The Scent of Jasmine (15 page)

Fourteen

“They tried to
kiss
me!” Cay said in horror to Alex. It was dark out, they were in the barn, and he was rubbing down both of their horses.

“Did they, now?”

“Don’t you
dare
start laughing at me. If you do, I’ll—” She gave him a half smile. “I’ll not let you see Uncle T.C.’s letter.”

That stopped him from smiling. Turning, he looked at her. “What did he say?”

“Actually, I haven’t opened it yet.”

“You haven’t read it?”

“For your information, I’ve been very busy since you dumped me in the middle of those female sharks. Do you know what those two girls wanted from me? Their hands were all over me. And every time I took a step, they were trying to kiss me. One of them tripped me so I’d land on the other one. They—”

“So they’re like all the other females on the planet,” Alex said in dismissal. “Where is the letter?

“They are
not
like other females.
I
have never—”

“How else is a man to know when a woman wants to be kissed unless she tells him so?” he said impatiently. “Now give me the letter.”

“Maybe that’s so, but there is such a thing as subtlety. Doctors use leeches that don’t stick to a person as close as those two stuck to me. I couldn’t take a step that they didn’t—” The look Alex gave her made her stop talking about the twins and take the letter out of her pocket, even while she was thinking that she should have read the letter by herself. After all, it was addressed to her alone. But in the last days she’d become so accustomed to sharing everything with Alex that she hadn’t even thought of keeping the letter to herself.

She handed the sealed letter to him, but he didn’t take it. Instead, he went back to rubbing her mare.

“Read it to me.”

Cay broke the seal on the letter. The sight of her uncle’s familiar handwriting nearly made her cry, but she took a breath and pulled herself together. “It’s dated five days after . . . after I met you.” That seemed to be the most polite way of describing the prison break. She began to read.

“My dearest, dearest Cay,

“There is no way I can begin to apologize for all that has happened to you. It was all my fault and I will never forgive myself. But as much as I’d like to tell you in as lengthy detail as I have paper and pen, Adam is here and you know what that means. I am to get on with business.

“First of all, your parents know nothing. On the night of what I can only think of as the Great Error, Hope took a small, fast carriage and Cuddy, your mother’s faithful servant, and drove to Edilean to get Nate and as many of your brothers as they could. They were fortunate that Adam was at home and he arranged everything. He knew that to tell your father would start a war. Angus would be beside himself with fear for your safety—and if he found out that I had caused it, my life would be forfeit, and rightfully so.

“Nate told me that Adam can be an admirable liar when called for, and this time he outdid himself. He gave some outrageous story to your parents to explain their need to leave right away, and he and Nate were here in record time. I think perhaps Adam harnessed an eagle and flew.

“Adam took a day to talk to people here and ask questions, and as soon as I finish this letter, he plans to go away, but he won’t tell me where. Nate will stay in Charleston and work on solving the puzzle of how Alex’s wife was murdered inside a locked room.

“Cay, your name has been cleared. That was easy enough to do, but if you’re reading this letter, then you must be in Florida. I wonder if Alex . . .”

Cay stopped reading aloud as she scanned the rest of the letter. She looked back up at Alex. “You were right when you said that Uncle T.C. would figure out a way to clear my name.”

“Read the rest of it,” Alex said.

“It’s not important. Have you had anything to eat? Thankfull—she owns this place—has cooked some kind of bird that I’ve never seen before. She stuffs it with rice and some spices. It’s really very good, and—”

“Read the letter and don’t skip even a word of it.” Alex’s tone said that he wasn’t going to be disobeyed.

She picked the letter up again.

“I wonder if Alex is still with you? When I visited him in prison, he was a very angry man, and his grief over the loss of his wife nearly broke my heart. Was he any company for you on the long trip down? My heart cries for what you must have gone through with him.

“Adam told me to say that you’re to stay there in Florida and wait for one of your brothers to come and get you. You aren’t to leave that place, but to remain there until someone, probably Tally, comes for you. Adam said this over and over. He doesn’t seem to believe that you are a very obedient young lady. I told him that you were the opposite, that you readily agreed to help poor Alex in his time of need. Cay, dearest, your eldest brother said some curse words to me that in all my travels among sailors and mountain men, I had never heard!

“I beg of you, please stay there. Thankfull will take care of you, and you’re welcome to use my art supplies while you wait. Thankfull will show you where they are. She’s a very kind young woman and she helped me assemble it all.
Tell her

“Cay, dear, I wonder if you got Alex to talk? While he was in the jail, he barely spoke. I’m sworn to secrecy, but let me tell you that he knows more than I thought he did. Don’t tell Alex, but the long letter he wrote while in jail never reached the intended recipient. Nate says that if Alex is still there to tell him that he, Nate, has made a sacred oath that he will find who murdered Alex’s wife.

“Now I must go. Adam is giving me looks that frighten me. He is so much like your father!

“I send my love to you and I am sorry for all the pain I’ve caused you and your family. When we’re together again, remember that I owe you chocolate.

“With much love,
“T.C. Connor”

Cay folded the letter back together and looked up at Alex, but he kept his face turned away and concentrated on the horse. But she knew him well enough to know that he was thinking hard about what Uncle T.C. had written. “What did he mean that you know more than he thought you did?”

Alex was silent as he rubbed the mare’s back with the brush. “I’m glad to hear that they cleared your name,” he said at last. “And I agree with your brothers that you must stay here and wait for one of them to come for you. I didn’t like the idea of your traveling back alone.” He glanced at her. “Even if you’re dressed as a boy.” His tone said that he thought that was a joke.

“Tally,” Cay said, making the word sound heavy and forbidding. “He’ll laugh at me.”

Alex made a sound as though he thought her being ridiculed would be an appropriate response. “But think how you can best him with stories of your adventure. You rode through the night with an escaped murderer. You can tell him of your fear and the constant danger you were in.”

Cay arched an eyebrow at him. “Would that be the danger I was in when we were dancing in the store? Or when you had your head on my lap and I was rubbing jasmine oil into your hair?”

Alex turned his face away so she couldn’t see it. “I don’t know, lass,” he said softly. “That first night you were afraid of me.”

“True. I almost cut your throat.”

He chuckled. “Did you know that I still have a sore on my side from where you nicked me?”

“I did not!”

“Aye, you did. It was after we went out the side of the barn and you sliced my breeches half off me.” He looked back at her. “I’ll tell you, lass, that I thought you were going to stab me right then and there, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to move out of your reach.”

“It wasn’t easy for me to choose between you and the man who owned that decrepit old barn.”

“Are you glad you chose me?” Alex asked, laughing, but as he looked at her his face became serious. It was easy to see that she was again letting him know that she didn’t want to be left behind.

“Yes.”

There was an awkward moment as they looked at each other, and the fact that this was their last night together hung in the air.

Alex broke the moment. “So did you kiss them?”

“Who?”

“Did you kiss the girls?”

“You’re sick. You’re worse than a murderer, you’re deranged. You ought to be put away in an asylum.”

“What about young Tim? He was mightily taken with you. Did you sneak back and kiss him?”

“I’m going to tell my brother Adam that you weren’t very nice to me, and he’s going to beat you up.”

Alex laughed. “Oh, how I’m going to miss you, lass. You made me laugh after a time when I thought I’d never so much as smile again.”

“You wouldn’t be alive now if it weren’t for me.” Her voice was completely serious, her eyes burning into his.

Alex turned back to the horses. “No, you’re not going with me, and don’t start on me again. Tell me more about the food in this place. After tonight I might be eating alligators for dinner. I wonder what the meat tastes like?”

“I hope it tastes like festering donkey caresses,” she said, glaring at his back. “And don’t you dare ask me to sleep in the same bed with you tonight, because I won’t do it. You, Alexander . . . Yates, are an ungrateful, mean-spirited, bad-tempered numptie. And I wish I knew some of the words my brother knows so I could call you those things.” With that, she left the barn and slammed the door behind her.

Turning, Alex looked at the door, and sighed. He was going to miss her very, very much.

It was later that night, when Cay was in bed—alone—that she had to struggle to keep from crying. When she’d left Alex, the twins had been waiting for her with more questions and more attempts to touch her. They were so forward in their advances that she was tempted to tell them the truth, that she was female. But she couldn’t do that.

The thought of having to deal with the two of them for even a whole day was enough to make her want to jump in a saddle and head north. She couldn’t even imagine a whole week—or more—near them.

And even worse was that at the end of that horrible time, who was she to see but Tally. Tally! Her brother who liked nothing more than to make her feel as though she were incompetent at everything she tried.

She could hear him now. “So you were in a party dress when you rode out in the middle of the night to rescue a condemned criminal? Weren’t you worried that your dress might get soiled? Or your hair come down from whatever you do to make it stay up on top of your head?”

He would go on and on at her while she had to stand there and take it.

But then, maybe she could shoot him, she thought. One bullet to his shoulder. Or maybe to a thigh. He’d recover, but in the meantime, it would shut him up.

She was thinking these lovely thoughts, her mind full of satisfying images, when there was a knock on her door. Since she’d heard Thankfull threaten the girls if they bothered Cay again, she felt sure it was Alex come to apologize. She spread what was left of her hair out on the pillow. “Come in.”

When Thankfull put her head inside the door, Cay frantically began to tuck her hair behind her.

“I don’t mean to bother you, but I was wondering if Mr. Connor’s letter contained something bad.”

“No,” Cay said. “Just news from home.”

“I couldn’t help noticing that when you came in from the stables, you were in a bit of an ill temper, so I thought maybe . . .”

Cay reminded herself that in the future, she had to be more careful. She was used to being on the trail with Alex where they never saw the same people twice. “No, it was just my brother being what he is.”