Jasper stared up at the windows. One of them would be Clara’s, for in a house this big there would be no reason to put the sisters in the same room. The loss of the family hit him afresh. It always ran under the surface, in the quiet grief of the girls’ mother, and in the steely determination Clara had acquired far too young, but here, in the empty shell of what should be a bustling family house, Jasper at last saw what they had lost.
He wondered if he could grieve for them. Was it allowed? His comrades would think him a traitor for taking the charity of a Yankee family and leaving them in peace, their home unburned. The north had betrayed them. He heard it often and had spoken it just as frequently. His comrades knew other betrayals, even if they would not admit to it. More men than Jasper had been left to die on the battlefields for lack of care. Others had been pulled from their homes with no one left behind to tend to the fields.
Still they fought one another, citizens just trying to survive. What had this war made of them?
Jasper had lost everything he thought he knew: his loyalty, his family, his homestead. If the only thing he had left was to keep his promise to Clara, then he would keep it. He turned to leave, his tread heavy, and a voice spoke from the darkness.
“Why did you come?”
Clara stepped into the light, and he swallowed. She could not know that the moonlight turned her nightdress sheer, and that he could see the outline of her body beneath the thin fabric. She likely thought herself well covered, a bow modestly tied at her neck and her sleeves long. He swallowed hard.
She had been waiting to see what he would do, he saw. His promise warred with honesty.
“The fever’s not coming down,” Jasper said at last. He did not say that he had decided not to ask her; she had seen it.
“I’ll go into town for your friend tomorrow,” she said simply, and Jasper’s heart turned over in his chest.
“I cannot ask you to do that. I don’t have money to pay for medicine, and you...”
“You have worked in our fields for a pittance,” she observed calmly. “I think perhaps you are owed our help.” Clouds scudded across the moon, throwing flickering shadows on her face, but she was very still.
“That is not why you offered.”
“You know why I offered,” she said simply. She was already walking back to the house, but she paused with her hand on the latch of the door. “Because you are going to keep your promise,” she said quietly, and she slipped inside without a goodbye.
It was only when he reached the cabin once more that it occurred to Jasper to wonder if she had been waiting for him.
Chapter 10
Clara tightened the strap at the wagon hitch, hissing as a blister broke open. Another sleepless night. She was getting clumsy. Her mother would exclaim over her hands later a
nd tell Clara that she should not do this work, but both of them knew there was no alternative. Clara liked to think that Millicent even approved, in her own way. The woman was hardened to farming life, always rising early, capable of handling a shotgun and butchering meat. She might have hoped for a softer life for her children, but she knew that the world was rarely as kind as that.
She climbed into the driver’s seat of the wagon and surveyed the back. A meager portion of vegetables and early grain rested there. Perhaps it would be enough for Clara to get the medicine and little enough that her mother would not notice the lack. Clara grimaced and snapped the reins. She should leave before she thought much more about what she was doing.
The drive into town was a long one, however, and there was little else to think on. She was saving a man’s life, Clara told herself. No one deserved to die of a festering wound. Much to her surprise, her conscience seemed easy with that. Apparently, her conscience was not overly concerned with the Confederacy.
Unfortunately, that left her mind free once more, and much as she tried to stay disciplined, Clara found her thoughts drifting to Jasper. Had he expected her to be outside last night? Surely not. The way his eyes had lingered on her form, she knew that he would not have been able to stare at the house so calmly. The naked desire in his eyes was a mirror of the lust that had driven her outside and a few steps across the field before she had seen him emerge from the forest.
It was well that he had arrived, and that he had carried concerns beyond their tryst in the woods. She had been willing to cast propriety to the wind. Had she met him in the trees, only a nightgown for a covering, and offered herself to him. She was quite sure he would have taken all that she offered, and more. The thought of it made her flush, and Clara tried to hold her head high.
It was intoxicating, the feeling itself just as seductive as the press of Jasper’s lips and the hard planes of his chest. She shifted in her seat, glad that no one had come with her into town. She could not be still since last yesterday—irritable and restless, her entire body seeming to burn.
“What’s gotten into you?” her mother had demanded over dinner. “Do you have a fever?”
A mother’s intuition might have made her suspicious, but even she would not guess the truth. Indeed, Clara reflected bitterly, no one would. She had always been a headstrong child, willful and much despaired over by schoolmistresses and relatives alike, and her insistence on running the farm by herself was hardly unexpected, as unconventional as it might be. But who would guess she would find herself half-naked under a willow tree with a southern soldier?
No one except Clara, who had been lost the moment she saw him.
She should turn her head from this madness, but the sun in the sky and the birds in the trees all seemed to thrill with this new knowledge—a world beyond what she had known, more beautiful than it had been yesterday.
Even the township looked more cheerful. Women moved to and fro in their heavy dresses, and Clara felt the familiar stab of notoriety. Since she began working, she had sewed herself dresses with close sleeves and straight skirts, fashionable dresses being too likely to be caught in machinery. She knew that she looked like a servant, but she had become so accustomed to her attire that she had not even thought to change her gown. Keeping her head down, Clara tied the wagon to a hitch outside the pharmacy and made her way into the cool, dusty shop.
“Miss Dalton!”
“Mister Jeffries.” Clara felt herself smile. The Jeffries family had served Knox Township as pharmacists for years, and as the elder, Mr. Jeffries, grew older, his son was taking over the business. Streaks of grey showed in his hair now, but he moved confidently, with the calm demeanor that comforted his patients.
“Is someone ill? Not your mother, I hope?”