Page 14 of Always to Remember
“Said he had a premonition, didn’t think he was gonna make it home. He was afraid in the chaos the letters would get lost. He thought they’d be safe with me.”
“Because there wasn’t a chance in hell that you’d be killed, was there?” she asked, contempt adding a sharp edge to her words. “Can you even begin to understand how much courage it took for them to march onto that battlefield knowing theymightbe killed? How could you not stand by their side?”
“If you have to ask, there isn’t any explanation in the world I can give you that would satisfy you.”
Shaking her bowed head, she clutched the pouch to her breast. “I don’t understand why he wasn’t revolted by the thought of your hands touching these precious letters.”
“Because he understood.”
Swiveling her head, she scrutinized his profile, stark against the blue sky. “He understood what?”
Slowly, he turned his intense gaze on her. “Why I wouldn’t fight.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He rolled his slender shoulders into a careless shrug. “Believe what you want. That’s what everybody around here does anyway.”
She lowered the pouch to her lap and peered at him, dreading his answer. “Did you touch them?” She watched as truth warred against deception, and she knew the answer even before his eyes filled with regret.
“Yes.”
She squeezed her eyes shut as pain consumed her heart until it was a physical ache, and tears trailed down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely.
Slowly, she shook her head. No apology on earth could atone for what he’d done. She felt utterly and completely violated.
“I … I never took the letters out. I only touched the envelopes. I was just so damn alone, so damn lonely … sometimes I just needed to have some kind of—”
Opening her tear-filled eyes, she stared at him. “You didn’t read the letters?”
He shook his head. “You could take the letters out, burn the envelopes—”
“You only touched theenvelopes?”
Remorse washed over his face. “And smelled them. They always smelled so sweet … like honeysuckle.”
Lifting a letter, she wondered how he managed to notice the honeysuckle when the acrid scent of gunpowder practically drowned it out. She’d been disappointed when she opened the pouch and discovered how distant the honeysuckle smelled. A smile of remembrance graced her lips as she brought the letter to her nose and sniffed. “Kirk liked the smell of honeysuckle,” she said softly. “I always slipped a few honeysuckle petals between the folds of the letters.”
“It probably reminded him of you.”
Blushing, she turned her face away. No conversation with this man ever went the way she planned. His sad eyes, his honesty always took the fight out of her. She wiped away any trace of previous tears and forced all softness from her eyes before she dared look at him again. “Why didn’t youtouchyourownenvelopes. Didn’t your family write you?”
“My ma wrote me.”
“Then why didn’t you read those letters?” she snapped.
“Because they wouldn’t give them to me.”
His answer startled her. She assumed that an unwritten code guaranteed that a letter be given to the person for whom it was addressed. She shuddered at the thought of Kirk not receiving her letters. “If they didn’t give them to you, how can you be sure she sent them?”
“Because they showed them to me just before they burned them. They’d—” Despair contorted his face as he closed his eyes.
Meg’s hand was almost resting on top of his before she realized that she was about to offer this man comfort—the last thing she wanted to give him. She jerked her hand back, but her curiosity had been piqued. “What did they do?”
Opening his eyes, he glanced down the river, slipped his fingers between the buttons on his shirt, and rubbed his chest. “Doesn’t matter now.”
“But why did they burn your letters?”
