Little Love Affair (Southern Romance 1)

When she pulled away from him at last, her face pink with tears, he saw the package clenched in her hands. He wanted to turn away from her, run as far as his legs would take him. She stood before him with every reason to curse Horace and consign him to death, and she was holding out the medicine to save his life.

“I want to meet him,” she said, her face trembling. “Your friend.”

“I... You can’t.” Jasper swallowed.

“Why not?” The package came down slowly. She folded it in her arms and looked at him warily.

He paused to choose his words carefully. “He doesn’t approve of the risk I’ve taken,” he said at last.

“The risk?” she asked, and her cheeks flushed. “I’ve sheltered you both for weeks. I’ve gone to get him medicine, Jasper. We don’t have enough to pay the laborers next week, because of this.” She thrust the package at him once more, and snatched it away when he reached for it. “If anyone has risked anything, it is me. And you know I can be trusted.”

“I told him that,” Jasper pleaded with her.

“Then he should trust you.” She made to push past him.

Jasper caught her easily, holding her back, and he held her even when her eyes flared with anger.

“Let. Me. Go.”

“Clara...I promised him.”

“And you promised me you would never speak to me again,” she cried passionately. “You broke that promise, and your promise to him means nothing. I am no threat. I only want to meet the man whose life I’m saving. I want to know his face, Jasper. Can’t you understand that? My brother is gone and I would bring him back if I could, but I can’t. I can’t. All I have left is this man, do you see?”

“I’m sorry,” Jasper whispered. He met her eyes and flinched from the pain he saw there. “I wish...”

“You wish you were a different man,” she shot back. “A man who would have the least bit of courtesy to the woman who saved your miserable life. You’d have starved if it weren’t for me, Jasper Perry, you and your friend. Well, here. Take the medicine. Never trouble me again.” She turned and strode away, her head held high as her shoulders shook.

“Clara!”

She turned slowly, and her face was like a mask. “Never. Again.”

Then she was gone. As she reached the bottom of the hill, she broke into a run, and Jasper turned back to the cabin. The blood was beating in his ears. He strode back inside, and as his eyes acclimated to the darkness, he saw Horace curled in the back corner, his face turned to the wall, a hand over his eyes.

“Suppose you tell me,” Jasper said, “what that was about. Tell me now.”

A headshake was his only answer.

“She knows what we are.” He was almost shouting now. “You heard her.”

“Yes. I heard her.” Horace looked like he was going to be ill.

“She knows what we are. Why is my life worth risking, but not yours?”

“I can’t tell you.” Horace’s face was screwed up in misery. One hand was clenched so tightly that the flesh had turned white. “Jasper, I can’t. Anything else...my life...but not this. Not until we’re away.”

Jasper could not speak for rage. He pushed himself away from the cabin and strode into the forest, his breath coming short. It was time to decide, at long last, where his loyalties truly lay.

Chapter 12

She could not be still. She wanted to run until there was no breath in her lungs, but there was nowhere to go. Into the house where she had played hide and seek with Solomon, to the overlook where they had climbed together, to the river where they chased frogs and fish? The world was made of memories she could not forget.

Clara looked up at the blue sky above her and she wanted to scream her fury that the sun dared shine down on her. There should be clouds, there should be rain and storms that tore the heavens open. There should be nothing at all, darkness and a void of grief. The world could not go on, not now.

But it was, and she must go tell her mother what she had heard. Somewhere, she must find the courage to say it.

Her heart was crumbling to dust and she wanted nothing more than to curl into Jasper’s arms, feel his strong heartbeat beneath her fingers. She would hide away from her duty if she could and sit beneath the willow with her fingers twined in his and his soft words to distract her from the fact that the world was not right, would never be right again. That desire was a betrayal. She cursed her own foolishness even as she turned to stare up the hillside, yearning...

It was a kindness, she tried to tell herself, that he had shown himself now.