Tarleton's Wife (30 page)

Both the major and his wife slept badly that night. They did not dream.

* * * * *

The Earl of Ellington’s dower house was nestled in a charming meadow some two miles from the earl’s principal seat. The lace curtains in the drawing room of the modest structure—which contained a mere fourteen rooms—were twitched aside, and a piquant face framed in shining, carefully coifed black hair peered out. The lace sagged back in place. The face, disheartened, disappeared. In what had become a continuing ritual—her Aunt Elvira swore she would soon wear a path in the carpet—Doña Violante Modestia Vila Santiago turned away from the window, her chocolate brown eyes misting with angry tears.

“And still he does not come!” she cried.

“
Basta, basta
, my child,” Doña Elvira chided. “He will come when he comes. If you wish to attract a gentleman’s devotion, you must practice patience. Men do as they will and women must ever bite their tongues and wait. If you are not careful, the major will return to find you grown into a shrew.”

Violante opened her eyes wide, the warm brown sparkling in the morning sunlight filtering through the lacy curtains. “When he comes, I think I shall not see him. When he wishes to beg my forgiveness for allowing that great
creature
to take the place which should be mine, I shall ignore him. He must camp on our doorstep, grovel at my feet before I will speak one word.”

“You are not only a child, you are a fool as well,” intoned Doña Elvira. “Have I come all the way to this cold, godforsaken land to see you lose what you once held in the palm of your hand? He is a man, that one. He will do as he pleases. Your father has explained this to you. The major is married in the eyes of God and his country and only he may decide what is to be done. Are you truly fool enough to believe that if you cry and moan or show him a fit of temper he will put his wife aside so he might have the privilege of living with a waterfall or a witch?”

With a swish of her golden silk skirt, Violante stalked back to the window, her conscience troubling her for the aggravation she was causing her dear aunt who had fled her own comfortable existence to follow her brother and niece into exile. Doña Elvira took her responsibility too seriously but it was impossible not to admit—only to oneself of course—that her aunt might have sense on her side. Yet again, Violante peeked around the edge of the lace curtain. Anyone close to the window might have seen a pout which marred the perfection of her delicate heart-shaped face. The rider coming up the driveway was too far away to detect more than a blur of white as the curtain shivered back into place.

“
Dios mio
, he is come! Quickly, quickly, quickly, ring for Benson. We must have wine. Ah, bah! Will he expect tea, do you think? And food, there must be food. Quickly now, how do I look? Have I grown too thin? Too pale? Ah,
dios
, tell me I have not lost my looks…”

Doña Elvira, who had dutifully rung for the butler, patted Violante’s raven hair into even greater perfection, pinched her niece’s pale cheeks into a rosy glow. “Rub your lips together, straighten your shoulders…smile!” she commanded as Violante winced from her ministrations. When she merited Doña Elvira’s nod of satisfaction, Violante arranged herself on the sofa in a pose of elaborate graciousness, chin high and regal as if sitting for a court portrait. The charming stance was soon spoiled by a twitch, a wiggle and finally a distinct extension of the lower lip, for Benson did not return to announce a visitor. By the time the major appeared some twenty minutes later, Violante had been pacing the drawing room for some ten of those minutes, more like a leashed tiger than a sheltered young lady of excellent breeding.

When she saw him, she ran the full length of the drawing room and launched herself onto his chest. “You have come at last!” she cried. “It was so very bad of you to abandon us,
mi Nicolas
.” She raised her still lovely tearstained face to his. “You cannot imagine how lonely I have been. If it were not for your so kind brother I do not know how I should have survived.” She sniffed, managing a brave smile.

Don Raimondo, who had entered the room with Nicholas, nodded benignly. His Violante Modestia, though not quite living up to her middle name, was carrying off a situation which would have been difficult for a woman twice her age. “I have given the major permission to speak with you,” he told his daughter. “We are agreed that you must know what we have discussed. The situation is awkward and it is not yet clear whether the law or the heart will prevail. You must listen carefully and understand that the major is not free to do as he would choose.” With a formal nod to his sister Doña Elvira and a bow to the major, Don Raimondo left the room.

Violante, dragging Nicholas by the hand, led him to a sofa as far away from her aunt as it was possible to get in the less than stately drawing room. Nicholas, who was finding it impossible to begin such a delicate discussion, momentarily fell back on polite social conversation. Yes, Violante assured him, the dower house, though small, was adequate for their needs. And, no, she did not find the country cold. Too flat, yes but she was accustomed to the cold of the high country. The village was quaint and quite pretty and very clean. She looked forward to seeing the gardens in bloom.

“Homesick?” repeated Violante after his next question. “Of course not. This is my home now. It is understood that a woman goes to the home of her husband. I like your England very well. I shall be happy here.”

“I see.” Nicholas repressed a grimace. There was not going to be an easy way out of this tangle. And, now, seeing his exquisite Spanish violet in all the breathtaking beauty and innocence of her seventeen years, he was not at all sure he wished a way out. “So you and my brother have become friends,” he said a shade too heartily.

Violante’s eyes lit at this opportunity to repeat what Oliver had told her. “Ah, yes, your brother has called on me many times. He has explained to me about this Miss Litchfield—how clever she is. That she married you when you were too ill to know what you were doing so that she could have your money and The Willows as well. She had to run away when you came home or you would have had her arrested. He says that if you will not do so, then he will find a way to take her away himself so that you will be free. He is
hidalgo
, your brother, a true gentleman.”

Nicholas heard this rush of words in a haze of astonishment. Had he himself believed such calumny before Daniel and Sophy Upton dinned the truth into his ears? Possibly. For a few moments, he conceded. Before his chaotic thoughts slowed long enough for him to recall the look on Julia’s face when he walked back into her life. “You don’t understand,” he murmured to Violante. “Nor does my brother. It wasn’t that way at all…”

Violante paid him no heed, having recalled another story recounted by Oliver Tarleton. “And she is in trade, a most vulgar enterprise, I am told. She even works shoulder to shoulder with peasants. I assure you, my dear Nicolas, she is quite beneath your notice. A disgrace to your name.”

While catching her breath, Violante could not help but notice that her betrothed looked less than pleased with her outburst. A swift glance at Doña Elvira revealed that lady too far away to hear their conversation, was keeping her eyes firmly fixed on her embroidery. Violante, sneaking her hands up the front of Nicholas’ jacket, favored him with the smile she had perfected while coaxing Nicholas out of the sullens during his bout with pneumonia. Her lower lip quivered. There was a catch in her husky little voice. “You must get an annulment immediately, Nicolas, so we may put all this behind us like a very bad dream.” Daringly, she moved her hands still farther, clasping them around his neck, her heart-shaped face turned up to his. “And then we may live happily ever after, no?”

Traces of tears still dotted her cheeks, only enhancing her beauty. Nicholas swallowed hard. This was his darling Violante, daughter of Don Raimondo. Sister of Carlos.

Hell and the devil confound it!

Gently, Nicholas removed the fragile fingers from around his neck. He looked into the depths of the liquid brown eyes which gazed up at him with such eagerness and trust. Inwardly, he groaned. “Violante,” he said firmly, “I am not at all certain an annulment is the…ah…appropriate action in this case. I am convinced Julia married me in good faith. She saved my life at La Coruña. She has held household for me here through very difficult times. I am bound to her in an almost inextricable bond of obligation.”

“Obligation?” Violante cried. “To such a one as she? Señor Oliver says she is little better than a whore, carrying on with Mr. Harding at the cottage where the herbs are kept. Everyone knows she meets him there! It is a great scandal.”

“I beg your pardon?” Nicholas stared at his innocent little violet as if she had just sprouted horns.

“It is true!” she insisted. “Everyone knows. Your brother has told me so. Me, I do not yet speak enough English to go into society but I know that you cannot wish to be married to this…this
puta
.”

The word was as ugly in Spanish as it was in English. Nicholas rose to his feet, scarcely aware of where he was or to whom he was talking. His
adieus
, his promise to return on the morrow, were mechanical. He was on his horse riding through the woods before any semblance of rational thought returned.

And when it did, it was rage.

Chapter Fifteen

Several hours before Nicholas paid his call to the Dower House, Julia, Sophy and Meg took refuge in their herbal empire. Outdistancing the other women who rushed out of cottage to greet them was Beth Collins, at sixteen the youngest of Willow Herbal’s faithful workers. “Ah, missus,” she bubbled, eyes aglow, “you must be right happy to have the major home. ’Tis a miracle, me mum says, but
I
say it’s just like a fairy tale…” As young Beth took in the awkward silence which greeted her fanciful disregard of the lord of the manor presenting his wife to his betrothed, she clapped her hand over her mouth. The eyes peering over her fingers opened wide in fright.

“What Beth means,” said Mary Carter, a mild-mannered woman of middle years long accustomed to mending other people’s fences, “is that we are happy the major has returned to us at last and Lord Cheyney as well.”

“You are quite right, Beth,” Julia assured the younger girl, though a shade too heartily. “It
is
a miracle and no one could be happier than I to know the major is alive and well.” She smiled encouragingly at the stricken sixteen-year-old. “Come along now, Beth and show me what you have done while I’ve been gone.”

As the women wound their way through the forest of drying herbs, suspended upside down from every rafter and inspected rack upon rack of herbs and flowers already dried and stored in jars, conversation did not lag. When Julia had been apprised of all the news of Willow Herbals, the women—in a not-so-subtle effort to avoid the sensitive topic of Major Tarleton—switched the talked to Captain Avery Dunstan, Viscount Cheyney.

“Most of us have known the lad since he was a gleam in his mother’s eye,” declared Mary Carter. “Is that not right, Alice? Emma? Seems ’twas only yesterday he was toddling about trying to keep up with Mr. Jack and Mr. Nick and we wuz never sure they’d all live through the summertime. The major well earned the name Old Nick—though never fear, missus, there never wuz an ounce of vice in either of ’em. But the devil’s own for mischief, they wuz,” she added with a reminiscent smile, a shake of her head.

“Jack and Nicholas grew up together?” Julia was incredulous.

“To be certain,” asserted Emma Tompkins, eldest of the group. “Inseparable they was, every summer long. Miss Summerton was never so high in the instep that she would keep the boy from running with Ellington’s bastard. Only two young sprigs that age. Down from school fer the summers, they were. Mary has the right of it. Doubt there’s any sort of mischief those imps didn’t get up to.”

“And still up to mischief,” snipped Alice Potter, a striking woman of some thirty years, with long flowing black hair. “I’ll grant you Mr. Jack seems right fond of ’is brother,” she added hastily, “though what’s good about having to give up a title and all that goes with it to a lad ten years his junior I’m sure I couldn’t say.”

“You’re much too free with your words, Alice Potter,” said Sophy Upton severely. “It’s not for you to judge your betters.

“Betters!” Alice snorted. “And who’s to say a bastard is my better?”

“That’s enough, Alice,” said Julia firmly. “You’re a hard worker and a staunch ally but no one criticizes Jack Harding in my presence. Without Mr. Harding’s support there would be no Willow Herbals and well you know it.”

“Sorry, missus,” said Alice pertly. “I’m that fond of Mr. Jack but he is what he is and there’s no changing it now, is there?”

“Nor is it his fault,” returned Julia shortly. “Now let’s get to work. What needs to be done?”

“’Tis stuffing we are today,” said Mary Carter. “All them pretty little sashays we been making all these months.”

The materials for the day’s work were already laid out on the large wooden table in the center of the kitchen. Baskets of varying shapes and sizes, filled with small square pockets of white muslin, ringed the rim of the table. Each pristine square was decorated with embroidery or a crocheted edging, the result of long hours of devotion by nearly every woman on the estate.

Large glass jars of herbs and flowers, also the product of months of work, were lined up down the middle of the long table, leaving the center bare. The seven women, displaying smiles ranging from eager to quietly satisfied, upended the contents of the jars into a large mound in the center space. Julia promptly sneezed, sending a small shower of flakes drifting to the floor while the others laughed or pretended to be horrified at such waste. Eyes brimming with good humor, Sophy handed Julia a long-handled wooden spoon and, taking a similar one for herself, the two creators of Willow Herbals began to gently mix the ingredients. Rose petals spiked with tiny buds, geranium leaves, lavender flowers, rosemary, thyme, marjoram and verbena. Julia’s eyes watered but it was well worth the discomfort. The scents—sweet, tangy, even pungent—transformed the ancient kitchen into a realm of delight.