Tarleton's Wife (28 page)

Julia had turned her back to him, ostensibly losing herself in contemplation of a particularly gory hunting scene which marred the delicate silk floral pattern of the wallcovering. The sheet had fallen off her back, presenting Nicholas with a delightfully statuesque array of bare skin including the rounded contours of her derrière just above the point where her nether cheeks disappeared under the bed covers.

“What about Willow Herbals?” he inquired sweetly, his lips twitching into a speculative grin as he ran his forefinger down the length of her spine, setting off a noticeable quiver of female flesh.

Julia gasped, her thought processes once again dissolving into a muddle. “What do you mean?” she murmured.

“After all I’ve heard about the herb business from Daniel, I can’t believe you’d be willing to just go off and leave it.” His lips feathered kisses along the nape of her neck.

“I can’t live at The Willows. You know I can’t…” Her voice trailed away to a whisper.

Nicholas’ hands insinuated themselves around her waist, the tips of his fingers stretching toward her most intimate flesh. He flexed his fingers, moving slowly, teasingly upward. Against her shoulder his lips moved. “Sophy Upton would share her cottage.”

Julia jerked away, once again swirling the sheet into a protective cocoon as she faced his challenge. “The cottage is full of herbs and quite untenable,” she declared, grimly triumphant. For a moment she had wavered but common sense broke Nicholas’ powerful spell. This was a battle she could not lose. There was no way she would live in Grantley.

“The cottage is easily cleaned.” Nicholas, undeterred by the concealing sheet, resumed his teasing caresses, his long fingers moving over the fullness of her breasts as if they had every right to be there. Julia gritted her teeth. The muslin sheet was no defense against the erotic images that threatened to cloud her mind.

“You cannot!” she protested with her last ounce of determination. She would
not
succumb to his blatant wheedling. Absolutely. Would not. “The herbs are not dry, they would be ruined,” she added weakly.

“I’ll pay the damages.”

“You don’t understand, Nicholas,” she said, eagerly welcoming the intrusion of a firm argument into the precarious moment. “Your money is no good. It’s a matter of pride. We’ve worked so hard to reach this point. To have so many orders, to know our cottagers are making money through their own efforts and not starving or living on the dole. Willow Herbals is not a toy, Nicholas. If we are to stay in business, we must fulfill our obligations. Sophy, Daniel and Meg can run the business without me but the business cannot survive without the herbs.”

Nicholas thought she looked rather like a mummy whose head had not yet been wrapped, sitting there glaring, defending his cottagers to him as if he were the enemy. God, she was magnificent! Not his kind of woman, of course but magnificent nonetheless.

Julia’s few moments of sanity were overwhelmed by a rising desire so blatant she was shocked by its intensity. She could feel his seduction all the way down to her toes. There was no mistaking the gleam of appreciation in those steel gray eyes. But never…no, never again would she let him see how much she cared. To protect her soul from the piercing intensity of those gray eyes, Julia turned abruptly away, bidding Nicholas a brisk, dismissive good night. Like a babe returning to the womb, she added as many bed coverings as she could grab to her cocoon and snuggled down on her pillow, presenting him with an uncompromisingly stiff back.

The corners of the major’s mouth turned up in a secret smile. A challenge, by God.

His seduction had been lighthearted—the little nothings which had worked so well on his mistresses when they were in a pout. But Julia had held firm and it was he who had been seduced. Before him, however angry, was a warm, loving woman who just happened to be his wife. The taste of her he had just experienced was the stuff of dreams. Too ephemeral by half. And yet he knew what lay behind the resolute back and beneath the covers. The generous mouth, breasts which so amply filled his hands, hips that welcomed, moving to meet his every thrust…

Nicholas, who no longer questioned why he had gone to Julia Litchfield’s room and not come out ’til morning, consigned honor and scruples to limbo. She was his wife and rational thought could wait ’til morning. With a powerful sweep of his hand he ripped the sheet aside, shoved the bed covers onto the floor. He silenced Julia’s feeble protest before it began. His mouth, his tongue, his hands, the whole of his flesh came home to their proper place. She melted into him, warm, pliable and more than willing. He was not dreaming. Nor would he forget this night. Ever.

* * * * *

The occupant of the post-chaise shifted his weight on the padded squabs in a vain attempt to ease the strain on his leg. The dull ache with which he had started the journey had blossomed into a continual series of sharp stabbing pains. He glanced at his companion who appeared to be as sorely tried as himself. “No need to look so long-faced, Tom,” Avery Dunstan offered in an encouraging tone. “We’re nearly there. A half hour and you’ll be snug with a cup of tea and a dollop of brandy. Strictly medicinal of course.”

“Yes, Sir,” mumbled the lanky corporal, summoning a ghost of a grin.

“The arm will mend, Tom,” Avery Dunstan assured the corporal. “After a bit of rest, we’ll return to the Peninsula hale and hearty.” Seeing no sign that his words had altered his traveling companion’s lugubrious features, the newly promoted captain added, “’Twas good of you to see me home, Pickering and I am sincerely grateful.”

Uncomfortable with praise, the bandsman shrugged his bony shoulders. “Arm may heal enough for hospital work, Sir. Doubt it’ll be good enough to play the fife.”

“Nonsense,” returned young Dunstan, who had learned a number of hard lessons about being a good officer, “you’ll be playing again before you know it.”

“Yes, Sir, if you say so, Sir.” For a moment Tom Pickering examined the white bandages swathing his right forearm, then he quite deliberately lifted his eyes to the fields and hedgerows passing by outside. The captain was right. No sense brooding about it. He was about to spend his leave in the home of a real live earl. And wouldn’t that be a tale to tell when he got back to Portugal?

Unembarrassed by his own excitement, Avery Dunstan, Viscount Cheyney, pressed his nose to the glass, drinking in the glorious well-tended acres that one day would be his. If he lived. He was no longer the vainglorious boy who, scorning his title, had insisted on following the heroic Major Nicholas Tarleton off to war. He had discovered the high price to be paid for the hours of camaraderie, the moments of glory. He didn’t have to go back to the Peninsula, of course. As his father’s heir, no one had ever expected him to go to war and no stigma would be attached to his selling out. But he would go back. There was no way he could live with himself else.

With a sudden exclamation Avery pulled the checkrein, shouting, “Stop! Stop, I say!”

As the startled coachman slowed his team, the young captain flung open the door, peering out across a fallow field to a stream where several men were struggling to repair an earthen dam. One of the men towered above the others by half a head. In spite of the late October chill he had shed his jacket, his billowing white shirt a striking contrast to the flow of his rich chestnut locks whipping in the wind. Fifty yards or not, Avery Dunstan would have recognized his brother anywhere.

The wounded captain struggled to his feet. While balanced on his one good leg, he employed his best battlefield voice, bellowing, “Jack, Ja-ack! I’m home, Jack!”

The workers paused, leaning on their shovels and gazed in surprise at the coach. Captain Dunstan, precariously balanced, waved and shouted once again. The broad-shouldered worker with the mane of chestnut hair responded with an answering whoop, threw his shovel aside and started for the coach on the run. In moments the two men were bound in a joyful reunion modified only by Jack Harding’s care of his half brother’s wounded leg. The bare bones of Avery’s return were soon told. “You’ll not go back,” said Jack flatly.

“I will,” said the young captain in a tone that left no doubt he would no longer bow to the dictates of his adored older brother. “I’ll go back as soon as I am able.” He waved a casual hand toward his leg. “This is nothing. Too many good men have died.” His eyes grew dark. “Nick Tarleton among them. I’ll not rest until Boney is rolled up, horns, tail and all.”

“Ah, yes, the major,” said Jack softly. “Move over, Brother and let me ride with you. I’ve a tale to tell…

Chapter Fourteen

A scant few hours behind the post-chaise of Captain Avery Dunstan, the lumbering eighteenth century coach once belonging to Laetitia Summerton entered Lincolnshire. The animosity of the two antagonists inside contrasted sharply with the harmonious reunion enjoyed by the sons of the Earl of Ellington. On the long trip from London Nicholas and Julia had, in fact, exhausted every argument and counter-argument two lively minds could contrive, punctuating seething silences with hot bouts of quarreling that drowned out the rumble of the ancient coach’s massive wheels. Daniel Runyon, after several attempts at mediation, retired from the lysts, feigning sleep for most of the long day’s journey.

Julia and the major continued their harsh words over luncheon at an inn of fine repute, deeply offending their host by the amount of food returned to the kitchen by his short-tempered guests. During the long afternoon that followed the atmosphere in the coach cooled from acrimonious to sullen to long-suffering silence, broken only near journey’s end when Nicholas announced, “The thing which most appalls me is that I was going to let you do it.”

Not at all mystified by this obscure remark, his wife snapped back, “I have told you—I will
not
be an obligation!”

“Obligation?” The major swelled with fury. “How many times—”

“That’s what I have been all along, is it not?” Julia interrupted, very much on her dignity.

An ominous note tinged the major’s smooth reply. “That’s what I was last night, I take it. I was
obliged
to be in your bed? I think not, my girl. I was wide awake the second time and knew exactly what I was doing…and I’d wager you did too.”

Julia drew breath for a withering reply, paused…snapped her mouth shut without uttering a word. She was defenseless. He was entirely right.

With the superior nod of a person who has just been proven correct—a nod Julia would have found intolerably smug if she had not turned her back on him—Nicholas continued, “So it’s settled then. You’ll come home as my wife…and no more nonsense about an annulment.”

“No.”

“Dammit, Julia! I’ve told you Don Raimondo and Violante have removed to Ellington’s dower house. I made the arrangements before I left The Willows. You may think me an insensitive clod but even I never expected to keep a wife and a fiancée under the same roof.” Unfortunately, the major spoiled this semi-conciliatory remark by adding, “Violante is of a delicate nature. Her spirits would have been quite crushed if she had been forced to encounter you at every turn.”

Julia gasped. “If you think I would have lived under the same roof with that niminy-piminy little wisp of a wilted violet, you are quite mistaken. That was
my
house,
my
servants. If you thought I was going to stand by and let that
child
lord it over me in my own home…”

The major’s loud applause drowned out Julia’s fury. “You really should go on the stage, my dear. Mrs. Siddons might quake in her boots. You are quite superb, you know, for I find it difficult to believe you actually thought I would condone such a
ménage à trois
.” When his wife maintained her much-put-upon silence, Nicholas was inspired to inquire thoughtfully, “I suppose that becomes
ménage à quatre
if we add Jack Harding?”

Julia’s attempt to box his ears almost succeeded. When he had her right arm motionless in midair and her left pinned to her side, the major clicked his tongue and shook his head. His gray eyes sparkled with glints of silver. “Violence, my girl? When I merely wished to point out that I have not created quite
all
the problems we face. That’s what we’re doing here, is it not? The only thing we seem to agree upon is that our problems cannot be solved in London. We must return home and pay the piper.”

For a few quivering moments the tableau held until slowly, reluctantly, defiance drained from Julia’s body as she accepted the inevitable. Nicholas lowered her arm to her side, his hands continuing down, seemingly of their own volition, to gather her stiff form hard against his chest. It had been a damned long day, Nicholas thought wearily. This, the first good moment in it.

After a silent struggle of wills, Julia’s body sagged against his, her shoulders shaking. Nicholas continued to hold her while she cried, grimly aware that every hot, slow, silent tear was drawing the net tighter about him. Oddly enough, he didn’t mind. The thought of being married to a termagant like Julia instead of his darling Violante was not as disquieting as it should have been.

Julia finally ceased to quiver, her tears slowing to an occasional sniff but she made no attempt to pull away from the haven of Nicholas’ broad shoulder. Eyes downcast, her tone surprisingly meek, she murmured into the smooth wool of his cloak, “I have an idea…a compromise, if you wish.” She did not see the sharp look he aimed at the top of her head. “I suppose your aunt must have shown you the room above the old storage area near the kitchen?”