Tarleton's Wife (34 page)

Nicholas broke free, beating Jack to his feet by a matter of seconds. A feint with his left and Jack was once again propelled across the room, this time by a hard right to the jaw which sent him staggering back against the corner of the dining table. The sharp stab of pain ignited the anger lurking beneath Jack’s humiliation at being caught with his friend’s wife. Both men settled down to fighting in earnest.

They were evenly matched. Six feet two of sandy-haired fury to six feet of chestnut-haired scorn and anger. To the accompaniment of Julia’s occasional pleas of “Stop! Stop it, I say!” they wrestled, exchanging a series of hardy blows, several times coming close to singeing themselves in the fire. The silver candelabrum on the table crashed to the floor, the mirror on Julia’s dresser disintegrated into a mass of silver slivers. Dining chairs went askew, the wardrobe door came open, the ladder-back chair and desk chair lay where they had fallen.

With a battlefield roar Nicholas charged once more, sending Jack flying into an as yet undamaged portion of the room. The painted porcelain bowl and pitcher on the washstand crashed to the floor. Jack, considerably more sober than his opponent, came to his senses first, appalled by the destruction of Julia’s room, not to mention his friendship with Nicholas. And all because of his own arrogant assumption that he could treat Julia as if she were his and not the wife of his old friend Nick. Time to end it, though far too late for sweet reason.

Jack bounced off the washstand, came back with a bullish roar, swinging his fist in a low blow to the major’s stomach. Why stick to gentlemen’s rules, when all he wanted was to finish this farce? And, bloody hell, he wasn’t a gentleman anyway.

Nicholas tripped on the remains of the desk chair and tipped over backward. Straight into the tub of now chilly water. His head struck the back of the hip bath with a thunk and he lay still, dazed and winded, one leg dangling over the end of the tub, the other drooping over the side at a drunken angle.

“Oh, my God,” panted Jack softly. “I’m sorry, Jule. The devil’s in it now.”

“Out!” Julia ordered. “Now, Jack. This minute!”

“But…” Jack bent over Nicholas, feeling for his pulse.

“Just get out,” Julia said, tugging at his arm. “Before you do any more damage.”

Nicholas’ eyes were partially open, seemingly fixed on the toe of his boot where it hung to one side of the tub. Julia gave Jack a shove, hissing, “I’ll be all right. Just get out. Now!”

Jack scanned the shambles of the room, lingering on Nicholas, who was immersed to his neck in cold water. “But I can’t just leave. How will you get him out?”

“He’ll get himself out,” she snapped. “Can’t you see he’s merely sulking? A cold bath has a very salutary effect on a temper tantrum. “For God’s sake, Jack, go!”

Reluctantly, Jack backed toward the stairs, murmuring apologies. Muttering a few choice bits of Anglo-Saxon, Jack picked up the coat he had left on the railing and descended the stairs. When almost at the bottom, his irrepressible spirits got the better of him. He called back up the stairs, “Better bolt the outside door, my Jule. I doubt you want any more visitors tonight.”

After a grimace of annoyance, Julia did just that. If she had not left the room wide open so Nicholas could come to her by either door, she might have been spared this nasty little debacle. When she came back up the narrow stairs from the storeroom below, Nicholas, eyes closed, was still sprawled in the hip bath almost exactly as she had left him. Before tackling her rather large, wet and angry problem, Julia threw the bolt on the door to the upper hallway. Safe at last. Or as safe as she could be with a husband with ample cause to be furious.

Fortunately, the not-so-secret room was provided with a generous supply of towels. After removing two from the linen cupboard, Julia righted the ladder-back chair, stirred the coals with the poker, blew on them with the bellows, then added wood until the fire was once again giving off a blazing warmth. Finding nothing more to add to her procrastination, she slowly turned back to the hip bath.

Nicholas eyed her balefully. “Perhaps you’d care to iron your clothes and cook a midnight supper before getting me out of this damn thing?” he inquired in the purring voice that always sent shivers up her spine.

“I don’t doubt you’re quite capable of getting out on your own if you’d a mind to,” Julia retorted. “But you know as well as I that you’re better off where you are until the fire’s made up.”

“Since a cold bath is merely my third sobering incident of the night, I daresay I’ll not die of it,” Nicholas grumbled.

“Third?”

Nicholas extended a dripping hand. “Get me out of here, my girl. Then we’ll talk.”

No dainty Botticelli Venus on the half-shell, Nicholas sloshed water in every direction as he and his soaking wet clothing emerged. Julia jumped back as her silk robe plastered itself to her body. Water ran over the wooden floor and across the hearth. The fire hissed as water turned to steam.

Ignoring the sudden chill of wet silk, Julia sat her husband down on the ladder-back chair and helped him peel off his thoroughly soaked jacket and shirt. Flickering candlelight shone on his scars. Julia closed her eyes a moment before thrusting a towel at him. The night of the battle, the night they were married, came back in all its horror. Surely they had earned the right to hope for something better.

Abruptly, Julia knelt and went to work on her husband’s boots which, fortunately, had not gotten wet. Since years of following the drum had given her a good deal of experience with gentlemen’s boots, she had them off with minimal effort. Julia looked up to discover a gleam of amusement in her husband’s gray eyes as he contemplated her consternation over what must come next.

Slowly, Nicholas stood up. His head might be developing a lump and as nasty a headache as he could recall, not to mention his body’s multitude of bruises but he was actually beginning to enjoy himself. He started to peel off the skintight knit pantaloons he had worn in another lifetime when he had set out that afternoon to call on Violante. The pantaloons were reluctant, as was the equally skintight garment beneath. Several times he looked to his wife for assistance but she stood there like a lump and merely glared at him. Nicholas’ only aid was the satisfaction of some muttered barracks room language. When he stood before his wife naked but for his stockings, he sat down on the chair, picked up the second towel which had been warming before the fire and handed it to her. “Your turn,” he growled.

Julia’s eyes widened. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she gulped.

Nicholas shut his eyes and leaned against the unyielding back of the chair. “It’s been one hell of day, my girl. I’m not lying when I tell you that I doubt I could have stood up another minute. Just finish the job like a good girl and get me to bed.”

Major Tarleton decreeing a drumhead punishment for her sins.

Julia ducked her head and, heart pounding, peeled off his knit stockings, no doubt a product of his discontented mill workers in Nottingham. Kneeling at Nicholas’ feet, she dried each toe with elaborate care, her eyes never raised above his ankles as she sought with numbed mind for some distraction from the task at hand. With a rush of relief she recalled his earlier promise.

“Will you tell me what you meant by three sobering incidents?” Julia inquired.

Nicholas, thoroughly enjoying his wife’s inability to venture above his ankles, was willing enough. “I met Avery Dunstan this afternoon. I fear we overdid our reunion,” he admitted, continuing with a brief version of being set on by the mob at the bonfire.

As Nicholas spoke of scythes, pitchforks and clubs, Julia’s shocked gaze flew to his face. Color suffused her face, as she missed none of the length of him along the way. Fear for Nicholas vied with anger at Jack for stirring up the mob. For all Captain Hood’s confidence in his own abilities, it seemed likely he was unleashing a violence he could not control.

“You must listen to me, Nicholas,” Julia urged. “The women say you are to be the Guy. Nicholas, do you hear me? They plan to burn you in effigy. It could easily turn to serious trouble.”

Nicholas raised one eyebrow, seemingly unmoved. “And then I came home to find my wife in the arms of another man.”

“I wasn’t in his arms,” Julia protested. Feebly.

“Somehow,” Nicholas continued softly, “nothing seems to matter very much at the moment. Finish the drying and get me to bed.”

All thought of Guys, pitchforks and bonfires flew from her head. Julia bit her lip. Grasping the towel like a defensive barrier, she gingerly patted her way up from ankle to knee to inner thigh. When her hand slowed, seemingly frozen in place, Nicholas took pity on her. Placing his hand over hers, he guided the softness of the towel into the hills and valleys of his most intimate anatomy. Strange. He had not believed anyone could actually turn purple. Hell! It wasn’t as if she were a perishing virgin.

At the first loosening of her husband’s grip, Julia bounded to her feet. “I’ll run down the hall and get your nightshirt and robe,” she said, already halfway across the room. “You can’t go back to your room like that.”

“The hell with my room,” Nicholas murmured. “Just give me your shoulder to lean on. The bed’s not more than six feet away.”

“You can’t stay here!”

“Will if I want to.” A twitch of his lips revealed that he was not so far gone in drink and exhaustion that he wasn’t aware of his use of the childhood cliché. With the aid of the tall back of the chair, he levered himself to his feet. Nicholas’ gaze locked with Julia’s until slowly, reluctantly, she returned to his side. He draped his arm over her shoulders. Together they made it the few feet to the bed where Nicholas swayed precariously while Julia drew back the covers. He fell on his face in utter contentment. Home at last.

As she bent to pull up the bedding over his long lean body, Julia paused, sheet and quilt pinched between her fingers.
Dear God!
Her questing hands had felt these scars but not seen them until tonight. Still livid, they ranged across his back, his buttocks and down his legs. She sent a silent prayer for the Spanish monks who had saved Nicholas’ life.

Afraid to name the overwhelming emotions which swept over her, Julia finished her task, tucking the bedding up to her husband’s neck as one would for a sleeping child. Her anger had long since faded to compassion. And much more. Once again, that last night in La Coruña came flooding back. The numbing desolation. The inconsolable anguish of knowing Nicholas was dying and she could do next to nothing to prevent it. The joy of the previous night—their precious moments together—fading with each rasping, shallow breath from his mutilated body. And now that he was restored to her?

She had loved him enough to give him up to his Spanish violet, had she not? Or was her self-sacrifice merely a fit of jealous pique? Her stupid pride had rejected his attempts at reconciliation. And now—when she was finally succumbing to the uncontrollable desire to win his love—she had ruined everything.

Jack had ruined everything.

No!
She had scorned what Nicholas offered. Marriage without love had not been good enough for her overweening pride. She had expected to have it all. It was her own confusion and hurt, her blind notions of noble self-sacrifice which brought Jack hotfoot to the rescue. If she had not fought Nicholas every step of the way, Jack would not have come to offer good advice. To offer all he had.

Never blame Jack. The fault was hers alone.

And now she had Nicholas where she wanted him. In her bed, alone in a secret corner of the house. And she doubted even a genuine spirit escaped from the All Hallow’s revelries could wake him. With a sigh Julia rummaged in the back of her drawer until she found one of her old cotton nightgowns. Its voluminous yardage settled over her body in pristine folds of purity. Armor against her own overwhelming emotions. Too late, she realized it was the twin of the gown she had worn that night in London. The night her Dream became reality.

In La Coruña there had been no gown at all. She sank down on the edge of the bed and let memory wash over her. The cold wind stirring the heavy curtains as it surged through the shattered windows. The crackle and hiss of the logs Nicholas threw on the fire. His strong, capable fingers gently unlacing her boots. Those ugly, ragged boots she would keep through all the years of her life. The fleeting roughness of his calloused hands as he rolled down her stockings, the flickering butterfly touch on the buttons down her back. The cold had disappeared as if it had never been, leaving warmth, light and love.

“No gown…warmer skin to skin,” came a murmured protest from the bed.

Lord! She had thought him sound asleep.

“Smell good.”

“Wha…”

“You…smell…good.”

Julia choked. The herbal bath seemed part of another lifetime. She seized on the one concrete problem which had to be solved. An anchor in a sea of seething conflicts. If Nicholas was awake, it was as much her duty to warn him as it was to save Willow Herbals. She would have to make him understand.

“Nicholas, they mean to make you the Guy. Do you understand me, Nicholas? They plan to burn you in effigy. You must put a stop to it before something terrible happens.”

“Tomorrow.”

“What?”

“Talk ’morrow.”

“Nicholas!”

“G’night,
querida
.”