Tarleton's Wife Read Free Page B

horrible humiliation of loving someone who cared not a whit in return?
    Julia ducked her head, firmed her chin. Nothing mattered. Nothing mattered but being safe from the degradation she saw yawning before her.
    And safe meant Major Nicholas Tarleton.
     
    Nicholas knew he should be losing. Joining the game had been a quixotic gesture fully as futile as tilting at windmills. He could not expect to win against hardened gamesters who spent their evenings at play while Major Tarleton tended the regiment. He was an idiot. Fit only for Bedlam.
    But somehow, after two hours of play, he was winning. The crowd of officers had settled themselves into more comfortable positions, some sprawled in chairs, most lounging on the floor, smoking cigars, drinking port straight from the bottle, taking their eyes off the play only long enough for occasional glances at the white-faced girl still sitting primly in the shadows, hands clasped in her lap. It was a nearly frozen tableau, the only signs of life the slap of the cards, the clink of coins, the tilt of bottles, the drift of cigar smoke blown by icy currents of air.
    Nicholas was not sure just when he realized why he was winning. Luck might have had a hand in it but he doubted it. Colonel Francis Litchfield, with deft and devious assistance from Captain Miles Bannister, controlled the play with so fine a subtlety that had Nicholas not been aware of his own lack of expertise at cards, he might have been gulled into fancying himself a hero. It was nearing two in the morning when Colonel Sedgwick broke the silence with a snarled oath and covered his bet with a scribbled note of hand.
    Calmly, Julia’s father picked up the note and held it out to the infantry colonel. “Sorry, Arthur, no notes. Who’s to say we’ll be alive to settle our debts tomorrow?”
    “Damn it, man, you know we’ve not seen a paymaster in weeks!”
    “You may withdraw, Sedgwick,” said Colonel Litchfield firmly. “This wager must be settled now. Else we’ll still be sitting here when Soult’s batteries open up in the morning.”
    A general murmur of approval swept through the room. Lt. Colonel Sedgwick stood so abruptly his chair tumbled backward to the floor. Julia flinched, her numbed mind scarcely able to accept that Sedgwick had been banished.
    After two more desultory rounds in which Nicholas’ pile of gold coins increased still further, Miles Bannister produced an elaborate yawn, stretched his stiffened shoulders and long slender fingers. From inside his weathered green jacket he withdrew a leather pouch and carefully stowed away his unusually modest pile of winnings before pushing his chair back from the table.
    “You must excuse me, gentlemen,” he murmured. “I have enjoyed the game but—with all respect to Miss Julia—I’ve no taste for wedlock. Nor she for me.” He tipped her a salute, his lips twitching in a fleeting smile. “And, besides, she’s far too good a shot. I’d be dead in a week.”
    The guffaw which greeted this sally was louder than the humor deserved. Tension escalated to new heights. As Captain Bannister exited the room, all eyes turned toward Colonel Litchfield. Had his wager been in earnest? If so, he too could declare himself out, the game ended, Nicholas Tarleton the winner. But if Julia had been only a convenient stake in a high risk game of chance… If the colonel were more interested in the major’s gold…
    At eight and forty Francis Litchfield was still a fine figure of a man. From under hair only lightly salted by gray, clear blue eyes—Julia’s eyes—pinned the major to his chair. The colonel had no doubt about his own future. As surely as he was sitting there, he would not live through the morrow.
    “Do you accept the terms of the wager, Major?” Litchfield inquired, every inch the colonel of a crack regiment of riflemen. “Or must we play on?”
    Tarleton glared right back. They might have been strangers meeting for the first time. “I do not accept