To Taste Temptation (Legend of the Four Soldiers #1)(57)

“How do you thank a man for doing that?” Jasper asked. “He ran until his feet blistered. Ran until the blisters broke and bled. An’ then kept running.”

“Dear Lord,” Emeline whispered. She’d had no idea. They were at Jasper’s rooms now, and she knew that it wasn’t proper for her to go in, but she couldn’t very well leave him in the hallway. And it was Jasper, for goodness’ sake. He was as close a thing to a brother that she had in this world anymore.

Emeline reached for the doorknob but was saved by the door opening. Pynch, Jasper’s burly valet, stood in the doorway, absolutely expressionless. “Might I assist you, my lady?”

“Oh, thank you, Pynch.” Emeline gratefully handed over her inebriated fiancé. “Can you see to him?”

“Of course, my lady.” If Pynch had shown an expression, it might have been affront, but really it was impossible to tell.

“Thank you.” Emeline was indecently relieved to leave Jasper to Pynch’s care. She flicked a smile at the valet and then hurried back down the stairs.

It was imperative that she find Samuel.

NIGHT WAS FALLING. The sky had taken on that shade of pewter that heralded the end of the day’s light.

And still Sam ran.

He’d been running for hours. Long enough to have reached exhaustion. Long enough to have passed exhaustion into a second wind. Long enough to have lost that wind and simply be enduring now. His body moved in the repetitive rhythm of a machine. Except that machines did not feel despair. However long he ran, he could not outrun his thoughts.

A soldier dead by suicide. To have made it through all the battles, the marching, the rotten food, the cold of winter with inadequate clothing, the diseases that periodically swept the regiment. To make it through all that alive and whole, a near miracle, one of the few to survive the massacre intact. To come home to a neat little cottage and a loving wife. It should’ve all been over. The soldier come home, the war lost to history, and stories by a winter fire. And yet Craddock had stood on a stool, looped a rope about his neck, and kicked the stool away.

Why? That was the question that Sam couldn’t outrun. Why, when you’d already cheated death, why go willingly into her withered arms? Why now?

His breath caught as he crested a hill, his legs trembling with fatigue, his feet slicing with pain with each step. Dark had settled now on the fields he ran through, and he didn’t like it. With each footfall there came the real possibility that he might step wrong. Hit a rabbit hole or rock and fall. But he must not fall. He had to keep running because others depended on him. If he stopped, then his reason for running in the first place would be false. He’d be a coward, merely fleeing a battle. He wasn’t a coward. He’d survived battle. He’d killed men, both white and Indian. He’d come through the war and become a gentleman, a man of means and respect. Others depended on him; others nodded gravely at his opinions. Hardly anyone accused him of cowardliness anymore—at least not to his face.

Sam stumbled, his left foot catching. But he didn’t go down. He didn’t fall. Instead, he half whirled, sobbing with pain, the stars overhead blurring.

Keep running. Don’t give up.

Craddock had given up. Craddock had succumbed to the blackness that seeped into his mind in odd moments, the nightmares that tore apart his sleep, the thoughts that he could not keep away. Craddock slept now. Peacefully. Without nightmares or fear for his own soul. Craddock was at rest.

Don’t give up.

EMELINE DIDN’T KNOW what woke her late that night. Certainly Samuel moved without a sound, silent and secretive like a cat returning home from the hunt. But she woke nevertheless when he entered his room.

She straightened in the chair by the fireplace. “Where have you been?”

He didn’t seem startled to see her in his room. His face was pale and unreadable in the candlelight as he walked toward her, oddly stiff. She looked down. Dark stains on the carpet followed his footsteps. She almost took him to task for not wiping the mud from his feet, but then she understood. And in that moment came fully awake.

“Oh, dear Lord, what have you done?” She stood and grabbed his arm, thrusting him urgently into the chair she’d occupied. “You stupid, stupid man!” She whirled to pile more coal on the fire, then brought a candle closer. “What have you done? What could have possessed you?”

She closed her mouth because what she saw in the candlelight nearly made her ill. He’d run through his moccasins. They were merely tattered leather strips about his feet. And his feet, dear God, his feet. They were nothing more than bloody rags, the stumps that Jasper had told her about only hours ago. But now they were real and in front of her. She looked wildly about the room. There was water, but it wasn’t hot, and where could she find cloth to use as bandages? She started for the door, but his hand flashed out to catch her arm.

“Stay.”

His voice was guttural, raspy with exhaustion, but his eyes had focused on her. “Stay.”

How many miles had he run? “I need to get water and bandages.”

He shook his head. “I want you to stay.”

She pulled away from him roughly. “And I don’t want you to die of infection!”

Emeline was scowling down at him, and she knew the fear showed in her eyes. But despite her harsh tone and unlovely face, he smiled. “Then come back to me.”