The Scent of Jasmine (13 page)

Had he given up his thoughts of justice? she wondered. And if he had, had he done it because of her? The way he spoke now, he meant to go into the jungles of wild Florida and maybe never return.

But she’d heard the difference in his voice when he spoke of the past. When he talked about his horses, he was full of energy, even excitement. He’d left his homeland and his father with hope for his future life.

Just as I have a plan for mine, Cay thought. She knew what she wanted out of life, and so did he. He’d even started working on it while he still lived in Scotland. She smiled at the memory of his story about illegally mating his mare with a “great beast” of a stallion. He’d done it so he could get to America and someday have his own farm, with his own wife and children.

He wants exactly what I do, she thought, and sadness nearly overwhelmed her as she realized that it was possible that she’d get the future she wanted, but Alex never would. For all his life, he’d be haunted by the fact that he’d been convicted of murder and had escaped hanging by just one day.

But what if Nate got her letter and went to Charleston and found out the truth about who killed Alex’s wife? Knowing who killed someone wouldn’t bring that person back to life. While it was true that Alex could possibly be cleared of the murder charges, he’d
never
get back the woman he loved. Such a tragic happening would take years to recover from—if he ever did.

“Stop thinking so hard,” Alex said. “It’s keeping me awake.”

“All right,” she said. “It’s just that I don’t think that going to Florida will solve anything.”

“Nor do I,” he said, “but right now it’s the only thing I can do. We need to sleep, as I plan to leave very early.”

“Maybe if I bury my face in your hair and smell the jasmine, I’ll be able to fall asleep.”

“Don’t even think of touching me.”

“Yes, Mr. McDowell,” she said as she closed her eyes.

Eleven

The next morning, well before daylight, Alex told Cay to get out of bed, but she couldn’t seem to wake up. “We need to go, so put that thing on your chest and let’s leave.”

“I want my chocolate,” Cay mumbled as she tried to stand up. “And I want to take a bath.”

“You had a bath two days ago. Now get dressed.”

As soon as Alex went to the other side of the room, she fell across the bed and was asleep instantly.

“Up!” he said as he grabbed the waistband of her breeches and pulled. “Fall down like that again and I’ll give you a smack across that round little bottom of yours.”

“You’re cruel.” She couldn’t seem to get her eyes open and she was standing, but she swayed on her feet.

“Cay!” he said sharply. “Get dressed.”

“Am dressed,” she mumbled.

He picked up the binding cloth and tossed it on to her shoulder, but she just stood there. When she didn’t move, he said, “So help me, I’m tempted to leave you here! I’ve already been downstairs and the barman’s found out his daughter ran off with the stable lad. The man knows someone here helped them. If I left you here, there’s no way you’d keep your mouth closed and not brag that
you
arranged everything. He’d probably have you put in jail.”

Cay opened one eye. “You wouldn’t actually leave without me, would you?”

Alex, fully dressed, paused at the door. “Five minutes. If you aren’t at the horses in five minutes you won’t see me again.” With that, he left the room, closing the door behind him.

Cay stood still for a full minute. He was, of course, lying, but on the other hand, maybe he wasn’t. Four and a half minutes after Alex left the room, Cay was outside the barn, standing beside her mare and yawning. Alex was nowhere to be seen. When he walked out of the tavern, two steaming mugs in his hands, she said, “You took long enough. I’ve been waiting for hours.” She saw a hint of a smile under his whiskers, but he just handed her a mug. “Where’s breakfast?”

“This is it. The barman’s too angry to cook. The man he wanted his daughter to marry is in there.”

When he said nothing else, she said, “So what’s he like?”

Alex’s eyes showed his merriment. “Very old, very ugly.”

She drained her mug and headed toward the tavern, but he caught her arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To tell the man about jasmine oil. It makes even old, ugly men look good.”

“Get on your horse,” Alex said, laughing. “If we ride hard for the next two days we can be there by tomorrow evening.”

“Tomorrow?” she asked, and that word woke her up. Just one more day.

Alex looked at her from atop his horse. “Will you miss me, lass?”

She wanted to say that she’d be glad to see her family, but the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth. When she saw Alex’s frown, she knew he was starting to worry again. “Did I tell you about Ephraim?” she asked as she got on her horse.

“Is he the third suitor?”

She followed him out of the courtyard and on to the road. “Yes. He’s forty-two, a widower, and he has three nearly grown children.”

“Lass, please tell me you’re making a jest.”

“No. He’s quite wealthy, has a beautiful house, and—”

“But does he makes your heart dance with joy at the very sight of him?”

“I do believe, Alex McDowell, that you’re the most romantic man I’ve ever met.”

“Except, of course, for Adam.”

“On long winter evenings, Adam writes poetry.”

Alex groaned. “I hope I never meet your perfect brother.”

When Cay looked at Alex, it occurred to her that he might never meet any of her family.

He saw her face change, saw the gleam leave her eyes. “Are you ready to ride? Can you keep up with me?”

“I can outride you any day of the week.”

“That’s better. No more sadness, now. You’ll be rid of me soon enough.” Turning, he started down the road at a rapid pace, Cay close behind him.

As they traveled deeper south, they began to run out of towns and even roads. They passed huge, magnificent plantations that were more like villages than houses. Acres of fields full of indigo, cotton, and rice bordered the rutted, weed-infested roads they rode on.

Where there weren’t plantations, there were tiny, falling-down houses that all seemed to have a dozen children running around them. It was a marked contrast between the very wealthy and the very poor.

Cay looked at everything the best she could while keeping up with the grueling pace Alex set. Once in a while, he’d turn and ask if she was all right and she always nodded.

The sun became brighter, the sky more blue, the people and buildings more sparse. She pulled her straw hat down over her head to shade her eyes from the glare and kept riding.

At noon they stopped by a stream and ate and drank.

“Still wishing you were home?” Alex asked.

She looked about her at the tall, narrow-trunked palm trees and the huge ferns. “No, I don’t think I do.”

“Not even for your two men?”

“Three men.”

“You aren’t really serious about the one with grown children, are you? How old is the oldest child?”

“A son, eighteen.”

Alex put the stopper back in the canteen. “He’ll climb into bed with you.”

“He would never do such a thing. He’s a very nice boy. He’s studying law.”

“Oh, then, if he’s a lawyer he must be of sterling character.”

“You’re horrible.”

“Never said I wasn’t.” He mounted his horse and looked down at her. “If you eliminate the old man, that leaves you with a preacher and a gambler. Lass, you need to think hard about who you’re going to marry.” Chuckling, he led his horse back to the narrow road.

As Cay mounted her mare, she stuck her tongue out at Alex’s back. But he turned and saw her—and he laughed in a way that made her want to hit him.

They rode for hours more, and the roads narrowed until they were little more than pathways. Twice they stopped at houses so Alex could ask directions. Each time the people invited them inside, as the owners were hungry for company and news of the outside world. Cay wanted to stay, wanted to get off the horse and walk around, but Alex always said no. At one house, a pretty girl, about sixteen, looked at Cay from under her lashes and gave her a big piece of cornbread. But the girl offered nothing to Alex.

When they were back on their horses, Cay ate the cornbread with gusto. “I do believe this is the very
best
cornbread I’ve ever had. Mmmm. So delicious.” She didn’t offer Alex even a bite. “You do know why she gave this to me, don’t you?” she asked.

Alex said nothing.

“She was flirting with me, that’s why. And she was flirting because she thought I was a boy.”

Alex looked her up and down. Her breeches clung to her thighs, her hair was about her shoulders, and her big hat made a shade like a veil over her face. He thought she couldn’t look more feminine. “You have just proven that people are stupid.”

“They see what they’re supposed to. When are we going to stop for the night? Are there any taverns around here?”

“Not on this road. Are you going to share that or not?”

Cay had a big chunk of uneaten cornbread in her hand. “I’ll sell it to you.”

“You have the money.”

“I don’t want money. I want you to tell me what the plan for me is.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “As if you haven’t already figured that out.”

“You mean you saw behind all my subtle questions?”

“You don’t know the meaning of subtle.”

“All right, so tell me a story about when you were a little boy.”

“How about if I tell you that when I was in prison I shared the cell with rats? Or maybe you’d like to hear about the townspeople throwing rocks at me when I was dragged into the courtroom?”

Cay’s face lost its smile and she handed the cornbread to him.

He ate it in two bites. “That soft heart of yours is going to get you in trouble one day. I win!” He kicked his horse forward.

“You—” she called as he raced ahead of her. Blast it! Why hadn’t she listened when Tally wanted to teach her curse words? “You’re a very bad person, Alexander McDowell!” she called out, and his laughter floated back to her, but by then she was smiling, too.

Twelve

“What if those people at the boardinghouse don’t like me?” Cay asked.

Alex was kicking the remains of the fire out. “How could they not like you?” he asked softly.

“What?”

“I said that you’re not going to live with them forever, just a few weeks, so you’ll be fine.”

“How many weeks?”

“I don’t know.” He stepped on a branch that was still smoldering. When he glanced up at Cay, she was looking at him as though she thought he knew the answers to all her questions. “Lass, I really don’t know what to expect. I can’t very well ask someone what they’ve heard about the escaped murderer from Charleston, now can I?”

Cay sat down on a log and thought she might stay there. According to Uncle T.C.’s map—which she’d just seen—they were a mere three hours from the tiny town on the St. Johns River where Alex was to meet Mr. Grady. The town had a dozen or so houses, a trading post, and a few other stores. One of the houses took in paying customers, and that’s where she was to stay. She’d thought she was to be the guest of “friends” of T.C.’s, but it was just a boardinghouse.

Alex sat down beside her. “Come on, lass, buck up. It’s only for a while, then you’ll be back with your family.”

“And how am I to get there by myself? What if robbers attack me?”

“You can outrun them. Or maybe just slip to the side of your horse and hide, as I taught you to do.”

She heard the laughter in his voice. Standing up, she glared down at him. “While
you
go running into the wilds of Florida enjoying yourself!”

Late last night they’d made camp amid a thicket of spiny plants, and as had become the way between them, they slept near each other. It was too warm to need the cloak or a fire, so there was no real need to sleep just a foot from each other, but they were too tired to make up excuses of why they shouldn’t be together. Alex put a blanket on the moist ground and started to put a second one several feet away, but after a glance at Cay, he put the other blanket next to hers. After all, it was their last night together.

They were too tired to do much talking, but this morning Alex showed her T.C.’s map and she saw how close they were. All morning they’d ridden hard, and Cay hadn’t so much as cracked a smile.

“Come now, lass, surely you have a joke in you,” Alex said as he rode beside her.

“No, not one.”

“What if I poured more oil on my hair?”

She tried to think of something funny to reply, but couldn’t.

In the early afternoon, Alex pulled off the rough road into a clearing among the fierce shrubs that threatened to overtake them, and built a fire. He knew he was wasting time, but like Cay, he was well aware of how much longer they had before they would part forever. He was going to miss her. He didn’t tell her, but he was deeply worried about what they’d find waiting for them.

Now, sitting on the log, he looked at her. “I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t have to. You know that, don’t you? If I had my way I’d . . .” He smiled. “I’d go back with you and meet your brothers.”

She sat back down on the log beside him. “If you didn’t need to hide in the jungle, you’d be a married man and you wouldn’t even have met me.”

“True,” he said. “But maybe if I can find out the truth of what has been done to me, I can visit you one day.”

“You won’t.” She sighed. “I think my entire life is ruined.”

“I’m sorry for that, lass. I never meant to make you into a fugitive, to have gunmen chasing you, or—”

“But that’s just it,” she said, standing up again. “I think I
like
all this. Before this happened I was a very happy person. I have a wonderful family, nice friends, and I live in a great little town. I had everything. But now—” She stretched out her arms. “Now I have nothing but the clothes on my back and—”

“And the dress in my saddlebag,” he added, “plus three diamond pins.” He was so glad to see her energetic again that he wanted to dance about with her, as he’d done in the store.

“Did you know that my mother ran a company?”

Alex had to stop himself from saying that he knew all about it, but he didn’t want to interrupt her. “What kind of company?”

“It was in Boston, before she was married, and she hired a lot of women to sell fruit. She was very successful, and when she sold the business, she made a great deal of money, which she gave to her employees. My mother did some truly wonderful things. But what have
I
done?”

“Driven three men insane with your indecision?” he offered.

She knew he’d meant it as a joke, but she didn’t take it as such. “That’s just it! The truth is that I’m having trouble remembering what those men look like.”

“Ugly, handsome, and in between.”

She nodded. “More or less.”

“So what are you saying, lass? Would you like to stay in Florida and wait for me to return? I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.” He wanted to give Nate plenty of time to investigate.

“Wait,” Cay said. “I’m to
wait.
” To her, the word sounded awful, but at the same time she thought maybe she could sketch what she saw. Her teacher, Mr. Johns, had often said it was a shame she couldn’t go out west and paint the magnificent landscapes he’d heard were there. Maybe while she waited for Alex to return, she could go to the big plantations they’d passed and paint portraits of the inhabitants.

“Maybe it won’t be so long,” Alex said, and he couldn’t keep the hope out of his voice. Maybe by the time he returned, Nate would have found out the truth. In the last few days he’d been asking himself
why
someone had wanted Lilith dead. Why her but not him? And, also, a couple of times, he’d asked himself if it was possible that what had been suggested at the trial could be true, that Lilith had drugged the wine and given it to Alex. But, always, he came back to the question of
why.

“You’re thinking about your wife, aren’t you? You have that faraway, sad look in your eyes again.”

“You’ve come to know me well.” He put his hand on the log beside him, and Cay sat down. “I won’t stay long on the trip. What if I stay a month or so, then tell Grady that I have to leave? I’ll help him find someone else to take care of the horses, and I’ll return and escort you back to Virginia.”

Cay grimaced. “Doing that would defeat the whole purpose of your escape. No, we need to part from each other. Your plan of leaving me behind is good, it’s just that I don’t like it.”

He was pleased at her logic—and at her self-sacrifice. “I hope to prove my innocence.”

“If you don’t, you’ll be hiding all your life.”

“I know, lass,” he said softly, “but I can assure you that I’ll do whatever I can to clear
your
name.”

“I’m sure my father and brothers will prevent anything from happening to me. It’s you I’m concerned about. You’re a nice man and—”

“Am I now?” he said as he mounted his horse.

“Sometimes you are,” she said tightly as she put her foot in the stirrup. She was giving him a compliment, but he was, as always, laughing at her.

“Will you invite me to dinner at your big house? You and I will recall the days we slept together on our wild ride south, and it’ll make your husband insane with jealousy.”

His teasing was infectious. “Then he and I will argue, but my husband and I will reconcile lovingly and that will make
you
jealous.” She reined her horse away, her nose in the air.

“Ha!” Alex said as he pulled up beside her. “By that time I’ll have two women on my arms—no! three of them—and I’ll own the biggest horse farm in all of Virginia.”

“You’ll lose your shirt in gambling, and what woman is going to want a smelly old man like you?” She was glad to see him smiling, and she was especially pleased to hear him talk about women other than the wife he’d lost.

“The scent of jasmine will become all the rage in men’s clothes,” he said, sounding like a man who cared about fashion. “Even the traders will be wearing it with their buckskins.”

“They’ll attract butterflies, and that’ll start a new trend for women. Our bonnets will be covered in butterfly wings.”

“And your husband will hate them because they make him sneeze.”

“I’m going to marry someone who is so manly that he never even sneezes,” she said as she urged her horse forward.

Her good humor lasted another hour, but when she began to think about what was going to happen when they got there, Cay felt more gloomy with every step they took. She was to stay in a boardinghouse alone for a few weeks after Alex left, then she was to proceed, as he’d told her repeatedly, cautiously toward home. She couldn’t think of anything more boring, lonely—or frightening. She couldn’t help but think of a hundred things that could go wrong. Even though she’d told Alex that she was certain her family would clear her name, she still worried about the timing. What if the Charleston police realized that their prisoner had probably gone south? Many people knew of Uncle T.C.’s explorations, so surely they knew of his next trip. She knew that T.C. and Mr. Grady had been planning the journey since the spring, so it wouldn’t take much detective work to figure out that the escaped fugitive—and his accomplice—had probably gone to Florida to meet the exploration team.

If this were true, what would Cay do if the authorities showed up in Florida after Alex left? Cay would be there alone. All by herself.

As often happened, Alex seemed to read her thoughts. “Before you leave for home, you must ask people for the news and find out if you’re still being hunted. But I feel sure that T.C. has already taken care of that.”

“How could he do that?”

“There are a lot of ways. He could have told them you were meeting someone and got caught in the chaos caused by a prison break. When your family gets to Charleston, they’ll verify that you weren’t there when I was with Lilith. In fact, you’d never met me.”

“So they’ll think it was just a coincidence that Uncle T.C. visited you in jail, and that I, his goddaughter, was with you when you escaped?”

“Maybe he could say that you were riding out to secretly meet one of the many men who asks you to marry him. I don’t know. I’m sure T.C. could come up with a hundred stories.” Alex had to take a breath to calm himself because his voice was betraying his worry. “What I do know is that they’ll have fixed it and it’ll be safe for you to return home. If I wasn’t
sure
of that I’d not let you go.”

“But
you
aren’t safe.”

“I don’t have a home anyway,” he said softly, but he managed to smile at her. “Think of the good, lass. You’ll get to see your family again, and you’ll get to see the men you love.”

“Oh. Them,” Cay said without much interest. “I’ve been thinking and I believe I should look around some more. Maybe I should look outside Edilean.”

“That’s a good idea,” Alex said. “Maybe you could even look outside Williamsburg.”

“What am I going to do without you to make fun of me?”

“You’ll find out soon,” he said cheerfully.

She gave him a sharp look. “You’re looking forward to traveling into this jungle, aren’t you?” It was beautiful around them, with palm trees, shrubs bright with blooms, and large birds such as she’d never seen before.

“I do believe I am,” Alex said. “When T.C. first told me his idea, I was in a jail cell, and I couldn’t imagine being on a boat and floating through what he said was a paradise. But now that I see this land, I think I would like to see more.”

“Who’s going to take Uncle T.C.’s place as recorder?”

“I don’t know.”

Cay’s mind began to form an idea. “Has Mr. Grady been told that Uncle T.C. won’t be going?”

“I don’t know. I assume T.C. wrote Grady a letter telling him he’d need a new recorder, so maybe Grady will arrive with one.”

“But we came too fast. If Mr. Grady was also traveling here, no letter could have reached him.”

“That’s not my concern. I’m sure he can find someone else to draw the plants and animals. How hard could it be?”

Cay nearly launched into a long explanation of what went into preparing to be an artist, but she didn’t. Instead, she was quiet as she began to think of another possibility. It was an idea much too far-fetched to be possible, but still, she liked what was in her head.

An hour later, they rode into the settlement, and Cay looked around her. The few houses were plastered over with what looked to be whitewashed mud, and the roofs were covered with dried palm fronds. Cay thought that the structures were enchanting. To the right was a long, low building that she assumed was the boardinghouse. Two adolescent girls were outside in the shade, one shucking dried corn, the other using a big mortar and pestle to pound the corn into meal. They paused in their work and looked at Alex and Cay with interest.

Alex nodded toward the house. “Let’s get you settled first.”

“No!” When he looked at her, she said, “I mean, let’s see where you’re to meet Mr. Grady. He might be waiting for you and wondering if you’re going to show up.”

“We’re here a day early, so I doubt if he’s hired someone else yet.”

“But we don’t know that, do we?”

Alex tried to repress a smile. “What’s frightening you the most, lass? The thought of being alone, or the fear of how much you’ll miss me?”