The Scent of Jasmine (8 page)

When Alex heard nothing from Cay, he assumed she was changing her clothes, so he didn’t want to bother her. He set the bag down by the door and walked quietly to the back of the store. There were cabinets full of clothing there, none of it of the quality he was sure she was used to, but of sturdy, serviceable cloth and well made. It took him only moments to strip off his torn, dirty clothing and put on new fawn-colored breeches that hugged his thighs, a white shirt with a cravat that tied about his neck, and a long vest of dark green. When he saw a shelf full of wide-brimmed straw hats, he took one. It would protect him from the Florida sun. As he looked down at himself, he fancied that he looked like a rich plantation owner, certainly not an escaped convict recently from the Highlands of Scotland.

Smiling, he stepped out to show Cay and to see what she’d found to wear, but when he saw her, he halted.

There was a tall mirror on a stand in the back, and she was standing before it, a brush in her hand, and quietly stroking her hair. He would have said that he was used to the sight of her by now, but he’d never seen her without the covering of the cloak. Her dress was tattered along the hem and he saw places that weren’t in the best repair, but it was still a beautiful gown. The neckline was low and her breasts rounded over the top. Short sleeves exposed her long, bare arms, and he could see they were well shaped by years of dealing with stubborn horses. The white gown was tight over her breasts, tied with a ribbon just below, then fell loose to the floor.

He stood still for a moment, watching her, and thought of how she’d dressed to go to a ball in Charleston. She’d probably imagined moonlight trysts with young men, maybe even adding another marriage proposal to her repertoire that she’d tell her grandchildren about.

But because of her good nature, she’d agreed to do something that few wealthy—or poor, for that matter—young women would do. She’d risked her life to save a man she’d never met, a man she had reason to believe was guilty of murder.

He kept watching as she brushed her hair, and he figured she was thinking that it would be the last time. And he knew by the look of loss on her face that she was going to agree to cut it.

How he wished he could turn the clock back! If he could, he’d go back . . . He couldn’t think of that because he knew he’d go back to the time when he’d been the happiest in his life, when he’d married Lilith.

Taking a deep breath, Alex stepped out from between the shelves full of goods and went to her. “May I have this dance, Miss Cay?”

He held out his arms for her and hoped that she didn’t mind about his dirty hair, and the stench of the prison that was still on his body.

But she had been taught her manners well. She smiled graciously at him, held up her skirt, and put her other hand in his. As Alex put his fingertips at her waist, he wished he had music, but the best he could do was hum an old, slow Scottish ballad that his mother used to sing to him. It wasn’t a proper dance, with the intricate changing of partners, but a private one, just between the two of them.

When she began to hum with him, showing that she knew the song, his smile broadened, and he swirled her about the room, between tables and shelves, in front of the counter and behind it. When she reached out and took a dark brown bottle and set in on the counter, he laughed out loud. She wasn’t forgetting the business side of why they were there.

It was several minutes before he took her back to the mirror, then bowed as he stepped away from her. “I must say, Miss Cay, that I have never enjoyed a dance as much as I did that one.”

“Nor have I.” She curtseyed to him, holding her skirt out to its full width.

Stepping away, he looked at her, thinking that she was so very pretty in her long white dress—and he wanted to remember her like this. She was the girl who’d saved his life.

“You’ll have to help me,” she said.

Alex was still staring at her. In all the years he’d spent writing her brother, Nate hadn’t mentioned that his little sister was so beautiful. “Help you do what?”

“Undress.”

It took Alex a moment to realize what she’d said. “You want me to help you . . . undress?”

She smiled sweetly at him. “If we’re going to travel together, then you have to act as one of my brothers.” She turned her back to him and lifted her hair. “You can start by unfastening the buttons down the back.”

“There must be a thousand of them. We’ll be here all day.”

“You’re a married man, so you must know how to unfasten the back of a gown.”

“I was married for just a few hours,” Alex said as he struggled with the fourth button. They were tiny and the little loops were slippery.

Cay glanced at him over her shoulder. “A few hours? Then you didn’t . . . ?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but no, we didn’t.” He was frowning at the buttons.

“Hope said that you fell asleep on your wedding night, but I didn’t believe her.”

“I did not ‘fall asleep.’ I was drugged.”

“Ah, yes, glass of wine, then sleep. Who drugged you?”

“If I knew that, I could have saved myself at the trial.” He was two-thirds of the way through the buttons.

“Hope said the door was locked from the inside and that only you and your wife were in her room.”

“That’s about the only thing the lawyers got right.” Alex pulled on the last button. “There, now, get out of that dress and let’s get going. Someone may come in here.”

“On a Sunday? Surely not. Not even my father works on Sundays.”

“So I guess that means that no man does,” Alex said in a derisive way. He was looking at the back of her dress as though he’d just climbed a mountain and was proud of what he’d done.

“Turn around,” she said. “I’m still a girl and you’re a man and . . .” Breaking off, she stared at him as though she was just realizing that he was in new clothes.

“You like this?” he asked, holding out his arms.

“You look like a planter,” she said softly. “Those clothes suit you.” She turned back around to face the mirror but kept looking at him in its reflection. “Of course the fact that you’re the dirtiest man in the country, and that you have nits in your hair takes away from the overall effect.”

He ran his hand over his hair. He used to keep it neatly trimmed and tied back at the nape of his neck with a black ribbon, but now it had grown wild and long, and she was right that it was very dirty. “Maybe I can wash it when we get to where we’re going.”

“No. You’re going to take a whole bath today or I’m not going to put on boy’s clothes.”

Alex smiled at her. “Too late for that. You’ll never get those buttons done up without my help.”

Cay grabbed a dress from a shelf near her and held it up. It was a plain thing, made of brown plaid, with black braid around the collar. There was a look of threat in her eyes.

He wasn’t going to tell her, but if she was going to continue wearing a dress, he much preferred the white one she had on. He’d grown used to the way it flashed in the sunlight. The surprise was that she’d seemed to know, through some mysterious female way, that he wouldn’t like for her to wear the plain brown dress.

“You have to take a bath.”

“I promise that I’ll wash.” He was smiling at her. “I’m not a barbarian, even if you think I am.”

Cay looked back at the mirror. She was holding her beautiful dress about her, and she took one last, long look, glanced at Alex as he turned his back to her, then she let the dress fall and stepped out of it. She looked at herself in the long corset, her pantaloons going down to her knees, and at her torn stockings above the worn and dirty slippers. This was her last glimpse of herself as a girl.

Worse, she knew that she was going to have to get his help in removing the corset. Her maid had tied it for her days ago, and she hadn’t had it off since then.

“You have to untie me,” she said.

“I’ll have to turn around to do that. Or should I wear a blindfold?”

“You wear a blindfold when you get shot for untying a woman’s corset strings when she doesn’t want you to, but I’m asking you to do this, so it’s all right.”

Laughing, Alex turned around, and Cay was pleased when he drew in his breath. He was the only man to have ever seen her in her underwear. Except for her father and brothers, she thought, but they didn’t count. Tally had once put itching powder in her corset just before she was to meet her mother’s old friend, Thomas Jefferson, who had become the governor of Virginia. At the memory of what she did to Tally afterward, she couldn’t help smiling.

“Where do I start?” Alex asked, keeping his eyes on the back of the boned garment.

“Pretend it’s a horse harness and untie it.”

“I could use my knife and—”

“No!” she said. “No cutting.”

He almost made a joke about “not yet,” meaning that he wouldn’t do any cutting until he took his knife to her hair, but he thought better of it. The strings had been tied in a way that had hardened into a knot over the last few days, and it took a while to get them loose. As he began to pull the strings out, he could feel her take deep breaths.

“My maid pulled it in tighter than usual because of the ball,” Cay said as she let out another breath.

“Isn’t that painful?” He had hit a snag and he dearly wanted to pull out his knife and slash the blasted thing.

“Of course it is, but you men love a small waist.”

Bending, he put his face closer to the laces. It looked like the maid had tied a knot in the middle as well as at the top. “But those dresses you women wear today hide your waist.”

“Do they really?” she asked, her voice all sweet innocence.

He pulled the laces loose, stepped back from her, and smiled. She had him there. The high-waisted fashions concealed little. “No, they don’t hide much of anything. When a woman stands in front of a candle you can see—” He cleared his throat. “It’s done.”

Cay was already shrugging out of the corset. He’d left the bottom of it fastened, so she had to step out of it. Alex meant to turn away, but she started twisting about in such a manner that he couldn’t stop looking at her—and laughing.

“I can breathe!” She ran her hands up her back and scratched through her long cotton shift, and when that wasn’t enough, she went to the wall and rubbed up against it, her face showing her utter delight.

“You shouldn’t have been afraid of the bear, he would have thought you were one of his tribe.”

“Do shut up,” she said amiably. “If
you
had spent days in a corset, without even taking it off at night, you’d—” She turned her back to him. “Make yourself useful and come over her and scratch my back. It itches until I could go mad.”

Alex hesitated, but he did as she said, gently scratching her back through the fabric.

“I know you’re a weak man, but surely you can do better than that.”

He began to scratch harder and when his nails weren’t enough, he took out his knife and used the handle of it to rub her back until he was sure he’d remove the skin.

At last she stepped away. “Better. Much better.” She was still twisting about, shrugging her shoulders, and moving her arms in circles.

Again, he marveled at how pretty she was. Why hadn’t Nate thought to mention that in all his letters? “Do you think you could get dressed now, lass?”

“Sure. What should I put on?”

“Anything that covers you,” he muttered, and went back to searching the store to see if there was anything else that they would need. On the counter was the bottle she’d put there while they were dancing. It was labeled “jasmine oil.” It looked like, even if she was going to wear boy’s clothes, she planned to smell good. He would, of course, have to tell her that she couldn’t wear it, but he wouldn’t ruin her good mood now. He put the oil back on the shelf.

In the back of the store, Cay was having trouble with the clothes. She left her shift on, but when she put a boy’s shirt on over it, her breasts were still prominent. And they tended to move when she walked. She wasn’t about to tell the Scotsman about this problem and ask his opinion. Instead, she had to look around the store to find cloth she could use to bind her breasts. In a back corner were rolls of fabric and scissors, so she cut a bit of white muslin and made a big bandage of it. She didn’t pull too hard, just enough to stop the movement and make her chest into a lump, and she put the shirt back on. If she kept it loose, she thought it would work.

It didn’t take long to put on the other clothes. She traded her torn silk stockings for a boy’s thick white ones, and breeches went easily over her slim legs. She had a great deal of trouble fastening them at the waist, what with all the buttons and ties, but she figured it out. She tucked the shirt into the trousers, slipped her arms through a vest, found a lightweight wool coat, and put it on. As she started for the front of the store, she grabbed a big straw hat off the shelf, and went to the front counter.

“Well?” she said to Alex’s back.

Turning, he gave her a long look, but said nothing.

“You don’t like it? Did I do something wrong? I’m not used to breeches, but I think I fastened them properly.”

Silently, he went behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, and pushed her toward the mirror. Her reflection showed a girl in boy’s clothing. Her hair hung past her shoulders in thick curls, and she was still wearing her pearl earrings. It was amazing that they’d stayed on as long as they had—but then she’d tightened them often.

Without a word, Alex held out his hand, and she knew what he meant. She unscrewed the earrings and put them in his palm.

“I’ll put these with your other clothes and take them with us.”

“Of course we’re going to take my dress. Maybe it can be repaired. I don’t plan to wear these hideous clothes forever. Once you’ve left on your travels with the other men, maybe I can go back to being a girl.”

“And travel all the way back to Virginia as a lone female? No, you will not.” The moment the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she was again twisting about.

“What are you doing now?”

“Moving. It feels odd not to have on a corset. I’ve worn one every day of my life since I was twelve.”