Siege of the Heart (Southern Romance Series, #2) (6 page)

“You will have to,” the agent said simply.

“Then shoot me now,” Solomon said, through gritted teeth. He had the pleasure of seeing the agent at a loss for words.

“...What?”

“Then shoot me
now
,” Solomon repeated.

“Don’t be so melodramatic.”

“You think this is drama? Whatever happens at my trial, I’ll live the rest of my days knowing my sister has been abused, possibly killed, and that my most loyal of friend, my sister’s husband, has been murdered for daring to help me. I cannot live with that. I am telling you, unless you will let me go to save them, shoot me now.”

“No.”

“Then give me the gun and I’ll do it myself!”

“Mr. Dalton, you are accused of
treason
. Do you know what that means? Are you even aware of the gravity of the situation?”

“I am fully aware. Are you? Because on the one hand, you have me, a man who—if you are correct in your accusations—is worth less than the dirt he walks on, and on the other hand, you have two innocent lives.”

“The Confederacy hardly thinks your friend is innocent.”

“And my sister?” Solomon demanded. “What about her?”

The agent did not move, but gave every indication that he wanted to throw his hands up in the air and pace away. His hands clenched.

“Kill me,” Solomon whispered. “If you will not let me go to them...”

“I can kill you,” the agent said at last, “only if you are known to be a traitor to the Union.”

“Do you doubt?”

“It is not about my conviction. It is about proof and justice.”

Solomon looked over the trees. If he ran to beauty, jumped into the saddle—

The agent would shoot him before he got there. And if the bullet went wide, it might be Beauty who paid the price. Too great a chance.

“What would you do if you did not have me to worry about, and you knew that two citizens loyal to the Union had been abducted?”

“I would do my best to save them.”

“You swear it?” Solomon asked.

“Of course. Do you think me heartless?”

“At the moment, you’ll forgive me if I do.”

“A fair assessment, I guess.” Ambrose looked at Solomon, and his eyes fell. “Mr. Dalton, you think me a monster. I can see that. No, do not bother arguing. I know the look in a man’s eyes. So let me tell you what I have seen, because I know you, who have fought in battles, might understand.”

Solomon stayed quiet. Suddenly, he was afraid. He did not want to know what this man would say.

“While my brother marched to war,” Ambrose said quietly, “his regiment was ambushed, and every man slaughtered. They hardly had time to draw their weapons. In the Confederacy, they would say that such means were necessary, for we were better armed and with more men, but I do not care what the Confederacy says. I care that my brother died because one of the men in his regiment gave them all up. He turned traitor and ran, and my brother paid the price. Do you have an older brother, Solomon?”

“I’m the eldest,” Solomon said softly.

“Well then, your father. Think of your father. My brother was the strongest, bravest man I knew. He deserved a better death than that, and he is not the only one, Mr. Dalton. There are thousands who died when men betrayed the Union. Do you know how many families have suffered for it?”

“More than even you know,” Solomon said bluntly.

“Yes. More than we will ever know. So perhaps you can understand when I say I cannot let you go.”

“Then tell me what to say,” Solomon told him. “I’ll say it, and you’ll be free to shoot me, and you can go free my sister. I do not think you a monster, Mr. Ambrose but there is no fate you can give me worse than knowing I failed in this.”

“I’ll not put words in your mouth.” The man sounded deeply offended. “I want the truth.”

It was on Solomon’s lips, and then he felt, to his shame, his resolve crumbling.
If my life is the price...
He had sworn to Clara that he would do anything it took, and now he found that he feared saying the words. He feared dying in the next moments, without ever knowing that Cecelia had been found.

He told himself that he could not rest in his grave until he knew for sure, and even if those words rang hollow, he knew, also, that he had a bargaining chip now. The truth, Ambrose said. And for a price, Solomon would give it to him.

“The truth, you shall have if we go back and I stand trial.”

“Which of course, you refuse to do.”

“I am fully willing to do so...as long as we rescue Cecelia and Jasper first.”

“Solomon Dalton, you are an infuriating man.” The agent stared him down.

“I’m aware of that.” Solomon watched the agent’s eyes slide away. “What is it?”

The gun came back out, but this time it shook slightly as Ambrose pointed it at Solomon. “Could I have been wrong?” the agent asked him harshly. “I tracked you for
weeks
. Is it truly possible that I was wrong? ...Or are you a more consummate liar than any man I’ve come across before?”

“The only two options are that I’m innocent, or the devil?”

The gun came down, and Ambrose closed his eyes briefly. He was, Solomon thought, one of the most beautiful men he’d ever seen. Long-lashed, almost delicate. It was a wonder the man could hold a weapon—and even more of wonder that he’d taken such a dangerous job. But, then he would hardly have been suited to hauling cannons.

Ambrose was a puzzle, indeed.

“Very well,” the agent said at last. “They will have my head on a stake for this if you run, though I doubt you care about that.”

“I’ll not run. I gave my word.”

“A great many men give their word to a great many causes. I have ceased to trust that.”

“Then why are you coming with me?” Solomon snapped.

“Because you are a puzzle,” the man said promptly. “I don’t understand you and that is rare. So. Onwards. They’ll be moving southwest.”

“How do you know?” A whistle, and the man’s horse trotted over the embankment and into the woods. Ambrose swung up into the saddle with ease and raised an eyebrow. “Are you coming, Mr. Dalton?”

Solomon heaved a sigh and went to get his horse. As he did, his back turned, he failed to see the spy’s long-lashed eyes watching him almost curiously, lower lip caught by teeth. She patted at her hair, making sure it was still in the long queue favored by Northern men, and checked to make sure no hint of curves showed beyond the vest and breeches. When Solomon looked back, any hint of femininity had disappeared behind an impassive expression.

“Let’s go,” he said gruffly, and the spy only nodded, hiding her smile.

“G
et up.” Jasper awoke to a glimpse of blue sky before dawn and the shadows of the trees on his face before someone held his head roughly and a blindfold was jerked tight over his eyes.

“What on earth—”

“Get
up
.”

“I can’t unless you stop holding me down!”

A fair point, he thought, but from the rough way they hauled him to his feet, they clearly did not appreciate it. Someone sniggered when his stomach rumbled, and they let him trip and sprawl to the ground while they dragged him to his horse.

“Enough of this.” Knox’s voice. “We need him in the saddle, not on the ground.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And someone find something for the girl, she’s vomiting.”

“What have you done to her?” Jasper demanded, and he got a ringing blow around his ears for the trouble.

“You said she’s with child, remember?” Knox asked, the voice just a bit too accommodating. “So I’d assume it’s that.”

Right. Jasper was now remembering why he did not often lie: he was terrible at it.

“Which is why you need to be gentle with her,” he said stiffly, trying to recover from his slip up. “What did you try to give her, maggoty meat?”

“Stop it,” Knox muttered. “We don’t have time for this. Get in the saddle.”

“What’s got you so upset?”

Knox waited until Jasper was hauled inelegantly into the saddle and his wrists were bound to the pommel. “We’re being followed,” the man said shortly, and Jasper could fairly see his lip curling with scorn. “Don’t look so pleased, Perry. You’d better hope they don’t reach us.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Because the men have promised to rip you to pieces themselves if it looks like you won’t get to the tribunal,” Knox said, and there was an undeniable hint of savage amusement in his voice. “So you can look as happy as you want to that someone’s coming for you...but if I were you, I’d hope for the gallows.”

Jasper turned away, his heart pounding, but try as he might and desperate as he was not to see Cecelia suffer, his heart was swelling with joy. They were coming for him. Someone had noticed he was missing, and they were coming to save him. They knew, if they were following, that he had not left of his own free will.

It had been tearing him apart inside for days that Clara might believe he had gone willingly, and it made him want to howl in agony that Cecelia would be gone, too. What had they said in the town? What manner of lie had she heard?

Did it sting more, to think she might doubt him when she would be right to do so? Oh, he would never leave her for Cecelia—Clara was the only woman he loved, and a woman he loved, in fact, more than he could say. When he looked at her, he saw not the woman of his dreams, but the woman beyond them, for in every way she was more perfect than anything he could have imagined.

In her protectiveness of her sister, in her choice to break her betrothal with Cyrus, Jasper had seen a rare courage, and from courage sprang honor: Clara, in her fierceness and her unwillingness to compromise, was one of the most honorable women he had ever met. She had more principles in her management of the farm, in her spinning, in her cooking, than any of the generals, Union or Confederate, had in their fancy speeches and their brave marches into battle.

And yet, above all, Clara was
kind
. Jasper had known it even the first time they met, when she yelled at him to leave, get back, go! She was not going to kill him, or call the town watchmen on him, unless he left her no other choice—and when he retreated, she had given of what little they had. In the weeks that followed, as she gave ever more for Solomon’s care, Jasper had seen her get her hands dirty in the fields, talk kindly to the threshers, and always pause to embrace her sister as they passed one another.

When he was with her, Jasper wanted to be a man worthy of her kindness and courage. He looked at her and thought he might die from how much he loved her. Never had he dreamed he might feel like this, and he would never expect to find another woman like this in all his days.

So, why then was it not enough?

If he had an answer to that question, Jasper thought wryly, he would be wiser than any man living. He had the sense, at least, to know that a man’s heart was a tangle in which anyone might get irrevocably lost; no matter how the men in the fields joked about womenfolk and their fickle hearts, Jasper knew they spoke of themselves as well.

He was homesick. There was a yearning for what could no longer be: the house was gone, his family dead before their time, and Jasper thought he would give anything to have them alive once more. How could he measure his own happiness with Clara against the lives of his brothers and sisters? His life with Clara, it was true, was built on the ashes of what had been lost.

Yet it was more than that, as well. It was everything, from the way the sun rose over the mountain instead of the fields, to the different way they spiced their beer and the colors the women used to knit their shawls. Some days, Jasper could swear the sky was a different color and the clouds differently shaped. He was sick with it, for anything that smelled of home, tasted of home.

It lay deep down, in the fear of what this homesickness meant: was he not meant to stay in the north? Would this only end in despair for both of them?

A rough halt jerked him back to reality, and the blindfold was torn off as Jasper was pulled from the horse.

“Eat quickly,” Knox told him. “We’ve lost them for now, and lets you and I both hope it stays that way. And comfort that one.” A jerk of his shoulder indicated Cecelia, who was crying softly.

“Cecelia.” Jasper crunched over the leaves and broken sticks that covered the ground. His boots were filthy, he noticed, much like the shirt he was wearing and the pants that had seen far too much splattered mud.

“They’re never going to let us go, are they?” She brushed at her face ineffectually with her bound hands, and her tears began again.

“Cecelia, no matter what happens, Knox will get you to freedom.”

“And what about you?” she demanded of him.

At his white face, her own fell.

“No. Jasper, I can’t go home to Clara and tell her—”

“You may
have
to—”

“She’d never forgive me!” Cecelia’s voice rang with conviction. “She wouldn’t.”

“Cecelia, Clara and I both knew this might happen someday.”

“Did you?”

“...I did,” Jasper said finally. “You don’t just defect, Cee. They come for you.”

“But you... I mean, you saved...” She looked at him helplessly.

“A—” No, he could not call Solomon a Union soldier, not here. “You know what he was to them. And Cee, they must never know about him.”

“Of course.” She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. “They’re looking for him too, aren’t they? I’ve been so stupid.”

“Nothing about what you’ve done has been stupid,” Jasper said softly. The others were still walking, trying to ease the pain of muscles too long kept in the saddle. The glares and whispered threats of the first two days had given way to occasional glowers; no one thought to watch the prisoners closely now, even Knox had drifted away.

“You’re coming back with me,” Cecelia said, barely a tremor in her voice to show that this was bravado. “I’m not going to let you get killed.”

“Cecelia...” Jasper wanted to laugh, or cry. “Do you think I deserve that?”

“
What
?” She shook her head. “You’re going to be my brother, you said you were going to be. I can’t leave you to die!”