by Lexy Timms
“And so you ran,” Knox repeated. “You know we can’t condone that.”
“I know.” Jasper closed his eyes. “Please, Knox, just take the blindfold off.”
Even the evening light was blinding when Knox complied, and Jasper had to squint. He looked over to the man’s face, dark with anger. However, there was some sympathy there. Some smidgen of hope to work with.
“You see so much death, and you start to wonder... Didn’t you ever wonder why they did it, Knox? It comes on you at weird times. One moment you’re fighting, you’re furious, your family’s dead and your home burned, and then you see some man throw himself in front of his comrades, or run into fire. Why would they do that? What do they have to believe in?”
“Careful, Perry. You talk like this and nobody’ll give you a clean death.”
“I’m not asking you to sympathize! But it shakes you, Knox. Can you say you never wondered? That it didn’t shake your faith a tiny amount? They aren’t windup toys; they were there for something. When they killed Horace...I didn’t have the courage to go on.” That, at least was true. The thought of trying to fight without Horace at his side had been terrifying. “I don’t even know how I got north. I ran. Nothing can save me now, I know that, but...”
His hands were still tied behind his back, but now he could meet his friend’s eyes, and he saw doubt there. Just a touch of it.
“Jasper,” Knox said finally, heavily. “You know I can’t save you.”
“You can save her,” Jasper whispered quietly. “Can you promise me, Knox, that she’ll be returned home? I would do anything. I know there’s nothing I can give you anymore. There’s my land. It’s still in my name. I’ll write you the deed. But let her go home. Please. This isn’t her fight.”
“A Yankee,” Knox said. He was trying to harden his voice, but Jasper knew he was weak here. He had seen Cecelia’s fear, and he was not inured to it.
“A Yankee,” Jasper agreed. “And she lost her brother on a battlefield—and I can’t condone what he did, but you know how our women suffered when the Union came for them. Knox, she wasn’t a fighter. She just saw their men march off and never come back. She doesn’t understand the war like we do. You’ve seen her, she’s a good woman, Yankee or no.”
“And I suppose she nursed you back to health, even knowing you were a Confederate,” Knox said acidly.
Jasper’s heart broke. He remembered the extra slices of bread Clara had snuck onto his plate, the way the ladle was heaping when she served him beans at lunch. Always a little more for him. A blanket and bandages for Solomon, her precious money spent on medicine. “Yes,” Jasper whispered. His heart broken so much it hurt physically. “She did.”
Knox had not been expecting Jasper’s response. His eyebrows rose as Jasper squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and shook his head. “You should’ve known better,” Knox said at last. “I can’t save you, Jasper. You left us when we needed you. Nothing can save you now.”
Chapter 4
It was always his loved ones who suffered for his failures. Solomon bent low over Beauty’s neck and urged her to a canter, praying under his breath as he did so. Never had he felt such a tumult of fear and self-loathing as now. Even lying in the darkness of the hut, injured, and hearing Clara’s voice, he had not felt so awful about himself. It had been hurt she felt then, hurt and betrayal—it would be worse if that same betrayal cost her not only her husband, but her sister as well.
He pushed the horse on. He would never be able to live with himself if that happened.
So he might as well forgo caution in this pursuit. He needed to be cautious only until the plan went into effect. He had promised Clara that he would sacrifice his life if need be...and he meant it. He would not go back on that. Of course, he had also promised her that he would come back. And that had hardly worked out.
He closed his eyes briefly, the only distraction he could allow while guiding a horse at high speed through a forest. They were heading south. Of course they were. As the day waned, Solomon managed to slowly gain on them.
The guilt had wormed in his gut since before he left, easing only slightly as he urged Beauty to a trot, and finally a canter. She was covered in sweat now, she rarely rode so far at once, but he could not let her stop to rest. He would need to tail them for a day or so, allowing her to rest while he planned the rescue, and then send Jasper and Cecelia on her back if he could wrestle another horse free from one of the abductors.
They would have been looking for him too. Solomon understood that. He knew they would have asked for a Horace, and found no one. It had never been them he had expected to evade with this, and it made his guilt all the worse—that Jasper would pay the price for both of their defections. Jasper would be furious now, and rightly so.
Or did Jasper feel guilty as well? Solomon’s brows drew together. Any diversion would help him feel less like he was betraying his people, less like a guilty little worm of a person.
What if Jasper had been so quiet lately because he was feeling the slow, cold worm of guilt inside his own soul? He swore he believed in the Union beliefs now, and no one in the household challenged him on the fact that his family had suffered at Union hands. They had only to look at the two soldiers in their midst for one thing, to know what war did to a person but they could never understand what had driven Jasper to take up arms and march, and of all people, only Solomon knew what it was to regret turning his back on former comrades. He knew well why perhaps Jasper had said nothing of it to anyone.
A thought-provoking idea, but one that made Solomon’s stomach turn cold. For he, after all, had not stayed with the Confederate cause after defecting. He had strayed back to the Union, and what if Jasper did the same? Atoned for his crimes, confessed, offered penance? Would he abandon Clara for his life?
Solomon did not know. On his own he believed Jasper would not. But if he was made to feel guilty for leaving his people? What might Jasper’s guilty conscience guide him to do then?
Oh, no.
Of course, he might not get that chance at all. Everyone knew the soldiers would not take kindly to those who had abandoned a losing side, when others fought so desperately.
What would they do to Cecelia then?
In fact, why take her at all? Solomon’s brow furrowed, and he leaned over the horse’s neck, trying to make sense of it. Even if she had seen them, it was just as risky to take her and set off a manhunt as it was to let her spread stories of what she’d seen. The men of the town no longer threatened Jasper’s life, but if he were taken, if he were strung up, Solomon knew they wouldn’t much care. No one was going to risk their life for a Confederate soldier, traitor or no. For all they knew, he had killed their brothers.
None of it made sense.
It was then he saw a movement in the forest beside him—and a movement that was not ahead of him, but behind. It took all of Solomon’s willpower not to turn his head to look, to let his pursuers know he had noticed them. He thought perhaps these soldiers were the pursuit he had felt time and time again, but he realized now that it was an incredibly stupid idea. They would never have been in town. Strange men with southern accents would have been noticed, especially if they had shown up for weeks.
So who was it then?
He knew.
It was one of the Union spies. It had to be. They had seen him leave his homestead and go into the wilderness alone, and they sensed their chance. He was going to be killed here and now, unless he could convince this stranger he needed to save his sister.
That meant turning the tables, getting out of the man’s sight.
Which was difficult, when riding a massive black horse through a fall forest. Solomon uttered a heartfelt oath and tried to think of a plan. He knew the lay of the land better than this man, or at least it was likely. There was a gully coming up, and a stream with a strange set of banks in the forest after it. The bank did not slope up gently, and so all must be funneled through a small opening near the crossing.
&nb
sp; He might wait for the man there, and trap him long enough to agree to bring Solomon back only after finding the two he needed to rescue.
He huffed, wanting to turn around but refusing to. What was the man waiting for? They had been hours in the forest by now, running their horses ragged, and Solomon knew he was beginning to tire. Was the man so good a horseman that he believed he could still have a clear advantage after an afternoon’s hard riding?
He was a spy.
Of course he might. Solomon swore again.
The gully was coming up, and he led Beauty to a canter, bargaining that the spy would drop his speed to avoid being seen, if he had not yet realized he’d been caught. The short rest would give Beauty the chance she needed to recover before Solomon urged her across the stream and up the embankment, bargaining on the other rider’s wish to stay hidden.
It was not the best plan he had ever come up with, but it was the only one he had at present. He pulled water from his saddlebags and drank a mouthful, wincing at the warmth. Only a month back at the farm, and he was already accustomed to well-made food and cold water again. How quickly one became soft.
His mind exploded into a riot of guilt and shame as he rode. He was trying to escape what he had done again, was he not? Was that not his goal? He squeezed his eyes shut and straightened his shoulders. He would not deny what he had done, he decided at last. He would tell the truth, and hope that his honesty convinced his captor that he intended, truly, to stand trial for what he had done. He would ask if they could try him quietly. He would ask for Clara’s sake. Surely the man would understand.
Surely not even the Union was so cruel as to make his family stand trial alongside him, dragged through the mud and vilified by the press at every turn as having raised and harbored a traitor. Solomon resolved he would go to his very death, swearing they had not known.
Cyrus was the only one who knew, and he would stay silent for love of Clara.
But it would destroy Jasper. He knew that.
There was no other option. No way back.
Why had his mother not warned him of that when he was little—that when he did wrong, and followed the wrong path, it would not be only himself he dragged down?
He came around the bend and dropped into the gully with the back of his neck prickling. If the spy knew these woods, they might choose to ride up along the side of the gully and shoot Solomon from above. It was a possibility. They would seize their chance and he would be dead without even a chance to plead for his life. He knew that no one would speak up, for fear of what might be exposed.
Damn this person for learning the truth, and damn Solomon himself for doing what he had done.
No one shot.
He thought he heard the clip of a horse’s hoof behind him once, but he did not look around, and the hoof beats did not draw closer. He could hear the stream though the trees now.
He was close. Solomon rolled his shoulders and his neck, readying himself for the sprint. If he could wait until just before his pursuer was emerging from the gully, he could gain a considerable lead. They would be disoriented.
He could not go until he saw the water in front of him, but when he did, he urged Beauty to a canter, and then at once to a gallop. She protested with a whinny, tossing her head, but Solomon could not afford to listen to her protests. Not now. He urged her down the bank on one side and across the riverbed as fast as she would go, kicking up spray. He was lucky there were no rocks for her to catch her foot, and they thundered up the opposite bank as he heard the other rider break, as well, into a canter.
Let them figure out themselves that there was no way to get a horse up the bank where they were, upstream from him. He urged beauty into the close darkness of the forest and tied her to a tree quickly, his hands shaking with adrenaline. He had only one shot at this. If he doubled back just until they got into the trees, he could knock them from their horse and have the advantage—just long enough to tell the truth.
He crept through the undergrowth, listening to the rider’s hoof beats plod one way and then the other. Did the man realize this had been a trap? Did he know that Solomon knew of the pursuit? He could only hope not. He curled his fingers around a heavy rock. He did not want to hurt this man, for all that he threatened them all. Just make him listen. He would go willingly once this was all over.
The horse snorted nearby and Solomon heard its hooves dance over the ground. What was happening? He lowered his head and closed his eyes, straining to listen. The birds were putting up a riot of sound in the branches, masking whatever words the spy might be muttering to himself. So absorbed was he in listening to the sounds from the beach that he did not hear the man sneaking up behind him.
He heard only the cocking of a pistol, and froze.
“Stand up,” said the light, controlled voice.
“I...” Solomon turned.
“Hello, Mr. Dalton.” The man before him was slight, his red-tinted hair drawn back in a loose ponytail, his clothes not well tailored, but serviceable enough, and made with good cloth. He was all in browns and reds, a perfect camouflage in the forest.
“Who’re you?” Solomon asked, heart pounding.
“I,” the man said, smiling viciously, “am Ambrose Stuart. And you...are a traitor.”
Chapter 5
“Why won’t you eat?” Robert’s voice was harsh as Cecelia turned her face away from the food he offered.
His patience, Jasper sensed, was growing thin.
Robert tossed an angry look at Jasper. “She’ll be no use to us dead.”
“She should be no use to you at all,” Jasper retorted strongly. He knew this was Robert’s weak point. There was nothing that would ever redeem Jasper in Knox’s eyes, but Cecelia was an innocent bystander, and it bothered the man to hurt her. Jasper had to play with that as a feeling. It was his only card.
“She’s here to keep you in line.”
“And then you’ll release her,” Jasper said. “You promised me.”
“Actually, I didn’t.” Robert snorted and spit a bunch of tobacco onto the ground near Cecelia’s skirts.
She wrinkled her nose. She did indeed look pale, Jasper noted. Not well by any standards. She had refused to eat since they left.
Robert spat again. “But you know I’ll not harm her.”
“She must be treated gently.” Jasper had limited bargaining power, but he could try.
“There’s only so softly we can treat her. I’m sure you understand.” His one-time friend shot him an annoyed look.
The answer came to Jasper in a flash. “Well, you’ll have to find something. She’s with child.”
There was a hastily indrawn breath from some of the men, and Cecelia went white, her mouth open in a little O of shock. She stared at Jasper.
He smiled at her as gently as he could. “I know you did not want to tell me, love,” he pretended to assure her, “but I noticed your appetite gone, and your mother confirmed it.”
“Mother knows?” she asked, her voice tremulous, but she was playing along, and Jasper could only thank his lucky stars for her quick mind.
“You can hardly hide such a thing from a woman who birthed three herself,” he said, smiling. He looked up to see the others avoiding his gaze.
“Jasper! Why did you not tell us?” Robert’s annoyance turned to shock.
“Because I hoped you would let her go!” Jasper said, trying to make himself sound indignant. “You know as well as I do that she’s nothing to you. They want me, not her.”
“And I know you well enough to know you’d do something stupid to try to get away if I let you. I can’t do that.”
“I promise.” Jasper stared at him. He had to get back to Clara, part of his mind whispered, and another part whispered that if he let Cecelia be hurt for his folly, neither he nor Clara would survive their guilt. Clara would understand. She would have to. “Put me in chains, Knox. Kill me here. Just let her go home. She’s with child, for Heaven’s sake.”
Robert looke
d around at the group of men, clustered, looking at him expectantly, and he sighed deeply.
“This way, Perry.”
Jasper hesitated. Was this it then? Was Knox going to take his bargain and kill him right here, right now? But Knox shook his head, and Jasper let out a breath. A quick death would be preferable, but even the moment of fear had been paralyzing.
When they were away, Robert turned on him.
“What?” Jasper asked.
“Why do you not treat her like your wife? No kisses, no embraces.” Robert looked at him long and hard. “You stare into the distance more than you look at her.”
He must not know the truth. Jasper fought the urge to speak reflexively, and chose his words. “Do you think I could bear to look at her?” he asked softly. “She knew what I was and she was good-hearted when I was at my lowest. I was unkind to her, you know, and when I realized I loved her.” He sighed. “I nearly left her still. Can you understand my love of her, even if she’s a Yankee?”
“She’s a fine woman,” Robert said after a moment. “No sniveling. I like that in a woman. And carrying on well for being with child.” There was no doubt in his voice. “Yes, I can understand, Perry.”
“And now this woman, who gave me everything when I was too sick and miserable to give her anything in return, will have nothing from me but a mouth to feed and no one to help her feed it. What’ll happen to her, Knox?”
“You’re trying for pity now?” His face turned stone-like.
“No,” Jasper assured him. “I know I have to stand trial for my crimes. I’m not asking you to let me go. But can you not understand that I can hardly bear to look at her? Please, let her go. Let her grieve me. Let her start over.”
Robert heaved a sigh and looked back at the camp. “You know I can’t do that,” he said finally.
“Knox, why?” Jasper stood no chance. He had condemned an innocent woman to death.
“Because I can’t trust any of the men with her,” Knox said brutally. “They’ve kept their hands off her because they’re afraid of me, but I can’t leave her with any of them.” He ran his hand over his forehead and spat again. “And I can’t leave you with them and go back with her, either. They’d tear you to pieces before you ever got to trial, Perry.”
