Little Love Affair (Southern Romance 1)

Was it insanity, or did he think he saw the same in this Yankee woman’s eyes? Her grief was buried deep, a wildness behind her eyes, and she had been terrified of him. There was desperation there. She was armed with nothing and facing down a soldier, but he didn’t doubt for a moment that she would have fought if he had come closer. She was protecting something, driven by duty to go beyond what she would do for herself.

He could not possibly know that after just a few moments in her company, could he?

A sound from behind him made him turn, and he saw Horace’s eyes open to slits. Not for the first time, Jasper tried to keep from wincing. His friend’s muscular frame had withered to nothing from poor rations, cheekbones standing out sharply below pale brown hair and blue eyes that shone with a rising fever.

Never would Jasper have thought Horace could be brought low by a mere wound. It was seven months since the man had rescued him on the battlefield, when Jasper was too gone with delirium to know if he faced a comrade or a Union soldier. Horace had always been a bulwark, as solid and unshakeable in his stature as he was in his defense of the Confederacy. And now... the last battle had been messy, a brutal affair, and in the wake of it, Horace was no longer the same. The wound was enough to kill him on its own, and yet it wasn’t even the wound that scared Jasper the most but instead the way Horace seemed to have sunk away from the world.

Jasper swallowed. He must not let the man see his fear. “How do you feel?”

“Like death.” The twitch of a smile told Jasper this was his friend’s attempt at a joke. “But I thought I smelled bacon.”

“You did.” Jasper plucked a thick slice of bacon from the makeshift roasting spit with his knife and laid it on a slice of bread. “You should drink some water while this cools. Here.”

Horace struggled to sit up, and grimaced when Jasper put an arm behind his back to help. “You don’t need to do that.”

Jasper did not bother to respond. It was a refrain he had heard many times before. Horace would not accept any charity easily, much like Jasper himself—and yet it would have been more than Jasper’s conscience could bear to leave his friend to die. Even in a time of peace his wound might have festered, and this was no ordinary year when the town doctor might be summoned from his house. The doctors tended too many, and the wounded died on the battlefield as often as they made it to the field hospitals. So here they were: Jasper struggling across the hills of Pennsylvania with his friend in a haze, emerging only rarely to chastise him for his aid.

Jasper helped Horace eat with the same seeming indifference he’d learned to use for it all. A proud man, Horace did not like to have his food torn to pieces, though his jaw was so weak now that he could barely eat the bacon. Jasper made sure to busy himself with the shawl so that he did not witness his friend’s frustration, heating water in one of their battered cups so that he could clean the wound.

“Where are we?” Horace asked at length.

Jasper looked around mutely. He had not admitted to Horace why they were here instead of making their way south, back to Confederate territory. It was a little thing Horace had said once, a lost word before he’d clamped his mouth shut: I used to go fishing on Lost Run.

Pennsylvania.

If Horace knew Jasper was bringing him through enemy territory to get him home, the man would insist he leave and go back to the army. So Jasper had pretended they were pursued, and then they were lost, and Horace was too gone with fever to notice. For the first time in days, Horace was lucid, and Jasper found himself wishing he hadn’t emerged from the delirium quite so soon.

“Abandoned old hut,” he said, in hopes of not quite answering the question.

“I can see that.” Horace lay back with a sigh. “You know, the rain on the trees and the smell...it’s very like home.”

“Oh?” Jasper began to unwrap the bandages at his friend’s arm and wondered how to ask his friend more about his home without tipping his hand.

“When I was young—” Horace hissed in pain as one of the bandages came away. “We would play blind man’s bluff in the forest. A summer storm came up and we lost my sister. My father was so mad. Even when we found her, he still beat me. It was the first time he told me I had to protect her.”

“I’ll get you back to your family,” Jasper said, and though he had meant to comfort his friend, he saw narrowed eyes when he looked up. Damn, he hadn’t meant to say that.

“Where are we, Jasper? Yes, yes. A hut. In the forest. Now the whole truth.”

Jasper dipped one of the makeshift bandages in the hot water and dabbed at the wound before replying.

“Pennsylvania.” He could not bring himself to meet his friend’s eyes. He swallowed as he cleaned dried blood from the wound. No matter how he tried to change the bandages each day, the redness seemed to be spreading down Horace’s arm, and the man winced when Jasper touched the inflamed flesh.

Horace let him bind the wound in silence, but his eyes were faraway, the delirium very far gone. When Jasper asked about the pain, headshakes were his only answer.

“You shouldn’t have done this,” Horace said at last.

“What was I going to do, leave you?”

“Yes. Go home to...” Horace’s voice trailed away, but he rallied. “Your town needs you, Jasper.”

“What’s the point in rebuilding when the Union can burn it all down again?” Jasper asked bitterly. He sighed and dipped another bandage in water, beginning to dress the wound again.

“They’re trying to preserve one country,” Horace chastised him, and Jasper’s head came up.

“What?”

Horace had been one of the Confederacy’s staunchest supporters, nodding around the fire as the men spoke of their families and their defense of the south. He had given all of them courage. To hear him utter kind words about the Union was shocking.