To Taste Temptation (Legend of the Four Soldiers #1)(59)

She heard him sigh. “He stopped living.”

She glanced up at him. He must be in pain—she was handling his foot quite roughly to get the grit out—but his face was smooth and calm. “What do you mean?”

“Craddock went out less and less until he never left the cottage at all. He’d lost his job long before that point; he’d been a clerk in the village dry grocer’s store. After that, he stopped talking. His wife said he’d sit by the fire and simply stare into it as if mesmerized.”

Emeline set his left foot on a clean rag by her side and tapped his right foot. “This one, please.”

She watched as he lifted the dripping foot onto her lap. She didn’t want to listen to this. Didn’t want to hear about old soldiers who couldn’t come home and live normally. Would Reynaud have been like Mr. Craddock had he lived? Would she have had to watch him slowly eat himself alive? And what about Samuel?

She cleared her throat and picked up a fresh rag. “And?”

“And then he stopped sleeping.”

She frowned and glanced quickly up at him. “How can that be? Everyone must sleep; one has no control over it.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her with such a well of sorrow in his face that she wanted to glance away. Wanted to flee the room and never have to think about wars and the men who had fought in them.

“He suffered from nightmares,” Samuel said.

The fire popped from behind her. He held her gaze. She stared into his eyes, turned black by the firelight, and felt her breasts push against her stays as she breathed in, filling her lungs with air. She didn’t want to know; she truly didn’t. Some things were too awful to imagine, too awful to hold in her soul for the rest of her life. She’d been fine all these years since Reynaud’s death. She’d grieved and railed against fate, and then she’d accepted because she’d had no other choice. To find out now what the war had been like, what it was still like for the men who returned, alive but not whole...It was too much.

Samuel held her gaze. Emeline inhaled again for fortitude and asked, “Do you have nightmares?”

“Yes.”

“What...” She had to stop and clear her throat. “What do you dream about?”

The lines about his mouth grew deeper, more grim. “I dream about the stink of men’s sweat. About bodies—dead bodies—crushing me, their wounds still open, still flowing with bright, red blood even though they are dead. I dream that I am already dead. That I died six years ago and never knew it. That I only think I’m alive, and when I look down, the flesh is rotting from my hands. The bones show through.”

“Oh, God.” She couldn’t bear hearing of his horrible pain.

“That’s not the worst,” he whispered so low she almost didn’t hear.

“What is the worst?”

He closed his eyes as if bracing himself, then said, “That I’ve failed my fellow soldiers. That I’m running through the woods of North America, but I’m not running to fetch help. I’m merely running away. That I’m the coward they call me.”

It was horribly inappropriate, ghastly, really, but she couldn’t help it. She laughed. Emeline stuffed her fist into her open mouth like a little child, trying to stifle the sound, but it broke forth, anyway, loud in the room.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’m sorry.”

But one side of his mouth moved upward as if he almost smiled. He reached down and pulled her into his lap, her skirts dragging through the basin of bloody water. She didn’t care. All she worried about was this man and his hellish nightmares.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured again, dropping the bloody rag. She placed her palm against his face. If she could only absorb his pain into herself, she would. “Oh, Samuel, I’m sorry.”

He stroked her hair. “I know. Why did you laugh?”

She caught her breath at the tenderness in his voice. “It’s so ludicrous, the thought that you could ever be a coward.”

“But it isn’t,” he murmured as his face drew close to hers. “You don’t know me.”

“I do. I—” She had meant to say that she knew him better than any man alive, even Jasper, but his lips covered hers.

He kissed her tenderly, his mouth soft, and she swallowed sorrow from his kiss. Why this man? Why not some other man of her own rank, of her own country? She took his face in between her hands and pushed her mouth on his, and her mouth wasn’t soft or gentle. What she wanted from him wasn’t a gentle thing. She licked across his lips, tasting salt, then forced her tongue into his mouth. She turned her upper body and pressed herself against him without any artifice, a wanton woman. He broke then. His arms wrapped about her back, and he pulled her fully into his chest, holding her tightly as his tongue slid against hers. She felt the drying tears on her face, she felt the ridge of his organ, even through all the intervening clothes, and she felt an answering feminine thrill.

And then she felt him push her away.

She grasped his shoulders to keep from falling in the basin of water. “What—?”

“Go.”

His face was dark, working with some emotion. Had she misunderstood his interest? But, no, looking at his lap, it was all too evident that he’d been fully engaged in their kiss. Then why...?