Page 42 of Texas Destiny
Houston was working to get the harness off the mules when he saw Amelia scramble out of the wagon and begin running toward … nothing but a distant horizon. He was familiar enough with lightning storms to know the damage they could do on the flat open plains. With a harsh curse, he bolted after her.
She stumbled, her knees hitting the ground. She scrambled back to her feet and continued to run, her arms waving around her as though she were warding off the very demons of hell.
His legs were longer, churning faster than hers. He caught her, totally unprepared for the stark terror in her eyes when he swung her around. She flailed her arms, hitting his face, his shoulders, his chest.
“Don’t put me back in there! Please, don’t put me back in there! I’ll die! I swear to God, I’ll die if you put me back in there!”
He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her against his chest. “I won’t,” he promised, his breathing labored, his heart pounding so hard he was certain she could feel it. “I won’t.”
She slumped against him. Still holding her, he brought his duster around her and eased them both to the ground. She trembled violently.
“It’s all right,” he cooed as though she were a horse he wanted to tame. “It’s all right.” He began to rock gently back and forth while the mild rain splattered his back and dripped slowly from his hat. Lightning flashed around them, so brilliant, so close that he thought it might blind him. He pulled the right side of his hat down and ducked his head, hoping to give her more shelter. A short distance away, lightning struck the ground, igniting a fire that the rain quickly drenched. Smoldering smoke trailed along the ground.
“If it hits us, we’ll die, won’t we?” she asked in a quiet calm voice, a voice too calm, too quiet.
“Probably.”
“Do you think it’ll hurt?”
“No,” he replied, tightening his hold. “We’ll just see a flash of bright light, and everything will go black.”
She tilted her face. “You don’t have to wait here with me.”
“You’ll get wet.”
She smiled, an endearing crooked grin, and right then, he didn’t care if the lightning did strike him. Dying with her in his arms couldn’t be worse than living a life alone.
His backside was drenched, mud coated his trousers, rivulets of water ran into his boots, and water dripped off the brim of his hat onto his shoulders. His muscles ached from the unnatural way he held his body, trying to shield her from the storm. He brushed his knuckles over her tear-streaked face and lowered his mouth until it rested beside her ear. “Tell me,” he said simply.
The crack of thunder filled the air. The smile eased off her face, and a great sadness filled her eyes. He wished he had the power to remove the sadness from her life—forever.
The rain lessened, falling softly, its patter a somber melody to accompany her words.
“I told you that my father died during the war. The day we were to bury him …” She swallowed and turned her gaze toward the darkening sky. “Some men came. I don’t know if they were soldiers or deserters. They wore blue uniforms, but no one seemed in charge. My mother was terrified, so she hid me.”
A tremor traveled the length of her slight body. He remembered that she’d told him that she didn’t like being inside the darkness. Not in the dark, not afraid of the dark. But inside the darkness. Dread crept through him. “Where did she hide you?”
“With my father.” She looked at him then, tears welling in her eyes. “Inside his coffin. It was so dark. I was afraid that no one would find me. That they would bury me with him. I cried until I fell asleep.”
“You said at the hotel that you’d slept with worse.”
She nodded, her voice growing ragged. “He was so cold. When I woke up, Mama was holding me, but she was different. I don’t know what they did to her. Her face and her throat were bruised. Her dress was torn. I always thought that she should have been crying, but she wasn’t. She just stared, but not at anything I could see. It was like she was staring inside herself, like her mind, her heart had gone away, and only her body remained to hold me.”
The bile rose in his throat. “Your sisters?”
She pressed her face harder against his shoulder until he thought she might crack his bones. She moved her head back and forth, and the warmth of her tears soaked through the flannel of his shirt. “They were staring, too,” she rasped. “Staring at the sky. They were lying side by side, holding hands … and there wasn’t much left of their clothes. It was so ugly.” She dug her fingers into his sides.
“Don’t think about it,” he ordered. He hated the war. It had brought out the best in men like his brother, the worst in men like him, and turned the rest into animals.
She sobbed. “I didn’t want to look at my sisters, but I did. I didn’t want to see the blood, but I did. So much of it. I think I know what those men did—”
“They weren’t men. Animals, maybe, but not men. Men don’t harm the innocent.” He cupped her cheek and pressed her face against his chest. “They didn’t hurt you?”
“Not my body, but my heart. I wanted to leave the plantation then, but I was only eight. And Mama was in no condition to travel. So we stayed and survived as best we could.”
She tilted her head back, her eyes as dark as the storm clouds. “That’s when I began searching for things, small things, for which I could be grateful. It didn’t matter how trivial, how silly. I just needed something each day to make me go on to the next day.”
He knew that feeling. Damn, he knew that feeling all too well.
