Free Everlasting Light - A Civil War Romance Novella by Andrea Boeshaar

up to the front of the house. Alaina froze. No one had horses anymore, except for the …
    “Federal soldiers!” Wild, icy fright coursed through her veins.
    “Don’t panic.” Michael set his hand on her shoulder.
    “What if it’s more raiders? I’m sure you heard what they did to poor Mary Baily—and then they killed her husband!”
    “Shh, Lain …” He looked over her head at Zeke. “You know where my gun is.”
    “Uh-huh, and I know how to use it too.”
    “Good. I’ll go see what this is all about.” Michael’s gaze lit back on Alaina. “You stay inside.”
    She nodded.
    Zeke already clutched the rifle as Michael made his way to the front of the house. Alaina followed him as far as the door. Peeking around Zeke’s broad shoulder, she saw Michael greet two men clad in dusty blue uniforms who sat astride sleek roans.
    “Shoot them, Zeke!” Alaina couldn’t keep the hate in her soul out of her tone.
    “That’d be cold-blooded killin’, Miz Laina. I cain’t do that.”
    “But they’ve taken so much from us. They burned our fields, our farms, looted our homes then set them on fire, killed our cattle. They murdered William, Kirk … Braeden.” Alaina fairly choked on her sudden tears. “I despise the very sight of those horrid men!”
    “Look at them, Miz Laina,” Zeke answered softly. “They’s just like us. They’s lost brothers and friends too.”
    Had they? Of course they must have. Until this moment, she’d seen the United States Army as some soulless killing machine.
    “Not all of them’s cruel. Some’s got a conscience.”
    “Hard to believe.”
    “Some of them’s even Christians. Brothers in Christ.”
    Alaina’s resolve all but fell to pieces. Hard as it was to believe, her spirit said Zeke spoke the truth.
    “I don’t blame you for being bitter-hearted, Miz Laina, but there’s no comfort in it.”
    “No … no, there’s not.” She watched Michael converse with the officers.
    “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” Zeke said.
    Alaina recognized the passage from the Lord’s Prayer. “Is that how you cope? You forgive?”
    “That’s right. But jes’ in case these men are up to no good, I got Mistah Michael’s back covered.” Zeke pointed the gun directly at the two soldiers, and his trained, dark gaze never strayed from the potentially deadly situation outside. “God doesn’t say we can’t defend ourselves.”
    From what she saw going on outside, it didn’t appear the soldiers had evil intentions—this time.
    “Miz Laina, I been thinkin’ it’d be just like Braeden to hear what Sherman did to poor South Carolina, and it’d be just like him to go west to Texas like most folks is doin’. He probably tried to write or wire y’all ’n’ let you know he’s alive, but with them Yankees ever’where, his messages didn’t get through no-how. But he’s got hisself a plan for him and us, and it’d be just like him to git home fer Christmas so he can tell us all ’bout it.”
    “Oh, Zeke.” The misery in Alaina’s heart doubled—tripled. “I want to believe, and at times I’m sure Braeden’s alive. But how would he have ever survived, wounded and in a northern prison camp? It’s not possible.”
    “Anythin’s possible, cuz with God all things is possible.”
    More truth. Alaina couldn’t argue. “So you’re saying I need to forgive and believe.”
    “That’s it.”
    The Yankee soldiers gave their horses’ sides a hard nudge and galloped away. Zeke lowered the gun. On his way back to the house now, Michael read a parchment of some sort.
    “As if I didn’t already know my tax bill is due.” He entered the cluttered foyer and grunted. “And by the first of the year? I don’t have the kind of money they’re asking for. Who does?” His gaze lit on Alaina. “The Confederate dollar is worth only a little more than one cent to the Union dollar. Who can even afford a sack of flour these days—five hundred