Siege of the Heart (Southern Romance 2)

“I told you the truth.”

“There’s more there than you’re admitting, and the way she looks at you confirms it. You’re lying about something, Perry.”

“Tell me this,” Jasper said angrily. His blood beat against his ears. “Is there any purpose to it? They’ll kill me, no matter what I say. They’ll make me stand up there and give some impassioned defense, but you know they won’t let me live.”

Robert paced for so long that Jasper grew dizzy watching him. “I keep hoping,” he said finally, and Jasper swallowed, “that you’ll say something that’ll make me able to argue for your pardon. Can’t you understand that, Perry?”

“No.”

“If it was me sitting where you’re sitting, wouldn’t you wonder why? Wouldn’t you think there had to be a reason? Jasper, you betrayed us. Why? For the last time, why?”

Jasper swallowed. What could he say? He could not tell the truth of Solomon’s defection. If he did, he knew no false name would be enough to keep the Confederate army from tracking him down and killing him. They would think the same Jasper had: that Solomon had been sent as a spy, to report on them. His disappearance would only confirm it.

And he could not say, he knew, that he doubted the Confederate cause. To do so was to beg for them to kill him outright. To say that he thought the south as it was should fall...

But he still remembered Solomon’s words in the forest: It’s no different in the north. It’s all lies told by rich men in suits.

“Because I couldn’t stomach it,” Jasper whispered, and it was the truth. “It was too much, Knox. I’m not made for war.”

“I’m not made for war,” Knox hissed, and Jasper looked over in surprise. With his tall frame and hulking form, Jasper would have expected that Knox would be perfectly suited to battle. “I want to be home with a wife and children. I want to be tilling fields, Perry, and I was out slogging through the mud with you. What was it that you had nothing to fight for anymore?”

That, Jasper knew, was a trap. If he admitted to it, he was saying that his own family meant more to him than all the other families of the Confederacy—and around the fire at night, they had all sworn that they fought for everyone. That they would take care of anyone who needed help after the war.

No one mentioned the slaves, his new sensibilities pointed out. However, Knox would never agree.

“I don’t know what to tell you! I lost Horace and I lost everything. He saved me when I was near to death, and you remember him—how much he believed. When he was gone, I didn’t know how to believe any longer myself. Can’t you see that? I still wake from nightmares of the battlefields, and they’re a hundred miles away. Dammit, Knox, can’t you see what the war is doing to us?”

“And can’t you see that you turned and ran when we needed you?”

Jasper turned away, clenching his hands and looking up to the sky. There was nothing to say to that. Knox was right, and he knew it. Jasper had betrayed them all. This was the guilt that had wormed at him. It was all well and good to know that they had been outmatched; how many times had he gripped his tankard while the men in the taverns had crowed about how little the Confederate army had, how they had marched barefoot? They had used it as an example of the North’s innate superiority, and Jasper must bite his tongue to keep from defending his comrades.

He should not care about them. That was what the others in the town thought, as if it were possible for Jasper to cut his heart out and sever all ties when he came north. I left the army, he wanted to cry. I don’t believe in their cause any longer—but can’t you see that I still believe in them? That I still left them? There was always going to be the wondering: what if he had stayed? Would one more man have turned the tide of the battle? Would two? It didn’t matter how much his mind understood that he and Solomon would have done nothing. His heart would never believe it.

“Just kill me now,” Jasper whispered. “I can’t live like this. Waiting. You could bring Cl...Cecelia back now.”

“Oh, no, Perry.” Robert’s voice had gone cold. “You’re going to live for a little while longer yet. You’ll remember what it is you did.”

I know what it is I did, Jasper wanted to cry. He just did not know where he fit any longer. He did not know if he belonged in the north or the south, or neither.

Chapter 6

“You’re the one who’s been tailing me,” Solomon said. He could not answer the man’s accusation; there was no answer, and they both knew it.

“Of course.”

There was a certain jaunty quality to the man’s victory, Solomon thought. He was somewhat shorter than Solomon—not unusual, with Solomon’s tall frame. Lean and pale, the man’s face had a delicate quality that somehow did not convey weakness. He still held the pistol out, seemingly with little regard to the weight of it, and he kept his hazel eyes trained on Solomon’s face.

“What brought you to Knox Township?” Solomon asked, leaning back against a tree and trying for a hint of a smile. There was little else he could do with the pistol trained on him.

“You. Of course, I was looking for Horace...”

Solomon’s face flickered, and the man smirked. He had a rare stillness, this man, not easily moved to laughter or scowls. His satisfaction, however, was plain.

“I see.”

A single eyebrow raised.

“That’s it?”