Tarleton's Wife (44 page)

No longer a shy young virgin, Julia reached out to encompass that most private part of him. A twinge tugged her breast as Nicholas, startled, inadvertently clamped his teeth onto her soft flesh. For a moment each questing hand stilled. Then, with a short sharp oath, Nicholas lost the best of his intentions. The bed covers slithered onto the floor as he stripped them away. The delicate gown was skinned off in one long movement, sent flying after the bedding. Mouth to mouth, flesh to flesh, they burned together, heedless of the November chill, battered bodies and anguished spirits.

Home at last.

Epilogue

June 21, 1813, Vitoria, Spain

Motionless as a statue, Colonel Nicholas Tarleton sat his horse on a ridge above the battlefield. His forest green battle uniform was so badly torn and stained it threatened to defy his wife’s meticulous mending. His red officer’s sash was faded and drooping. His sword betrayed the ominous stains of harsh use.

Scattered around him were the bodies of French gunners who, only that morning, rained wave after wave of destruction on the British infantry below. And now…bright splotches of red and crumpled heaps of forest green were scattered amidst the French blue. Englishmen who died ousting the French artillery from the ridge.

In the valley below wisps of smoke still lingered among the piles of dead and wounded. French and English. Infantry, cavalry, lancers, riflemen, horses and mules. Nicholas had seen the dead in thousands before but this battle was different. This one opened the road to France itself.

To the east, hidden from the colonel’s view by a second ridge, sixty thousand French soldiers and camp followers ran in headlong panic toward Pamplona. Among them, Joseph Bonaparte, brother to Napoleon and erstwhile King of Spain. Behind them lay wagons full of the treasures plundered by France during the occupation of Spain. Chest upon chest of gold coins, superbly crafted silver, fine china, masterpieces of art—all buying time for the fleeing French army. For Spain’s stolen treasures were being plundered in turn by those who had come to save Spain from Napoleon. In effect, the looted treasures of Spain had done what the French could not—stopped the Allied army in its tracks.

Before mounting the ridge for this final look at the killing field, Nicholas scanned the hastily prepared list of casualties and made sure the seriously wounded were transported to the field hospital, never doubting that someone was searching the battlefield for his missing men. With Tom Pickering as a bandsman, there was no need.

He was free to think with considerable irony of that long-ago day when Sir John Moore’s forces landed on the Portuguese coast. When twenty thousand men marched bravely off to liberate Spain from her former ally, most of them cocksure they would have Napoleon’s army running for France inside six months. Only today—after five long years—were the French in headlong retreat. Five years of men dying with glory. And in dishonor. By treachery, perversion, sadism and outright ignorance and stupidity.

Even here, high above the field, Nicholas could smell the stench of terror and death. There was a time when he was accustomed to it. When the army was his life. Now, as soon as Napoleon was swept from power, he was going back to England. To live among the peaceful fields of Lincolnshire and raise a crop of children.

Children. With a small secret smile at odds with the battlefield below, Colonel Nicholas Tarleton turned his mount and headed home.

He did not have far to go. Home was a tent a scant mile beyond the field of battle. Colonels being entitled to certain privileges, his was a tent twice as large as its neighbors. Nicholas lifted the flap and walked inside, taking care to tie the canvas closed behind him. If he expected a rapturous greeting, or even an expression of relief from his wife, he gave no sign of disappointment. Julia assessed his battleworn condition with an experienced eye and turned back to what she was doing. “Oliver stopped by,” she said, continuing to struggle with the squirming object on the camp bed beside her.

The few words were more significant than they sounded. Lieutenant Oliver Tarleton always stopped by. His mother had extracted a promise before he left home. Julia Tarleton would not be the last person to know the outcome of a battle, whether her husband lived or died.

Nicholas strode across the room, picked up the squirming baby his wife had just finished changing. The little boy chortled with glee as Nicholas swung him high over his head. “That’s right, Carlos,” his proud papa cooed. “Fly like a bird, Carlos, my boy.”

Charles Francis Tarleton rewarded his father’s efforts with shrieks of joy, his chubby fourteen-month-old fingers sawing the air in his toddler’s attempt at wings.

Julia turned her head away to hide a rush of tears. Following the drum was her life. She should be accustomed to it. But the hours of agonizing fear never dimmed. With every explosion of the cannon, the never-ending clash of steel on steel, the thunder of artillery, the screams of men and horses, she always feared her world was coming to an end.

Her world. Nicholas Tarleton.

Today was a great victory. But the war was not yet over. There would be more battles, more waiting, more fear, before that wonderful day when they could all go home to The Willows. When Napoleon was caged.

Nicholas lowered his son into a heartfelt hug before tucking young Carlos into his bed and adjusting the curtain which partitioned the corner where the baby slept. He stood in the shadows, his head nearly touching the canvas above him and stared at his wife. The smile he had displayed to his son slowly faded. By what miracle had he been so fortunate? Nicholas wondered.

He stepped out of the shadows, revealing a face stained with black powder. A trickle of blood had dried on his right cheek. He was, Julia thought, the most beautiful sight she had ever seen.

“I love you,” the colonel told to his wife.

“I believe you,” Julia vowed, tracing a finger over his lips.

“You make a most satisfactory wife,” the colonel declared in his best military fashion. He started forward, backing his wife toward the cot, his hands busy unwinding the faded red sash around his waist. Their eyes were still fastened on each other as Julia’s legs hit the cot. She sat, abruptly, Nicholas following her down.

“And you never mind my dirt,” Nicholas murmured as he began to unbutton his jacket. He was on the third of the long row of buttons when his wife’s fingers took over the delicate task. “And you never mind making love anytime, anywhere,” the colonel added, his lips brushing her sweetly scented hair.

“As if a woman has a choice when the lust for battle transforms into…animal instincts.”

“A lust for life,” Nicholas whispered in her ear. “Why else do you think I let you come with me?”

“
Let
me!” Julia cried, jumping back from the ramrod she had just unleashed. “
Let me.
You know I had to come alone by packet to Lisbon. With only Tess to help in the struggle with horses and baggage and…”

“So I was wrong,” Nicholas growled in his throat, attempting to slip out of the tight-fitting pants of his uniform. He barked a sharp expletive, adding with considerable frustration,” I need you. How else would I get my damn boots off?”

“Shall I call Pickering?” his wife inquired sweetly.

Since they both knew Pickering was quartering the battlefield in search of survivors, Nicholas merely raised his brows until his wife slipped to her knees beside the camp bed. While she struggled with his boots, he announced conversationally, “I wasn’t wrong actually. Battlefields are no place for wives. I merely compromised my principles for my comfort.”

Julia sat down hard on her bottom as her angry tug propelled the second boot off in record time.

With a deep chuckle Nicholas reached down and pulled his wife back onto the cot while his other hand finished skinning his remaining clothing from his body. “Does it really matter?” he asked. “You’re here and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Isn’t that enough?”

Their lips met, then swiftly parted as Nicholas in his eagerness could not wait to return the favor. He peeled off his wife’s clothes with experienced ease. Naked, they snuggled into the cot and into each other, knowing there was no other place for them to be but exactly where they were.

It was very much later when an exhausted but warmly satisfied Nicholas lay back against the pillow and said, “I doubt there’ll be winter quarters this year. Wellington’s got the bit in his teeth. He’ll not stop until we’re marching down the Champs Elysée.”

It was not an irrelevant remark. The long months of relative comfort and stability of winter quarters were the respite which kept them all from madness. A time for families. Dancing and hunting. Loving and living. The entry into the world of Charles Francis Tarleton had been perfectly, if inadvertently, timed to coincide with the long comfortable days of winter quarters. The namesake of Carlos Guillermo Vila Santiago had not had to suffer the fate of the baby born into the ice and snow of a pass high in the mountains of northern Spain.

But this year there would be no rest, no quiet respite from mad maneuverings through the Spanish countryside, from the exhausting marches and pungent odors of an army on the move, the call to battle, the tragedy of lost faces around the campfire. There would be no small cottage, however humble, which they could call home for more than a week or two. The Allied army would move inexorably on, crossing the high Pyrenees, pushing Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops back to France.

So she would not tell him about the baby. The little sister or brother of Charles Francis Tarleton who might, God and Wellington willing, be born in France.

Also by Blair Bancroft

Steeplechase

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