‘Juno?’ she shouted again as she pelted down the bedroom corridor and heard only the sound of her own feet thumping on ancient oak floorboards and the echoes of her own voice again. ‘Juno?’ she repeated, desperate now as she ran into the room expecting to find it empty and Juno halfway to goodness knew where. She was so convinced she was right that she nearly turned away too soon and missed the glimpse of skirts and petticoats that was all she could see of Juno from the doorway. She peered around it and saw the girl sitting on the floor in the furthest corner of the room, rocking herself backwards and forwards like a desolate child. ‘Oh, Juno, why are you down there? Whatever is the matter?’
‘I cannot, I just cannot,’ Juno wailed incoherently and Marianne almost wished her own mother was here, or Viola. Or anyone who had experience of sobbing and incoherent girls who were not yet quite old enough to really be women would do right now. ‘Tell Uncle Alaric I am sorry,’ the girl said.
‘You must tell him that yourself,’ Marianne said and there was her lifeline. He was Juno’s guardian and protector; he would know what to do and say. Or if he did not he would just have to learn fast.
‘Lord Stratford!’ She ran back down to the head of the stairs, calling out his name. ‘Tell Lord Stratford he must come inside and you had best have the horses unharnessed and taken off to the stables, Joe. There has been a slight delay to our plans.’
Now she was feeling guilty at her panic about having to deal with Juno’s distraught tears and that strange frozen look on her poor woebegone face. Alaric dashed in through the front door, then took the stairs in as few bounds as he could and she was so glad of him she almost wept herself.
‘What is it?’ he demanded curtly.
‘I have no idea, but Juno needs you,’ she told him breathlessly and was almost on his heels when he had to grab the upright of the door to stop himself in his headlong haste to get to his niece. Then he was sitting down by Juno on the floor and doing what Marianne ought to have when she found her there. He simply pulled her into his arms and rocked her like a little child as she howled into his superfine coat.
The poor man would be getting through them by the dozen if distraught females kept on weeping all over him like this, Marianne mused, feeling decidedly surplus to requirements, yet still she could not make herself go away and leave them in peace to talk about whatever Juno wanted to talk about.
Juno surprised Marianne after a few moments of unrestrained woe by sitting upright and fighting back her tears. She owed the girl an apology for expecting her to go on sobbing until she was so incoherent with misery she had to be put to bed. ‘I thought I could, but I cannot,’ she said rather bravely. ‘Stratford Park,’ she explained as a sob and a shiver hit at the same time and she buried her head in Alaric’s shoulder again and seemed to find some of his strength in there. She shook her head as if she was furious with herself for reacting in this way.
‘I have heard of it,’ Alaric said lightly and Juno actually managed a laugh.
‘The girls from London, I simply cannot go back and face them, Uncle Alaric. I tried so hard to find the nerve to, but I truly cannot do it.’
‘Ah, and now we are getting to the heart of things at last. Why did you not tell me about them before I set all these ridiculous plans in motion, love?’
‘I wanted you to be proud of me. I want to be brave and strong and look them in the eye and show them I am not a looby or a wantwit or even a silly little wallflower. I am, though, because I cannot do it.’
‘Is that what they said? And who are they?’
At last it all came tumbling out—the full story of Juno’s miserable debut Season in so-called polite society. Never had Marianne been more grateful she was too humbly born and Papa too poor for her to do more than attend a few local parties and a subscription ball at the Assembly Rooms in the nearest town when she was old enough to be considered officially out.
‘I cannot understand why those girls turned against you,’ Marianne said from her place on the bed where she had sunk while she heard all the vicious tricks a few haughty young women had played on Juno once they discovered they could get away with it, ‘especially when some of them are your uncle’s neighbours and should have known better.’
‘At first they were eager for me to join in with them, but I suppose I am too quiet and I had never been to the waltzing parties or any of the events their mamas arranged for them before they were officially out so they were at ease and I was not.’
‘Idiot, I should have thought of that,’ Alaric chided himself.
‘No, Grandmama should. She took your money and spent it lavishly on parties and grand toilettes for herself and entertaining her friends, like that horrid man she was so
