Siege of the Heart (Southern Romance Series, #2) (7 page)

“I have to stand trial,” Jasper told her heavily. “Everything they’re accusing me of, Cecelia, I
did
it. I left my brothers in arms when they desperately needed my help. I gave aid the Union. I...left my people, and became a Yankee. Yes. I saved your brother’s life, but that is only another in the litany of my crimes.”

“You think that? You truly think that?” Her face was growing white with fury. Truly, Cecelia was more like her sister than either of them knew. Oh, for certain, Clara had once been the headstrong one and Cecelia the timid one, but the younger sister was more confident every day. “Let me tell you something, Jasper Perry, if you think that saving—”

“I don’t. I would do it again in a heartbeat.” Jasper took her hands in his, both of them clasping fingers awkwardly around the ropes, and met her eyes. “Please, Cecelia, try to understand.”

“Understand what?” she hissed at him. “That everything you say would have me leaving you here while you wound up in the south again, and Clara alone with a broken heart?”

“Sometimes men have to pay for their crimes, no matter who loves them! Cecelia, didn’t your brother learn that too?”

She stared at him, struck dumb by the sentiment, and Jasper shook his head.

“I don’t want to go back.”

“That’s a lie.” She did not spit the words at him, only said it as if she were reciting her times tables. “I’ve seen you recently, you know, staring into the woods, always alone. You told me before that you would get home to Clara, but I don’t think you’re sure—I don’t think you even want to be sure. Sometimes, when they aren’t all glaring at you, you look at home with them. Well, I’ll tell. When I get home, I’ll tell her the truth about what you are.”

“You’ve never been away from your homestead!” At last, Jasper felt his temper beginning to slip. So what if she had seen? He would not apologize for missing his family. “If all you had left was ashes and memories, if you had not seen the orchard or the barn or your bedroom for years and you could never go back. Then, even if you had someone you loved, would you not grieve what you had lost?”

She did not speak. Her mouth was hanging open, and even at the sight of her shocked face, Jasper could not stop.

“I love Clara. I love her more than anyone in the world and I would never betray her. But you, everyone, even
she,
you all think I must be one or the other, southern or northern, Confederate or Union. You think that to miss my home is treason, just like they think helping a wounded man was treason! Well, I never asked for any of this.”

“I never thought—”

“You did. Ever since I lived with you, every one of you has wanted me to accept the Union as my home, and maybe it is now, but you expect loyalty down to my thoughts. You try to tell me what is right, and I... I cannot bear to keep being shoved into a box and told I can only be one thing, ever. That I can never miss what used to be. I never asked to love a woman far from my home. I never
asked
for my home to be destroyed. I have lost more than you could ever know, and I will forever regret that you got caught up in this, but do not
dare
tell me that I am not loyal to your sister because I miss my people.”

“Very interesting,” said Robert Knox’s voice.

Jasper froze, his veins turning to ice.

“So she’s not your wife, after all. Is it still your child she’s carrying then?”

She’s not even pregnant.
Better that they thought him faithless, than he take what little protection Cecelia still had. Jasper hung his head, biting his tongue.

“Well, we’ll find out soon enough. Along with all the details of this Union soldier you saved.” His tone dripped with fury. “Back on the horse, Perry. I don’t think anything’s going to save you now.”

“Y
ou sure this is going to work?” Solomon crawled low to the ground to Ambrose’s side.

“No.” Ambrose glanced over at him.

“What?”

“You’re asking me to help you rescue two people from the clutches of twenty well-armed militia. Our odds of success are slim at best. So, no. I am not, to quote you, ‘sure this is going to work.’”

Solomon paused, holding back a rejoinder. Over the past day, he had found himself becoming more and more comfortable in Ambrose’s company. The man’s tongue was sharp, but always with a hint humor that Solomon found refreshing. Had they been two men sitting in a tavern, he would have been quite pleased to spend an entire afternoon in conversation.

Except they were not two men in a tavern. They were a spy and a traitor, shortly to be a spy and a dead man, and Solomon just wished he could make himself understand that Ambrose was far, far from being an ally.

“So why’re you here with me?” Solomon asked him quietly.

Oddly, Ambrose looked away.

Solomon brought his eyebrows together. Had the man blushed?

“Because a man of honor is an unusual thing to find these days.” His voice was muffled against the leaves so that Solomon had to lean close to hear. When he turned back, Ambrose’s face was so close they both drew quickly away. “And a man of honor, who might also be a traitor, is a puzzle I wish to solve,” the spy finished softly.

“I’m just a puzzle to you?” For some reason this disappointed Solomon.

Ambrose opened his mouth, then shut it. “Every man is a puzzle,” he said finally. “Some are simply more interesting than others.”

“No less than I should have expected from a spy.” Anger beat in Solomon’s chest. Why, he could not say. Perhaps his mind had finally remembered that this man would shortly hand him over to be hanged.

That
, his mind whispered,
is not it
.

He was tired and hungry. That was it, Solomon told himself, and shoved away any thoughts that might say otherwise. He shoved away too the way he wanted to take the words back when he saw the fleeting hurt pass over Ambrose’s features.

And yet, for all of Solomon’s anger, Ambrose had been fair to him. Solomon had sworn his intentions not to run, and he had no wish to, but he had never for a moment thought Ambrose would believe him. Still, the man had not bound his hands as they rode, or as they slept. He had not taken Solomon’s rifle or knife. However sure he was of Solomon’s guilt, as he might be, Solomon had to admit; the man was also sure of the promise.

Neither did he ask about Solomon’s guilt. Several times now, Solomon had seen the questions in his eyes and at the tip of his tongue, but the strange man always hid the words away, as if respecting a request for peace. It very nearly made Solomon feel guilty, given that he had only withheld the information, knowing the other wanted the truth. He was not quite foolish enough to spit out everything now, but seeing Ambrose quell his curiosity always prompted Solomon to speak.

So, speak they did. Not of the trial that was to come, or Solomon’s time in the war, but of inconsequential things: Beauty’s breeding, and the type of apple trees they had planted in the orchard. Ambrose did mention, but then did not speak of it again, his elder brother, carried away by treachery. He did talk about a younger sister, his voice so wistful that Solomon almost thought
he
might be the one speaking, around a campfire on the march to battle, and he felt a strange dislocation in time.

For certain, if the young woman had half the grace of her brother, Ambrose, and the same delicate bone structure, she would be a beauty. Solomon let his thoughts drift to this strange woman and imagined her slim and lithe, as tall as Ambrose and yet elegant enough that men would still fall all over themselves to be seen with her on their arm. Although if she had Ambrose’s wit, perhaps they would not court her for long. That thought, oddly, made him angry; he seemed to be made of offense and resentment these days.

He shook his head to clear it.

“Well, they’ll be asleep soon enough,” he said shortly. The two of them had pushed the horses hard to circle wide around the Confederate party—a risk, but Ambrose had been certain of their path, and had been correct in his assumption.

Ambrose only nodded.

They waited, and as the sun set, a wind rose in the trees, rattling the branches and causing the birds to take flight in great choruses of calls and flapping. Solomon, who detested wet clothing as much as the next man, found him wishing for a thunderstorm for the first time. Chaos could only help them.

So absorbed were they both in waiting, they did not hear the footsteps until it was far too late. As Solomon felt his heart leap and he scrambled around on the hill, the soldier’s face went blank.

As well it might. They had brought soldiers on this mission who served with Jasper, and those who served with Jasper, had served with Solomon. Or rather, they had served with—

“Horace?” James Danielson asked softly. His face as white as if he had seen a ghost.

“Hello, James.” Solomon did not dare dart a glance at Ambrose. His pulse was pounding, and he could not fathom why the man was not reaching for his gun. He could not waste time now wondering also what Ambrose made of all of this.

“You come for Jasper too?” the man asked doubtfully.

Solomon stayed silent, too unsure of himself to know why the man was not firing, and too worried to let things spin out of control now.

In a rush, James’s words came again: “Was he the one, then? Did
he
kill you? Said he buried you. Said you were too wounded. Do ghosts carry wounds?”

For a moment, Solomon could have laughed with relief. So they had been looking for him as well. If he had not been so consumed with his own danger, he would have seen it at once. Jasper, who might have won a little comfort from sharing Horace’s true name, had proclaimed him dead and gone, out of the Confederacy’s reach.

Bloody Jasper...
Solomon’s breath caught in his throat. He shook his head. “He would have brought me to the infirmary, but I told him the wound was too grave. If he is the one who set me to rest, you must thank him for me.”

“I...”

But at just the wrong moment, a branch gave way beneath Solomon’s weight, and the illusion fell to pieces. No spirit would so disturb the forest, for a spirit would walk with no sound beyond his voice.

“He lied again.” Danielson’s face closed off at once. “You’re just like him, aren’t you? A turncoat.”

Ambrose did not snort. He did not make a sound. But Solomon felt his amusement as clearly as if the man had shouted.

“Danielson, listen to me—”

“No.” The man raised his rifle, and then, to Solomon’s horror, raised his voice and yelled. “They’re here! They found us!”

Ambrose dived forward at once, knocking the barrel of the rifle out of the way as it fired, and landing a well-placed punch on the man’s face at the same time.

“Go! Get them out!” He directed only the quickest glance in Solomon’s direction before directing an uppercut into Danielson’s sternum. Three more right hooks landed in close succession on Danielson’s jaw, and the Confederate soldier went down like a ton of bricks.

Solomon, his eyebrows raised at the sight, forced himself back into action. He snatched up his rifle and was over the hill in a moment, swinging the rifle like a club and taking advantage of every startled look, every pause.

“Jasper!
Cecelia
!”

“Here!” he heard Cecelia’s cry, and she gave a shriek after that, one that made Solomon’s breath come short.

“Cecelia?”

Her screaming was wordless, wild, and Solomon fought like a man possessed, driving knives into flesh and ducking under flailing arms. Where Ambrose was, he had not the faintest idea, but the occasional yells of pain from behind him seemed to indicate that the man was holding his own. Solomon, meanwhile, tried to forge the tide of armed men to reach—

No. Oh, no.

The horses weren’t saddled, but they didn’t need to be. Cecelia was struggling wildly, kicking and screaming, but she was slung over the horse’s back like a sack of grain, and the man holding her down as he urged the horse out of the camp was none other than Robert Knox.

Of all the men he had fought with, Knox was the one Solomon had least hoped to meet here, and from the look in Knox’s eyes, pure fury would spur him to understanding soon enough. How long until he recognized the resemblance between Cecelia and Solomon? Not long enough, Solomon would wager.

Jasper too was fighting—but towards Cecelia, as if he might knock her from the horse.

Don’t do anything stupid, Perry.
But Solomon understood, with a lump growing in his throat, exactly what was happening here. Jasper did not believe there was any way out of this for him, and he was salvaging all he could.

The idea of rescue had seemed simpler before Solomon realized his brother-to-be also had a death wish. If he’d been smarter, he would have seen it in the way Jasper had been wandering out into the fields recently when he thought no one was looking.

Solomon ran, breath bursting in his lungs, and he only vaguely registered a man raising a gun in the corner of his vision. When a figure slammed into him from the side, Solomon swung a punch, almost too tired to do anything else, but the figure covering his was Ambrose’s, the pistol firing once, twice, three times, and leaving the camp empty as the men fled, following Knox.

Solomon, his cry of anguish dying in his throat, only then realized something odd. For the form on top of him was not so much lanky as lithe, not so much fragile as...oddly rounded. Solomon felt his fingers drift, hardly understanding what he did, feeling the narrowness of a waist, obscured by the loose-cut vest, and the slight curve of hips. His hands drifted up then, and he could make out the faintest hint of softness, tiny breasts nonetheless welcoming against his hands.

In Ambrose’s face, so close to his, Solomon finally understood the delicacy he had seen from the start. How had he ever mistaken such a pointed chin for a man’s? The fingers were slim, the nose pert, the lips...

...eminently kissable. And those eyes. Solomon could have drowned in them, and he found himself enjoyed, if a bit too much, the heaving of Ambrose’s breathe.