Tarleton's Wife (35 page)

“Nicholas…”

“Julia.” He was making an effort, forcing a thought which had just occurred to him.

“Nicholas, you must…”

“Baby,” he murmured. “Tom Pickering said to tell you.

Baby!
“Baby? What baby?”

“Baby from the mountains. Pickering’s here with Avery. Said to tell you he saw the baby. Fletcher’s a corporal now. Baby’s…a toddler.”

He lived. The baby lived!
“A miracle,” Julia exulted. As was the life beside her. “Nicholas?”

But he was fast asleep, his tousled sandy hair falling onto his face, softening his rugged features. His nose was swollen, one eye turning black and there was a tiny cut on his lip. But Nicholas still looked remarkably like the officer who had ridden onto the parade ground and into her heart almost three years earlier. She had tried to remain angry, tried to summon up the pain of the immense hurt she had suffered. But how could she when her husband was vulnerable instead of awesome? Appealing instead of frightening. He was her Nicholas. She was bound to him as Violante would never be.

If he still wanted her.

Querida
? He was probably thinking of someone else…

Jack was right. She’d be a fool to let him go.

* * * * *

In the gray light of early morning Nicholas forced open his bloodshot eyes and regarded the strange unadorned ceiling above him with interest. After a few moments, puzzlement turned to silent profanity. He inched his head around with extreme caution, surveying the shambles of the room. Hell and damnation! He and Jack were both old enough to know better. A bad end to a worse day. Then again, he’d woken to find himself in far worse places.

Nicholas was increasingly aware—through throbbing head, screaming muscles and acute chagrin—that the fire might have turned to ashes but the body snuggled into his side was marvelously warm and comforting. When had Julia become so appealing? He thought back to the wide-eyed eighteen-year-old who had opened the door to him when he had first reported to his new commanding officer. He had found her strength of character and strong will annoying. Now? Even last night, when strangulation had seemed a tempting solution to his problem, he found her magnificent. The truth was, he was exactly where he wished to be. In his wife’s bed.

In Julia
Tarleton’s
bed.

With a small sigh, Nicholas settled back into his pillow, shifting his weight still closer to the soft warmth beside him. In spite of brandy, anger and exhaustion, every detail of last night came back with awful clarity. Was there such a word as “revelatory”? If not, there should be, for some such expression was needed to describe the last twenty-four hours. He was hung over and surrounded by a sea of irritated women and angry men. His workers were in rebellion, his solicitor living high on The Willow’s profits. His wife had gone into trade. His best friend was quite possibly his wife’s lover. A hell of a time to discover he was in love with his wife. No matter what she had done. Or with whom.

So what was he doing here snuggled into her warmth, still as a mouse? Watching long brown lashes against cheeks gone pale under damp and cloudy English skies? Suffering from desire he couldn’t assuage because he’d made a fool of himself? Because he still wondered if she preferred Jack?

Because he needed one of Sophy’s potions before he cast up his accounts.

Because he wasn’t certain if he reached for his wife, she would welcome him into her arms.

And this wasn’t the moment to put his luck to the test. He was no Prince Charming and this was not the time to wake Sleeping Beauty with a kiss. However much he might want to.

Nicholas eased himself out of bed. Helping himself to a sheet from the linen cupboard, he unbolted the door and crept down the hall to his room. Every moment he expected a piercing shriek from a maid sent to light the morning fires. Acutely aware of the irony of skulking in embarrassment through the halls of his own house, Nicholas allowed his anger to flare. Never, never again would he creep out of his wife’s bed at dawn.

Or any other time.

Julia was his and it was high time she knew it.

They belonged together.

Chapter Seventeen

Meg Runyon set the breakfast tray on top of a dusty, much-scarred deal table in the old box room. What little light there was filtered through panes of glass silted by years of deliberate neglect. Using both hands, Meg reached inside the large wooden cupboard and felt for the bit of carving on the back panel that was the key to the secret staircase. With a sharp click one side of the cupboard swung inward. Heaving a sigh of relief, Meg picked up the tray and slipped her ungainly form through the narrow opening. Balancing the tray and negotiating the narrow stairs in the awkwardness of her advanced pregnancy were not the easiest tasks. Meg paused at the top to catch her breath, resting the tray on the newel post.

Holy Mary, Mother of God…
The room was a shambles.

The tray teetered precariously. Meg’s horrified gaze flew to the bed, fearing to find her mistress lying in a crumpled bloody heap.

Julia, who had been awake for some time morosely contemplating her sins, crossed the room in a flash. She grabbed Meg’s tray, assuring her she was unhurt. No one had been killed. At least not yet.

After setting the tray on the bed, Julia dragged the ladder-back chair next to the bed and helped Meg into it. “You’ll share my coffee,” she said. Over Meg’s protests, Julia poured steaming coffee from a silver pot into a fragile porcelain cup and offered it to her maid.

Meg sipped and sighed. “A sight different from Corunna, ain’t it, missus?”

Julia glanced at the wreckage of her room. “Not as much as I’d like,” she murmured.

“Ain’t—are you not going to read your letter?”

Julia continued to ignore the sealed parchment perched prominently on her breakfast tray. The style of her name on the outside was unmistakable. Bold, heavily black and dashing. In the manner of Nicholas Tarleton’s Last Will and Testament.

“Nicholas found Jack here last night,” Julia said. “And you need not looked so shocked. You should know me better than that! Yet…it could not have looked worse,” she conceded on a sigh. “Nicholas cannot help but believe that Jack and I… Oh, Meg,” she whispered, “what am I to do?”

“Ye’d best read the letter. P’haps it ain’t as bad as you think.”

Julia broke the seal, unfolded the heavy parchment. Oddly enough, Meg seemed to be right. It was not as bad as she expected. Or deserved.

Julia—

I will be out for most of the day. Daniel will see to the room. Go to Sophy’s cottage for the day or where else you will.

Meet me in your room at four o’clock. Leave the outside door open.

Nicholas

Wordlessly, Julia handed the letter to Meg.

Meg, whose reading had become quite proficient, made short work of the note. “Don’t sound so bad to me, missus. I’d say he’s just bein’ the major. Writin’ out ’is Orders of the Day.”

The two women looked at each other. Their eyes lit up. Giggles erupted. “Oh, Meg, how can we laugh?” Julia choked out.

“Don’t know, missus. But it sure beats bawlin’, now don’t it?”

* * * * *

Louis Tyler had been estate agent for The Willows for more than thirty years. So long as the fields were green and the profits steady, Laetitia Summerton had shown little interest in the day-to-day functioning of the estate. Louis Tyler and his longtime employer inhabited entirely different planes of existence. The arrival of Julia Tarleton shattered Louis Tyler’s complacent little world. He considered Mrs. Nicholas Tarleton the primary source of doubling his gray hairs over the past twenty months. There was no telling what fits and starts she might be up to next. Though little could be much worse than going into trade. Willow Herbals indeed! Kept her own books, the little witch. And insisted on examining his. Well, the days of females intruding in men’s affairs were over, praise God. The major had sent word he would examine the books today. Which was as it should be. Females should stick to embroidery, babies and the church. That’s all they were good for.

A grim smile of satisfaction crossed Tyler’s face as he heard a horseman canter up the road and stop at his door. The major would put a stop to women going into trade. Aye and he’d do for Captain Hood too. High time there was to be something other than petticoat rule at The Willows.

As Nicholas Tarleton stepped through the door of the estate office, Tyler had to bite back an exclamation of surprise. The major showed distinct signs of recent combat. But it was not his place to ask how his employer came to be sporting a black eye, a swollen jaw and a cut lip.

Nicholas, after spending sufficient time to confirm that Louis Tyler was the competent manager he knew him to be, gently closed the books and complimented Mr. Tyler on his stewardship. “It would seem,” he added casually, “that the cultivation of herbs has not interfered with our crops.”

Louis Tyler seemed to swell, puffing up into a red-faced ball of indignation. “That it has not, Major, I assure you! Never gave them an inch.” Responding to a sudden flash of steel in his employer’s eyes, the estate agent retrenched in mid-sentence. “I lent them a fallow field or two, Major. Seemed like the herbs might do the soil some good. But mostly the women’ve used the bits of land round their cottages. And Mrs. Tarleton—well, I couldn’t very well stop her expanding the kitchen garden, now could I?” Tyler ducked his gray head, studying the wide wooden floor boards with considerable interest.

“Most of the lower terraces, I believe?” said the major. Still mildly.

Louis Tyler gulped. “Aye, Sir, I believe that’s so.”

“When this herbal business started—a year and more ago, was it not, Tyler?—somehow I’m surprised you did not object.”

“Oh, I did, Sir, I did,” Louis Tyler assured his employer. “But…well…that is…”

“Yes?” Nicholas purred.

“I…um…I spoke with Ebadiah Woodworthy, Major, and he said as how he might be Mrs. Tarleton’s guardian but someday if—begging your pardon, Major—you were truly dead, she’d be in charge. Said we’d be right fools if we didn’t treat her with respect. Surprised me, he did, but all in all, I allowed he was right.”

Nicholas let out his breath. This was perhaps something Julia herself didn’t know. And it had the ring of truth. “Tell me, Tyler,” he inquired, “was Woodworthy the only person you spoke to about my wife going into the herbal trade?”

Louis Tyler ran a finger under his shirt collar and swallowed noisily. “You’ve perhaps heard of Captain Hood, Major?”

Hood!
Nicholas hid his surprise. “I’ve been told a bit. Go on, Tyler.”

“A great hulk of a man, Major. Stirred up the workers something fierce. Raided the farms, they did. Masked, every cowardly one of them. Broke the looms and fences, burned hay ricks, even spooked the milch cows. Fair curdled they was. And now I hear Hood’s causing the same kind of trouble at the mills in Nottingham. And I’m not afraid to admit I don’t want him as an enemy.”

“If you have a point to make, get on with it,” Nicholas snapped.

“One night—dark of the moon, it was—” Tyler admitted, “the Captain came to me. Told me I had not yet begun to see trouble. Mrs. Tarleton was to have the land she wanted for her herbs, the help of the cottagers, use of the farm carts, anything she needed. All I had to do was stand aside and keep my mouth shut. If not… If not…well, Major, he spoke of broken dams, flooded fields, burned barns, poisoned sheep. Broken heads. So I did as he said, Major. I minded the farms as I always had and left Mrs. Tarleton and Miss Sophy to the herbs. I’m sorry if you can’t like it but I’m gettin’ too old to take on Captain Hood.”

There was a long silence. “Of course you are, Tyler,” Nicholas agreed, rising slowly to his feet. “You were quite right. I would not care to have Captain Hood…or my wife as an enemy. Good day to you, Tyler.”

The major rode off, leaving behind an estate agent who, though unsure just how it came about, was contemplating imminent retirement to a snug cottage on the coast.

* * * * *

“Out with it, Julia,” Sophy Upton commanded. “I do not care to be kept in the dark when I can plainly see everyone is simply bursting with news. And don’t tell me I’m imagining things, for I heard young Oliver ask Peters if he had heard any strange noises in the night. I can assure you I thought poor dear Peters was going to expire on the spot. He informed that puerile boy—with his most toplofty condescension, I might add—that there had been no unusual occurrences last night. But poor Peters turned white, then gray, before practically galloping for the green baize door. So out with it, child. If there’s been further disaster, I wish to know of it.”

The two women had found a small uncluttered nook in the morning parlor of Sophy’s cottage. There they had settled down to review the state of Willow Herbal’s orders versus their inventory. Daniel, who functioned as salesman, had compiled an impressive stack of orders—supplies for apothecary shops, herbs for cooking, potpourri jars, sachets, bath herbs, soaps and exotically flavored honey for London’s finest shops. A broad spectrum of offerings for a business just completing its second growing season. But somehow neither woman could keep her mind on the task at hand.