Little Love Affair (Southern Romance 1)

“You’re Clara’s brother.” This could not be real.

“Yes.” Horace’s face was white, but he nodded resolutely.

“The man they’re mourning down there on the farm? The man they were told, today, was dead? You’re him?” His heart gave a twist. “And you heard—you heard her say you were gone.”

“I...” Horace sank his face into his hands.

“That’s why you couldn’t let her see you. Why you told me we shouldn’t be here. I thought your family were sympathizers! I thought...”

“No,” the man whispered.

That meant...

“You marched with the Union army, and you turned traitor.” Jasper looked away to stare into the flames.

“I couldn’t let you die! You’re a good man, Jasper! You’ve always been a good man, I could see it in a moment. When I left, I-I was sure I was going to die. I don’t know how to tell you so you can understand, but before I left, I saw it in my dreams a hundred times. When I didn’t, it felt like it should be for something that I survived. I was such a coward and I wanted...I wanted to understand what you were fighting for.”

“Now you think you do?” Jasper could barely speak for disgust.

“Yes,” the man said softly.

“What do you think you know about us? We shared our rations with you, we—”

“I fought with you! I killed my countrymen! I wasn’t a spy, Jasper. I had lost my way. I wanted something to believe in.”

“You studied us like we were animals at a carnival!” Jasper yelled back. “And now you think you know something about the cause. So what is it? What do you think you know?”

“That we were lied to.”

“By the generals?” A thing he had told himself, and yet to hear it from a Yankee turncoat’s lips was more than he could stand. “We’re not fools, Horace.” Horace. His father’s name. “Solomon. Whoever you are. We knew the generals lied about how it would be.”

“It wasn’t just them! Think of the landowners, the bankers. They talked about a society without pain, with everyone in their natural place. But you know the men in power can never see beyond their money.”

“Don’t you dare—”

“It’s the same in the North, Jasper!” Solomon’s chest was heaving. “It is. Liars in black suits, only they’re running mills instead of farms. All of it profits off someone else—your generals were right about that. This world seems to need someone who works for nothing.”

“You said they were liars, and now you say they’re right?” Jasper tipped his head back against the wall. He should walk away. Traitors were not worth the breath for argument.

But this was Horace. Never in all his dreams would Jasper have thought it could come to this. He had thought there was a debt he could never repay, and now the world was turned upside down. He had saved Horace, and he was not sure he should have done so.

“They’re right.” Horace’s eyes burned into him. “Every society has its poor. But they’re liars too, and you know I’m right about that. You’ve worked with William.”

“And?” Jasper challenged him.

“They told you he was meant to do work as a slave, that he’s an inferior to you in every way. Can you look me in the eyes and tell me they’re right, after knowing him?”

“Yes!” Jasper shot back. He looked away, hands clenched. “...No,” he admitted.

He slid down the wall, sank his head into his hands. Clear-eyed, polite, joking with the others. William was like any man Jasper might have known in his hometown. He spoke with the drawl that Jasper missed so much. More than once, Jasper had caught himself thanking the man for things that would be...expected. Beyond manners, in his hometown. He had pushed away the unsettling thought that treating William that way made more sense than treating him as a slave.

“Do you know what they did to him?” Horace asked. He sank to his knees, still shaking, his eyes boring into Jasper’s.

“Don’t,” Jasper whispered, but Horace did not stop.

“Look at his back someday, Jasper. He’s a runaway. We’ve sheltered him for years, and he told me stories. His daughter was sold away from him when she was five years old. Her name was Annabelle.”

“Stop it!”