Page 51 of The Winter Husband
“Lucas?”
His lashes flickered as if he’d just realized she stood beside him. “We’ve wandered too far.”
She touched the sleeve of his coat. “Then let’s go back to the cabin.”
His eyes narrowed in a deeper squint and a muscle flexed in his cheek. A lot of thinking was going on.
“Can’t leave yet.” He sighed hard. “You need to see this.”
“See what?”
“Soldiers. My men.”
Surprise made her pause, but Lucas shot ahead. She set off after him, but he made no effort to slow his pace. What was he seeing that she couldn’t? The glancing sunlight off the snow in the open field half-blinded her. She supposed there could be campfires under the boughs of those far trees, but no smoke drifted above the treetops, and no cabins were visible between the tree trunks either. Why would Lucas’s men be here, so deep in the wilderness? He’d told her many times there wasn’t a soul within walking distance of their cabin.
The front edge of her snowshoe struck a broken crust of ice. Stumbling, she tipped forward but slapped a glove on the ground before her face hit powder. When she straightened, a considerable gap had stretched between them. She set her feet into the grooves of his wake and pushed harder. Her legs ached. If there were soldiers beyond those trees, she would ask Lucas if they could spend the night among them. Rest and a warm fire sounded lovely, a long walk home didn’t. Besides, curiosity was getting the best of her. She wanted to meet his men and understand why Lucas was heading toward them with fierce intent.
In the blue shadows cast by the tree line, Lucas paused. He tossed his flintlock aside and shrugged off his pack. Bending over, he picked at the knots on his snowshoes, kicked them off, and then fell to his knees.
By all that was holy, what was going on?
As she came closer, it appeared by the rhythmic shift of his shoulders he was digging in the snow. By the time she reached him, he’d finished one hole and shuffled to the side to start another. He didn’t lift his head when she slid up next to him, though her heaving breath couldn’t possibly be easy to ignore.
The first hole revealed the top of an ice-encrusted post. Was this a boundary marker, perhaps for someone else’s land? Lucas had said they’d traveled too far. Awkward on her snowshoes, she dropped to one hip so she could scrape away the powder clinging to the face of the post. She assumed there would be a bright cloth tied to it, to make it easy to see from afar.
Instead, she uncovered faded letters carved in the wood.
Henri, it said. And beneath—
R…I…P
***
Lucas braced himself as Marie’s hazy shadow fell across the first hole. She’d be expecting an explanation, but he was still stunned to find himself in this place. Words jumbled in his mind. His tongue stuck to the top of his mouth. He didn’t know what to do except keep digging. He summoned a memory of Jacques, from St. Malo, who’d joined the regiment to escape a harder life on the sea; of one-eyed Henri, who’d left behind a Huron wife and rambunctious son; of Gabriel, the pup from Perpignan, so skinny and scared his knees used to knock when he marched.
These and three others. All dead and buried.
Because of him.
“Dear heavens, Lucas, what happened?”
Why was she here? He hadn’t meant to lead her here. He’d been distracted by her humming, by tracking the stag. He’d been fooled by how different the land looked when it was smothered in snow.
And yet he knew she should see this.
It was past time she knew.
“These are my men.” He pointed toward the row of pale blue dimples that marked the position of the other graves. “They were the last soldiers of my regiment from Flanders.”
“Flanders,” she repeated softly. “From your nightmares.”
His throat closed up. To think these men had survived the bloodbath of Flanders only to die so far from home.
A soft pressure brought his attention to Marie’s hand on his sleeve.
“I don’t understand, Lucas. Why are they buried here, and not on that battlefield across the sea?”
“These were the survivors of Flanders.” Each word an iron dagger, dug deeper into his gut. “There were few of us left after the battle. We stayed together when our company was disbanded.”
