To Taste Temptation (Legend of the Four Soldiers #1)(41)

Behind him, Vale swore.

“All right back there?” Sam drawled.

“Fine. Enjoying the quaint scenery,” the viscount shot back.

Sam grinned. They climbed a series of stairs, and then he led the way to Allen’s room. It was much as it had been before—smelly and small. Ned Allen lay in a corner, reduced to a bundle of rags.

Sam sighed and approached the man. The smell grew worse as he neared.

“Good God,” Vale muttered as he followed. He toed Allen. “Stinking drunk.”

“I don’t think so.” Sam hunkered by the prone man and rolled him to his back. The man turned all of apiece, as if he were made of wood. A knife stuck out of his chest, the handle made of white bone. “He’s dead.”

Vale crouched beside him and stared. “Damn me.”

“No doubt.” Sam rose swiftly and wiped his hands against his breeches.

The room was suddenly too small, too close, too smelly. He turned, stumbling, and nearly ran from the room. He tumbled ungracefully down the stairs and out into the light. Even this grimy courtyard was better than the death room upstairs. Sam took deep breaths, trying to still the rolling nausea in his belly, aware as he made his way back into the narrow alleyway that Vale clattered behind him.

“He could’ve been killed by anyone, living in this cesspit,” the viscount panted.

“Maybe.” Sam felt a grudging gratitude that the other man didn’t mention his ignoble retreat. “Or perhaps I was followed here before. The man who was trailing me had a bone-handled knife.”

Vale sighed. “Then Sergeant Allen must’ve known something.”

“Christ.” Sam stopped. “I should’ve come back sooner.”

Vale looked at him a moment and then tipped his head back to stare at the small patch of blue overhead. “There were so many.”

Sam stared. “What?”

“Do you remember Tommy Pace?”

A memory of a young lad—too young to have told the truth about his age—came to Sam. Freckled cheeks, dark hair, a small wiry frame.

“He used to pretend to shave,” Vale said dreamily. “Did you know that? He probably had all of three whiskers on his chin, and every morning he’d be stropping his razor, so proud.”

“He won the razor off Ted Barnes.”

“No.” Vale looked at him. “I didn’t know that.”

Sam nodded. “In a card game. It was part of the reason Tommy was so proud of the thing.”

Vale chuckled. “And Barnes had such a heavy beard. That’s irony for you.”

There was silence as they both contemplated this old gossip. A rodent scurried into the shadows near a doorway.

“And now they’re both dust in the ground,” Vale said softly, “along with all the rest.”

There was nothing to say to that, so Sam pivoted and resumed walking back to the carriage.

Vale strolled a little behind him. The alley wasn’t wide enough for two men to walk abreast.

“If they were betrayed, we’ll avenge them. All of them,” Vale said conversationally.

Sam nodded, keeping his eyes straight ahead.

“Where do we go now?” Vale asked.

“Dick Thornton. Perhaps he’s returned to his place of work. We need to question him.”

“Glad you agree.” The viscount whistled a few merry notes and then cut himself off. “Did you see MacDonald’s body, by the way?”

“No.” They rounded the corner, and the carriage came into view, the footmen and driver standing around it looking nervous. “I never went back. I was too busy running to Fort Edward and then guiding the detachment with the ransom. That was one of the things I wanted to ask Allen: who among the regiment survived?”

Vale nodded, probably busy with his own terrible memories as they made their way back to where the carriage waited.

The footmen looked relieved when they came into sight. Vale nodded to his men, and Sam entered the carriage and settled into the seat across from the viscount. The carriage lurched forward.

“Did I ever thank you?” Vale asked. He was watching out the window, apparently engrossed in the dismal neighborhood.

“Yes,” Sam lied. In fact, Vale had been in shock by the time the rescue party had ransomed the surviving officers at the Wyandot Indian camp. All of the captured men had run the gauntlet—a double line of whooping Indian men and women who had pummeled the victim as he ran by. Then, too, from what Sam heard, Vale had been made to watch St. Aubyn’s death and the torture of Munroe and the others. Vale had been in no condition to thank anyone when they’d eventually rescued him.

Vale was frowning now. “So we only have Thornton’s word that MacDonald is dead.”

Sam looked at him. “Yes.”

“Look here, if anyone had a reason to make sure the regiment never got to Fort Edward, it was MacDonald.” Vale sat forward. “The man was in chains as we marched.”

“He would’ve been hung at the fort,” Sam said. “Rape and murder. His court-martial would’ve been very short.”

MacDonald had been a nasty piece of work. He and another soldier named Brown had looted a French settler’s cabin, raping and killing the settler’s wife when she surprised them. Unfortunately for MacDonald and his companion, the French settler’s wife had turned out to be an Englishwoman—and the sister of a British colonel. Looting and rape were hanging offenses, but ones that some officers might turn a blind eye to, as long as they weren’t wholesale. The rape and murder of an Englishwoman was a crime that couldn’t be swept under the rug. There had been a hunt within the British army, and soon soldiers had come forward with the information that Brown had drunkenly boasted of the crime. Once under arrest, Brown had soon betrayed MacDonald, and both men had been marching in chains when the 28th Regiment of Foot had been attacked.