Little Love Affair (Southern Romance Series, #1) (11 page)

“He was afraid he would not come back,” Cyrus said gently. His voice blended with the hum of the cicadas. “He spoke like he was sure of it. I told him that he was only afraid, as any man would be. I’d have been as well, Clara. But he insisted. He said he had a premonition, and when the other families got word, and yours did not, I thought he had been right.”

“You didn’t hope? You didn’t even wonder if he might still be alive?”

“I didn’t.” The look in his eyes said that he knew what she would think of this, but he did not lie. “I meant what I said to Cecelia today, Clara. He was so proud to be your brother. He loved you both so much. It was what he told me to say, if...if he didn’t come back. But I waited to say it. I would never have said it while there was a chance I could be wrong.”

He was right. Clara thought back over the months since they had realized there was no word. She had spoken of Solomon returning, and never once had Cyrus flickered in his agreement. He had not counseled her against hoping.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and she looked away, wanting to pull her knees up to her chest and rest her chin on them. But she was a lady now, and so she sat with her back straight and her chin up, as if she was dignified and proper.

In a flash, she remembered Jasper’s lips on her throat, and his hands running over her body. Her face flushed, her lips parted; she looked away hastily before Cyrus might see. She must not think of that again. Down that road led only pain.

Perhaps that was why the preachers were so insistent about the perils of adultery. Clara stole a glance at Cyrus’s profile, and twisted her hands together in her lap. She was comfortable in his company, and in Jasper’s...she felt as if her heart would burst out of her chest. Cyrus knew her family, and Jasper did not. Cyrus was known to her, dependable and kind. Jasper was a risk.

At the sight of the farmhouse, her reserve broke. She looked over at him as they pulled up before the door. “Cyrus.”

“What is it?” He came around to lift her down.

“Yes.” She did not draw away when her feet hit the ground. Her hesitation was momentary, and she pushed it away from her with abandon.

“Yes?” He frowned.

“Yes,” Clara said again. “Yes...” She took a deep breath. “I will marry you.”

His fingers tightened on her hips.

“You will?” His voice was a breath.

“I will,” Clara told him. She searched his face, the hesitation. He was shaking with the effort of holding himself away from her, and she tightened her fingers where they rested on his arms. “Kiss me,” she whispered.

He did not need a second invitation. His lips came down on hers and he crushed her to him with a groan. His mouth pressed against her insistently and his hands crept up her stomacher.

It was then that sadness threatened to overwhelm her, for no matter the desire she could feel in his touch and the urgency of his lips, she could feel nothing at all. She was numb, cold, opening her mouth for his tongue and knowing that her eyes should be closed as his were, and her heart racing as his was.

“Clara, I have been waiting for this for years.” One of his hands went to her hair, to the pins that held it in place, and Clara pulled herself away suddenly.

“We shouldn’t. I should go.”

“Stay with me here.”

“Someone will see,” Clara said, grasping at anything she could think of. The thought of his hands on her body as Jasper’s had been, of him pressing against her, was more than she could bear.

To her relief, he stepped back with a nod.

“I apologize. Forgive me, Clara.”

“There is nothing to forgive.” And there was not. He loved her. She could not fault him that, not when she knew what it was to have her heart set on another.

“I’ll wait,” he promised her, and he snatched up her hand to press a kiss against the fingers. “You’ll marry me?” he asked again, hardly believing it. He had seen her hesitation before. He had suspected she would say no.

No,
Clara wanted to cry.
I can’t do this.

However there was no looking back. What lay down that path? Nothing but loneliness and regret, and wondering what might have been. Panic was rising in her blood, but she could not think what to say.

“I will.”

She would come to terms with it, she assured herself. Her mother would be pleased. She would say it was a good choice, and she would be correct. They would be well-to-do once more, safe no matter if there was a bad season, secure in their home. Millicent would not grow old in poverty, and Cecelia would make a good marriage.

As she watched him drive away, Clara felt her breath coming shorter and shorter. She wanted to scream.
I cannot do this.
Every protestation that this was right, a good choice, was wiped away in her panic.

I cannot do this.

She could not go in to tell her mother what she had done, not when the woman would be so pleased. Clara could not say what she had done without confessing that she wished she had not done it, and her mother would say everything she had always said. Or something about cold feet. And honor. And staying true to one’s word.

She hardly realized where she was going until she was halfway across the field, her dancing slippers far too thin for the uneven ground. She looked over her shoulder to the dark windows. Was anyone watching? Did they see?

She did not care. She turned, hiked up her skirts, and ran for Jasper. She had been wrong, she would tell him. None of it mattered. If he could take her away from all of this, none of it would matter. Even if all he could give her was one last kiss, a moment of heady pleasure, she would take it. She had to see him again.

As she reached the cabin, she slowed. Voices sounded within, raised in anger. Clara frowned, something tugging at her memory. It sounded...

It sounded like Solomon.

It could not be. Holding her breath, she picked up her skirts and crept closer to listen.

“Y
ou’re Solomon Dalton?” Jasper stared incredulously at his friend.

“Yes,” the man admitted.

“
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!”

“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 go 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.

She did not slow, but he was faster than she was. He caught her at the bottom of the hill and dragged her to a stop, trying not to hurt her as she made to pull away from him.

“You knew he was from Pennsylvania?” Rage twisted her face into a mask.

“Yes, but I never guessed...” His voice trailed away. “I’m such a fool.”

“You’re worse than a fool!” Her voice rose. “You’re the reason he left us, do you realize that? He said it was for you, you and your kind. He left us behind and you told him what he did was right!”

“I never knew that was what he had done! If we knew he was Union, we would have—”