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She rolled up the embroidered edges of his leggings and placed the basin under him. “Put your feet in here.”
He complied and hissed softly as his feet met the hot water. She glanced up, but his face merely showed weariness as he watched her.
“How long did you run?” she asked.
She half expected him to deny it, but he didn’t. “I don’t know.”
She nodded and frowned at the basin of water. It was clouding with blood.
“Vale told you?” he asked.
“Jasper said something about the man you went to see being dead,” she murmured absently. If he’d run through the soles of his moccasins into bare feet, there would be dirt and debris in the wounds. She’d have to clean them thoroughly or infection would set in. It was going to be terribly painful.
“Where’s Vale?” he asked, interrupting her distressed thoughts.
She looked up. “In his rooms in the care of his valet. He drank himself nearly into a stupor.”
Samuel nodded but didn’t comment.
She pulled a cloth across her lap and tapped his left leg. “Lift.”
He complied, holding out a dripping foot. She guided it to rest on her lap so she could examine the sole. It was raw-looking, reddened and scraped, but in better condition than she would’ve thought. There were several broken blisters but only one cut. She was conscious, too, that it was a rather elegant foot for a man, which was a silly thought. His feet were large and bony, but with a high arch and long toes.
“He had hung himself,” Samuel murmured.
Emeline glanced at him. His eyes were closed, his head resting against the back of his chair. The flickering firelight cast the planes of his face into stark lines and shadows that gleamed a little from old sweat. He must be completely exhausted. It was a wonder that he was still awake.
She inhaled and looked back at the foot. “The soldier you and Jasper went to see?”
“Yes. His wife was there at the cottage. She said that he came home after the war and seemed fine for a while.”
“And then?” She had taken another cloth and ripped it until she had a rag the size of her palm. Now she dipped it into the salve and began to wash the bottom of his foot. Emeline frowned to herself. She should’ve brought some type of scrub brush from the kitchen.
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.”
