Tarleton's Wife (40 page)

“What he expected,” Terence O’Rourke interjected with dripping sarcasm, “was that he could control the mob. And no man can. He was the earl’s own bastard boyo, cock of the walk. He thought he was God. The mighty Captain Hood could stir the masses to do
what
he wanted,
when
he wanted. And now, he’s had a fine surprise, finding the sheep have minds of their own. Is that not the way of it, Captain?”

“But he wasn’t anywhere near them,” Julia protested. “He was sitting in Buck’s Tavern talking to you when the trouble began.”

“Julia,” said Nicholas, drawing out her name with long-suffering patience, “you know as well as I who stirred the workers to rebellion. It doesn’t matter a whit whether he was actually there or not.”

“But if he’d been there, I’m sure he would have tried to stop them.”

Jack groaned. “But I wasn’t there, my Jule and it’s just as O’Rourke says—I was arrogant enough to think they’d do nothing without me. I thought the men in the mills as loyal to me as our own farm workers. More the fool, I.”

Julia turned to O’Rourke, her blue eyes wide in blatant feminine appeal. “Surely you would not have Jack transported if he wasn’t even there?”

“Transportation was once a possibility. Not now.” O’Rourke raised one black brow. The rest of his face remained immobile, although Julia thought she detected a gleam far back in eyes as blue as her own. “If Mr. Harding helps quell the troubles,” Terence O’Rourke decreed, his Irish brogue giving way to crisp London merchant’s English. “If he gives us ample reason to believe he recalls his promise to retire from rabble-rousing, it is just possible he may not be hanged. But after last night his chance of survival seems considerably less than it did a day ago.”

“You’d hang him?” Julia’s voice was a hoarse whisper.

“Not I,” said O’Rourke. “But, earl’s son or no, they’ll find someone to do it. Men are transported for stealing a loaf of bread. For what happened last night, men hang.”

Julia and Jack exchanged a swift look. For once there was no sign of nonchalance, no slightest quirk of humor in his green eyes.

“I’ve faced worse odds,” Nicholas said. “We’ve only to keep the workers from more violence and at the same time prevent the militia from massacring the whole lot of them. I admit I find the idea of keeping people alive rather than killing them a fine switch from the usual soldiering.”

“And a damn sight harder to do,” O’Rourke declared.

“Ellington controls the militia,” said Nicholas. “It’s plain he’s protected Jack for quite some time. I can’t believe he’d stop now, though he and every other ‘aristo’ are convinced the rabble is sharpening their guillotines. That the Terror has already begun.”

“One night of rioting,” Jack scoffed. “Men not yet sober from Hallowe’en and anticipating Guy Fawkes. ’Tis not a Revolution.”

“But it could be,” O’Rourke stated flatly. “All revolutions begin somewhere. And here’s as good as any.”

“So it stops now,” said Nicholas. “It’s not going to be said that anarchy and mass murder started here. Can you control the cottagers, Jack?”

Jack hesitated before replying, his pride considerably shaken by what had happened in Nottingham. “Yes, I’m nearly certain of it. Though I would have said the same of the mill workers before last night.”

“Did the militia capture many of those who caused the trouble?” Julia inquired.

“Nary a one,” said Nicholas. “Every man of them was long home in bed by the time the militia was called out. The two dead men were guards overrun by the mob. The troops have been marching up and back in front of the mills all day, trying to look ferocious when I doubt any of them have ever shot at anything more menacing than a rabbit.”

O’Rourke snorted. Jack shook his head. “I know at least half of the workers personally. I’ve no wish to see them hurt.”

“Is it possible to cancel the Guy Fawkes celebration?” Julia asked.

“That might help,” Terence said, glancing at Nicholas and Jack for their opinion.

“It would only make everyone angry,” Jack stated firmly. “The tradition is too strong.”

“They’d burn the Guy in secret or, more likely, choose something considerably larger than the Guy to burn,” Nicholas concurred.

Like a barn. Or stables. A cottage. Ellington Park. Or The Willows.

They were an oddly assorted group of conspirators, Julia thought. A soldier who had inherited knitting mills, the bastard leader of the rebellious workers, an equally illegitimate Irishman backed by great wealth and power and a strong-minded woman torn between her sense of justice and her abhorrence of violence and death.

When had she changed? Julia wondered. She had lived in the starkly realistic and violent world of the soldier all her life. And now…now she could not accept what was happening. Was it that terrible trek through Spain? The horror of Nicholas lying on a stone-cold floor in La Coruña covered in blood? Or had she been softened by the simple joy of living nearly two years in the quiet security of the English countryside? By the hope born with Meg’s babe? The tiny new life who suckled at his mother’s breast giving promise of renewal, of new life blossoming from the tragedy of the past.

These were her people. All of them. Death was not an acceptable solution.

When Julia and Nicholas bade their visitors farewell in the wee hours of the morning, all four were cautiously optimistic the plans they had made would go a long way toward ending the violence.

But on the morrow the Earl of Ellington announced the cancellation of all Guy Fawkes activities.

* * * * *

Julia sat on the edge of her bed and gazed in awe at the mounds of colorful clothing completely surrounding her, while still more garments spilled out of the huge trunk that had finally arrived from London. Nicholas, an indulgent smile softening his harsh features, had come into his wife’s room to watch while Julia and young Tess, the housemaid, unpacked the treasures from London. He turned his gaze from the latest item the maid retrieved from the trunk in time to catch the look on his wife’s face as she traced her fingers down the front of a rose satin ball gown trimmed in diamanté and pearls. Her face was crumpled, a tear glistening on her cheek.

“What now?” Nicholas demanded. “Don’t you like them?”

“They’re b-beautiful,” Julia quavered. “But I know you ordered them to ease your conscience.”

“Conscience be damned! I ordered them because I don’t care for my wife to look like a crow.” With a savage gesture, Nicholas sent young Tess scurrying from the room.

“When you ordered them, you still planned to marry Violante.”

“Like hell I did!”

“You didn’t talk to Miles Bannister until
after
you ordered the clothes.”

“Miles Bannister be hanged. He had nothing to do with it.”

Julia caught her husband’s eyes in a long look of disbelief.

“Very well,” Nicholas conceded grudgingly. “Bannister made me realize I had no choice in the matter but I had made up my mind while chasing you to London. When I heard the whole tale from Daniel, I never doubted his word. I knew you and I were well and truly married.”

“You wanted an annulment.” Julia had the bit between her teeth and could not let it go.

“Only if you were willing,” Nicholas muttered, well aware the ground beneath his feet was trembling. “If you preferred to marry Jack.”

Reason reared its anxious head. The woman who took Nicholas to her bed last night had fought the good fight with pride. And lost. If she had to put her humbling into words, so be it. She loved him. They were together. It was enough. Had to be enough.

“I adore Jack,” Julia told him, her voice fading to the soft tones of reminiscence. “As a friend, as my strong helper and defender. But, truly, I never loved him as I love you.”

Nicholas took a deep breath, staring at his wife, who was surrounded by a barricade of precious silks, satins and lace. “I don’t suppose you would believe me if I said I loved you too?”

Julia shook her head but her lips curled into a soft smile. “It may be true, Nicholas but I think the idea comes hard to you. I’m not foolish enough to demand empty words. I can wait.”

“Then I’ll keep saying them until you believe me,” Nicholas vowed.

Tears dripped onto the sea of elegant new clothes as Julia’s heart overflowed. Nicholas being kind was almost harder to deal with than a Nicholas barking orders.

“Damn these clothes,” he muttered.

Then again, Julia conceded, it was foolish to see mountains where none existed. “They all have to be ironed anyway,” she responded. Helpfully.

Nicholas turned on his heel, strode to the door, locked it. He returned in time to help toss the lovely new wardrobe back into the trunk before topping the colorful pile with his own clothes. Julia’s day gown and undergarments soon followed.

“Ah!” Nicholas breathed with satisfaction, “one should always make love by daylight. The view is so much more…revealing.” His smile creased into a wicked grin. “I believe ‘stimulating’ is the word I want.”

He proceeded to occupy myself with activities which his wife found very stimulating indeed. Julia only had time for a fleeting qualm that she had not yet told him about Violante’s visit before all rational thought was driven from her mind. Perhaps forgiveness was, after all, as much a part of love as caring and giving and…making love. After all they had endured, fate seemed to be smiling on them at last.

* * * * *

Later that day, the messenger arrived from the Earl of Ellington with the order to cancel all Guy Fawkes celebrations. Nicholas, who was about to set out on a round of his tenants and farm workers, swore fluently, crumpled the message into a ball and flung it across the drawing room. He would have to expand his plans for defense of the house and outbuildings. And then he would have to face the impossible task of doing the same for his tenant farmers and the cottagers who worked for them.

He had not thought it would come to this. Guy Fawkes was a legitimate outlet for surly tempers, something that might have defused the situation. Then again, possibly Ellington was right. At this point in time the gathering of any mob, sanctioned or not, was dangerous.
À bas les aristos!
Hell and the devil, surely rebellion wouldn’t go that far. These were Englishmen. The sturdy yeomen who kept their country well fed, well clothed, fought the brave fight in war. There would be no revolution here. Nicholas had not survived the war in Spain only to die at the hands of his own people.

Or…was this, perhaps, why he had survived? To die here in this quiet corner of the English countryside so that war and death would not consume his own land? Slowly Nicholas shook his head. He had been too long among the monks. He was a soldier, a man of action. Philosophy, predestination, fate could not be part of his life. This new battle would be the most bitter he had fought. For it would be against Englishmen. Englishmen with honest grievances. Englishmen fighting the only way they could against an armed militia, blissfully unaware of the deeper issues involved.

Nicholas’ mouth flattened into a grim line. Compared to this, fighting the French was a mere bagatelle. For how could he win this battle without killing? Yet how could he kill people whose cause was as just as his own?

* * * * *

The mists drifted sluggishly through the void, curling tendrils swaying in the icy stillness. Silence. Nothingness. The world had ceased to exist. The swirling mists surrounded her, enveloped her. Threatened her. She was so cold. So terribly cold. The fear that shook her was primitive, formless, as ancient as life itself. With a sudden flare tendrils of red infiltrated the mists. Reflected flickers of fire—blood?—turned the void to glowing red. Yet there was no warmth.

Julia shivered, primordial fear turning to terror.

Soundlessly, the oxcart plunged out of the blood-red mist, careening to a halt at her feet, its terrible burden still icy-blue, the babe’s black eyes wide and staring. Above the loathsome sight the red mists swirled, eddied, parted. Nicholas stood upon the wall framed in elaborately carved gilt. Nicholas the man, not the boy. He was wearing his major’s uniform of forest green and shining silver, his sword at his side.

The red mists flickered, the portrait changed again. Long white hair hung from an unrecognizable face which had seen a thousand years. The green uniform was stained and tattered. Another swirl of red. The shredded uniform rose from the wall and floated toward the oxcart bier. Inside the remains of the uniform a skeleton shone stark white amidst the glowing red of the void.

Julia could not move, could not scream, could not faint. As is the way of nightmares, she must keep watching until the final horror.

The skeleton hovered over the bier, hands reaching toward the unknown mother whose black hair glistened with crystals of ice, the child struggling for life at her frozen breast. The stark white bones began to crumble, floating in place, clinging to their skeletal form until the bones were nothing but fine dust. Slowly, the dust gave up its form, drifting softly down to cover the bier in a cloud of white. The sword stabbed through the mists of red, quivering to rest six inches deep in white dust and old wood, the silver in its hilt glowing in the lambent light.

Abruptly, the swirling mists retreated to the unknown world from which they had come. The void, now totally black, swallowed her up.