The Scent of Jasmine (7 page)

“I know that feeling,” Alex said softly. “I know it very well.”

Cay wanted to say more, even wanted to argue with him. She wasn’t especially sleepy, and the night around them, with the rain coming down, made her nervous. “And you loved your wife very much?” she asked softly.

“With all my heart and soul.”

“And you knew that in just three weeks?”

“I knew it in the first moment. Her eyes met mine and I was hers.”

“But you knew nothing about her, not her personality, not what she liked or disliked, what her hopes for the future were, nothing?”

“And I guess you know all about the men you’re considering marrying.”

“Of course.”

“Make lists, do you?”

Cay thought of her notebook full of her comparisons of the men she might possibly marry. She had compared ages, houses, backgrounds, whatever she could think of. She knew that marriage was a serious matter and she didn’t want to make a mistake. She wanted a marriage as good as her parents’. “Of course I didn’t do any such thing,” she lied. “I’m going to let my heart make the decision for me. Isn’t that what a bride should do?”

“If you’re asking me what I think
you
should do, I think you should lie down and go to sleep. We’ll leave early tomorrow, before light, so you need to get as much rest as you can.”

Reluctantly, Cay lay down on the hard ground and tried to still her mind, but it kept working. “Have you finished making a plan for me yet?”

“Aye, I have, but I’m not going to tell you what’s in my mind, so there’s no use in nagging me now.”

“I don’t nag,” she said.

“You could give lessons in it. You could open a school that teaches how to nag a man until he’s crying for relief from your tongue.”

She truly hated the way he treated her like a child! “Micah Bassett didn’t want relief from my tongue. In fact—”

“Lass, you’re alone in the forest with a convicted murderer. Tell me you’re not going to talk to him about what a girl can do with her tongue.”

“I, uh . . .” Cay couldn’t think of what to say to explain herself, but then there was no explanation she could give. Instead, she rolled to one side of the cloak and, after a moment’s hesitation, she threw the other side over him. He grunted his thanks, and when he moved closer to her, she could feel his body heat on her back. Maybe it was the comfort or maybe it was the soft sounds of the rain, but she closed her eyes and went to sleep.

Seven

“I am
not
going to dress as a boy,” Cay said. “Absolutely, positively no! That’s the end of it, and I won’t discuss it anymore.”

“Good!” Alex said. “Then I won’t have to hear more of your complaining. When you get dressed—as a boy—you can keep your mouth shut—unless you meet some man you think you should marry, then you can do other things with your mouth.”

“You are disgusting. You’re worse than
any
of my brothers.”

“Does that include Adam?” he asked. “Or is he too perfect for unchurchlike thoughts?”

She was pulling the cinch on her mare and she looked under the horse’s neck to glare at him. He didn’t look at her, but she could see that he was pleased with himself, thinking that he’d bested her in a duel of words. “My brother Adam doesn’t have any thoughts that he couldn’t repeat in front of a congregation in church. Are you ready to go or do you need help?”

“I don’t need any help, and your brother sounds like a bore,” Alex said as he walked around her horse, bent, grabbed Cay by the calf, and nearly threw her up into the saddle.

Only years of experience and very strong thigh muscles kept her from going over the other side. But she refused to give him the satisfaction of complaining.

“Look at that, you’re half male already.” He looked up at her. “The truth is, lass, if you didn’t have all that hair, you could pass for a boy.”

In that one sentence, he said everything she’d ever feared. Her mother was so beautiful that men had written poems about her. One young man composed a song about her beauty. But Cay, the only daughter, didn’t look so much like her mother as she did her father and brothers. In fact, when they were growing up, what with only ten months difference in the ages between her and Tally, sometimes people thought they were twins—male twins.

Alex, standing by her feet and looking up at her, saw that he’d hurt her feelings and she was trying hard not to cry. He hadn’t meant to. The truth was that after a good meal and a full night’s sleep, he’d awoken this morning to see a very pretty girl in a beautiful gown reaching up over her head to try to get a bag down from a tree. At first, he hadn’t remembered where he was and all that had happened in the past few months. He was in the moment and he thought he’d never seen a prettier sight in his life—and therein lay the problem.

The idea of dressing her in boy’s clothes had come to him when he’d told old man Yates that he was traveling with his young brother, but Alex hadn’t told her his thoughts for fear that she’d react just as she had. What was it with women that they thought they didn’t exist if they weren’t wearing ribbons every minute of the day?

“It’s just for a while,” he said gently as he looked up at her. “There’s a town near here and today’s Sunday. I figure we can get inside a store while it’s closed and get what we need. And leave money to pay for it all,” he added because he already knew her well enough to know that she’d want to do that. “After you’re kitted out, we can go down to Florida. I’ll leave you with T.C.’s friends and you can wait there until I’ve been gone a couple of weeks, then you can go home. People won’t notice a boy traveling alone, but a pretty girl by herself will cause nothing but problems.”

“Not according to you.
You
think I look like a boy as it is. I guess you want me to hide my hair under a wig.”

When he didn’t answer, she saw that he was studiously working on packing his horse. She drew in her breath. “You want me to cut my hair, don’t you?”

Alex mounted his horse and after a cowardly moment, he met her eyes. “I’ve thought of that and your hair would ruin the disguise. You look very young as it is, and in boy’s clothes you’ll look even younger. If you wear a powdered wig, you’ll draw attention to yourself. Besides, with the way you ride, the wig would come off, then all that hair of yours would show.”

Cay put her hand on her hair, which was hanging down past her shoulders. As a child, it was her hair that had finally stopped her from being compared to her brother. “I won’t cut it.” She moved her horse forward. “I might consider the clothes,” she said. “But I
will
not
cut my hair.”

“All right,” he said softly. “We won’t do any cutting.” Even as he said it, he knew he was lying. He wasn’t going to risk her life and his because of her vanity.

“Why don’t you lead for a while?” he said in a conciliatory tone. It was the least he could do when he thought of what he might have to do to her. If she wouldn’t do it voluntarily, he’d have to do it without her permission—and that thought scared him. If he cut her hair while she was asleep, he’d better never close his eyes while around her or she’d cut something on him—and it wouldn’t be his hair.

They rode for three hours in the early morning dark, staying off the major roads and making their way through fields whenever they could. As they went farther south, there was more distance between the towns, and they began see plantations. The plantations were like small towns, with everything that was needed by the family and the workers grown or made on their land.

Cay was quiet for most of the ride, and Alex knew her silence was because she didn’t want to dress as a boy, but he could see no other way of keeping her safe. Thanks to her arriving wearing a dress that looked as though it was made of starlight, the men chasing him had easily seen that she was female. So now they were looking for a man and a woman together. If Alex could change even one aspect of that description, they’d be safer.

He wasn’t about to tell her, but he figured that by now there were handbills out about them both, and her hair was the most recognizable feature of the two of them. He could almost see the words on the handbills. “Flaming red hair.” Or “three feet of thick, lustrous, dark red hair” and “porcelain skin that looks as though it’s never been exposed to the sun.”

As for him, he’d like to shave, but the woodcut in the newspapers during the trial had been of him shaved. If he was going to be recognized, it would be with a clean face. Also, as Cay had told him many times—too many for his liking—the beard made him look much older than he really was.

Cay glanced back at him, then reined in her horse so she could move beside him. “What’s that look for?”

“Nothing. It’s the way I look,” he said grumpily.

“I don’t know why I have to put up with your bad temper. I’m the innocent one, and I’m only in this mess because I volunteered to help you out.”

“Now who’s in a bad temper?”

“I have a right to be. You should be grateful.”

“I thank you for saving my life, but I don’t thank you for nearly getting us caught.”

“When did I—?” she began, but then closed her mouth. In the next moment she’d turned her horse and was heading back the way they came at full speed.

Alex had a difficult time catching up with her, and he cursed the fact that his horse was so weighted down with equipment and supplies that the poor animal had difficulty moving. When he did reach her, he nearly pulled his arm from the socket as he tried to get the reins from her so he could slow her down. But she was very good on the horse, and try as he might, he couldn’t overtake her. “I’m sorry,” he shouted at her as she rode away. “I apologize. With all my heart, lass, I’m sorry for what I said.”

Alex was sure he’d lost her, but to his disbelief, she slowed down, and turned toward him.

“Say it again.”

It went against him to grovel. His father had always told him that they may not have a title or money, but they had their pride, and a man never gave that up. But now he was looking at this bit of a girl and he felt that if he had to, he’d kiss her feet to make her forgive him. And that thought, of kissing her feet, made the bad humor and the self-pity leave him.

“I’m sorry, lass,” he said, but there was a bit of a smile about his lips. “You were a person of courage and strength to take on what T.C. Connor had mucked up, and I ask you to forgive me for saying otherwise.”

“Do you mean that, or are you just saying it so I’ll not leave you out here alone?”

He nearly choked on her words. He’d be much better off without her, but he’d not say that. Right now he wondered what Angus McTern Harcourt was thinking in teaching his daughter to be able to ride as she did. But then, she was half Scots, so maybe it was in her blood.

“You’re still looking at me oddly.”

“I was thinking that with a set of racing silks you could win any race. If I had my horses and we weren’t in this mess, you and I could make a fortune on the track.”

Cay couldn’t help but smile. “Is that what’s made you so bad tempered this morning? That you miss your racehorses?”

He started to tell her the truth, that he was afraid of the future and what would happen if they were caught, but he didn’t. Instead, he lowered his eyes and said, “I was thinking about how awful it will be to have to cut hair like yours. But, lass, you’re much too pretty with that great halo swirling about your head.”

Alex was sure that she’d tell him he was full of horse manure and ride off, never to see him again, but she didn’t. Instead she touched her hair and smiled sweetly. “Do you really think so?”

“Aye, I do,” he said, and he was sincere.

“I guess I got too angry too fast,” she said. “It’s always been a problem of mine. Adam says it’s my biggest fault.”

“And of course Adam is always right,” he murmured.

She looked at him hard, trying to see if he was teasing or being honest.

Alex worked to keep his eyes calm and not let the laughter inside him escape. “Will you no come with me now, lass?”

“Only if you call me by my name,” she said. “I know you were told my full name, but I’m called—”

“Cay,” he said. “For your initials of
C-E-H.
It’s what your brother Nate thought your name was because your mother embroidered everything with your initials before you were born. She was determined that you were going to be a girl. Now . . . Cay, are you ready to go? We should be at the town very soon.”

When he turned his horse around and headed south, obviously hoping she would follow him, Cay couldn’t move. What a great lot of information Uncle T.C. had told him! In her opinion, he’d told too much family business to a stranger. Frowning, she at last began to follow him.

When Alex heard the clip-clop of her horse, he smiled to himself and thought that maybe he’d just learned something about women. He knew he’d tarnished his pride by apologizing and begging her to go with him, but he’d also won because she was now following him. Maybe pride and women didn’t go together. Whatever the truth was, he was glad she was doing the sensible thing and allowing him to protect her.

“I don’t like this,” Cay whispered as Alex jiggled the nail he’d pulled out of the side of the building in the door lock.

“Do you think I do?” he whispered back. “I’d like to be at home with my wife right now, not here.”

“I’m sorry,” she said contritely. “I sometimes forget about your loss.”

Alex pulled up on the lock and pushed down on the nail, and the door finally came open. “Quickly,” he said as he let her go inside before him. He stayed outside for a moment as he looked around to see if they’d been seen. But it appeared that every person in the small town was in church on this Sunday morning, so they were safe for a while.

“It’s a nice store,” Cay said as she looked around at the well-stocked shelves on the walls. Toward the back were cabinets full of clothes. “It’s not Charleston or New York, but for where it is, it’s not bad.”

Alex didn’t care how good the store was as long as they could get what they needed and get out of there before they were discovered. “We need to get out of here and go,” he said, his voice low. “And be quiet.”

“You always think that I know nothing,” she said as she walked to the back of the large store. In the front was a long counter, with boxes and bottles behind it. There were barrels of hard crackers and one of pickles.

Alex took a big canvas bag from behind the counter and began to fill it with crackers and dried apples. He hadn’t told Cay he was worried that news about T.C.’s involvement in the jail break had reached Mr. Grady and he would be looking for a man of Alex’s description. He hated to think that they could travel all that distance only to reach a trap.