The Scent of Jasmine (28 page)

Twenty-six

Before Adam answered the knock on his hotel door, he felt sure he knew who it was. This morning Tally had told him about Cay fainting and nearly hitting her head on the hard floor. Tally had been so angry that he’d wanted to challenge Alex to a duel. At the very least, he wanted to press charges against him.

“Don’t you think he’s had enough trouble from the law?” Nate asked, calm as always.

Adam turned to Nate and asked what had happened.

“Our sister wanted to see Alex with his wife. She did, and it was too much for her.”

Tally glared at Nate. “Tell him why you aren’t concerned about this. Tell Adam why you couldn’t care less about what’s been done to our little sister, including dragging her into uncharted territory where even the plants have teeth.”

“I have yet to see proof of plants that devour human flesh, no matter that Mr. Connor loves to tell stories of them.”

“Proof? You don’t need proof for what happened this morning. Just because
you
think McDowell can do no wrong doesn’t mean—”

“Tally!” Adam said. “Am I right that our sister is unhurt?”

“If you call crying hard enough to break a man’s heart to hear her, and refusing to eat or speak to anyone ‘unhurt,’ then yes she is.”

“Interesting observation,” Nate said calmly, “since it’s usually you who makes her cry.”

“Why you—” Tally made a lunge for Nate, who put up his fists. Nate had had boxing lessons from a professional.

Adam’s long arm reached out and stopped Tally. “Sit! I want to know what happened, and since you, Tally, seem to be incapable of coherent thought, I’ll let Nate tell me. First of all, why does our angry brother think you aren’t concerned about our little sister?”

“Tell him!” Tally said as he slumped down on to a chair.

“Alexander McDowell is Merlin.”

Adam stared at Nate for a few moments before he spoke. “Now I understand. It’s why you’ve been so involved in this hunt for the truth.”

“Yes, it is,” Nate answered. “With both my sister and my friend involved, I could do no less than my best.”

“So what happened after Cay fainted?” Adam asked.

Tally answered. “I carried her to Nate’s room.”

Adam nodded. Last night, he and Cay had stayed in one hotel, while Nate, Tally, and Alex went to another one. It was at Nate’s hotel that they had arranged for Alex to meet with his wife. “What did Alex do that so upset Cay?”

“He kissed the woman,” Tally said angrily.

“If by ‘the woman’ you mean his wife, then he had a right to, didn’t he?” Nate said.

“In front of Cay?” Tally shot back.

“If you had kept proper vigilance, she wouldn’t have been concealing herself behind some cabinet doors and seen it all.”

“Since when am I her sitter?”

“Stop it!” Adam said. “I want to know what happened between Alex and that woman.”

Tally and Nate looked at each other, then at Adam.

“We don’t know,” Nate said. “We were more concerned about Cay. We got her to my room, I revived her with smelling salts, and she . . .” Nate didn’t like great emotion and he especially didn’t like to see his sister crying in such pain.

Tally continued. “When I got back to the room where McDowell was to meet his wife, they were gone. Think they’re on their honeymoon by now?”

“If they’re in this city, I can find them,” Nate said.

“No,” Adam answered. “What’s between them is none of our business. Tally, I want you to take Cay home. Let Mother deal with her tears. She’ll know how to handle them.”

“Our father will be very angry,” Nate said.

“Yeah, won’t he?” Tally said, grinning. “He’ll skin McDowell alive and nail his hide to the barn door.”

“Tally,” Nate said, “I really don’t think there’s a need for your bloodthirsty declarations.”

“I’d like you to take care of our sister,” Adam said to his youngest brother.

“Gladly!” Tally stood up. “I want her as far away from McDowell as possible.”

Nate remained seated, looking at Adam. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to wait here for Alex to come to me.”

Nate couldn’t repress a smile. “He will come.”

“Yes,” Adam said, “I’m sure he will. My fear is that after we talk, he’ll go to Cay, and she’ll forgive him everything, then we’ll have a war on our hands. Now, while she’s angry at him, I want to get her out of here.”

“You’re going to talk to the bastard?” Tally asked.

“I’m going to listen to every word he has to say. I think it’s time that someone listened to him. Now go and get Cay while she’s still upset. When she comes to her senses, I want her to be in Edilean and under Father’s care.”

“I like this plan,” Tally said as he headed for the door, but he stopped and looked back at Nate. “And what do
you
plan to do?”

“After Merlin . . . Alex talks to Adam, I am going to help him however he needs me.”

“You’re going to choose that bastard over your own family?”

“No,” Nate said calmly. “I’m going to—”

“Tally,” Adam said, “would you please see to Cay and do what you can to calm down? And Nate—”

But Nate was already on his feet and ready to leave with Tally. “I’ll give you time alone with him. I hope that you’ll . . .”

“I’ll be fair and I’ll listen,” Adam said. “The man was falsely accused and convicted of murder. I can’t imagine what that must have done to him.”

After giving a quick nod, Nate left Adam’s hotel room.

It was late, and someone was knocking on Adam’s door, and he felt sure it was Alexander McDowell.

“Is she gone?” Alex asked as he stepped inside Adam’s room.

“Yes. Cay left for Edilean with Tally this morning. Nate is waiting to help you in whatever needs to be done. Cay wanted to stay, but we all think it’s better that she be with our family now.” Adam did his best to think and act in a rational manner, but he couldn’t help himself. “What in the hell were you thinking when you kissed that woman in front of Cay?”

Alex sat down heavily on a chair. He looked as though he’d aged twenty years in one day. “First of all, I didn’t know Cay was hiding in the room. I told her—” He ran his hand over his eyes. “That I’d told her she couldn’t go should have made me know that she’d be there.”

Some of Adam’s anger left him; that was exactly like his sister. “So why did you kiss a woman who’d done what she did to you?”

“I don’t know. I think it was relief that she was alive and not dead, which meant that the nightmare of my life was going to end. A thousand things went through my mind.”

“Cay . . .” Adam was torn between wanting to shout at the man and feeling sympathy for him. But if there was one thing he knew, it was that Alex loved Cay. He’d seen it. Their love for each other was so strong a person could almost touch it. “Are you in love with your wife?”

Shaking his head, Alex gave a derogatory little laugh. “I’d never spent a whole day with her, and after today, I don’t know how I ever believed I was in love with her. Cay told me I was a fool for marrying someone I didn’t know, and she was right.”

“I saw her, and her beauty dazzles a man.”

“Aye, it does. That she wanted
me
made me feel that I had been given some great honor. But she also made me feel that I needed to earn masses of money so I could give her everything, houses, carriages, beautiful clothes. I wanted to give all that I could to her.”

“She isn’t like my little sister?” There was curiosity in Adam’s voice.

Alex smiled. “Cay couldn’t be more different. I think that if I told her I wanted to set up housekeeping on the moon, Cay would start packing.”

“I always knew that if she fell in love, it would be hard.”

“So she wasn’t in love with her three men?”

Smiling, Adam sat down on a chair across from Alex. “It was me who persuaded our father to let her go to Charleston to have some time to think about her three marriage proposals. I wanted her to meet some other people, to see new places. I hoped that time and distance would make her forget those men she was thinking about marrying.” Adam got up and poured two glasses full of single malt MacTarvit Scotch and handed one to Alex. “Did she tell you about the Daisies?”

“Never heard of them.”

“Several of my father’s friends, your father’s friends, too, settled in Edilean, and got married. By chance, there were five baby girls born in the same year as Cay, and as they grew up, they became fast friends. When they were eight, they announced that they were going to call themselves The Chain because their friendship was as strong as steel. I think the idea came from Jess, the daughter of Naps and Tabitha who . . .” Adam waved his hand in dismissal. “If you knew them, you’d understand. Anyway, Tally heard this decree and said they were more like a chain of daisies than of steel. The name stuck. The five girls are still the best of friends, and we all call them the Daisies.”

“All Cay talked about was her brothers,” Alex said. “Night and day, it was all about the four of you. I didn’t hear anything about her friends, except about one of them having ten brothers and sisters, and parents with a bad marriage. She said the daughter stayed at her house all the time to escape her home.” Alex also remembered what Cay had told him about a girl named Jessica and her tongue, but he didn’t say that.

“That would be Jess. Yes, her parents fight a lot, but Jess stays at our house because my sister rolls out the red carpet for her. Dresses, riding, schooling. Whatever Jess wants, Cay gives it to her.”

“That sounds like her.” Alex was smiling.

“Are you hungry? I haven’t had dinner. I could order something to be brought up. I figure you have a lot to tell me, and we can do it just as well over dinner.”

“That sounds good,” Alex said. He got up to look out the window as Adam pulled a cord on the wall and a white-coated steward appeared. Alex knew he was being given time to relax because Adam wanted all the information he could get, and he felt sure that Adam had some decrees of his own to make. Alex suspected that Adam was going to tell him that he couldn’t see Cay again until the mess about Lilith was finished. Marriage, murder, all of it had to be done with and behind him before Alex could see Cay again. That was all right, because that was the same decision Alex had reached.

The two men didn’t talk much until the food arrived, and they sat down to eat. Adam held out a plate of brussels sprouts and his eyes told Alex that it was time for him to start talking.

There was so much to tell that Alex wasn’t sure where to start. “I’m not married.”

“Oh?” Adam asked.

“The woman who walked down the aisle to me has a husband living in England. It seems that she murdered her husband’s nephew, his heir, and I was used as a way for her to get out of being arrested. When she was living in Charleston, she discovered that some men were searching for her, so she came up with the plan to fake her own death in a very public way. She thought the men would report back to the English authorities that she was dead, then she’d be free to change her name again and . . .” He waved his hand. “I have no idea what she planned to do.”

Alex took a few bites. “As soon as she told me she had a living husband, I took her to a judge here in New Orleans. I can tell you that that was no mean feat to get her there.” Alex took a bite of food and chewed slowly. It was difficult to tell all that he’d learned in the last day. “The judge told us that if all two people had to do was swear that one of them was still married to someone else and thereby their marriage would be dissolved, there wouldn’t be even one marriage left in this country. He said, ‘I need
proof
! If she was married in England, then go to England and get me some documents. I want papers with seals on them. Gold seals. Just so I believe all of it.’”

“So you have to go back to England with her?”

“If I want all this horror taken from my life, yes I do.” Alex took a deep breath. “I think that all I’ve been through because of that woman has taken away my ability to feel pity—at least for her.” Alex took a bite of his steak and waited before speaking again. He was determined to get his anger under control.

“Even Nate didn’t find any of this out . . . Merlin.”