Siege of the Heart (Southern Romance 2)

“Of course it isn’t.” Jasper looked at him pleadingly. “You didn’t know he was a spy. You never meant to pass information.”

“Never meant to!” Knox’s voice rang out, and Jasper rounded on him.

“Neither did you!” His shout was cut off with a blow to the face, but he struggled up. “You rode with Stuart, you gave up information you didn’t know about until later. Well, Horace was nothing but honorable when I knew him. What if he got taken in too?”

“Then he’s a defector, same as you.”

Well, there was no arguing with that. Solomon saw Jasper give up even the thought of it. “Jasper...”

“What?” The man’s voice was weary. He looked up, his dark eyes surrounded by bruises.

“Don’t give up everything to try to save me.”

“Oh, shouldn’t I?” Jasper’s mouth twisted bitterly. “I almost think you’re right, you know. How much did I ever know about you, Horace?”

A faint indication of trust in that name, but Solomon knew that the loyalty was fading. Dammit, Perry! What have you done?

“I should’ve known you’d come,” Jasper whispered. He wasn’t even looking up anymore, but down at the ground. Jasper could see blood vivid against his skin. What had Jasper endured on his behalf? And what was he thinking now? “I just didn’t think you’d come with a Union spy.”

Solomon’s head wrenched around to Violet, and she looked back at him, chest rising and falling slowly. Only her eyes showed her terror. She was not ready for the kind of death they would give her now. No one could be, however. Solomon felt fury radiate through him. “Why would you say—?”

“They know, Horace.”

“They do know.” Violet’s low, smooth voice. “I rode with them, once. Of course, no one here had any information, but it was worth checking.”

Solomon saw shoulders settle around the camp and understood, at last. He felt a wave of admiration. Violet had known at once that their violence would be stoked by the feeling of stupidity. They would want revenge on her for coaxing information out of them. If she had any chances of making it to a clean death, she’d just doubled them.

“You knew he was a spy,” Jasper said, his voice low, and Solomon looked over at him.

“What are you saying, Perry?” There was something going on here he did not understand.

“He’s saying you betrayed him too,” Knox said from the side of the camp. “I’d almost feel sorry for him, if it weren’t for the defection. The boy’s had a hard time of it. He trusted you, Horace. And here you are now.”

Too late, Solomon understood. You knew he was a spy.

Oh, shit!

“I came to get Jasper back,” he said, low. “I came to save him. Ambrose helped me.”

“And how did you know a Union spy?”

The answer to that one would damn him, and as Solomon drew breath to speak, trying to figure out what to say, Knox decided he was done with waiting. Jasper was hauled away from Cecelia, her scream echoing in the clearing, and a pistol came to rest against the man’s dark hair.

“Time’s up, Perry. Make a choice. We’ll give you some mercy, if you tell us what in hell is going on with Horace.”

As Jasper looked up, his lips bleeding where the skin had broken, Solomon saw something new in his eyes: not terror, but anger and mistrust.

Who are you? Jasper mouthed at him.

Solomon looked over at Violet, bloodied and bruised; at Cecelia, open-mouthed and terrified. He turned back to Jasper. He was weary of lies, down to the depths of himself. Too weary to go on.

“Tell them the truth,” he said. “All of it.”

Chapter 14

Tell them the truth.

Jasper felt tears come to his eyes. Had he really doubted his friend, after all this time? The measure of a man was not in the company he kept, or the state he had been born in. It was in his actions, and Horace had proved himself a thousand times over.