May. She reminded him very much of a wild creature, not unlike his elder brother Braden’s young American wife, Cassidy. But Cassidy hadn’t been afraid of anything. This one would bound away like a fawn at the first perception of danger.
Johanna appeared at his shoulder. “You’ve found her,” she said. “May spends most of her time in her room, reading, or in the woods. I don’t deny her that freedom. She always remains close to home.”
“I have some acquaintance with wild things and places,” Quentin said.
“Do you?” Johanna tilted her head to search his eyes. “Perhaps, then, you will understand May.”
“I am always in favor of understanding.” He lifted his hand, allowing it to graze hers. Unobtrusively she swept her hand behind her skirts and made haste to walk away.
What game are you playing? he asked himself. What will you do if she begins to respond to your advances?
He shrugged off the question as he did so many others and trailed after her into the hallway.
She paused outside a closed door. “This is Harper Lawson’s room. He seldom leaves it, even for meals.” She drew a breath. “Harper was a soldier in the War, fighting with an Indiana regiment. My father had only begun to work with him when he suffered his apoplectic attack. I have since determined that Harper’s insanity has its origins in his service, though he was able to live a normal life for some time following the war. I have read other cases in which soldiers such as Harper…”
A soldier. Quentin lost the thread of her words, gripped by a sudden wave of dizziness. She’d said the War had made this man insane.
War.
He clutched at the wall, fingers curved into claws. A choking fear rose in his throat. His nostrils flared to the rank smell of smoke, of blood, of sweat and unwashed bodies. The hammering of gunfire reverberated in his ears until he could hear nothing else…
Bodies falling. Ambush. Captain Stokes collapsed beside him in midshout, missing part of his face. Blood drenched Ouentin’s uniform. Young Beringer’s legs were shot out from under him. He screamed in a high-pitched wail of pain and terror.
Quentin’s vision clouded, narrowed, fixed on the enemy among the rocks above. He could smell the outlaws in their hiding places, carrying out the slaughter from complete safety. There weren’t enough men to take them on. This was supposed to have been a simple police action, to capture a minor Pathan bandit who’d been harassing the more amicable Punjabi villagers. Lieutenant Colonel Jeffers couldn’t have known that he’d sent them into a trap.
Untouched by the whizzing bullets, Quentin dropped his pistol. He felt nothing. Nothing was the last thing he remembered, until he woke in the hospital tent…
“Are you ill?” He sprang back, heart pounding, before he recognized Johanna’s voice. He focused on her grave blue eyes until the trembling had passed.
Blue eyes like still, deep water. Calming. He floated away with them, into a land of peace. Nirvana, the Buddhists called it.
“Quentin,” she said, drifting somewhere alongside him. “Do you hear me?”
He heard, but he couldn’t speak. He didn’t know what caused his pulse to beat so high, or why she thought him ill. She had been speaking of Harper, and then…
Nothing. Blankness. Moments and words lost to him—then Johanna’s voice, her eyes. That was all.
Another one. Another episode of “disappearing,” though he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol.
“You were somewhere else just a moment ago,” she said. “Do you remember?”
Somewhere else. A place of blood and heat and fear. A narrow defile between jagged cliffs—a trap. Rocky walls closing in; a room of damp stones. Darkness. Hours and hours of darkness, and hunger, and pain. The images bled together in confusion.
And then the orders. Orders that came as hard and deadly as bullets. He threw up his arms, casting the images away. Staggering. Falling.
He found his weight supported against a solid, sweetly curved body.
“You had better sit down,” Johanna said. “You have pushed yourself too hard.”
Her words pierced the fog in his brain. Johanna. She held him. Her arms were strong and sheltering, but soft as a woman’s should be. Warm. Comforting.