Siege of the Heart (Southern Romance 2)

She took his shirt in her bound hands and pulled him down, stretching up on tiptoe to kiss him.

Chapter 16

There was a hand over his mouth. Jasper thrashed, but the hand pressed down, another hand clamping over his bound hands as he tried to pummel them up. His head was wrenched sideways and then there was hot breath in his ear, and hissed words. Jasper did not bother to listen, struggling until the hands gave him a sharp shake.

“Hell, boy, do you want to wake the whole camp?”

Knox. Jasper went limp. He opened his eyes and found the man fumbling with the ropes that bound Jasper’s hands.

“What in—”

Knox jerked his hand for silence, then pointed to the others. The spy had his eyes open to slits, and Knox stared at him for a long moment before shrugging and going to untie the man’s hands. As he moved on to Solomon, Jasper, struggling to move quietly despite the pain in his many bruises, crawled to Cecelia. He shook her gently and put a single finger over her lips to still her, and then untied the ropes around her hands. Holding a finger now over his own lips for absolute silence, he helped her up out of the bed of dry leaves.

Knox motioned for them to follow him out of the camp, his burly form melting and reappearing into shadow as the trees swayed in the wind. Jasper followed, his head a whirl of thoughts. No one seemed to be following them, but he jumped at every crackle in the dark forest; a fool’s action, for a forest at night was a riot of sound. What mattered was Knox. Why was the man helping them?

It felt like hours before they stopped, but Jasper knew well that it might have been only a few minutes. Time passed strangely in the night, and he was lost in the sound of their careful footsteps, and Cecelia’s labored breathing. Every once in a while she caught her breath as if she might vomit, but nothing came of it—and Jasper did not want to speak to tell her that there was no point in continuing the charade now.

“Here,” Knox said at last, his voice a strange sound in the cacophony of chirps and clicks. He pointed to a glimmer in the distance, where a river gleamed in the moonlight. “Follow that; it’ll take you due north, and at the boulders, turn west for a time. You’ll know which boulders.”

“Knox,” Solomon said quietly.

“Aye?” The man knew what was coming. He was wary.

“Why?” Solomon asked. No more.

Knox did not answer at once. He circled as he thought, rubbing at his beard and peering back through the woods as if he feared pursuit.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t, Delancy. If I could tell you, I would.”

“You’re freeing us for...no reason?” The spy’s voice was surprisingly delicate, not rough and low with sleep as Jasper would have expected. The man cleared his throat hastily.

“Not no reason,” Knox said stiffly. “I just don’t have words for it, see? That’s all.”

“Well...” Jasper looked around at them, and then to the faint lightening of the sky in the east, visible even in the sky above the trees. “We’ll be going then.”

“Aye. I suppose you will.”

They started down the hill, picking their way carefully, and Jasper was just beginning to wonder if it was a dream when Knox’s voice carried down amongst them. They halted to look back.

“It was your speech, Perry.”

“What about it?” Jasper turned, wincing at the pain in his ribs.

“What you said—that this is all a mess. You were right about that if you were right about anything.” Knox gave a half laugh. “It is a mess, and we’re all so busy hurting each other for what harm we did to our own side in the war that we’ll never heal even if the Union stays intact. You, Stuart, hauling Delancy off to be hung. Perry leaving his woman alone. This little one, carrying a baby with no father—well, we all knew, girl, don’t look so surprised. Perry told us.” He shook his head at Cecelia’s whispered protestation. “And here we were, coming to punish Perry like that’s not God’s task.”

It was enough to make tears come to Jasper’s eyes, and yet...

“That’s not all of it.”

“Dammit, boy, you don’t have all night.”

“Why, Knox?” Suddenly it was the most important thing.

“Because you have something worth saving,” Knox said roughly. “You ever lost love, Perry?”

“No,” Jasper whispered.

“You ain’t ever seen your face when you talk about Clara, either, I’ll reckon. Well, let me tell you something: love like that doesn’t come every day. And sure, you might die for her and it’d be a fine thing, very poetic but better to live. Better to give her babies and live in that pretty farmhouse and die in your bed. I’m not going to be the one who keeps that from happening.”