Tarleton's Wife (26 page)

Since Nicholas gambled with grace, whether winning or losing and displayed a dignified charm while expending largesse in all the right places, he was met with enthusiasm in even the meanest tavern. It was a seductive pleasure, being back in his own world where the talk was of Wellesley, now Viscount Wellington and the war. Hunting and the war… Wellington and prizefighting… Whigs, Tories, the Prince of Wales…and, once again, Wellington and the war.

Surprisingly, grudgingly, Nicholas had to admit that, deep down, he was enjoying himself. He had a wife, a fiancée and a haunting suspicion Brother Bonifacio would not approve of his handling of the dilemma. But it was a damned fine feeling to be an Englishman again.

Nicholas saved The King’s Men ’til last. Having indulged himself a bit more freely than was his custom, he contemplated skipping this last stop on his rounds. After all, without his presence, Julia—damn her eyes—might vanish into the vastness of the city. Or cancel the order for most of the clothes he had selected. And—blast her managing nature—find out about the items he had ordered and not told her about at all. Oh, no. Being legally leg-shackled did not mean he had to give up his freedom. Thoughts of a woman—even one tucked up in bed in his own suite of rooms—was not going to deter him from his plans. Lips curling as he sneered at his momentary weakness, the major paid a late-night beggar—an ex-corporal with one leg—to wipe the mud from his boots, the drops of rain from his finely sheared beaver. He then walked the half mile to The King’s Men.

Well above the average gaming hell, The King’s Men catered to military officers who demanded daring and danger off the battlefield as well as on. Although lacking the dignified ambience of White’s, the club boasted spacious rooms and an elegant, if somewhat bold, decor. There was something about the aura of bonhomie and joviality which set this establishment apart from the others. Recklessness, daring, a scorn of danger. The patrons here were men who had met the devil and lived to tell it. Nicholas Tarleton was among his own.

After divesting himself of his cloak, hat and sword stick, Nicholas did not linger over conversation with his many new acquaintances. His purpose, his resolve, was driving him hard. Somewhere in this vast city there must be someone who could tell him what he needed to know. The major examined the faces—some intent, some lazily indifferent—of the men gathered round two large faro tables. Then, ignoring the click of dice, he searched the features of those playing hazard.
Chemin de fer
,
vingt et un
, the silent clash of chess. He saw no one from his days in Spain.

Nicholas waved away brandy proffered by a passing footman, changed his mind, seized the snifter off the startled man’s tray and downed it in one gulp. He wanted to go home, put this whole nightmare from his mind but compulsion drove him on.

At the back of the club in a cozy, perfectly quiet room, three games of piquet were in progress, each small table illuminated by a wall sconce of five candles. At one end of the room flames glowed invitingly in a fireplace of black marble. The three sets of piquet players might almost have been statues of matching marble, lost in concentration, moving only the bare minimum necessary to play their cards. The room was a haven of sanity and peace.

Gratefully, Nicholas sank onto a small brocaded chair near the door. Another night of failure. Another day of not knowing. If he weren’t such a stubborn, arrogant fool, he’d leave London on the morrow and never look back. Yet he did not care for loose ends, for not
knowing
—

A crash of metal, the clink of shattered glass, as a footman’s tray hit the hearth in front of the fireplace. A chair clattered backward onto the carpet, a shower of cards drifting down to settle at the feet of a white-faced officer, seated with his back to the door, who had turned to accept a glass of brandy and seen his former commanding officer instead.

The ghost of his former commanding officer.

“Major?” the man whispered.

Nearly as disbelieving as his junior officer, Nicholas rose slowly to his feet. “Bannister?”

A grin split Miles Bannister’s usually taciturn features. “Old Nick?”

Even as they pounded each other on the back, Nicholas was aware of the irony. He thought Miles Bannister a Captain Sharp…
knew
him for a Captain Sharp, and Bannister thought Nicholas Tarleton a stuffed-up prig. Yet here they were, greeting each other like long-lost brothers. And meaning it.

When Miles Bannister had made his excuses to his piquet partner and gathered his winnings from previous games, the two men called for a bottle of brandy and settled into a comfortable secluded corner. “I need not ask what you are doing here,” said Nicholas, referring to the Captain’s noticeable limp. “Will you sell out?”

“Lord, no! I’ll be back in Spain by midwinter. Lisbon’s a hell of a lot warmer than London. And the women as well.” The captain’s eyes suddenly lit with even greater fervor. “Have you heard? About Torres Vedras?” At the major’s blank response he launched into an explanation of the rumor Nicholas had heard in northern Spain during the summer.

“Boney put three hundred and seventy thousand men in the field, Tarleton. Wellington didn’t have a snowball’s chance of beating them. But he had to maintain his foothold on the continent, protect the army until we have more men. So Old Douro put damn near every man in Portugal to work building fortifications. Tarleton, you’ve never seen anything like it. A double line of fortifications from the Tagus to the sea—twenty-five miles long, nearly ninety redoubts, three hundred gun emplacements.”

The usually cynical gamester surprised Nicholas by his open display of enthusiasm. “And it’s working, Major, it’s working!” Bannister continued. “While on summer campaign Wellington gave orders for all the Portuguese to leave the area, then had the ground laid waste. Destroyed
everything
. After that, he let Massena chase him back to Portugal.” The captain’s eyes gleamed. “And then the general slipped his men behind the lines at Torres Vedras and left Massena and his troops out there in the cold with no way in, no shelter, nothing to eat.” Miles Bannister slammed his fist against a table. “That’s what’s happening right now, Tarleton. I just got in yesterday and there’s no doubt Wellington’s plan is working. Lisbon is safe and so’s the army.”

And when, Nicholas wondered, had he become such a soft-hearted fool that visions of Portugal laid waste cast a shadow over the glory of what was surely one of the most massive military construction projects in the history of the world? “The Romans would have loved it,” he murmured, quickly adding, in response to Bannister’s odd look, more suitably enthusiastic words of praise.

“Run away and live to fight another day,” quipped the captain, returning to his normal sardonic self. “So now, if you please, tell me why I’m sitting here talking to a man who is supposed to be long dead.”

After recounting a considerably abbreviated version of his experiences in Spain, Nicholas got round to the crux of the matter. “I mentioned that I couldn’t remember the battle but I have to admit I also have no recollection of the card game I’m told I played the night before. I was wondering,” it wasn’t easy to ask a favor of a man he had admired as a soldier but could never like as a person, “I would be grateful if you could tell me exactly what happened that night.”

After his initial surprise at the major’s story, Miles Bannister’s
savoir faire
was firmly back in place. He studied the firelit amber glints in his brandy, made a subtle examination of the major’s lean, square-jawed face. “Surely Julia has told you about it,” he prodded with seeming innocence.

For a moment Nicholas looked as uncomfortable as he felt. Then the shutter came down. “Julia tells me she was too upset to be aware of the details. I thought you might be able to fill in the gaps.”

Bannister nodded. Certainly the major had a right to know. “I never truly understood what Litchfield had in mind,” he admitted. “I don’t know if he was foxed, or mad, or whether he planned the whole damned thing.” Bannister proceeded to describe the game in more technical detail than Nicholas had heard from Julia but with a surprisingly similar opinion of the outcome.

“I was playing for the sport of it,” the captain said. “I’d seen a lot of strange stakes in my time but never a bride of impeccable reputation. I wasn’t ready to be leg-shackled, nor did I have any illusions about being a suitable mate for our Julia. The play, however, was irresistible.” Bannister’s face grew grim. “I may be a bastard, Tarleton but even I couldn’t sit there and let Sedgwick win. The thought of that sorry excuse for a man getting his hands on our Julia was more than I could stomach. So I kept playing, hoping young Prentice was good enough to be of help—which he wasn’t. I was just about to send someone to get you when you walked in. Lord, were you a welcome sight!”

“Leave it to the major?” Nicholas inquired with raised eyebrows.

For a moment the captain’s eyes flickered in surprise. “Well, you were the perfect choice, were you not? Even at the table I could feel the sighs of relief run through the room when you walked in. She was our friend, our mascot, our pet if you will. Most of us had known her since she was flat as a board and wore braids. We had long since decided you were the only man who would do for our Julia. Didn’t you know?”

When Nicholas simply stared at him, Miles Bannister continued his detailed sketch of the card game in La Coruña. “Once we got rid of Sedgwick, the outcome was a foregone conclusion,” he ended. “I doubt the colonel ever intended anyone but you to win. “The real shock came after that.”

Nicholas, who had found himself speechless for some time now, waited in grim silence for the captain to explain.

“I keep forgetting you really don’t remember,” Miles said with a shake of his head. “It seemed everything was settled and then you had to go holier than thou. Or maybe it was sheer self-preservation. I was watching Julia’s face when you did it. Her color had just begun to come back when you calmly announced you would only accept guardianship of her. Not a word about marriage. The poor girl had suffered her world turned upside down, had just been given a ray of hope and then you rejected her. Right there in front of every officer in the regiment.” Miles Bannister poured and tossed off another brandy. “Perhaps, if it had ended there, you might have been right. It was the honorable thing to do.”

Nicholas found his voice at last. “Well, go on. Just what the hell else happened that night?”

Miles studied Nicholas closely, his gamester’s sharp eyes finally accepting the fact that the major truly did not remember. “We bet on it, you know. We were all sharing, three or four to a room. We took off our boots and lay down on the bed and waited to see what you would do. I said you’d stay in your room. Ranleigh, Crawley and Godolphin insisted you were writing your new will and would take it to the girl that night.”

Nicholas waited, scarcely breathing, until Bannister added, “They were right and I was wrong. Instead of paying off, the bets were tripled when we heard you come down the stairs and go to her room. Would you give her the will and go? I still said you’d go. I couldn’t believe the stiff-necked, honorable,
scrupulous
Major Nicholas Tarleton would claim his winnings like any ordinary man.

“It cost me, I can tell you,” the captain continued. “I still find it hard to believe. I even checked your room early next morning before I’d admit defeat. I paid up my losses, then we all tiptoed out of the house and left you with her. I was on the field when you rode up at close on to nine—about three hours behind the rest of us.”

“I don’t believe it!” Nicholas exploded.

“It’s true. Ask any officer in the regiment.” Miles Bannister’s assertion had the strong ring of truth. “So none of us was surprised when we’d heard you’d married her. That, at least, was very much in character. I suppose you intended to all along but hadn’t wanted to speak of it in the cardroom in front of such a crowd of interested spectators. You wanted to leave the girl a bit of privacy, I suppose.”

“You are saying,” Nicholas enunciated with care, “that I went to Julia’s room after the card game…”

“About twenty minutes after,” Bannister interjected.

“And stayed until nearly nine the next morning.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh, Lord!” Nicholas groaned. And buried his head in his hands.

Chapter Thirteen

Julia woke to the sound of an angry voice. For a moment her sleep-shuttered brain refused to function and she was unable to remember where she was. Or when or why. It was The Nightmare. Nicholas had descended from the portrait with a candle in his hand. Harsh sounds issued from his mouth. Julia squeezed her eyes shut, turned her back to the noise, pulled the covers up over her head.

“Dammit, Julia, wake up!”

The strong grip on her shoulder was all too real. Reluctantly, heart sinking to her toes, she turned over, careful to keep the quilt tucked beneath her chin. He had removed his hand but Nicholas—a living, breathing Nicholas—towered beside the bed, eyes glaring.

“It would seem I have married a liar,” he said in that smooth, deadly tone she dreaded. “Not that Miles Bannister is a witness to be trusted,” Nicholas conceded grimly, “but he has just informed me that every officer in the regiment would likely come forward to testify ours was not a marriage in name only. I believe you failed to mention that fact,
madam wife
.”

Still scrambling for her wits, her greatest dread become reality, Julia made no answer. To gain time while her mind struggled to find a coherent response, she made a piece of work of sitting up. A slow rise, difficulty with the quilt, a quick blush as Nicholas’ eyes followed the brief exposure of her modest white cotton gown. Abandoning her delaying tactics, Julia gave the bed covers a sharp tug, drawing them up until only her head and shoulders were displayed before his frank assessment. Trying to remember, was he? Julia ground her teeth.