Read Online To Wed in Texas by Jodi Thomas - Free Book Online Page B

flowers. “You all should have had the sense to run to Mexico in sixty-five like your governor Murrah.”
    Daniel waited. The widow’s cries were more of pain than sorrow, but the Union officer didn’t notice. Karlee pulled both girls against her sides and tried to move the widow backward.
    Logan unfolded a paper from his pocket with great ceremony. “I’ve got orders to arrest Jesse Blair, and this fake funeral isn’t going to stop me.” He signaled. His troops lifted their rifles. “No one will stop me. Jesse Blair is no hero but only a common criminal.”
    Daniel stepped away from the open grave but didn’t lower his gaze.
    The lieutenant glared at him for a moment, resenting Daniel’s lack of respect but unsure what to do about it. He motioned two of his men to pull up the coffin. “If this box is empty, as I suspect, I swear it will be full before sundown.”
    AmyAnn Blair cried out in pain and gripped her middle, but the lieutenant paid no heed. As the coffin reached ground level, he raised his Colt and fired three shots through the center of the pine. “Just in case Blair’s playing possum.” Logan laughed.
    The officer looked disappointed when no one aroundthe grave reacted except one of the twins, who started crying at the sudden sound.
    Karlee lifted the girl to her hip and covered the child’s ear with her hand.
    Soldiers pried the case open and stepped back quickly, turning their faces away to gulp fresh air.
    The Yankee officer moved to see inside the box. But as he leaned close, he gagged and turned away. The smell of death drifted across the morning air. With a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, he moved close again, examining the dead man inside.
    “Is this man your husband, Madam?” Logan turned for the first time to the widow.
    She cried softly and straightened slightly. “He was wearing that very uniform the last time I saw him.”
    The lieutenant turned to Daniel. “Something is not right here. There’s more that stinks than the corpse. Why wasn’t he buried sooner?”
    Wolf moved beside the preacher, his rifle riding unseen along the back of his leg. “We decided to wait as long as we could in case you boys wanted to see the body. Figured you’d never believe Jesse was dead unless you seen it with your own eyes.”
    “He’s dead. With that smell he could be nothing else. But something’s not right here. I can feel it.” The officer stared at Daniel. “I’ll be watching you.”
    Daniel raised his chin slightly but didn’t say a word. If the man were corrupt, Daniel would learn the truth faster by letting him believe there were only Southerners present.
    “Fall out!” the Yankee yelled as he climbed on his horse. “There’s nothing here. Jesse Blair is nothing but worm meat now.”
    No one moved as the troops rode from sight. Daniel knew what he’d just done would amount to treason if he were caught. When he’d first landed in Jefferson, hewent to what the Union Army called the stockade. The locals called it Sandtown. Week after week, he watched innocent men die of fever and exposure. Men who served their state well in the Confederacy. Men who fought beside their neighbors and family, not for slavery, but for the right of free choice as they saw it.
    Texas entered the Union as an independent country. Texans figured they had the right to leave. Daniel’s greatest revelation had been to learn that the war he and his brothers fought over slavery wasn’t about that at all, to the Southerners’ way of thinking.
    Jesse Blair was just into his twenties and far too poor to have owned a slave. He’d turned from a boy to a man in the middle of battle. He came home wanting to forget the war and start a family. But pride in a dead cause branded him as a troublemaker. Wolf told Daniel most of the things that got blamed on Jesse couldn’t have been done by the kid and were probably done by an outlaw named Cullen Baker.
    The way Wolf figured it, the only crime Jesse committed was