Tarleton's Wife (9 page)

She was surprisingly attractive when she smiled, Jack discovered. Her long face broadened into a flashing glimpse of even white teeth and sparkling blue eyes. He had at first thought her a tall, thin gawk of a girl, magnificent in rage but sadly lacking in the feminine graces. In the course of the last hour he had found her intelligent, witty and charming, capable of carrying on in a civilized manner despite almost impossible odds. He now found her far more attractive than he had thought possible. In spite of the business he had yet to conduct this evening, he was reluctant to see her go as she pushed back her chair and began to repeat her profuse thanks for his assistance. When she offered her hand, he held it a shade too long, as if he were an impressionable schoolboy and not a man grown these ten years or more. She was Nick’s wife. Gallant. Intelligent. Likable.

But was she a widow?

It was impossible to be indifferent to Jack Harding, Julia admitted. Like Nicholas Tarleton, he had a will of iron only lightly overlaid by good manners. His bursts of charm, however, were far more frequent. He spoke with sympathy of starving farm workers driven onto the dole or forced into factories in the city, yet he controlled the acres of the largest landowner in this part of the county. An enigma. Yet a friendly face in a sea of the unknown.

Before Daniel Runyon left the women for the night, he did not spare Julia his own cautions about their new acquaintance. “Danger walks with that one, missus,” he said. “I’ve seen the like of him often enough in the army. Shake their fist at the devil, they would. If it’s peace, quiet and a long life you’ll be wanting, you’ll give Harding a wide berth.”

Julia merely smiled and shook her head, bidding Daniel a fond goodnight. But now, tucked up in bed with Meg O’Callaghan fast asleep in a trundle bed beside her, the healing balm of sleep would not come. The whole day had been askew. She had left Ebadiah Woodworthy’s office with prickles running up her spine. His promises to write a letter of introduction to Peters, the butler at The Willows and arrange for ample staff rang hollow. As did his deftly worded speech of welcome. Simply put, Ebadiah Woodworthy had complete control over her life. Without Nicholas she was powerless to stop him from doing anything he wished.

Ruthlessly, Julia disregarded a pair of cat-green eyes which seemed to coalesce in the smoke drifting from the fireplace. Jack Harding had no place in her dreams. Though she was intrigued by his aura of mystery, there was no room in her heart for anything but grief. Nonetheless, the man was a nagging puzzle which refused to go away. Tough…but oddly gentle when he had offered the glass of brandy.

Julia’s eyes widened. She sat up in bed with a sudden start. Her reticule! She had reached the shelter of their room with the pouch containing all her precious papers but her reticule—with a goodly number of gold coins—was still on the sofa in the private parlor, probably fallen down behind the cushions where, in her weariness, she had failed to remember it.

Slipping cautiously out of bed so as not to awaken Meg, Julia scrambled into her gown, disguising the buttons skipped in her haste to dress by throwing a shawl around her shoulders. An ear to the door revealed not a sound. Carefully, she slipped back the bolt and stepped into the hall, quietly shutting the door behind her. The inn was nearly silent, the only sound a faint murmur of voices drifting up the stairs from the common room. She had no desire to encounter any of the men she had glimpsed earlier in the taproom. If she used only the faint glow drifting out the common room as a guide, Julia reasoned, she should be able to slip into the private parlor, retrieve her reticule and return to her room without being seen.

Padding along in her stocking feet, she managed just that. Her reticule was exactly where she had supposed but as she cautiously cracked the door and peered out into the hallway, a burst of noise came from the common room. Abruptly, heart pounding, she shut the heavy oaken door. Then, curiosity getting the better of her—and after all, she could scarcely spend the night trapped in the private parlor—she cracked the door once again and listened closely for a clue to what was happening in the large room just up the hall.

“Fair’s fair,” a belligerent voice was saying. “T’ Summerton cottages be on t’ list. It was agreed. We’ve collected enough this night to do ’em all as planned.”

“Aye. Aye, ’tis true,” came a chorus of male voices.

“No!” The uncompromising syllable sent a shiver down Julia’s spine. In a single word she recognized the owner of that voice of authority.

“Since when are ye swayed by a pretty face, Cap’n?” someone taunted. “Thought you wasn’t in the petticoat line.”

“You’ll do as I say,” the voice retorted flatly, ignoring the jibe. “If it’s transportation or the noose you’re wanting, then go off on your own and be damned to you but if we’re in this together, you’ll do as I say and no argument. Is that clear?”

The ayes outweighed the grumbles and the voices soon subsided, with a general shuffling as mugs were refilled. Hope of any explanation of the odd exchange seemed unlikely. Julia pulled her dark shawl up over her head and slipped into the dim hallway, moving carefully with her back to the wall, her eyes on the open taproom door. Mercifully, no one succumbed to the urge to visit the necessary behind the inn. Julia’s breath caught as her hand encountered the solid presence of the newel post. When she stopped shaking, she bolted up the stairs, down the hall and popped into her room, slamming the bolt in place. She leaned against the door, gasping for breath.

Silly, silly fool. As if retrieving her very own reticule were a crime. And yet…all those men in the common room. With plenty of vacant rooms above stairs. Local men…holding a meeting of some kind. And if that was not Jack Harding’s voice…

As Julia struggled with the buttons of her gown, the memory of Nicholas’ fingers moving button by button, down her back came crashing back with poignant pain.
Oh, God, Nicholas, how could you leave me?
”

Cold, so cold. A shiver racked her body. Julia climbed into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. But Nicholas lurked there as well. Most particularly there. In the dark haven of feather mattress, plump pillows and piles of quilts where she had shown him her love but never spoken the word. Like an idiot, she had let pride stand in her way. Even when they spent that last night before the battle in her bed, she had been unable to admit she had never looked at another man since the day Nicholas Tarleton had ridden into the quadrangle in front of regimental headquarters. One glimpse and her schoolgirl’s mind had likened him to Alexander come to conquer the world.

She had an excuse of course, feeble feminine thing that it was. Unlike most young girls who could suffer their girlish infatuations well protected by kith and kin behind the protective bastion of English etiquette, she had grown to maturity in a sea of young men, her slightest sign of interest in any of them a focal point of speculation from raw recruits to grizzled sergeants and smirking young officers. She had quickly learned not to wear her heart on her sleeve. Most particularly, with Major Nicholas Tarleton. Even at their most intimate moment she had known he did not love her and so she had remained silent one too many times. If God granted him life, she vowed she would not make such a foolish mistake a second time. He had given her his name, a home and considerable wealth. The least she could have done was admit that she loved him.

Once again, gleaming green eyes and a sardonic grin intruded on her thoughts. Jack Harding’s somber portrait of Lincolnshire could not be at all what Nicholas had planned for them. And the words—the mysterious, somehow chilling words—she had overheard in the common room? She had not understood them but they were never meant for her ears.

Nicholas…Nicholas…I need you, Nicholas!

Chapter Five

“I won’t!” Julia cried, slapping Ebadiah Woodworthy’s letter onto the library desk as if she were swatting a fly. “How dare he? I won’t have some dried up old spinster dictating what I may and may not do.” Julia grabbed the letter and quickly scanned it again. “Sophronia Upton,” she mocked. Can you imagine the person who goes with such a name? It is outside of enough. I’ll not have it!”

“But, missus,” Meg O’Callaghan protested, “as much as I wish the devil might fly away with ’im, ’e has the right of it. I may not be a proper maid but I knows well enough that it ain’t right for you to stay in this great ’ouse without a real lady in attendance. Bein’ married won’t save ye from t’ scandalmongers. Them tabbies ’as sharp claws, missus, truly they do.”

“Ebadiah Woodworthy is a mawworm,” Julia declared with feeling, once again tossing the letter to the desk, where it rested on top of the list of cleaning and repairs she had been compiling before the solicitor’s messenger arrived.

The Willows had turned out to be more imposing than she had anticipated. Built of yellow-gray stone, its classical symmetry was softened by a rambling coat of dark green ivy. The graceful tendrils even curled up the sides of the broad front steps, daringly flirting with the pediment adorning the front entrance. Though sadly in need of pruning to keep the rooms from their present funereal shadow, the vines added a certain rakish charm which captured Julia’s heart at once. Mullioned windows, gracious gables and an intriguing variety of tall chimneys added to the picture of a manor house designed for a family of distinguished taste and comfortable fortune. The rear prospect boasted formal gardens descending in broad terraces to a lake where the still blue water was heavily overhung by the graceful trees that gave The Willows its name. Even in the cool gray and white surroundings of winter the house began to dispel some of the newcomers’ fears and alarms. They had come home to the peaceful heart of rural England. And now this! This abomination of a decree.

Julia paced the length of the large, comfortable room, completely ignoring the rows of leather-bound books which had given her such pleasure on first seeing the library. The Willows was hers. Hers. No old witch of a woman was going to take over as mistress here. Sophronia Upton, indeed. Former companion to Laetitia Summerton. Whoever she might be.

Once again, Julia stalked to the cold reaches of the library and back, her frustration heightened by the thick oriental carpet which swallowed what should have been the satisfaction of hearing the angry thump of her feet.

Peters, butler at The Willows for more than thirty years, paused just inside the doorway. “Miss Sophronia Upton,” he announced in stentorian tones.

“Hell and damnation!” Julia muttered under her breath. Quietly, Meg faded into the far corner of the room.

Whatever Julia had envisioned, it was not the lady who was bending her knee in a gracious curtsey. Sophronia Upton was tiny, only the height of her fashionable bonnet allowing her to reach Julia’s earlobe. Although she had experienced a full sixty years of life, her fine auburn hair showed not a hint of gray—betraying a rather charming vanity and a certain skill with dyes—and her fine English complexion could never be described as wrinkled. Her well-cut gown of silver-gray wool trimmed in black braid further proclaimed her good taste. Much chagrined, Julia could only hope she had not been voicing her overheated thoughts aloud as her visitor approached the door.

She recovered herself enough to ask Miss Upton to be seated. “Please forgive our appearance, ma’am, for we are parted from our trunks and have not yet had time to seek out a dressmaker. Our arrival has been so unexpected this is the only room Mrs. Peters has had time to make fit for habitation. I am assured we will have adequate staff shortly but at the moment I fear this is the best we can offer.”

After expressing her condolences on the death of Julia’s father and her sympathy and grave concern for one who, Miss Upton declared, had been the apple of his Aunt Laetitia’s eye, she added quite frankly, “I am well aware that I am intruding. If I had not had a letter from Mr. Woodworthy, I assure you I would not have been so gauche as to arrive on your first day at The Willows. May I assume you also have received a letter from him?”

Julia bit back the first response that came to mind and politely confirmed Miss Upton’s question.

For some moments Sophronia Upton studied her hostess’ struggle for composure. So…she had not been wrong about the stormy features she had seen as she first entered the room. “I must tell you, my child,” said Miss Upton with a tart edge to her voice, “I am no more pleased by this turn of events than you. I am quite happily retired to my cottage and my herbs. I had no thought to set myself up as chaperone to a young chit who has followed the drum and shall undoubtedly cut up my peace quite dreadfully. Nevertheless…”

As Julia drew breath to protest this insult, she realized there was no possible reply to Sophronia Upton’s candid assessment of the situation. With the wind taken out of her sails, she closed her mouth and sat back, regarding Miss Upton with some fascination.

“Nevertheless,” Miss Upton continued briskly, “as much as I dislike admitting
That Man
is right about anything, I feel it my duty to return to The Willows. A young woman of your tender years, married though you may be, requires a companion to lend her countenance. You would be nothing but scandal broth else. Since you seem a capable chit and will scarcely be entertaining during your period of mourning, I believe I may be able to continue with my own interests, leaving you to manage the household. If this meets with your approval, I shall remove to The Willows on the morrow.”

When Miss Upton paused at last for breath, her eyes widened as she fully took in the state of her hostess’s dark blue gown. Although Sophronia Upton had impeccable manners when she chose to use them, they seemed quite forgotten as she swung her head toward Meg O’Callaghan and raised a quizzing glass, surveying the maid’s even more disreputable attire with bland leisure. “I believe I indicated I did not wish to intrude on your life,” said Miss Upton, allowing the glass to fall into her lap, “but perhaps you might wish me to suggest a local seamstress?”