Siege of the Heart (Southern Romance Series, #2) Read Online Free

looking askance at them.
    “Well, we’ll see how you feel in the morning.” Robert’s voice was dubious, but he let it be.
    “Knox.” Jasper’s voice was low, and he heard the camp still.
    “Perry,” Robert said after a moment.
    “Suppose you tell me what this is about.”
    “You know what it’s about,” Robert said in a low voice.
    Jasper heard Cecelia catch her breath.
    That was all Robert would say on the matter.
    It was only later, as Jasper sat alone in the darkness, the choked up water they’d tipped too fast into his mouth still drying on his shirt, that he heard the crunch of footsteps. “Knox?” He could only hope. Knox had been a volatile man at times, but he’d commanded the respect of the others, as he did now, Jasper could tell.
    “Yes,” the man said after a moment’s pause. He sat at Jasper’s side.
    Jasper, the stupid burlap blindfold still covering his head, could at least tell it had gone dark outside now. “Why am I here?” he said quietly, hoping it was just the two of them alone.
    There was a pause that chilled him.
    “I think you know,” Robert told him quietly.
    Jasper let his head fall. “Say it.”
    “You’re here,” Robert said softly, “to be brought back and stand trial for defecting when the Confederacy needed you. You’re to hang, Perry.”
    “You must let me free,” Jasper begged. He knew at once that he had miscalculated.
    “I don’t think we do,” Knox told him. There was muted anger in his voice.
    “Do you want to know why I left?” Jasper knew he sounded desperate, but he had no other choice.
    “Save it for the court,” Robert told him contemptuously.
    “It wasn’t because I wanted to betray the Confederacy! I... Hell, Robert, you know what it’s like on the battlefield! You remember. You have to have seen it after, when the blood and the dying are all around you, and the smoke, and you wonder what in God’s name is worth that. You have to understand, don’t you?”
    “You left because you didn’t like battlefields?”
    “I left because...” He couldn’t mention Horace. Or could he? He could not blow Solomon’s cover, but...
    “You remember Horace.”
    “Aye, and if you’d tell me where he is, we’d appreciate that. Maybe you’ll get a kinder death.” Knox’s voice was wheedling, and Jasper almost laughed. They were looking for Horace, were they? Well, he’d not give away that they were looking for the wrong man.
    “He’s dead,” he lied shortly, and Knox fell silent. “Died outside. I found him on the battlefield and tried to pull him to safety. Ask the others; someone must have seen it.”
    “...I’ll ask,” Robert said finally. “Why didn’t you move him to the hospital, then?”
    “He died too quickly,” Jasper said softly, remembering others who had. “I buried him in a shallow grave.”
    “And then you ran?”
    “You don’t understand,” Jasper said passionately. “Horace saved my life, Knox. He was the one who found me injured, and he made sure I survived. When it came time for me to repay him, I failed. He died in my arms. You know he ran away from home, didn’t you? Early? He was just sixteen.” A difficult lie, with Solomon’s tall frame, but the man had an idealistic streak a mile wide. It might be possible to believe him so young. “Eighteen when I met him, but he still wouldn’t say where he was from. I couldn’t even get him back to his family, and I stared down at that grave and knew no one was ever going to know what happened to him. His family would never have the opportunity to see him come home.” He hung his head again, trying to play the part.
    “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