Tarleton's Wife Read Free Page A

nay.”
    Behind the major Lieutenant Prentice threw in his hand and rose from the table. Julia’s stomach lurched.
    There was no time left for foolish pride. She gritted her teeth and kept her voice as calm and neutral as she could. Hysterics might be expected from a lesser woman but from Julia Litchfield the major obviously demanded sterner self-discipline. She raised her eyes to his. Summer blue to winter ice. “If there is anything at all you can suggest, Major, I would be exceedingly grateful for your help.”
    Nicholas Tarleton had not seen Lieutenant Prentice leave the game but he heard the sudden murmur of the crowd followed by Colonel Litchfield’s call for more wine. He glanced over his shoulder at the empty chair, then swept his gaze over the expectant faces of his officers, every last damn one of them looking in his direction.
    And what in all that was holy was he supposed to do with her if he won?
    With a sigh he did not bother to disguise, Major Nicholas Tarleton stood and walked the few steps to the gaming table. “Gentlemen,” he murmured, quietly polite, “may I join you?”
     
    Julia sat with her back to the wall, her eyes alternating between the hands gripped tightly together in her lap and Nicholas Tarleton’s face. The room was filled with the pungent odor of Spanish cigars and officers whose only baths in two months had been during their struggle to keep from drowning while crossing Spanish rivers.
    To Julia Litchfield it was the dreamtime. She was somewhere far away. Somewhere safe and warm. The Julia sitting in this ornate room in a Spanish casa while a group of British officers gamed away her fate was merely an effigy. A rag doll. A useless, spineless thing incapable of sound or movement. Or protest.
    As if from a great height, she could see herself, sitting there, head bowed. Beaten. Her only hope a man who would have come to the aid of his horse as readily as he had to her. Julia shoved her knuckles in her mouth to stifle a sob. At least the major still had a horse. They’d taken her beautiful Astarte and all the other horses which weren’t to be used in tomorrow’s battle, driven them down to the beach and shot them. She’d hear the terrified screams for the rest of her life.
    She couldn’t move…couldn’t think. Through a swirl of cigar smoke, stirred by a breeze that whipped around the heavy draperies covering the shattered windows, Nicholas’ face was suddenly clear. Strong and determined. A soldier’s face.
    Nicholas Tarleton, she knew, didn’t have to be in this war any more than he had to be at the gaming table playing for her life and honor. The son of a successful solicitor in York, he had never had to live solely on his pay but after inheriting his aunt’s estate a few months earlier he could have sold out at any time. Julia had sat, wide-eyed, at the dinner table when her father asked his aide-de-camp why he chose to stay in the army. The major’s reply was as simple as it was inexorable. He’d fought Boney since he was a raw ensign withstanding the siege at Acre. As long as Napoleon Bonaparte was on the march, Nicholas Tarleton would stand and fight.
    Julia—long accustomed to being the darling of the regiment—found Nicholas Tarleton as baffling as he was intriguing. The last thing she wished to do was aggravate him but, inevitably, she did just that. At times she could almost see him ticking off her bad points. She was too competent, too independent. Too tall. Her riding habit was too tight, her ball gown too décolleté. She walked like a man and rode like the devil. When the men gave a huzzah for her horsemanship, the major was sourly sitting his horse waiting for her to break her neck.
    Yet he dined with them each night. In England, in Portugal. Even on the march through Spain. Until those final awful days when cold and starvation reigned and civilization was lost.
    Had Nicholas noticed the feelings she tried so hard to hide? Did he realize she suffered the