Little Love Affair (Southern Romance 1)

She bent her head in acceptance, loss swirling in her chest.

“You should go,” she whispered, wanting to be kind and knowing that any moment of weakness would lead her back into his arms.

He nodded, his face never flickering.

“You’ll never see me again.”

“No,” Clara whispered. She turned away, trying to compose her face, fingers working on the bodice of her gown. “Stay until your friend can travel. I would never be the reason a man dies. But you and I...”

“I shall not speak to you,” he promised her. “I won’t even look at you. Clara...I would kiss you goodbye, but I swear I cannot. It would be too much.”

Clara bent her head. She could not look back at him, not when she was biting her lip so hard she thought it might bleed.

“Go,” she whispered. She heard the branches rustle and she buried her face in her hands and counted to one hundred. When she looked around, Jasper was gone—and she rested her face on her knees and sobbed.

Chapter 9

All he could think of was her skin and her lips and the arch of her back, and it drove him mad. Jasper growled, low in his throat and clenched his hands. He needed to focus.

There were more important things to worry about than kisses, he knew that. The fever was not improving. Horace’s skin was an unhealthy shade of grey, a sheen of sweat clinging to his forehead, and he was so far gone that he did not even protest when Jasper lifted him to pour the willow bark and yarrow tea down his throat.

When he peeled away the bandages, it was all Jasper could do not to show his horror. In one short year, he had seen enough to know what despair could do to a man. He knew that Horace must believe he could recover. When he was lucid, no matter how weak, Jasper would be as confident as any priest. It had become difficult to know when Horace might emerge from his fevered dreams.

The wound was growing puffy, flushed and angry, and Jasper swallowed at the hint of red lines beginning to trace away from it. He knew of that, as well, and his memories were laced with horror. He had seen men put maggots on their own flesh to eat away the rot, and balked at it. Now, he realized, he was desperate enough to try. He would try anything.

His hands shook as he cleaned the wound, and he realized he was making babbling noises, the same sort one might make to an infant, cooing and murmuring as Horace tossed his head in pain. It was a small mercy that he was half-asleep, for Jasper must scrape the wound of anything that looked infected, pouring boiled water and laying the yarrow leaves neatly before binding it once more.

He wondered what prayer Clara’s mother used with comfrey, and winced. He could not think of Clara, not when the very image of her smile set his pulse racing. He was hard in a moment and ready to stride down the hill, consequences be damned, to find her and claim another kiss, and another, and another.

Dammit.

If it had been the right thing to leave her there, the honorable thing, why did he regret it so much? That was the sort of thing the pastors preached about. It had made sense, once, just like all the oaths he swore to defend his people from the Union. None of it—none of it—made sense any longer.

A low cry of pain caught his attention, and he looked back from the fire to see Horace’s face screwed up in a grimace. If it weren’t for Horace, Jasper reflected, he would not be alive for any of it to make sense in the first place.

He did not even remember where they had been when they met. It was some useless fight, not on one of the grand battlegrounds history would remember. Not, of course, that glory seemed all that glorious any longer. Even one fight taught you that no war song came close to the truth of it. Still, his family didn’t know that, and as he lay bleeding on the sodden ground, gasping for air, Jasper thought that he would have liked them to think he died with honor, in a grand meeting of two armies. It might give them some measure of comfort, perhaps.

He first saw Horace through the smoke and a low morning mist, and Jasper could not forget the stab of fear when he first saw the man’s shape emerge from the haze. Horace was young, clear-eyed even though he was streaked with blood, gazing around the battlefield as if his soul had broken in two. But his hands were still wrapped around the barrel of a musket, a bloody bayonet affixed to the end, and when his eyes met Jasper’s for the first time, Jasper was quite sure he was meeting the gaze of a Union soldier. He was sure he was going to die, and he was glad that his family would not know he had survived the battle, only to be cut down while he lay wounded.

All that was left, it occurred to him, was to appeal to whatever honor a Union soldier might have. His fingers fumbled beneath the opening to his shirt, and the man’s eyes flickered. He relaxed when Jasper pulled out a silver cross, closing one numb hand around it.

“Make it quick,” he whispered.

At that, at last, the man moved. The bayonet was dropped, and he knelt at Jasper’s side, pushing the ruins of his coat aside. His fingers probed at the wound, eliciting a cry of pain, but the man only nodded, pleased by what he saw.

“You’re lucky,” he said simply, and Jasper managed a laugh that was half-gasp. “The wound in your arm is shallow enough, and this one ripped the skin, but not all the way to your bowels. You’ll live, if we can get you to the camp.”

“They’re gone,” Jasper croaked back.

“No.” The man shook his head. “They’re not far. Come.”

How far he coaxed Jasper that morning, Jasper still did not know. His legs shook with exhaustion, and he retched with pain more than once, but when the mists had cleared, they were in the camp proper. Jasper vaguely remembered a beleaguered nurse trying to tell Horace that there were not enough beds, and yet the next thing he knew, he was on a thin mattress and there was sun on his face.

A thin, old army blanket felt like paradise to him, and it was only later—watching the others in the camp—that he realized how strange it was to have a blanket at all. To have food, as he always had. Even saving Horace’s life now, Jasper thought, could not repay that debt, and it was becoming clear that Jasper could not even do that much.

He must ask for help, and he could not. To walk into that town was to consign himself to death, and that would do nothing for Horace, and there was only one person he could trust. His steps carried him out of the cabin and down the hill before he could think, across the half-threshed fields and to the shadow of the farmhouse. There was no guard dog to sound the alarm, and Jasper had the faint urge to bang on the door and tell them that they should have protection. How would they know if dangerous men were crossing their fields at night?

It was more amusing if one considered that their idea of dangerous men was likely Confederate soldiers. Unless it was less amusing.