Siege of the Heart (Southern Romance 2)

“Because you are a puzzle,” the man said promptly. “I don’t understand you and that is rare. So. Onwards. They’ll be moving southwest.”

“How do you know?” A whistle, and the man’s horse trotted over the embankment and into the woods. Ambrose swung up into the saddle with ease and raised an eyebrow. “Are you coming, Mr. Dalton?”

Solomon heaved a sigh and went to get his horse. As he did, his back turned, he failed to see the spy’s long-lashed eyes watching him almost curiously, lower lip caught by teeth. She patted at her hair, making sure it was still in the long queue favored by Northern men, and checked to make sure no hint of curves showed beyond the vest and breeches. When Solomon looked back, any hint of femininity had disappeared behind an impassive expression.

“Let’s go,” he said gruffly, and the spy only nodded, hiding her smile.

Chapter 7

“Get up.” Jasper awoke to a glimpse of blue sky before dawn and the shadows of the trees on his face before someone held his head roughly and a blindfold was jerked tight over his eyes.

“What on earth—”

“Get up.”

“I can’t unless you stop holding me down!”

A fair point, he thought, but from the rough way they hauled him to his feet, they clearly did not appreciate it. Someone sniggered when his stomach rumbled, and they let him trip and sprawl to the ground while they dragged him to his horse.

“Enough of this.” Knox’s voice. “We need him in the saddle, not on the ground.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And someone find something for the girl, she’s vomiting.”

“What have you done to her?” Jasper demanded, and he got a ringing blow around his ears for the trouble.

“You said she’s with child, remember?” Knox asked, the voice just a bit too accommodating. “So I’d assume it’s that.”

Right. Jasper was now remembering why he did not often lie: he was terrible at it.

“Which is why you need to be gentle with her,” he said stiffly, trying to recover from his slip up. “What did you try to give her, maggoty meat?”

“Stop it,” Knox muttered. “We don’t have time for this. Get in the saddle.”

“What’s got you so upset?”

Knox waited until Jasper was hauled inelegantly into the saddle and his wrists were bound to the pommel. “We’re being followed,” the man said shortly, and Jasper could fairly see his lip curling with scorn. “Don’t look so pleased, Perry. You’d better hope they don’t reach us.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Because the men have promised to rip you to pieces themselves if it looks like you won’t get to the tribunal,” Knox said, and there was an undeniable hint of savage amusement in his voice. “So you can look as happy as you want to that someone’s coming for you...but if I were you, I’d hope for the gallows.”

Jasper turned away, his heart pounding, but try as he might and desperate as he was not to see Cecelia suffer, his heart was swelling with joy. They were coming for him. Someone had noticed he was missing, and they were coming to save him. They knew, if they were following, that he had not left of his own free will.

It had been tearing him apart inside for days that Clara might believe he had gone willingly, and it made him want to howl in agony that Cecelia would be gone, too. What had they said in the town? What manner of lie had she heard?

Did it sting more, to think she might doubt him when she would be right to do so? Oh, he would never leave her for Cecelia—Clara was the only woman he loved, and a woman he loved, in fact, more than he could say. When he looked at her, he saw not the woman of his dreams, but the woman beyond them, for in every way she was more perfect than anything he could have imagined.

In her protectiveness of her sister, in her choice to break her betrothal with Cyrus, Jasper had seen a rare courage, and from courage sprang honor: Clara, in her fierceness and her unwillingness to compromise, was one of the most honorable women he had ever met. She had more principles in her management of the farm, in her spinning, in her cooking, than any of the generals, Union or Confederate, had in their fancy speeches and their brave marches into battle.

And yet, above all, Clara was kind. Jasper had known it even the first time they met, when she yelled at him to leave, get back, go! She was not going to kill him, or call the town watchmen on him, unless he left her no other choice—and when he retreated, she had given of what little they had. In the weeks that followed, as she gave ever more for Solomon’s care, Jasper had seen her get her hands dirty in the fields, talk kindly to the threshers, and always pause to embrace her sister as they passed one another.

When he was with her, Jasper wanted to be a man worthy of her kindness and courage. He looked at her and thought he might die from how much he loved her. Never had he dreamed he might feel like this, and he would never expect to find another woman like this in all his days.

So, why then was it not enough?

If he had an answer to that question, Jasper thought wryly, he would be wiser than any man living. He had the sense, at least, to know that a man’s heart was a tangle in which anyone might get irrevocably lost; no matter how the men in the fields joked about womenfolk and their fickle hearts, Jasper knew they spoke of themselves as well.