Little Love Affair (Southern Romance Series, #1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

there was no getting away from the harvest when the time came. It took over the town, and nearly every family sent men to work.
    Jasper never had. This was poorer work than his father thought acceptable for their family. The man would never have approved of Jasper working side by side in the field with a freed slave. Jasper stole a sideways glance. William was a puzzle, a man given to singing as he worked, with a ready smile. He was learning to read over the supper hour, he said. Miss Cecelia was teaching him.
    None of the other men seemed to find it the least bit strange to be working the same job. Clara paid him the same for his work as she paid all the others, and Millicent called a hello to him. The men spoke of their families together, and no one mentioned that this was unnatural, an affront to the order of things.
    No, his father would not approve at all. Jasper did not even have to wonder what the man would say. Field work was not for gentlemen, the man would have said, least of all alongside Negroes. Jasper, even a year past, would have ducked his head and accepted his father’s words as an immutable truth. A year ago, missing his father desperately, he wanted nothing more than guidance and wisdom.
    Now he no longer believed his father’s words could answer the questions raging in his head. William’s kindness, and the intelligence in his eyes, sparked thoughts he could not understand, and those thoughts were not even the least part of the storm in his mind. Jasper had seen too much since he left his home. The world made a sick sort of sense as he went into battle, so much so that it seemed nothing had changed...until he thought of his home and could no longer fathom how he might live there. How had he never noticed how simply others saw the world? How much they missed, how little they could comprehend of the world’s cruelty?
    Even here and now, his body tiring from the constant swinging of the scythe, the sunlight on the grain and wind in his hair, Jasper felt as though he might be two men: one in the world as it was, working honestly for his dinner; the other still lying on the battlefield where Horace had rescued him all those months ago. Pain...so much pain searing in his leg and the stink of death and wanting nothing more than to leave the world that had been so cruelly different from the one he thought he knew. When the smoke cleared and the men you had slaughtered were only boys like yourself, and you knew neither their names nor their families nor even why they had marched, you began to wonder if any of it mattered.
    Perhaps that was why Jasper had remained at Horace’s side. Why he was so insistent now that Horace heal and survive and return to his family, when Jasper had seen a dozen of his friends die. Horace believed where the rest of them doubted. Horace reminded them that there was something worth fighting for.
    Jasper turned, shading his eyes to pick out the abandoned cottage on the hill. Horace had been sleeping peacefully when Jasper left for the fields, a cup of water at his side and a bit of bread and bacon saved from Jasper’s dinner. The man was delirious and moody by turns, with enough sense to see that they’d been here far longer than he had wanted. Still, Jasper suspected that Horace tried to force himself out of bed when he was alone. It would explain why he did not insist that they go. He knew he could barely make it one step farther.
    The supper bell rang, and Jasper tried not to sigh with relief. He was desperate for a cup of water and for a rest as he listened to the men talking. They no longer tried to draw him into conversation. He had affected a disinterested demeanor, for he dared not even spark conversation with the other hired workers to pass the time. No, that would not be wise, not when he had no answers for them about where he lived, how he had come to be employed, and why he had the accent that Clara had so easily marked. But he was lonely.
    Clara. Jasper felt his mouth