Her curtsey never reached its full depth, frozen by the waves of antagonism emanating from her guests. Julia straightened to her full eight inches over five feet and held her ground like the well-trained soldier she was.
“So you are here at last,” Ramsey Tarleton boomed. “Your appearance, missy, confirms my doubts. You are not to Nicholas’ taste. Not his sort of woman at all. Is she, Oliver?”
The major’s brother favored Julia with a sly grin. “Not in the least, Father. Accredited beauties only, that was Nick.”
“Woodworthy tells me he has examined your papers,” Ramsey Tarleton continued, “but I have come to do it for myself. Havey-cavey business, this. Can’t believe Nicholas would be such a damn fool.”
Miss Upton swelled with indignation as she charged to Julia’s defense. “Mr. Tarleton!” she snapped, “your mode of introduction is quite beyond the pale. Perhaps these manners will do in York but they are not acceptable here. You may recall that we have met in the past. I am Miss Sophronia Upton, companion to your wife’s aunt and now to this young woman, Julia Tarleton, your son’s wife. You are guests in her home and I’ll thank you to remember it.”
“Whether or not it is her home remains to be seen,” Mr. Tarleton snapped, unaffected by Miss Upton’s rebuke. “I’ll see those papers, missy.”
Though Nicholas had seldom mentioned his family, Julia had not expected a reception of this nature. Tears, acceptance into the family fold, possibly even love and warmth. Never this implacable hostility. As she had done so many times in the past, Julia gathered her courage about her.
“Peters,” she said to the shocked butler, “have Meg bring my packet of legal papers here at once.” She turned back to her father-in-law. “Although I do not acknowledge you have any legal right to examine the papers, Mr. Tarleton, I offer them as a courtesy to Nicholas’ parents. I am truly sorry you doubt me, for I had hoped our relationship would be amicable.”
With great dignity Julia and Sophy Upton crossed the room to seat themselves in chairs facing the Tarleton family. Into the awkward silence Pamela Tarleton ventured, “I am gratified to see you are wearing mourning, Mi…Mrs…” At her inability to find a proper means of address for Julia, Mrs. Tarleton’s voice died away in confusion.
Meg O’Callaghan came into the room. Walking with head held high, she sank to the floor before her mistress in the most formal curtsey of her life. Silently, she held out the battered leather pouch.
As Ramsey Tarleton finished reading each document, it was snatched up by his son, who frowned over it as if he were certain of detecting telltale signs of forgery. The ladies made no further efforts at conversation. Mrs. Tarleton sat with one gloved hand pressed to her mouth, while Julia and Sophy waited, outwardly calm, betraying no sign of the extreme agitation each was experiencing.
As Mr. Woodworthy had done, Ramsey Tarleton questioned the multitude of signatures on the marriage certificate, his eyes dropping as he acknowledged that his son’s scrawl could be verified by a rather startling number of living witnesses. And, as Woodworthy had already informed him, even if the marriage were not verifiable, the girl had every right to occupy The Willows as Nicholas’ ward. It was to be hoped, Ebadiah Woodworthy had pronounced with great unctuousness, that the major would be back among them before she reached her majority. In any event, they had no recourse but to wait.
Ramsey Tarleton eyed Julia with distaste. “It seems we must acknowledge you,” he said grudgingly. “Though why my son let himself be trapped into such a quixotic gesture I cannot fathom.”
“Noblesse oblige,” murmured Oliver Tarleton nastily. “And my dear brother was the noblest of them all.”
“At least this travesty can be annulled if Nicholas returns,” said Ramsey Tarleton with some satisfaction. He gave Julia a sharp glance. “At least I presume there is no impediment to an annulment. Or is it too much to hope you did not anticipate the wedding?”
Julia had seldom experienced true rage. The power of it—all the worse as the crude accusation was true—nearly froze her to her chair. Slowly, regally, she struggled to her feet, fighting to gain enough breath to speak. “Because you are Nicholas’ father, I shall make a very great effort to forget you ever said that. And now, you will please leave.” She stalked to the bell pull and nearly broke it from the wall as she rang for Peters.
Meg O’Callaghan rushed to pick up the papers Oliver Tarleton had scattered on the floor. No one would ever know how closely she had watched to make sure none of them disappeared into someone’s pocket.
“We are staying at The Bell and Candle,” Ramsey Tarleton said, accepting his dismissal with grim formality, “and will return to York tomorrow. This is not the end of the matter, missy, but for the moment we will allow things to remain as they are.” A spasm passed across his stern features, allowing Julia a fleeting glimpse of his personal pain. “I take it you do not hold much hope for my son’s life?”
Julia faced him squarely, reminding herself this was the man who had given Nicholas life. In her letter to the Tarletons she had detailed the arrangements made for Nicholas but she could not, in good conscience, offer false hope. “I must tell you that any hope I have is merely wishful thinking. There is only the very slightest possibility Nicholas still lives.”
For a brief moment Ramsey Tarleton allowed his head to fall forward, shielding his steel gray eyes from view. His shoulders drooped into a feeble caricature of the irascible domineering solicitor from York. He followed Peters from the room, paying no heed to the wife and son he left behind.
With a sauntering swagger Oliver Tarleton followed his father out but not before reexamining Julia with an insolent leer. Pamela Tarleton scurried in Oliver’s wake but paused, with unexpected daring, halfway across the room. She regarded Julia with eyes brimming with tears. “I suppose…is it possible…are you increasing, my child?” This open defiance of the men in her family obviously cost her a good deal. Her lips quivered and she looked as if she might swoon at any moment.
Meg and Sophy gasped in dismay. Human though it was, Pamela Tarleton could not have fashioned a more ill-timed question.
“No,” Julia choked out. “No, ma’am, I’m sorry. Indeed I am not.”
Hope drained from Pamela Tarleton’s face, leaving her once again the faded, ineffectual mate of a tyrannical husband. Wiping tears from her eyes, she meekly followed her husband and son from the room.
“That miserable cur Oliver must have been the heir!” Miss Upton exploded the minute the drawing room door shut behind their visitors. “That would explain it. Don’t you see, my dear, Nicholas’ new will cut him out. The infamy of it! The major dead or dying and all they care about is the estate.”
“’Tis the way of the world,” said Meg with a shake of her head. “The major ’avin’ a missus must ’a’ come a real shock to ’em.”
“I suppose we are no more alone than we’ve always been,” said Julia with a sigh, “but I had hoped…”
“A family like that you do not need,” Sophy declared with asperity. “Miss Laetitia never could stand them. Had them here only once. Never invited them again.”
“It would be nice…” Julia’s voice trailed away.
“What, my dear?” Miss Upton asked.
“If Nicholas came back and put them all to rout.”
“Amen to that,” breathed Meg with considerable fervor.
That night, The Nightmare came again.
* * * * *
“So wot’s t’ be done?” Meg demanded of Daniel, agitation plunging her accent back to the depths of the London stews. “Four times in a fortnight t’ demons ’av come to ’er. Miz Upton, fer all ’er ’erbs ’n’ suchlike, don’ know wot t’ do neither.”
As had become their custom, Meg and Daniel were seated on a cold marble bench in a far corner of the garden lit this night by nothing more than the glow of a springtime half-moon. Daniel had slipped effortlessly into the unofficial position of major domo to the household, sparing the aging Peters a number of
his more active chores and generally acting as Julia’s go-between with the cottagers and, most particularly, with The Willow’s estate agent Louis Tyler. Tyler, following Ebadiah Woodworthy’s lead, had left no doubt about his disinterest in communicating with a nineteen-year-old female of doubtful origin.
To Julia’s secret amusement and Meg’s chagrin, Daniel also took keen pleasure in his additional duty of keeping abreast of county news by frequent trips to The Bell and Candle. In addition to the boon of this not-so-onerous chore Daniel received an ample salary from Julia’s own purse, Julia being unwilling to hazard Daniel’s nebulous position in the household with an appeal to Mr. Woodworthy’s notoriously stingy pockets.
“The poor girl needs a babe of her own,” said Daniel, stating the obvious in reply to Meg’s despairing question. “It might be she’ll have to suffer her demons until she marries again.”
Meg gave him a good clip on the shoulder. “A great help you are, Dan Runyon. And when will that day come, I ask y’? Poor girl don’t know whether the major be alive or dead. And w’out knowin’ ’e’s dead, she can’t remarry. And bein’ a proper lady, w’out no ’usband there’s no baby.”
“That’s as may be. I don’t doubt Jack Harding would be willing to offer his services,” said Daniel with a wicked grin and a quick squeeze for his companion.
“Go away with you! Nasty minded Paddy that you are, Dan Runyon. ’Tis not a jokin’ matter. We must find some way o’ cheerin’ ’er up.”
“And so we will, me darlin’,” Daniel soothed. Though devoted to the missus, he was finding it difficult to keep his mind on Julia’s problems with the warmth of Meg’s soft body close to his. “But not just this minute, sweeting,” he murmured. “Give me time to think on it.” He slid his hand up under her cloak, snuggling Meg into a close embrace, one large hand closing over her breast as his mouth found hers. His hand kept up a rhythmic pulse on the full softness of her as his mouth traced a series of kisses along her cheek, up to her brow. His teeth nipped at her earlobe, lips softly brushing away the hurt. Descending to nuzzle her neck before capturing her mouth in a kiss, which deepened until his plunging tongue entangled with hers, pulsing, demanding…
Two determined hands broke the perfect meld of their bodies. Two competent feminine hands shoved hard against his chest, clearing a gap which filled with a chilling rush of night air. Daniel leaned forward into a futile pursuit of Meg’s lips before breaking off with an oath and renewal of an old argument. “Devil take it, me darlin’. If we was still on the march, you’d have been in my bed the night after your man was gone. It’s more’n two months now. Why do you keep puttin’ me off?”
“You call what we’ve been doin’ puttin’ you off?” Meg cried. “I call it all the lovin’ y’r goin’ to get, Dan Runyon! For we are not on the march and I’ve no need for a protector. I c’n be a decent woman for once in my life and be as proper as the missus. Well…nearly so,” she added in all fairness.
The pride of an Irishman was at stake, Daniel reasoned. Not to mention he was rare fond of the girl. His hand smoothed its way downward, trailing from her breast, over her quivering belly to her thighbone. Questing fingers crept softly over the folds of her skirt into the inner crevice of her most private self. Cupping her through the thin fabric, he murmured against her mouth, “Now tell me again you don’t want me, my girl.”
Meg flung his hand away, gaining her feet in one fluid motion. “I’ve told you, Dan Runyon, I’ll be no man’s hoor,” she spat at him. “Not ever again. My Sean knew me for what I once wus and loved me true despite it. When you’re man enough to offer somethin’ more than the point of your sword, I’ll think on walkin’ out with you again.” A sob broke through her anger. She was seven kinds of a fool! Didn’t they all know Dan Runyon was being well satisfied by the barmaid at The Bell and Candle? What need did he have to pursue a prickly widow who’d lost three children and had the nerve to demand a wedding ring as the price for warming his bed. Meg backed away, Dan’s dejected image swimming through her tears. She turned and bolted for the house as if the hounds of hell were after her. As perhaps they were. Surely the good Lord should not have made it so hard to resist the temptations of the flesh.
* * * * *
It was not The Nightmare. No skeletons stretched bony fingers from a golden frame. No soundless monster carts came crashing through the walls. No ice-blue breasts or anguished brown eyes. No sad wailing of a babe born in the midst of a frozen hell.
There was light and warmth, a certainty of rightness in the world. A breath tickled her ear. Almost…almost there were words. Faint murmurings of love and caring. A touch. But no fear. The touch of a lover. Gentle lips…hands, softly lingering, moving ever downward. A fierce deliciousness stirred lovingly remembered passions…
In a few moments suspended between dreaming and waking, Julia thought she saw him. Nicholas. A not-quite amorphous shadow, his strong features softened by passion, his smile wondrously sweet. She came fully awake with a start, sitting up and clutching the bed covers about her as she tried to understand this ghostly visitation. Did not shades haunt the place where they died? So how could Nicholas walk here? She shoved up the cuff of her muslin nightgown and gazed at the hairs on her arm. They were standing on end as they were wont to do in every ghostly tale she had ever heard. Her body believed in ghosts, even as her head clung to the surety that she had conjured Nicholas out of her own vivid rememberings.
Why had Nicholas come now and not before? He had been gone from her life. She’d felt no sense of him at all. No fey hint that he still existed. No communion of souls, living or dead. He was, quite simply, gone. Leaving a great gaping void in her life. She had willed herself not to think of their last days together as the memory was far too painful, deliberately cocooning herself against all recollection of him. And now this. This benign beautiful spirit. Come to do what? To save her from her nightmare? To tell her she was free to love again?
To show that he still lived? Still lived. Impossible. A living Nicholas was not fanciful, not a person whose spirit would travel such a great distance to be with her.
But surely, by all the laws of hauntings, a dead Nicholas should not have walked here in Lincolnshire.
The warmth lingered. The damp chill of the April night was just beginning to penetrate the cozy unnatural warmth that suffused her body. Her dream had been filled with love, warmth and light. Dead or alive, Nicholas was with her. A loving wraith who would let no harm come to her. At that moment she was absolutely certain of it.
Julia settled back into bed, snuggling into her pillow in the wistful hope the vision might come again. What came to her was the sound of unusual activity penetrating the heavy oaken door of her bedchamber. She lay quite still, listening. No ghostly presence, this but furtive movement and whisperings in the hallway where a sliver of light showed under her door. Julia bounded out of bed, scrambling for her slippers and robe. She was still thrusting one arm through a sleeve as she cracked open the door. All was quiet, the hallway deserted.
No, she had not dreamed it! With a sigh of annoyance Julia tied her robe tightly around her before groping her way back to the small chest of drawers near her bed, where she lit a candle, waiting impatiently for its flame to settle into a steady glow. Then, still warmed by Nicholas’ love and oddly restored to her position as the confident, strong-willed daughter of the regiment, she set out to discover what was going on.
Sophronia Upton’s bed was empty. The covers, hastily put aside, told their own tale. If someone had come for Sophy in the middle of the night, the reason was probably medical. And very likely desperate. And where better to put an injured person than near the source of the medical supplies?
Julia approached the stillroom with caution, moving softly along the ground floor hallway. The door was partially open, the room in total darkness. Shielding her candle with her hand, she moved forward, ears straining for any sound. A soft murmur drifted along the chill hallway. Only two doors away was the housekeeper’s
sitting room and office. Julia put her ear to the door and was rewarded by the rise and fall of agitated discussion. Perhaps it was the afterglow of Nicholas’ presence, or merely that she relished this disturbance in the inactivity of her new life but as she put her hand on the doorknob, she was more fully alive than at any time since her night in Nicholas’ arms. Whatever crisis lurked inside, she welcomed it.
She threw open the door and walked in.
Chapter Seven
Six pairs of eyes stared at her in horror. One pair belonged to a man stretched full-length upon Mrs. Peters’ sofa, his face obscured by a black cloth which covered all but his forehead and two shockingly green eyes. Blood seeped through a compress over a wound to his left shoulder. The two roughly dressed men hovering over the sofa were unknown to her. The other three—Sophy Upton, Matthew and Jane Peters—gaped at her in consternation.
“How could ye, missus? Have ye no shame?” roared one of the strangers, the more burly of the two. “Lettin’ on you wus our friend, then betrayin’ us all?”
“Here’s money, you sez,” the second man mocked. “Break our frames, you sez. Come and be ’anged, more like! Waitin’ for us, they wus. The sojers. It’s certain they knew, all right. Just waitin’ fer us t’ come t’ the cottages.”
“Be quiet! Both of you.” The harsh whisper came from the masked man on the sofa.
“I fear it’s true, ma’am,” Peters chimed in, his voice a dignified blend of regret and apology. “When the captain and his men came to our cottages, the militia was waiting for them. There can be no doubt someone betrayed them.”
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