Tarleton's Wife (2 page)

Not even in her wildest romantic dreams could Julia have conjured anyone she was happier to see at that moment.

As Nicholas crossed the room, he became uncomfortably aware that not all his fury was directed at the gamesters. He was sorry for it but he could not help it. Miss Julia Litchfield was not to his taste. He did not approve the custom of families following the drum. He liked his women soft and petite and clinging. Julia Litchfield was none of these things. Yet as he knelt by her chair, he could not help but notice she had dressed with such haste her long brown hair still hung down her back in its loose night braid. The hem of her serviceable brown wool was torn and dirty. Over it she clutched a coarse woolen shawl. The queenly Miss Litchfield, with her statuesque figure which the major usually noticed only enough to wish, fervently and profanely, that she were less of a distraction for his troops, had been reduced to vulnerability at last. Her full lower lip quivered and tears glistened in her wide, thickly lashed blue eyes.

Hell and the devil! It was her own fault.
The colonel wasn’t a pauper. She didn’t have to be here. Did she? No woman should have to endure what she had these past weeks. It wasn’t right. And now she was one more problem to solve. Bloody, stupid army! If he were in charge at the Horse Guards…

“You’re not going to let him do this to you, are you?” Nicholas demanded.

Julia hadn’t expected the anger. She wanted to throw herself onto the safety of his chest and weep. His tone knocked her back in the chair like a whiplash. She clutched her hands tightly together and tried to draw a deep breath in a chest so constricted she was sure the air could never reached her lungs. She and Nicholas were in the shadows some ten feet from the gaming table, the major’s face only inches from hers as he knelt beside her. The halo no longer glinted over his head.

Steady, she cautioned herself. Nicholas Tarleton was her only hope. “I’ve lived with the army all my life, Major,” she said simply. “Above all else, orders must be obeyed. Without that, we would die. This is war and survival depends on obedience. There is also the obedience I owe him because he is my father. No!” She raised her hand to silence the major’s protest, her fingertips pausing just short of the thin straight line of his mouth. Dear God, how she wanted to touch him, to gather his strength to herself. Slowly, she returned her hand to her lap. “There is also the matter of honor. Gaming debts must be paid. I have been brought up to that absolute tenet as well.”

“Honor!” Nicholas exploded. “Honor be damned. What can possibly be honorable about staking a daughter in a card game?”

“You will not criticize my father. You will not!”

“Criticize! The man’s mad, girl. Slipped his tether. You’ve no call to do anything he says.”

“You forget yourself, Major.
I have no rights
.” Anger had driven away the tears and a bit of Julia’s well-known sparkle began to glow in her eyes. “I am female. And underage by two whole years. I have no family but my father. If he thinks he will die tomorrow, he very likely will. His mother was Irish, you know and ’tis said she had the Sight. I believe him. And there’s no denying he’s foxed,” she admitted wryly. “And well beyond reason. So, though it may be thoroughly humiliating and an end to all my foolish dreams, I am not in a position to say him nay.”

Behind the major Lieutenant Prentice threw in his hand and rose from the table. Julia’s stomach lurched.

There was no time left for foolish pride. She gritted her teeth and kept her voice as calm and neutral as she could. Hysterics might be expected from a lesser woman but from Julia Litchfield the major obviously demanded sterner self-discipline. She raised her eyes to his. Summer blue to winter ice. “If there is anything at all you can suggest, Major, I would be exceedingly grateful for your help.”

Nicholas Tarleton had not seen Lieutenant Prentice leave the game but he heard the sudden murmur of the crowd followed by Colonel Litchfield’s call for more wine. He glanced over his shoulder at the empty chair, then swept his gaze over the expectant faces of his officers, every last damn one of them looking in his direction.

And what in all that was holy was he supposed to do with her if he won?

With a sigh he did not bother to disguise, Major Nicholas Tarleton stood and walked the few steps to the gaming table. “Gentlemen,” he murmured, quietly polite, “may I join you?”

Julia sat with her back to the wall, her eyes alternating between the hands gripped tightly together in her lap and Nicholas Tarleton’s face. The room was filled with the pungent odor of Spanish cigars and officers whose only baths in two months had been during their struggle to keep from drowning while crossing Spanish rivers.

To Julia Litchfield it was the dreamtime. She was somewhere far away. Somewhere safe and warm. The Julia sitting in this ornate room in a Spanish
casa
while a group of British officers gamed away her fate was merely an effigy. A rag doll. A useless, spineless thing incapable of sound or movement. Or protest.

As if from a great height, she could see herself, sitting there, head bowed. Beaten. Her only hope a man who would have come to the aid of his horse as readily as he had to her. Julia shoved her knuckles in her mouth to stifle a sob. At least the major still had a horse. They’d taken her beautiful Astarte and all the other horses which weren’t to be used in tomorrow’s battle, driven them down to the beach and shot them. She’d hear the terrified screams for the rest of her life.

She couldn’t move…couldn’t think. Through a swirl of cigar smoke, stirred by a breeze that whipped around the heavy draperies covering the shattered windows, Nicholas’ face was suddenly clear. Strong and determined. A soldier’s face.

Nicholas Tarleton, she knew, didn’t have to be in this war any more than he had to be at the gaming table playing for her life and honor. The son of a successful solicitor in York, he had never had to live solely on his pay but after inheriting his aunt’s estate a few months earlier he could have sold out at any time. Julia had sat, wide-eyed, at the dinner table when her father asked his aide-de-camp why he chose to stay in the army. The major’s reply was as simple as it was inexorable. He’d fought Boney since he was a raw ensign withstanding the siege at Acre. As long as Napoleon Bonaparte was on the march, Nicholas Tarleton would stand and fight.

Julia—long accustomed to being the darling of the regiment—found Nicholas Tarleton as baffling as he was intriguing. The last thing she wished to do was aggravate him but, inevitably, she did just that. At times she could almost see him ticking off her bad points. She was too competent, too independent. Too tall. Her riding habit was too tight, her ball gown too
décolleté.
She walked like a man and rode like the devil. When the men gave a huzzah for her horsemanship, the major was sourly sitting his horse waiting for her to break her neck.

Yet he dined with them each night. In England, in Portugal. Even on the march through Spain. Until those final awful days when cold and starvation reigned and civilization was lost.

Had Nicholas noticed the feelings she tried so hard to hide? Did he realize she suffered the horrible humiliation of loving someone who cared not a whit in return?

Julia ducked her head, firmed her chin. Nothing mattered. Nothing mattered but being safe from the degradation she saw yawning before her.

And safe meant Major Nicholas Tarleton.

Nicholas knew he should be losing. Joining the game had been a quixotic gesture fully as futile as tilting at windmills. He could not expect to win against hardened gamesters who spent their evenings at play while Major Tarleton tended the regiment. He was an idiot. Fit only for Bedlam.

But somehow, after two hours of play, he was winning. The crowd of officers had settled themselves into more comfortable positions, some sprawled in chairs, most lounging on the floor, smoking cigars, drinking port straight from the bottle, taking their eyes off the play only long enough for occasional glances at the white-faced girl still sitting primly in the shadows, hands clasped in her lap. It was a nearly frozen tableau, the only signs of life the slap of the cards, the clink of coins, the tilt of bottles, the drift of cigar smoke blown by icy currents of air.

Nicholas was not sure just when he realized why he was winning. Luck might have had a hand in it but he doubted it. Colonel Francis Litchfield, with deft and devious assistance from Captain Miles Bannister, controlled the play with so fine a subtlety that had Nicholas not been aware of his own lack of expertise at cards, he might have been gulled into fancying himself a hero. It was nearing two in the morning when Colonel Sedgwick broke the silence with a snarled oath and covered his bet with a scribbled note of hand.

Calmly, Julia’s father picked up the note and held it out to the infantry colonel. “Sorry, Arthur, no notes. Who’s to say we’ll be alive to settle our debts tomorrow?”

“Damn it, man, you know we’ve not seen a paymaster in weeks!”

“You may withdraw, Sedgwick,” said Colonel Litchfield firmly. “This wager must be settled now. Else we’ll still be sitting here when Soult’s batteries open up in the morning.”

A general murmur of approval swept through the room. Lt. Colonel Sedgwick stood so abruptly his chair tumbled backward to the floor. Julia flinched, her numbed mind scarcely able to accept that Sedgwick had been banished.

After two more desultory rounds in which Nicholas’ pile of gold coins increased still further, Miles Bannister produced an elaborate yawn, stretched his stiffened shoulders and long slender fingers. From inside his weathered green jacket he withdrew a leather pouch and carefully stowed away his unusually modest pile of winnings before pushing his chair back from the table.

“You must excuse me, gentlemen,” he murmured. “I have enjoyed the game but—with all respect to Miss Julia—I’ve no taste for wedlock. Nor she for me.” He tipped her a salute, his lips twitching in a fleeting smile. “And, besides, she’s far too good a shot. I’d be dead in a week.”

The guffaw which greeted this sally was louder than the humor deserved. Tension escalated to new heights. As Captain Bannister exited the room, all eyes turned toward Colonel Litchfield. Had his wager been in earnest? If so, he too could declare himself out, the game ended, Nicholas Tarleton the winner. But if Julia had been only a convenient stake in a high risk game of chance… If the colonel were more interested in the major’s gold…

At eight and forty Francis Litchfield was still a fine figure of a man. From under hair only lightly salted by gray, clear blue eyes—Julia’s eyes—pinned the major to his chair. The colonel had no doubt about his own future. As surely as he was sitting there, he would not live through the morrow.

“Do you accept the terms of the wager, Major?” Litchfield inquired, every inch the colonel of a crack regiment of riflemen. “Or must we play on?”

Tarleton glared right back. They might have been strangers meeting for the first time. “I do not accept terms where Miss Litchfield has no choice. I will, however, accept responsibility as her legal guardian.” The major’s mouth firmed into a thin line. “And I guarantee she will meet no dishonor at my hands.”

Behind them Julia turned sharply away so no one could see her face. Nicholas was so noble, she could have killed him.
Damn the man, he didn’t even want her!

“Done,” said the colonel, stretching his hand across the table.

After enduring general expressions of satisfaction and weary goodnights from his officers, Tarleton turned back to Francis Litchfield. “I want a paper from you, naming me guardian. I, in turn, guarantee she’ll have a roof over her head and a comfortable income.”

The major’s voice trailed away, embarrassed by the telltale glistening of tears in his colonel’s eyes. He gathered up his winnings and, for the first time in hours, turned to Julia. “I’ll leave you to make your farewells to your father, Julia. I’ll come to your room in half an hour. There are papers I must give you which can’t wait ’til morning. The French batteries could open up at first light. Colonel, good night.” Abruptly, Nicholas turned on his heel and left the room. He had never spent a stranger evening.
Hell and the devil confound it! Women were a great deal of trouble.

For Julia the pain of making peace with her father was blessedly dulled by a haze of emotional exhaustion. She would not let herself think of tomorrow’s battle as any different from others she had known. Her father would survive as he always had, his premonition of death a chimera of physical and mental exhaustion. The major, with considerable relief, would return her to her father’s care. And they would go on…

“Listen to me, Julia!” Francis Litchfield commanded. “Whatever Tarleton wants of you, do it. Do you understand? You’ve fallen on your feet, girl, far better than I dared hope. He’s the best officer I’ve ever had and his pockets are well lined. Don’t spoil what I’ve done for you this night by being missish.”

“Papa!” She could not mistake his meaning.

The colonel placed his hands on his daughter’s shoulders. “I can rest easy now, child. He’s a good man. Now off to bed. I’ve a will to write.” Awkwardly, he kissed her forehead. She could not remember the last time he had done so.

When they parted at the door to her room, she forced herself into a composed caricature of the Julia Litchfield who had said farewell to her father the night before countless other battles. The statuesque iron maiden. The queen of the regiment bidding the commander of her troops Godspeed.