Siege of the Heart (Southern Romance 2)

Or to track down a missing soldier. A soldier who had defected. They were here for revenge. Jasper’s breath caught. He’d just gotten Cecelia caught in the middle of it.

Chapter 2

Solomon banged his way o

ut of the house. He was in a very bad mood indeed. It had been a bitch of a morning, and there was no one—no one—he could tell what was wrong. They would think he was crazy, and if they did not, they would be terrified. He could not do that to his family.

Someone was following him.

He knew they would call him crazy, and still he could not help believing it. Even he thought he was crazy sometimes, but he knew, deep down, that he was not. That it was real. It was little things he caught out of the corner of his eye, glimpses of movement on the street that didn’t seem normal, and he could never catch a glimpse of who it was.

It was maddening, which was refreshing as an emotion because it was also damned well terrifying.

Who would be tailing him? He knew the answer to that, and he did not like it. Those in the taverns in town mentioned it without any reserve, none of them suspecting the truth about him—that the Union army was tracking down defectors, traitors, spies. That now the business of the war was done for civilians, but it was not over yet for the army. Some people, they confided, had betrayed the Union. They deserved to hang, some said. Other said a great deal more violent things, and Solomon would always swallow and look down into his beer.

They thought he was quiet because of Jasper, and sometimes they took the time to clap him on the shoulder and say quietly that Jasper seemed a good man, that maybe some southerners weren’t so bad. But not all of them had met Solomon, they said. Not all of them had seen the light. And those in the Union who had not supported the cause...

He did not know who would come for him, but he had been sure from the start that someone would. It would all come tumbling down to him being hauled away and his family disgraced, because it wouldn’t take too many questions before someone noticed a very large gap between when Solomon had disappeared and when he’d re-emerged, rescued. It wouldn’t take very much for people to begin to piece the story together, particularly when Cyrus clearly knew more than he was saying. Cyrus, who people were curious about, who had held his tongue in the wake of his broken engagement, but how long might that last?

Solomon did feel bad about his sister’s broken engagement, but Cyrus wouldn’t speak to him anymore. He showed up at the shop, and Cyrus looked right through him. Solomon did not dare push it, not when he knew his life hung in the balance.

Then there was Jasper himself, Jasper and Clara, looking at one another like they were so in love they couldn’t see the rest of the world. Clara and Jasper...

That, Solomon would never have seen coming. No matter how many times he had watched Jasper’s quiet good manners and honor, and wished they had been born in another time and place when he might introduce Clara and Jasper and hope they would court. He had thought Clara would bend, someday, to Cyrus, and he had thought Jasper might love Cecelia. But, now that he saw their love, he was not so much admiring and happy as deeply envious. It was an ungracious emotion, as Millicent would say. Gracious friends did not envy.

How could Solomon not envy when he had come home to his farmstead and he had nothing he had imagined; not glory, for he could claim nothing when the guilt wormed cold in his gut; not a clear conscience, for he had seen far too much even before he became a traitor. No wife, as he had thought he might have when he came home. He could see none of the women of the town without thinking bitterly that they knew nothing. They rejoiced to see the South brought to heel, and as well they might, when their siblings and sons had died on the battlefields, but they had not seen the suffering those same men inflicted.

War was not as simple as anyone wanted it to be, and even Solomon would make it simple if he could. He just could not forget.

“Solomon?” Clara rounded the house, her brows drawn together and a smudge of flour on her cheek.

“What’s wrong?” Solomon felt his anger melt away as he looked at her. Whatever envy he felt in his loneliest hours, whatever awful jealousy and sadness, he could feel none of it while looking at Clara. She was radiant these days, awaiting her marriage to Jasper with joy. All was right in her world once more, and if there was still a delicacy between her and Solomon...

It would ease in time. He must believe it. More and more, they fell back into their old patterns, little jokes and easy moments. He wished he could confide in her now, but how could he lay this at her doorstep when it troubled her conscience so? She would tell him that it served him right, that he should make amends for what he had done.

He did not know how.

“I can’t find Cee,” she said now, frowning. “She was going to help me with the baking, but she’s gone.”

“She’s been...” Cecelia had been walking on air for a few weeks before this, bright-eyed and pink-cheeked, shining with health. Solomon knew it pleased her to have her family happy and whole once more, and he knew she had seen more than Clara ever thought. But her depression, what could be causing it?

“I’ll check the stables.”

“I looked in the stables.”

“Odd.” Solomon peered through the orchard. “Have you seen Jasper?”

“No.” Her frown deepened. “I thought he was with you.”

“No, I haven’t seen him all morning.”

Jasper too had been acting oddly. He often stared into the distance at nights, contributing little to the dinner conversation. Solomon knew it had been difficult for him to acclimate, that sometimes the townsfolk took Cyrus’s side in the marriage scandal. Oh, yes, it was the best gossip the town had had in years, and Millicent was determined that they wait long enough on the marriage to show that Clara had not gotten in the family way, but surely that would cause Jasper frustration and anger, not melancholy.

“She said she was going out to the fields,” Clara murmured. She dusted her hands off on her skirt and marched towards the corner of the house.

“Perhaps...” But Solomon’s voice trailed off. He could think of nothing.

“Naught.” Clara announced, disgusted. She was surveying the fields when Solomon arrived, fields that were conveniently bare. The scent of ripening apples and peaches filled the air, and a crisp wind was blowing up between the trees.