Tarleton's Wife (43 page)

Shouts rose from inside the front entrance. Julia—heart pounding, hope and fear clashing within her—shifted her eyes from the terrified women above. Amid rising cheers, a tall shape burst through the front entrance, dragging two slighter shadows behind him, one from either hand. As their headlong plunge slowed and came to a halt, the shadows became people. People with smoke-blackened but recognizable faces.

Julia had never seen anything so wonderful in her life. She did not recall dismounting but suddenly, heedless of soot and sweat and ash, she threw herself into her husband’s arms. Her voice wouldn’t come. She simply clung and would not let him go.

“Where’s Jack?” Nicholas’ question was hoarse but clear.

Julia swallowed hard. “Didn’t he come out with you?”

“No,” Daniel and Avery Dunstan said as one voice. “Only Nick and the ladies.”

“He was to get Don Raimondo,” said the major. “Julia, take care of Violante and Doña Elvira. I shall be with you shortly.”

“No!” Julia cried before she could stop herself. She clamped her teeth together. Her body shook. There was nothing for it. He would go. There was no stopping him. She knew better than to try.

The Earl of Ellington himself appeared out of the darkness, adding what Julia could not bring herself to say. “There are women on the top floor, Major. On the west side. You’ll need help.”

At that moment Jack came charging through the front door, supporting the gasping figure of Don Raimondo.

They would go back, of course they would. The earl’s bastard was as bound by
noblesse oblige
as the officer and gentleman.

As helpful hands upended buckets of water over Nicholas and Jack, the screams of the three women far above settled into a steady wail more horrible than the inferno around them. No noticed one member of the brigade who emptied his bucket over his own head before—long legs churning to catch up—following Nicholas and Jack into the burning building.

Except for the crackling of the fire and the wailing from the upper floor, an unnatural silence enveloped those who waited. The line of buckets swung in their never-ending cycle, the fleetest young men catching the empty containers at the front of the line and ferrying them back to stream. Julia kept telling herself that Jack, knowing the house well, would find his way through the maze of hallways. But what about Nicholas?

Violante, flanked by her father and aunt, stood with her eyes glued to the doorway, tears running down her soot-smeared cheeks. A few feet away Ramsey Tarleton stood, stiff and alone, unable to share his fear. The Earl of Ellington, not so aloof, patted Julia’s hand, softly murmuring words of reassurance. Julia felt his pain. He was as doubtful of seeing his elder son alive again as Julia was of seeing Nicholas.

The wailing ceased. The ghostly waving hand disappeared from the window. The men had made it! Or had the women succumbed to the dense smoke which so frequently killed where flames did not?

They continued to wait, picturing dark hallways, rippled by flames, obscured by smoke. Three flights of stairs. Overwhelming heat. Smoke that killed.

The skeleton turned to ash.

Prisoners forgotten, Avery Dunstan stood silently beside his father, waiting for his adored older brother. With Oliver Tarleton inside the house at the head of the line of buckets, Terence O’Rourke had taken his place as fire boss. His strong commanding voice urged the men to even greater effort, though he too, seldom took his eyes from the front of the house.

Nothing. No movement beyond the steady swing of the buckets, the running shadows of boys returning the empties for another load.

It was a long way down from the top floor, Julia told herself. But surely soon? One of them would make it back, so they would know… Dear God, at least one of them…

Nicholas turned to ash…

Julia prayed. Beside her Daniel murmured an accompaniment in Latin.

A dark, oddly bulky shape stumbled out of the door, tumbling into eager waiting hands who swiftly hauled their prize down the steps and away from the house. The oddly shaped shadow resolved itself into two people. Jack was recognizable only from a glimpse of chestnut hair under a coating of soot and ash. The second, equally filthy form was that of one of the maids, who had exited the burning house over Jack’s shoulder and was now being supported by a variety of helping hands.

Julia’s anxious eyes met Jack’s bloodshot gaze. “Behind me,” he gasped. “He was just behind me, Jule, I swear!”

Except for the long snakelike lines of the bucket brigade the doorway was empty. Jack’s stride back toward the steps was halted by four strong hands, his brother’s and his father’s. And by Julia’s loud protest. “You will not!” she screamed at him. “You’ve done enough.”

Sudden cries of alarm from inside the house. Oliver and the forward portion of the bucket brigade erupted through the entrance. A loud crack, a rumble of bricks and mortar. A cloud of dust obscured the entrance.

“The ceiling,” Oliver gasped as he staggered up to them. “Came down. We got out just in time. Oh, God, Julia, I’m sorry.” He turned to his father and with a gesture never allowed in childhood, buried his ravaged face against his father’s chest. Stiffly, awkwardly, Ramsey Tarleton closed his arms around his younger son.

Out of the billowing dust and smoke a monstrous creature rose, its amorphous outline more grotesque than any of Julia’s Nightmares.

Out of the mouth of hell…

Men ran forward to take the two female forms Tom Pickering dumped into their arms before he turned and rushed back into the house.

Tom Pickering. Of course, Tom Pickering, Julia thought. This was just another nightmare. Nicholas was not trapped and dying. None of this was real.

Once again Pickering came through the swirling cloud of dust and ash, this time supporting a figure none failed to recognize. A figure bent but not broken, still able to place one foot before the other.

“Beam fell on him,” said Pickering to Julia as he delivered his prize in person. “Told me to take the women and go, so I did. But I wasn’t about to leave him there. Beam was burned through, not hard to lift.” Pickering brought his hand up in a ragged salute. “Glad to have been of help, ma’am,” he said, grinning through his hideous mask of blood and ash.

Ash. White ash. The remains of the ceiling. Nicholas was covered with it.

Slowly, Pickering lowered his burned hand and gazed at it, lifting his other swelling mass of flesh up beside it. “Don’t guess I’ll be playing the fife for a while, ma’am,” he said.

Somehow Julia clasped them all to her. Nicholas, Jack and Tom Pickering. It was difficult to find a dry eye in the crowd hovering around them.

With a quirk of a smile for an evening’s work doubly well done, Terence O’Rourke ordered the bucket brigade to stand down.

* * * * *

Sunday passed in a blur of lotions, potions and bandages. And heartfelt prayers of thanks that matters had not been worse. When Nicholas came to his wife’s bed on Sunday night, he was wise enough to know he had come home at long last. There were words he hadn’t spoken. Necessary words. Words she might more readily believe.

Nicholas settled his weight beside her, tilted her chin up, so their eyes met, acknowledging in their depths all that had passed between them. “Once again,” he said slowly and clearly, determined to speak the words that filled his mind, the words that had to be said, “we’ve been reminded how easily life can be snuffed out. I promise you, I’m well aware I wasn’t spared in order to remain the stiff-necked soldier all the days of my life. I now know there’s much more to life than that.

“No, not one word,” he said, placing his fingers against her lips. “This is my confession, so let me get on with it.” Nicholas paused, allowing images from the past to flood his mind. He had to find a way to tell her. Something she would believe.

“I know I’ve hurt you badly by what I can’t remember,” he admitted, “but I wonder if you have any idea of what I
do
remember?” Lightly, Nicholas traced the length of Julia’s nose with the tip of his finger. “Yours was the first face to greet me when I reported to the regiment. The girl with a ready smile and a twinkling eye.”

“You glowered at me!”

“I did indeed. But only when you smiled so indiscriminately at others.” Chagrin crossed a face where burns from flying embers mixed with his cuts and bruises from the fight with Jack. “I never recognized that I was jealous. I heartily disapproved of the custom of following the drum, never more so than when I looked at you. I had no idea then of the horrors to come but I knew a campaign was no place for a woman.

“Oh, yes, my girl, no need to pucker up. I know where I ate my meals each night. And how that habit started I’m none too sure but your father and I needed to make plans—and that was excuse enough. You mended my clothes and ironed my shirts. Bandaged me on occasion. And nearly scratched my eyes out when I tried to keep you from flaunting yourself in front of the troops.”

“I did not!”

“You most certainly did!” A low rumble of laughter shook him and they both realized how long it had been since Nicholas Tarleton had laughed at anything. “The men loved you and respected you but all I could see was a silly chit who didn’t have sense enough to know she was courting disaster.”

“And in the end you were right.” Julia’s voice was very small.

“No. I just didn’t look in the right direction for the danger.” Silence filled the room as they each thought back to those last nightmare days on the march.

“You were superb, you know,” Nicholas said. “A great many women died on that trek through the mountains. And, yes, I remember the baby. I never saw him but when you told me of it, I remember being so furious you had to see such a sight, that you had to endure that frozen hell surrounded by death and suffering and debauchery such as few men, let alone women, have had to endure. It was wrong, so terribly wrong…”

“But women have always followed the drum.”

“Then pray God it’s a custom which will soon end,” Nicholas replied with considerable fervor.

He picked up one of Julia’s slim, capable hands and examined it, as if to find an answer to a question not yet voiced. “How you survived that march I’ll never know. You cried when I found the house in La Coruña, do you remember? A roof over your head, a bed to sleep on.” Nicholas’ voice sank to a husky whisper. “You cried over the horses too. Odd—that’s one of the very last things I remember before waking up in the monastery. You sitting in your room with your hands over your ears to dull the sound of the firing, tears pouring down your face.”

Nicholas squeezed her hand and held her eyes with his. “I remember more than you think, my girl. And I’ve been regaled with a good many tales by others. It seems the regiment was far more fly to the time of day than I. They had us paired long before our trek over the mountains.”

“Then why…” Julia closed her eyes, deliberately blinding herself to her husband’s face which hovered so close to her. “Then why…Violante?”

“Damn it, Julia!” Nicholas roared. “Of all the stubborn, willful, single-minded, devious, arrogant termagants in this world, why do you have to be the queen of them all? If I haven’t asked you to explain Jack, how the
hell
can you ask me to explain Violante? She happened. As Jack happened. Because we’re human. I’ve never even kissed the chit which is a good deal more than you can say for your conduct with Jack.”

Nicholas allowed himself an exaggerated sigh of exasperation. “Are you through now? Can we get on with our life? Or do you wish to discuss your damn herbs, Sophy’s latest decoction, or possibly the outlook for next year’s harvest?”

Julia began to giggle. “Oh, Nick, am I truly so perverse?”

“Damn right. I’d name a few other diverting topics but I hesitate to bring them to mind. You might actually take me up on it.”

Julia snuggled into her pillow. There was just enough light from the fireplace to reveal a naughty, self-satisfied smile. “And just why
did
you come to my bed tonight? Surely, you are in no condition for—”

“When a man comes naked to his wife’s bed, there’s usually just one reason,” the major purred, his mouth only inches from her lips.

“Precisely.” Julia scowled. The major groaned.

“How many times must I swear I love you?” Nicholas rasped. And idea dawned. “How could I love you as I did in our dreams and have it be merely lust? In dreams a man may roam where he will. And I came to you.”

Nicholas Tarleton admitting the reality of the inexplicable. At long last Julia believed him. She placed her hands, gently, on either side of his battered face. “But it was all a dream, Nicholas. I fear I need new lessons lest I forget what you taught me.”

With a sound which was a remarkable mix of a chuckle and a growl, Nicholas shed his robe and reached for the bed coverings. He savored drawing them back an inch at a time, his eyes moving slowly down from Julia’s generous mouth to her chin, her bare shoulders, the linen so fine he could see her rosy nipples peeking through.

She gasped as his hand followed the route of his eyes, teasing, kneading, promising. Far from steady when he slipped the wisp of fabric off one shoulder. His lips traced a butterfly course from mouth to neck to shoulder, finally fastening on her breast, sucking as if on the milk of life. As gently as if she were a virgin, his hand moved down her body, found the hem of her gown, moved up her inner thigh, ever so slowly, until he touched the core of her desire.