The Scent of Jasmine (21 page)

Cay couldn’t resist telling Tim that the feathers would make a good hat for him. Her hint was that it would be a woman’s hat.

When they got to the old fort that Mr. Grady wanted to map, Cay sat down to one side and began to sketch. The fortress had been built by the Spanish, and even though it was now in ruins, one tower still had thirty-foot-tall walls. After Cay had made several drawings, she and Alex walked around and looked at the old fort.

“I’d like to make love to you here and now,” he whispered. But as he bent to kiss her, a big rock fell from the top of the old wall and landed just inches away from Cay. Alex looked up just in time to see a flash of white, which he knew was Tim’s shirt. He took off running, and minutes later, the forest echoed with Alex’s shouting. “It’s one thing to play tricks and another to try to kill someone,” they heard him tell the boy.

Cay, back at her drawing pad, glanced at Mr. Grady, but he wouldn’t look at her. It was his responsibility to bawl out Tim for doing something so dangerous, but Grady was leaving it all to Alex.

For three days after that, Tim was set to cleaning pots and gathering firewood.

In the evenings, over dinner, Eli, who’d been down into Florida many times, would tell them stories from his other visits and ones that he’d heard. One story was about a tribe of Indians that had extremely beautiful women. “Better than anyone has ever seen,” he said. “Their hair, their eyes, their bodies were all the most beautiful ever put on this earth. And the women were as kind and as nice as they were heavenly to look at.”

He went on to tell about the first explorers who’d stumbled on them. The men had been hunting, got lost, and were on the point of perishing when they saw the women, whom they called the Daughters of the Sun. The women gave the hunters provisions and let them rest, but at sundown, they said the men had to leave. The women said their husbands were fierce warriors and would kill them if they were found. But the men didn’t want to leave, so they followed the women back toward their village, which they could see in the distance. But try as they might, the hunters couldn’t reach the village. As soon as they thought they were near it, it would reappear in the distance. At long last, the hunters left and went back to their own trading post and told their story.

“Over the years,” Eli said, “many men have tried to find the village of the Daughters of the Sun, but no one has.”

When Eli finished his story, Cay handed him a drawing of an incredibly beautiful woman. “Do you think the women looked like this?”

Eli puzzled at the drawing with wide eyes. “I would think that they did. Is this anyone you know, or did you make her up?”

“She’s my mother,” Cay said and there was longing in her voice. She liked where she was, but she missed her home and her family.

The next day they stopped early and Mr. Grady led them to a small Indian village. Cay didn’t know what she’d expected, but the clean, orderly little settlement was not it. The children ran to them, and Cay wished she had some candy to give them. There was a big house at one end where the chief and his family lived and where they held meetings. Alex, Mr. Grady, and Eli were welcome inside, but Tim and she were told to stay outside.

The first thing Cay realized was that the Indians knew she was a girl. They had no preconceived ideas based on the clothing rituals of the white man, so they weren’t prejudiced by Cay’s male apparel. Laughing, the woman pulled her inside a small house with them, but they wouldn’t let Tim in. They fed her corn cakes and a bowl of fresh milk. One old woman who could speak a bit of English asked her who her husband was. Cay said, “Alex,” without even thinking about it. They nodded approval, but one woman said something and made a motion that imitated Alex’s beard.

The first woman said, “She thinks he’s a very ugly man and that you’d be better off with the other one. Much more handsome.”

Cay couldn’t contain her laughter as she nodded in agreement, and told the woman that Alex’s hair smelled very good and that’s why she liked him. This made the women laugh, and when they left the Indian village, the women followed Alex and kept sniffing his hair.

Alex put up with it with good humor, but he shot Cay looks, as though he was going to murder her. Eli and Mr. Grady said nothing, but when they got back to the boat, they exploded with laughter.

“What’s going on?” Tim asked, looking at Cay. “Are they laughing because the women took you in to their house? I thought that was pretty funny, too. They must have seen that you don’t even shave.” He rubbed his own sparse chin hair with pride.

That statement made Eli and Mr. Grady laugh harder and Alex frown more.

That night when they were alone in their tent, Cay tried to coax Alex out of his bad humor, but she couldn’t. “What bothered you so much?” she asked in frustration. “That they were teasing you? Is your pride so inflexible that you can’t laugh at yourself? The women liked the smell of your hair. What’s so wrong with that?”

“I would never get angry about women liking whatever part of me they care to, it’s just that . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence because he didn’t want to alarm her, but every day he was growing more sure that Eli and Grady knew that Cay was female. Even more, he felt that Grady knew who Cay was. There were small things that Cay didn’t see, but Alex did. On the surface, Grady treated Cay just as he did that idiot boy, Tim, but there were little things that Alex noticed. Whereas Tim would drop his spoon into the mud and barely wipe it off before eating with it, Grady always made sure that Cay’s plate and utensils were clean. Several times, Alex had seen both Eli and Grady intercept some insect or crawling creature from climbing on Cay while she sat engrossed in her drawings. One time Grady reached out over Cay’s head and grabbed a single strand of web that a spider was spinning as it made its way down to the top of Cay’s head.

There were other things less physical that Alex noticed. Grady talked to Cay in a way that he didn’t use with the others. It was a matter of tone and even vocabulary. What Alex knew from having dealt with the rich plantation boys in Charleston was that Grady treated Cay as one of his own class. Alex had seen that you couldn’t enter that class; you had to have been born into it. For all that Americans liked to brag that the new country was a classless one, Alex had seen that it wasn’t so.

What Alex wondered was how much Grady knew. To Alex, it wouldn’t have been difficult for Grady to guess that Cay was female. She walked, talked, even reacted as a woman would. Even the pranks she pulled on young Tim were done in a female way. Had she been male, by now she would have punched Tim in the face.

What Alex feared was that Grady hadn’t so much as guessed the truth about Cay as that he’d been
told.
He seemed to not only know she was female, but also to know she was of his same class, and that made Alex wonder if Grady had received a letter from her family or T.C. telling him of the circumstances. And if Grady had been told about Cay, that meant he knew Alex was an escaped fugitive.

After their visit to the Indian village, Alex became more cautious, and he watched Grady and Eli more closely. As far as Alex could tell, Eli knew only that Cay was a girl, but Grady seemed to know much more. On the personal side, what was worse—to Alex’s mind anyway—was that Grady seemed to be making a play for Cay. Alex knew better than to tell his concerns to Cay. She’d laugh and tell him he was jealous, but Alex saw things that bothered him. At night, Eli’s stories became longer, so there was less time for him and Cay to slip away. Four times now, Grady had told Alex to go ashore and bring back game and any unusual plants that Cay might draw. That Cay would be alone on the boat with them while Alex was trapped onshore was not something he could protest without telling the truth. It had been extremely difficult to travel on foot through the wilds of Florida, bring down a deer, carry it across his shoulders, and get back to them.

“We thought you weren’t going to make it,” Eli said the first time Alex came into the camp late at night.

Alex dropped the deer carcass and looked at Grady, but the man wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Alex wondered what Grady wanted from Cay. It seemed obvious that he wanted to break the alliance between Alex and Cay, meaning that he wanted to stop their lovemaking. But why? Because Grady knew her family and therefore felt responsible for her? Or was he as interested in an alliance with her family as she was in his?

“You look like you ate something sour,” Cay whispered as they went into their little tent together. “Did something happen between you and Mr. Grady?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you’ve been frowning at him for two days now, and every time he so much as speaks to me I think you’re going to hit him with an oar. It’s flattering that you’re so jealous, but I think that what you and I do together proves that you don’t have a right to dislike him.”

“Don’t I?” he asked in a loud whisper. “When we leave here, who are you more likely to stay with? Me or Armitage?”

“Quiet, or they’ll hear you. Mr. Grady doesn’t want anyone to know who he is.”

“You think Eli doesn’t know? He practically kisses the man’s ring.”

“Jamie doesn’t wear any rings.”

“What?” Alex growled, his eyebrows pulled together so they nearly touched in the center.

“Nothing. I was making a joke. I was trying to cheer you up. What has happened to make you suddenly get so angry? I thought you were enjoying yourself.” She put her hand on his chest and lowered her voice. “I’ve been enjoying myself a great deal.”

He took her hands in his and held them. “And when this is over, that’s all it will be.”

“What does that mean?”

“When we get back to a town you’ll reveal yourself to Grady, and what will you two do then? Confess that you’re in love with each other and post the banns for your marriage?”

Cay gave him a serious look. “Every night after you and I make love, as soon as you’re asleep, I sneak away and join Mr. Grady in his tent. We have wild sex all night long, and by the way, he’s a much better lover than
you
are.”

Alex drew in his breath so sharply that the canvas walls of the tent moved. “You . . . you . . . ,” he began, choking on the words.

“And Eli is the best of all,” she said without a hint of a smile. “Tim’s not any good, but I’ve been teaching him what I’ve learned from you three men. Mostly from Eli, though. Did I tell you that he—”

“Stop talking,” Alex said as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

It was later, as they were lying together, sweaty and sated, that she again told him that he shouldn’t be jealous of Mr. Grady. Cay entwined her fingers in Alex’s beard. “Although, he is much more handsome than you are. Even the Indian women said so. Did you get that nest of sandpipers out of this mess?”

He picked up her hand, kissed the palm, and held it on his chest. “It’s not looks that worry me. It’s that Grady is like a duke, and you’re a princess.”

Cay laughed, but Alex didn’t. “I haven’t had a bath in a week and I spend my days hauling big boxes around. I see nothing princesslike in my life.”

“I well know that even when you’re covered in mud, you act and talk and move like a princess. Even when we share a spoon and a bowl of stew, you’re a lady.”

Cay knew she should be flattered by his words, but they made her frown. Something big was bothering him, but she couldn’t get him to tell her what it was. The only way she could get to sleep was to tell herself that of course he was upset. He’d been unjustly accused of murder and they had no idea what was awaiting him when they left the secrecy of the uncharted territory of Florida. She finally did sleep, but she was restless, and so was Alex.

Twenty

Alex shaved.

The next morning Cay needed the only washbasin they had, and when she saw that Alex was using it, she was too impatient to register what he’d done. “I need that,” she said. The flatboat was loaded and she hadn’t even washed her face and hands. As always, Eli had saved her some hot water, but she hadn’t had time to use it because Tim had played one of his tricks on her that morning, this time involving porcupine quills from the little creature Alex had brought to her the day before. It was only from a month of wariness that Cay managed to escape being impaled on the sharp spikes. Tim had been smirking all morning as Cay pulled quills out of her clothing.

So now, Alex was further agitating her by hogging the washbasin. “Since when do
you
wash?” she snapped at him.

“Go ahead and take it,” he said, but she could barely hear him as he had a towel over the lower half of his face. When she picked up the basin, she saw the soapy water and the whiskers in it, but even then she didn’t register what Alex had done. Eli and Mr. Grady shaved every morning, so she was used to whiskery water.

With the basin in her hands, she turned away, but after two steps, she halted, and turned back to look at him.

Alex still had the towel over his face, and he was looking at her shyly, as though he was almost afraid to let her see that part of him naked. If they hadn’t been surrounded by other people, she would have made jokes about what parts of him she had seen unclothed. “Let’s see what you look like.”

He didn’t move, just kept looking at her, the towel held closely about his face.

Cay smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry, I won’t be shocked.” Her voice softened, and she stepped closer to him. “Even if you have scars under there, I won’t mind.” She’d meant her words to make him laugh, but she stopped smiling when she remembered that he’d been in prison. She hadn’t thought about what they may have done to him while he was there, but she did now. Tortures that she’d read about in her history studies—all of which Tally had gleefully read aloud to her—ran through her mind. She held on to the rim of the basin until her knuckles were white. “Please take the towel down,” she said softly as she prepared herself for what she’d see.

Slowly and with reluctance, Alex removed the towel from his face and looked at her.

Nothing could have prepared Cay for what she saw when Alex’s face was exposed. He was beautiful. Not just handsome, but as lovely, as perfect, as an angel. His blue eyes, so familiar to her, were set above a nose that was perfectly formed. His lips, which she’d kissed so many times but had never really seen, were full and shaped like those in classical paintings. What was more was that Alex was young, less than thirty was her guess, and there wasn’t a line or a flaw on his face. Compared to Alex, Mr. Grady was a plain-faced old man.

She stared at him in silence for a moment, unable to speak for her astonishment, then all the times she’d called him an old man, and all the things she’d said about the handsomeness of other men, came back to her—and anger began to run through her. He had lied to her by omission. She remembered how he’d laughed at her so many times, about so many things, but it looked as if that hadn’t been enough for him. Since the day they’d met, he’d given himself the pleasure of knowing he was making a fool of her. How he must have enjoyed the thought of her humiliation when she found out the truth about him! And the worst was that even when they’d been making love, he was laughing at her.

Without a thought of what she was doing, Cay threw the dirty shaving water into his face, dropped the basin to the ground, and marched off. She didn’t know where she was going, but she never wanted to see Alexander McDowell ever again.

He caught her by the time she reached the river and put his hand on her arm.

She jerked away, refusing to look at him. Cay stood there with her arms folded over her flattened chest and stared straight ahead at the water.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“You know very well what’s wrong.” Her jaw was clenched so tightly she could hardly speak.

“Am I too ugly for you to look at?” He put his hand out to touch her shoulder, but she moved away.

She tightened her arms and her lips, but she still wouldn’t look at him. “You are beautiful!” she said in a way that made the word sound like an accusation.

For a moment he was silent, then he said, “Am I better than Adam?”

That he was again—still—laughing at her, ridiculing her even now, made her want to hit him, to at least shout at him, but she wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. If he could make jokes, so could she. “Of course not. And you’re not better-looking than my father, either.”

“How about Ethan?”

“Not even close.”

“Nate?”

“Yes.”

“I’m better-looking than Nate?”

“Yes.” Her jaw was still clenched, and she hated that he was enjoying himself so very much.

“What about Tally?”

“Tally has horns and a forked tail.”

“I’d better look.”

“Look at what?” she snapped, and made the mistake of glancing at him. He was better-looking than her first sight told her he was. She turned back to the river. “No! Don’t tell me. You mean to look to see if
you
have a tail. For your information, I’ve seen your bare behind, and it’s completely ordinary.”

“Is it?” There was laughter just under his voice.

“Stop laughing at me!”

“Sorry, lass, but this is the best conversation I’ve ever had in my life. When I was nine and a boy told me how babies were made, I liked that conversation, but this time is better.”

“Well, I don’t like it! I feel like . . . like Eve in the Garden of Eden.”

“You mean you feel naked?”

“No! I mean that I can now see the truth. I thought you were older. I thought maybe you were Uncle T.C.’s age.”

“I’m the
son
of his friend.”

“I can see that now, but forgive me if I got a little mixed up. What with people shooting at me when I met you, and being near a murderer, my thoughts were a tad bit confused.”

The laughter left Alex’s voice and he moved closer to her, but he didn’t touch her. “Lass, you must have known that I wasn’t old. An old man can’t . . .”

“Can’t what?” She spun around to glare at him and blinked at the sight of his beautiful face. “Forgive me for not having your experience in seeing the naked bodies of so many men that I can compare them. Or your experience with the abilities of old men versus young men as lovers. I—”

“What about Eli?” he asked, his face solemn.

Cay didn’t smile. “I hate you.” She turned away from him, her body still held rigidly.

“Do you?”

“Yes! And stop looking at me like that.”

“Since you won’t look at me, how can you know how I’m looking at you?”

“I can feel it. You’re looking at me in the same way that Ethan looks at girls.”

“I am honored by the comparison.”

“My brother is a good person. You, Alexander Lachlan McDowell, are
not.
” Without another glance at him, she went back to the campsite.