Little Love Affair (Southern Romance 1)

“You know he’s as human as you and I.” Horace was relentless.

“What do you want me to say?” Jasper cried at last.

“I want you to see that it’s all a lie! That they’re meant to be slaves, that they’re happy, all of it. I know you’ve been thinking it. I can see it in your eyes.”

“You think your generals have some grand truth?”

“They’re liars too.” Horace’s thin face was dark with anger. “The rich rule us, no matter which side we fight on. But slavery, Jasper...it’s built on lies.”

“Then what’s the answer? Your mills? Beggars in the streets, workers not even fed and housed?” He turned the speeches around and threw them at his friend. He’d heard stories of the northern towns.

“Have you heard nothing I’ve said?” Horace snapped, but he sighed, ran his fingers through the long, lank hair. “I don’t know. I feel like I don’t know anything anymore. I just know what I was looking for when I brought you back, that surety, everyone with a place in the world and a world without pain—it isn’t real. It isn’t an answer.” There were tears in his eyes. “I’m such a fool. I knew William and I still wanted to believe it. I let my family believe I was dead. I betrayed a friend, and for what?”

They looked away from one another, and Jasper clenched his teeth to keep a yell of pain back. This was more hurt than he had known he could feel. He wanted to go back home, to...

To a world built on lies? He did not want to believe Horace, and yet the words were sinking into his consciousness with a sickening rightness. Had he always known? Had he suspected? He could not bear to think of it. When Clara was so shocked that he was an honorable man...was she right to be? His memories of the battlefield, already tinged with regret and futility, were enough now to make him ill.

It should not make him feel better that Horace was also wracked with shame—but it did.

“You saved my life,” Jasper said finally. “Maybe that was why.”

“And you saved mine.” Solomon looked down at his hands.

“Clara saved your life,” Jasper corrected.

“So did you. Clara...” Solomon’s voice trailed away into a weak laugh and a cough. He winced, holding his shoulder. “In another world, there’s not any other man I’d wish to see marry her.”

“In another world.”

“It can’t be.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Jasper demanded. “I’m well aware that we have no future, believe me.”

“It isn’t right,” Solomon whispered.

“Don’t.” Jasper cut him off with a wave of his hand. “I can’t speak of it.”

There was a silence, wind in the trees and rustling in the underbrush.

“I have to go, don’t I?” Solomon asked finally.

“Are you mad?” Jasper whispered. “They want nothing more than for you to come home.”

“As a hero, not a traitor! How can I face them? It would hurt them more than to think I was dead.”

“What then? Is your plan to g

o back to the south? They won’t have you.”

“I could go north. New York. Boston.”

“Horace... Solomon. You have to tell them you’re alive.”

That was when they heard the branch break. Solomon sat bolt upright, his face gone pale, and Jasper ran to the door and wrenched it open. The figure was a shadow in the forest, running down the hill. Her dress billowed behind her, and in horror, he realized who it must be.

“Clara!”

“No!” Her cry was almost a scream.