To Taste Temptation (Legend of the Four Soldiers #1)(54)

“He was a good husband?”

“Yes.” She smiled. “He drank and gambled sometimes, but all men do. And he used to give me presents, pay me the loveliest compliments.”

“The marriage sounds ideal.” His voice was even.

“It was.” Was he jealous?

He stopped and faced her, and she saw it wasn’t jealousy in his eyes at all. “Then why, after an ideal, loving first marriage, do you want a loveless second one?”

She gasped, feeling as if he’d hit her. She raised her own hand, almost without realizing it, either in defense or to strike him back, but he caught her fist and pulled it aside, leaving her unshielded.

“Why, Emeline?”

“That’s none of your business.” Her voice shook no matter how hard she fought to control it.

“I think it is, my lady.”

“Someone will come,” she hissed. The path was deserted, save for themselves, but she knew it wouldn’t stay that way for long. “Let me go.”

“You lied to me.” He ignored her plea, pushing his face with his analytical eyes toward her. “You did love him.”

“Yes! I loved him and he died and left me.” Her breath caught on the traitorous words. “He left me all alone.”

He still looked at her as if he could see inside her head to pick apart her very soul. “Emeline—”

“No.” She tore away from him and ran.

Ran up the garden path and away from Samuel as if she were fleeing from demons.

THE DAY HAD turned gray by the time Sam and Lord Vale rode out early the next afternoon. Sam shivered atop his borrowed horse and hoped that there wouldn’t be rain on the trip home. He hadn’t been able to talk to Emeline all morning. Whenever he saw her, she’d made sure to be in the company of someone else. Her refusal to let him talk out their troubles bothered him. He’d touched a raw spot the night before in the garden, he knew. She had loved her first husband. In fact, Sam had the feeling that Emeline was capable of deep, unwavering love.

And maybe that was the problem. How many times could she give that kind of love and lose it without eventually feeling the effect? He imagined her a fire, banking itself, conserving its embers by burning low so that it might not go out altogether. It would take a determined man to stir those flames again.

Sam’s horse shook its head, jingling the bridle, and he returned his thoughts to the present. He and Vale were riding to the nearby town of Dryer’s Green where Corporal Craddock lived. Vale had been uncharacteristically silent as they’d procured their horses and jogged up the long drive to the main road.

When they reached the wrought-iron gate that stood at the drive’s end, Vale spoke. “Your aim was impressive all day yesterday. I think you hit a bull’s-eye on every shot.”

Sam looked at the other man, wondering at the choice of subjects. Perhaps Vale was only making small talk. “Thank you. You didn’t shoot yourself, I noticed.”

A small muscle jerked in Vale’s jaw. “I had enough of guns and gunfire in the war.”

Sam nodded. That he could understand. Aristocrat or common soldier, there had been far too many experiences in the war that didn’t bear repeating.

Vale glanced at him. “I expect you think me a coward.”

“Far from it.”

“Kind of you.” The other man’s horse shied at a leaf, and for a moment, he tended to the reins. Then he said, “It’s odd; I don’t mind hearing gunfire or smelling the smoke. It’s just holding a gun in my hands. The weight and the feel. Somehow it brings it all back, and the war is real again. Too real.”

Sam didn’t reply. How could one reply to such an observation? At times the war was too real for him, too. Maybe the war still lived for all the soldiers who had returned home—the wounded and the ones who only seemed whole.

They’d turned into the road now, following an ancient hedge along one side, the other side bordered by a drystone wall. Beyond these barriers, the brown and golden fields rolled away into the distance. A party of haymakers was working one field, the women with their skirts gathered to their knees, the men in smocks.

“Did you know Hasselthorpe was in the war, too?” Vale asked suddenly.

Sam glanced at him. “Indeed?” Hasselthorpe didn’t have a particularly military bearing about him.

“Was an aide-de-camp to one of the generals,” Vale said. “Can’t remember which one now.”

“Was he at Quebec?”

“No. I’m not sure he saw any action at all. I don’t think he was in the army very long, anyway, before he inherited.”

Sam nodded. Many aristocrats sought soft commissions in His Majesty’s army. Whether or not they were suited to army life had very little to do with their choice of career.

Their conversation ceased until they’d entered the outskirts of Dryer’s Green some minutes later. It was a bustling little town, the kind that would have a thriving market every week. They passed the smithy and a cobbler’s shop, and an inn came into sight.

“I’m told Honey Lane is just here.” Vale indicated a small road just past the inn.

Sam nodded and turned his horse down the lane. There was only one house here—a mean little cottage, the thatching blackened with age. Sam looked at Vale, his brows raised. The viscount shrugged. Both men dismounted their horses and tied them to low branches near the stone wall that separated the cottage from the road. Vale unlatched the wooden gate, and they marched up the brick walk. The place might’ve once been nice. There were signs of a garden, long neglected now, and the cottage, while small, was well proportioned. Evidently Craddock had fallen on hard times. Or he’d lost the ability to tend to the house.