands at seventeen. ‘You are kind-hearted and clever and far nicer, as well as a lot more interesting, than those preening girls with so little to preen about. I should have done better by you than I have until now, but you must believe me, Juno, no sane person I have ever come across is as certain of themselves as you seem to think they are.’
‘Not even you?’
‘Especially not me and if you promise to try harder to fight your demons in the future, then I will do the same with mine,’ he offered with a wry smile.
‘I doubt you have ever had a shy moment in your entire life, Uncle Alaric.’
‘I expect I could surprise you with one or two, but we all have our own worries and shortcomings, Jojo,’ he said and he had certainly learnt a lot about his own dark places since he set out on his frantic quest to find her.
‘When I saw you lying there hurt I felt...’ Juno hesitated and Alaric willed her to go on. He wanted better for her, wanted her to live well in her own skin and know she always had a right to be listened to, even if he had not been very good at it in the past. ‘Furious with myself,’ she went on as if she had to physically push the words out of her mouth. ‘You came all the way from Paris to Broadley, then out here to Owlet Manor in order to find me, although you were obviously so tired after riding all that way that you could barely stand upright when you got here. And you only came to make sure I was truly unharmed by the storm and the journey and having to walk the rest of the way here from Worcester after I was robbed. Then, when you got here, I hid away from you like a timid little child and refused to even meet your eyes across a room.’
‘I was the adult and you really were a child when this all began. I should never have left you with your grandmother after your father died. I ought to have done what I wanted to at the time and found a kindly older lady to help you settle so you could live with me at Stratford Park instead of at the Dower House. Not that the Dowager has spent much time there in the last few years, but I should never have let her persuade me I was not fit to care for you and you needed her. Apparently the world would think it odd if you did not live with her and that should not have mattered one jot beside your happiness and well-being.’
‘I would rather have been with you and I was very glad Grandmama spent most of her time in London,’ Juno said with the ghost of a smile.
‘So was I,’ he confided with a wan smile back. ‘I should have realised she did not love you years ago, but I was blinded by the fact she adored your father and thought she must love you as well. I should have been old enough to stop worrying what people would think if you lived with me instead.’
‘I do not think she likes either of us very much.’ Juno’s smile was more certain now and he managed to find a better one in return.
‘No, but I really do love you, Juno, and you are going to grow very tired of me telling you so for the rest of your life to make up for being such a fool until now. I promise you I will not keep my feelings to myself from now on.’
‘Things could get very complicated if you wear your heart on your sleeve all the time, Uncle Alaric.’
‘Aye, you are quite right, niece. Then I had best limit myself to being open with you and anyone else I somehow manage to love or like. The rest of the world can be excused knowing exactly what I think of it.’
‘Considering how little patience you have with some parts of it that would be as well.’
‘True—and I think you know me a little bit too well.’
‘I watch people a lot, even when I feel too shy to join in.’
‘Then we must find more of them you feel happy to engage with or you will soon become a cynic.’
‘No, I love Miss Grantham and already like Mrs Turner and Mr Yelverton very much. I even quite like you at times, Uncle Alaric, although obviously you do not count since you are family and obliged to like me anyway,’ she teased him, this girl he had been so desperate to find on his way here it seemed to have torn open his closed heart and remade him.
His mother’s cold indifference at best and hatred at worst, then George’s tragically premature death in the hunting field had made
