The Scent of Jasmine (23 page)

“I had the pleasure of her company on one instance when I was with Mr. Grady. A very handsome young woman.”

“Then you know about . . .” Cay hesitated.

“Her leg? I do. But have you tasted that woman’s apple pie?” Eli was dousing the breakfast fire. “I always wondered why a fine lady like her wasn’t married.”

“Then I take it you haven’t met her father.”

“T.C.?”

“Ah,” Cay said, “I see that gossip travels well. No, I meant the man who was married to Hope’s mother, Bathsheba.”

“You mean Isaac Chapman.” There was no mistaking the dislike in Eli’s voice. “He once cheated me out of nearly a hundred dollars. When he dies, the devil will be richer.”

“What did you do when you found out that he’d stolen money from you?” Cay’s voice was curious.

“I’m ashamed to say that I hit him in the face, but then I took him to court, where I defended myself, and I won. The judge made him pay me back the money, pay the lawyer’s fee, plus give me another ten pounds for all my trouble.”

“Well done!” Cay stood up. “I think you’ll do nicely. Hope asked me to bring her back a husband who could stand up to her father, and it looks like you can.”

“Isaac Chapman won’t let me marry his daughter,” Eli said.

“Yes, he will. After I tell Hope about you, she’ll make him agree,” Cay said. “Oh, but there’s something special she asked for.”

Eli snorted, as though to say he knew there’d be a catch. “She’ll want a young, handsome man like Alex here, not an old duffer like me.”

“Hope asked for a man who wouldn’t fall asleep on his wedding night.”

At first, Eli showed his shock at those words, then he laughed loud and hard. “I can guarantee that I won’t do that. You can bet money on it that I’d never fall asleep while I’m in the bed with a strong, young woman like Miss Hope.”

For the first time that morning, Cay looked at Alex and gave a malicious little smile to remind him that
he
had fallen asleep on
his
wedding night.

Alex’s eyes widened at what she’d done, how she’d set up Eli just so she could end the conversation with a jab at Alex. That she’d use the night his wife was murdered was beyond what he thought her capable of.

When Alex saw Eli and Grady looking at him with an expression of both amusement and sympathy, he was positive that they knew everything.

Since they had enough food for a couple of days, Alex was allowed to stay on the flatboat that day, but he couldn’t get Cay away from the others to talk to her. His lack of sleep hadn’t put him in the best of moods, so when he did catch her sitting at the end of the boat with a sketchpad on her lap, he could hardly speak.

“You’re endangering my life,” he said through clenched teeth.

“By trying to find Hope a husband?”

“Only girls matchmake.”

“My brother Ethan has introduced three couples to each other and they got married. You have odd ideas of what male and female can and cannot do.” She hadn’t so much as glanced at him.

“What did he do? Find husbands for the girls who had latched on to him? Was that his way of getting rid of them?”

“Yes.”

Alex had thought he was being sarcastic, but the fact that he was right startled him. “Cay . . .” He reached out to touch her arm, but she moved it away.

“If you don’t want anyone to know I’m female, then I suggest you stop touching me. And you definitely should stop kissing Tim’s neck.”

“I miss you,” he said, and there was genuine agony in his voice.

“And I miss the man I thought I knew! The liar with the pretty face is someone I’ve never met.”

“Cay!”

She turned to look at Mr. Grady, who was pointing at a bird with a long bill walking along the shore. “Yes, sir?”

“Did you paint him?”

“Yes, sir. I have four drawings of that bird.”

“Do you know its name?”

“No, sir, I don’t. I plan to give all the artwork to Uncle T.C. and let him figure out the names of everything. His goddaughter Hope has a fine hand for penmanship, so she can write the names on the drawings.”

“It seems that you’ve thought of everything,” Mr. Grady said with a smile before he turned away.

“He’s going to ask you to marry him,” Alex said from beside her.

“You’re ridiculous! He thinks I’m a boy.” When Alex said nothing, she glanced at him. “All right, so maybe they’ve guessed, but Eli and Jamie are too gentlemanly to say anything. Tim still thinks I’m a boy.”

Alex sat down on the end of the boat beside her. “That boy whistles all night.”

“That’s what Eli said.” Cay hadn’t let up in her drawing. She was quickly doing a watercolor of the curve in the river ahead of them, trying to capture it before the boat rounded the corner and the scene was gone.

“A person could squeeze that boy’s ribs in time to music and make an instrument of him. You could dance to his whistles.” He looked at Cay to see if there was any sign that she’d laughed at his joke, but he saw nothing. It wasn’t fair, he thought, that she could make him smile no matter how bad the situation was, but he didn’t seem to have the same effect on her.

“Lass,” he said softly, and his accent became very heavy, “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I didn’t shave while I was in jail because I couldn’t. And I’m not the kind of man to brag that I’m not so bad to look at. There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t have sounded vain, and I didn’t want you to think that of me.”

“No,” she said calmly. “You wanted to see if I’d like you even when I thought you were an older man, and so ugly you had to hide your face.”

He smiled at her perception. “Aye, I did. Is that so bad?”

“Actually, it is.” She turned to glare at him. “You judged me to be so shallow that I could only care about a man if he looked a certain way.
I
was put on trial even though
I
had risked my life to save you.
You
were a convicted murderer, but I judged
you
for what I saw, not what I’d been told. Now will you go away so I can do my work?”

Alex got up, and when he turned away, he caught a glimpse of Eli looking at him with sympathy.

Cay punished him for the entire three days it took them to get to the trading post. She would hardly look at him, rarely spoke to him, and, more or less, acted like he didn’t exist. She even pretended she couldn’t understand his accent. Alex hadn’t realized it, but for the entire trip he’d talked in his Scottish accent and she had translated for him—until the others had come to understand him. Even Tim, who was no great shakes in the brain area, had started saying, “Och aye, an’ dornt Ah ken it.”

But when Cay was angry at Alex, she coolly said that she had no idea what he was saying, could he please speak English?

It was Eli who stopped the fight that seemed to have no end. He caught Alex alone, away from the others. “Tell Cay you were wrong.”

“What?” Alex said, looking up from the rifle he was cleaning.

“Your brother. Tell him you were
wrong.
”

“But I did.”

“Tell him you were wrong on the day you were born and have been wrong every day since.”

“But—” Alex began.

Eli shrugged. “It’s up to you, lad. But to be wrong and to have always have been wrong is the only way to solve this. Take it from a man who used to want to be right at all costs. And look where I am today. Alone. Traveling with a bunch of men. My three brothers have eighteen kids.” Turning, a load of firewood in his arms, Eli went back to the camp.

Not that Alex had any more doubt that the men knew Cay was a girl, but Eli’s words cinched it. Alex’s first thought was to go to Cay and warn her, but his next thought was that he was past caring what the men on this trip knew. If it would make Cay stop being angry at him, he’d go to her on bended knee in front of them and beg. “And tell her I’m wrong,” he said aloud. He still felt that he wasn’t fully wrong. Not totally, but maybe . . . On the other hand, maybe he hadn’t been 100 percent in the right, either.

He felt bad for doing it, but he followed her when she left the camp to take a privacy break and waited in the shrubs until she was on her way back. When he stepped out of the bushes, she gasped.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said as contritely as he could manage. “I just wanted to tell you that . . . that . . .” He drew his shoulders up. “That I was wrong.”

“About what?”

“All of it. Everything.”

Cay narrowed her eyes at him. “Is this a trick?”

“This is a plea to get you to forgive me,” he said. “I lied to you, I admit it. It won’t happen again. And I misjudged you. I did think you were a frivolous girl who’d never had anything bad happen to her. But I’ve known women who wanted me only for the way I looked, so it was nice to see you start to, well, to
like
me even though you thought I was old and ugly. But it was all selfish of me, and I was wrong. From beginning to end, I was wrong. Totally and completely and absolutely
wrong.
Please say you’ll forgive me.”

“All right,” she said, and started to walk back toward the camp.

Alex caught her arm and pulled her to face him. “All right? Is that it?”

“Do you want more? You did a truly bad thing to me and I—” Alex cut her off as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

She had missed him horribly, more than she would ever tell him. She’d missed the smell of him, the feel of his skin on hers, his actions, his habits. All of it was part of her, and she’d had to keep away from him for so long that she felt as though she was missing half of her body.

She kissed his beautiful face and felt the sharp prickle of his whiskers on her cheeks. There was a trickle of sweat running down one cheek, and she couldn’t help it, but she licked it away. The sweat and the very male whiskers on her tongue sent waves of desire through her.

“Cay, I’ve missed you,” Alex said. “Don’t leave me again. Please don’t leave me. I need you so very much.”

She put her head back, and he ran his lips down her neck. She’d thought that she’d feel differently when he touched her because now she knew what he looked like. It was as though he’d always worn a mask before, but now he was at last fully naked, and she thought he would be a different man to her. But he wasn’t. With her eyes closed, he was the same man she’d spent many hours with. They’d laughed and loved together, and now they’d fought together. They’d come full circle.

Twenty-two

“It’s sweeter now,” Alex said. One hand was on Cay’s bare shoulder, and the other was just touching the water of the stream.

“What is?”

“Us. You and me. What’s between us is better now.”

Lifting up, she looked into his eyes. Their bodies were naked, and they were snuggled together in the tall grasses about a mile from the camp. Tomorrow they’d reach the trading post, and a new portion of their journey would begin. “What if we never went back?”

“You mean never leave this paradise and never return to people and noise?”

Around them the birds and the ever-present alligators were nearly deafening. Smiling, she put her head back down on his shoulder. “I just have a feeling that something is going to happen.”

Alex started to say some words to quieten her worries but decided instead to tell the truth. “Me, too. But maybe I feel that way because of what went on before. Just when I thought I had everything, it was all taken from me.” What he wasn’t telling her was that he had that indefinable feeling that he’d inherited from his mother. Something was about to change. Whether it was for good or bad, he didn’t know. It had always puzzled him that he hadn’t had a premonition about his wife’s death.

Cay was silent for a moment. “Do you wish you hadn’t been through all this?”

“Of course! The stench of that jail cell will haunt me for the rest of my life. What was said about me at the trial, no man should have to hear, and—” He stopped talking when Cay sat up. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s just getting cool is all.” She began to wrap the cloth about her breasts.

“I wish you didn’t have to wear that thing.” Alex helped her fasten it. “If it weren’t for Tim, I think you could wear your ball gown and the others wouldn’t be surprised.” When Cay still didn’t say anything, he turned her to look at him. “Something’s bothering you, so out with it.”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “It’s just that if all of . . . of what happened, hadn’t, you and I wouldn’t have met.”

When she looked at him, he knew what she was saying. She was asking him if he wished he had Lilith back rather than her. But how could Alex answer that? Lilith had been his wife. True, it was for a very short time, but they had loved each other from the first moment they saw one another. There was something about that initial feeling of love that overshadowed the more realistic relationship that he and Cay had.

Pulling away from him, Cay slipped her arms into her shirt. “She was your wife and you loved her. I understand. Would you please hand me my shoes?”

“We aren’t going to have another fight, are we? You aren’t going to stop speaking to me again, are you?”

“No,” she said as she kissed him softly on the lips. “In fact, I don’t think I’m ever going to do that again. The next time you do something I don’t like, I think I’ll punch you in your old, ugly face.”

Alex smiled as he lowered his eyelids and looked up at her in the way that had made many women forgive him for whatever he’d done. “Is that so? Old and ugly, am I?”

“Warthogs are prettier than you. And if you don’t quit looking at me like that, I’ll put that yellow flower under Tim’s pillow, the one that makes him sneeze. He’ll be wheezing all night long.”

Alex stopped his seductive looks and lay back on the grass, groaning. Since he and Cay had made up from their argument, she’d not moved back into his tent. Eli had said to Alex, “I think it’s your turn to sleep with the boy,” and his eyes said that he wasn’t going to give in.

Alex didn’t tell Cay, but he thought Eli’s stance had something to do with the fact that Alex and Cay had made love in the tent next to Eli’s. To hide his embarrassment, Alex had turned away. “You win,” he said to Cay. “I can’t stand the boy’s whistles, much less his sneezes.” Twice, Tim’s very loud sneezes had frightened flocks of birds out of overhead trees—and the people below had been cascaded by a rain of feathers and other not-so-pleasant droppings. “I hope we never fight again.”

“So do I,” Cay responded, but her voice was less hopeful. She wasn’t sure why, but she was dreading tomorrow. It wouldn’t be their little group of people, but there would be strangers at the trading post—and strangers carried news. She worried that fellow explorers had been to the settlement where Thankfull lived and asked questions. If law enforcement people knew Alex had gone into the swamps, maybe they’d do whatever was necessary to get there ahead of him, and they’d be waiting for him.

“Don’t look so glum,” Alex said as he put his arm around her. “You could always go back to those men who asked you to marry them. Now what were their names?” Laughing, he walked ahead of her.

“Alex,” she whispered. “They were all named Alex.”

“I know him,” Alex said, and his breath was so tight that Cay could hardly hear him. They’d arrived at the trading post two hours before, but both Cay and Alex had hesitated. They’d taken a long time to adjust the moorings of the boat, and Cay had made the excuse that she wanted to see to her drawings. Tim ran off the second the boat touched land. After where they’d been, the trading post, with its half a dozen small houses nearby, looked like a big city. Mr. Grady and Eli had also paused, but after a while, they went ahead, but they walked slowly and looked closely at everyone who passed them.

After a couple of hours and no one had run toward them with guns and handcuffs, Alex and Cay decided to go into the long, low building that was the center of the tiny settlement. It was where men came to take the furs they’d collected to exchange for goods and cash from the trader. He would then sell the trappings to the men who came down the river, and eventually, the furs would end up on the back of some rich woman in New York.

But when Alex and Cay cautiously entered the post, Alex had turned pale, whispered, “I know him,” and quickly left. The young man behind the counter looked up from the bird feathers he was counting—to be used on ladies’ hats—and saw only Cay. He looked her up and down, as though trying to remember if he’d seen her before, then went back to the feathers. Mr. Grady and Eli stood to one side, mugs of cider held to their lips, watching what was going on around them.

Cay slipped back out the door and began running, looking frantically for Alex. She found him sitting on a log not far from the boat.

“Who is he?” she asked as she sat down beside him. She was trying to remain calm, but her heart was beating in her throat.

“Believe it or not, he’s one of the rich boys from the race track.”

“Did you take much money from him?”

“What does that mean? You sound like I robbed him.”

“Some gamblers feel that way. I want to know what we’re up against, that’s all.”

Alex looked up at a tree full of white birds and sighed. “No, he wasn’t like that. His name is George Campbell, and at one time I would have said he was my friend. He was invited to my wedding, but he was out of town.”

Cay didn’t like to think about Alex’s wedding. “Maybe he hasn’t heard about what happened to you, or maybe he was your true friend and won’t say anything when he sees you.”

“Is there anyone in this country who hasn’t heard about me?”

“To be safe, I think we should assume there aren’t,” she said. Her mind was swirling with things that they’d need to do if the man could identify Alex. First of all, they needed to stay away from him. They couldn’t let the man see Alex for fear of what he’d say or do. If he did see Alex, or even heard he was here, even though no one was here now to arrest him, how long would it be before the trader, this George Campbell, told someone who was going north? It could be just a matter of days before they were found.

“I want you to talk to him,” Alex said.

“
Talk
to him? To the storekeeper? Are you insane?”

“Probably. After I married Lilith, everything I heard and saw is a blur to me, but maybe if George wasn’t there he won’t . . . won’t hate me so much.” Alex took a breath. “When George left town, he told me he was going to miss the way I stole everything he owned.”

“Nice man,” Cay muttered.

“It was a man’s joke.”

“Then I guess I couldn’t possibly understand, could I?” she asked belligerently.

“You aren’t going to start a fight, are you?”

“How can you ask that of me? All I’m trying to do is—” She stopped because she realized she
was
trying to get into an argument. Better that than to face what was going through her mind. “What do you want me to talk to him about?”

“I want you to find out what he knows.”

“You mean find out what he’s heard about people searching for you?”

“Yes,” Alex said.

“I don’t know if I’m any good at lying.”

“What would you be lying about?” Alex asked. “Tell him you know of me through my father. Isn’t that the truth?”

“And do you think that Mr. Grady and Eli won’t know who I’m talking about? Even Tim will be able to figure this one out.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get them to come outside. You just talk to George and find out what you can. And I’ll be right there with you.”

“Making sure that he doesn’t attack me at the mention of your name?”

“Aye, lass, that’s just what I mean.”

Cay swallowed. “All right,” she said, but she didn’t like the idea of being a spy. She slowly walked back to the trading post and stayed outside the door until she heard what sounded like an explosion in the direction of the boat. Immediately, Mr. Grady and Eli came running outside, and Cay stepped into the shadows.

“What’s that fool boy done now?” Eli said.

She gave only a second to wondering if he meant her or Tim before she went into the cool, dark trading post where the young man was counting a pile of furs. “Did I hear that your name is George Campbell?”

“As far as I know, I’m the only one in Florida.”

Cay started to smile at him in a way that she knew appealed to men, but she stopped herself. She was supposed to be a boy. “My father has a friend named McDowell and he has a son who—”

“Alex?”

“Right,” Cay said, her face lighting up. “Alex mentioned a George Campbell, and I wondered if you might be the same man.”

“That I am.” When George bent down behind the deep counter to pull up more furs, Cay saw Alex slip in through the door to hide behind a cabinet full of men’s shirts. “How is Alex?”

Cay had to hide her astonishment at his question. “Fine. When did you see him last?”

“The day before I left Charleston. We got so drunk they had to carry me out and put me on the boat. When I woke up, I was in New Orleans, and I had a headache that lasted a week.”

“New Orleans? Is that where you wanted to be?”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “That’s where I wanted to be. So where’d you go to school?”

“William and Mary,” Cay lied quickly. It looked like she’d yet again given away too much about herself. “So you knew Alex well?”

“Knew? You sound like he’s dead. He isn’t, is he?”

“No,” Cay said cautiously. “Last I heard, he was alive.”

“Glad to hear it. I had some good times with Alex, even though I lost to him in about a hundred races. He brought in this horse . . .” George gave a whistle and shook his head. “That animal must have been bred on another planet. It was faster than anything I’d ever seen before. But then Alex is a great horseman.”

“Is he?” There was a stool by the counter and Cay slipped onto it. It was nice to hear about Alex from someone who knew him before he’d been called a murderer.

“What he can get a horse to do, nobody else can.” George looked up from the furs. “What happened to him?”

“What do you mean?” Cay tried to keep her voice calm.

“I thought he was going to marry old Mrs. Underwood’s niece, but, obviously, he didn’t.”

It took all of Cay’s will power not to turn around and look in Alex’s direction. “Why do you say that?” she asked as calmly as she could.

“Because I saw Lilith in New Orleans two weeks ago.”

“You what?”

“I had to make a quick trip there and back because—” He waved his hand in dismissal. “Anyway, while I was there, I saw Lilith.” George bent down again and came back up. “I could have sworn she saw me, but she turned away. I ran after her because I wanted to ask her about Alex, but Lilith slipped into a building and I didn’t see her again. I even asked people about her, but no one knew her.” He shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe it was someone who just looked like her. Except . . .”