Little Love Affair (Southern Romance 1)

She might have stepped to one side politely as she opened the door, but there was no mistaking that this was a command. Jasper hesitated only a moment before stepping into the dim room. He looked around himself warily. A single candle guttered on a table, and the fire was burning low.

“Have a seat,” Millicent suggested, in the same no-nonsense tone. She looked at him steadily until he sank into a seat, and then hung a battered kettle over the fire before joining him at the table.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Jasper said.

“Oh, I think it’s my daughter’s hospitality.” Millicent was watching him steadily. “Clara has a good head on her shoulders, but she was always soft hearted. When she was little, she brought a bobcat home. It was laid open from chest to hips, but she thought she could nurse it back to health. What then, my husband asked her? He told her that when she had healed it, she would be its dinner. She didn’t want to hear that.”

“And did she nurse it back anyway?” Jasper managed a smile.

The kettle whistled, piercing.

“Young man, that is hardly the point.” Millicent’s blue eyes fixed on him for a moment before she went to the fire. “Clara may be too kind to turn you away, but even she knows you’re as much trouble as that bobcat.”

“Ma’am, I came only to apologize to Clara for harsh words I spoke earlier.” Jasper heard the desperation in his voice. “I would never wish to trouble her.”

“But you’ll do it anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Jasper did not spare a glance for the battered tray and chipped teapot she set down on the table; his eyes were fixed on her face, where he thought he almost saw pity.

“If you were a young man from the town, I would say you were courting my daughter,” Millicent said briskly. She held the strainer deftly and poured tea into an earthenware mug. It went down in front of Jasper with a clink and her eyes met his once more. “I’ve seen the way she looks at you. If you were a young man from the town, I would say you were a fine match for her.”

“But I’m not from the town,” Jasper said. Never had he been more careful of his accent.

“No, you’re not,” the woman agreed. She poured her own tea and sat back. “In fact, I wager if I looked around that old cabin, I’d find a grey coat.”

Jasper went cold, then felt heat spread across his face.

“Why would you think that?”

She did not deign to answer that, only rapped sharply on the table with her knuckles. “You know my daughter could never marry you.”

“I know.” His mouth tasted like ashes.

“Do you?”

“Yes!” The word burst out of him, and he sank his face into his hands, heedless of his manners. He had to take several breaths before he could bring himself to look up again.

“You would not dishonor her.” It was not a sly, pointed comment. She meant it, and somehow that made it worse.

“No, Ma’am. I would never do that.”

“Then what do you think can happen here? I believe that you would never cast her aside for selfish reasons, but cast her aside, you must. For you will never be safe here, Mister Perry, and she’ll never be safe if she is associated with you.”

The words were so bleak that the table swam in his vision; it was all Jasper could do not to push himself away and stumble into the dark. He had prepared to leave Clara behind with no more than a kiss on the hand, and walk away with a last image of her, hair blazing in the dawn light.

To hear the truth: that courting her would mean he cast her aside. It was not honorable to tell a woman that he loved her, and then leave. It was not honorable to pay her compliments and spend time with her as a suitor would, and then leave the next day.

Hearing the truth should have made things easier, for it was a truth he knew in his heart, and yet it was more than he could bear. Jasper pushed himself out of his chair and knelt on the floor, hands up, fingers laced together.

“Ma’am, I cannot leave her without telling her what is in my heart. Your daughter is a most admirable woman. She saved my life when my own could not care for me. She has saved a man she never met—my friend, a man who once saved my own life. It is beyond bearing not to thank her, and I cannot thank her without her knowing what I feel.”

“But you would tell her because you hope for her love in return.” The woman pressed her lips together, eyes sad.

“I do! I hope for it, I don’t deny that. But I will leave. If she doesn’t love me, I’ll take myself away in misery, and if she does, I’ll take myself away gladly, but I swear I will leave. Her love will be enough.”

“Will it?” Those eyes had seen too much of his soul. “Or will you wish, then, to remain here in Knox? You’ll tell her you are going the next day, and when dawn comes you’ll tell her you can stay just one more day after that. And then the day will come when it is not you leaving across the fields, but hanging in the town square, and what will happen to my Clara then, Mister Perry?”

“No.” He squeezed his eyes shut, but he could not escape her voice.