The Scent of Jasmine (29 page)

Alex smiled. “Merlin. All that seems like a lifetime ago. I wish I could walk away from here today and go to Cay a free man, but it’s going to take me a long time to get all this settled legally. I’ve already told Cay that I need to go to Charleston with . . .” Alex looked down at his food. “Legal papers saying that I didn’t kill her aren’t enough for me. Does that make sense?”

“Perfectly. If I were in your situation . . . Actually, I can’t imagine what I’d do.”

“But then, you wouldn’t have to, would you?” Alex said quickly. “You have family and friends. I had only T.C.”

“I think you could add my sister and Nate to that list of people who’ve helped you and believed in you. And Tally and I have done a bit. By the way, Nate has already let me know that wherever you go, he’s going with you. My brother is a very loyal person.”

Smiling, Alex began to relax. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve had a harrowing day.”

“Take your time, I’m not going anywhere.”

Alex pushed his half-eaten plate away and stood up. “First, I need to go to Charleston to clear my name. I need to walk through the streets with . . .” He looked at Adam. “Her name isn’t Lilith Grey, it’s Margaret Miller. She was called Megs as a girl. You see, everything about her is a lie. Would you like to hear her story, the one that she seemed to think would make me forgive her for everything?”

“I can’t think of anything that I’d like more than to hear why she did such an abominable thing. We’ll have cigars and brandy.”

Adam pulled the cord on the wall, and the steward came so quickly that Alex was sure the man had been waiting outside. It wasn’t long before the table was cleared, and when he and Adam were alone again, Alex spoke.

“That kiss! What a great lot of trouble it caused! Megs thought that kiss meant I’d forgiven her, so she tried to flutter her lashes at me and lean over me in a way that used to drive me wild with desire. Now, it just repulsed me. It took hours to get the truth out of her, but she finally told me the whole story, and every word was told with loud sobs and pleas for sympathy.” Alex calmed himself. “It seems that she was raised in great poverty, with a father who beat her. Again, I apologize for my lack of sympathy, but after what the woman did to me, I can feel nothing for her.”

“I understand completely,” Adam said, smoking his cigar and watching Alex as he paced the floor. “What did she say when you asked her why she stayed hidden while you were on trial?”

“She swears that she didn’t know that I’d been accused of her murder, and she says that if she’d known she would have returned to Charleston immediately. I don’t believe her.” He paused. “After she found out that men were in town searching for her, she came up with her diabolical plan to make them think she was dead. She’d seen the way the doctor looked at her, so she cried and made up some sad, pathetic story. I don’t know what it was, but it must have been a good one, because the doctor agreed to do whatever she wanted him to. She said that if he hadn’t died, it would have worked perfectly, but . . .” Alex took a breath. “Anyway, after I was arrested and taken away to jail, the doctor had her ‘body’ taken to his office, where she washed the blood off her neck and got into a waiting carriage that was loaded with her luggage.”

“And what was her plan for
you
?”

Alex had to take a breath before he could speak. “Nate figured that one out, too. The doctor was to declare her death to be a suicide, and that would get me released from jail.”

“The town would have said that she killed herself rather than spend her life with you.” Adam’s voice showed his disgust.

“Aye, they would have. I think I might have preferred hanging. Even now, after people see that I didn’t murder my wife, what I can’t abide is if Cay’s name is associated with this ugly mess. If she’s there in Charleston with me—as she wants to be—people would say that she had something to do with all of it.”

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

“Exactly. That old adage. No,” Alex said with a grimace, “I want all the gossip put where it belongs: on to Megs’s head.”

“What did she do after she left the doctor’s?”

“She says she went to a tiny town in Georgia and stayed there. She even told me she did the best she could to look plain so no one would notice her.”

“And how’d that work?” Adam asked, taking a long draw on his cigar.

“As always, she had some trouble with men. She presented herself as a young, beautiful widow living alone in a small town, so of course she had problems.”

“Where’d she get the money to live?”

“She didn’t say and I didn’t ask, but I think she stole it from old lady Underwood. Do you know about her?”

“I don’t think there was anything Nate didn’t uncover about your trial, so, yes, we were told about the rich old woman. But since she lied under oath about your wife being her niece, I don’t think she’s going to prosecute for thievery.”

“No. Lilith . . . Megs has a way of turning bad situations to her advantage.”

“I take it the ‘man problems’ were what sent her packing to New Orleans.”

“Aye, they did. She said she thought she could get lost in a city easier than in a small town. My opinion is that she was looking for her next husband to dupe. But who knows the truth? Maybe she just got bored and wanted excitement. If it hadn’t been for George Campbell seeing her . . .”

Adam spoke. “When we were in Charleston, Nate questioned someone who mentioned New Orleans, so he made one of his ‘educated guesses’ as to where she was heading. Our plan was that I’d go to New Orleans and Tally would go into the swamps to find you two. Anyway, Tally was dying to go.”

“I think he’d like being an explorer.”

“Did you?” Adam asked.

“I enjoyed the company,” Alex said with a smile as he remembered times with Cay.

“I think I’ll skip that part, if you don’t mind. After all, we are talking about my little sister. Did you find out why the woman, Megs, chose
you
to pull this trick on?”

“It was one of the first things I asked her. She said that there were many men in Charleston who looked at her with eyes glazed in lust—those were her exact words: ‘glazed in lust.’ But I was different in that I had no family there, and the only people I knew hadn’t known me for long. She said that after her faked suicide, she figured I’d leave town and never see any of them again.”

“I take it that means she was only thinking about your welfare, not her own.”

“According to her.”

“So what was the story this woman gave you to explain her perfidy?”

Alex sat down. “I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I’ll repeat what she told me. She said her father wanted to prostitute her out. He said her beauty could make them a great deal of money, but Megs had other plans for her life. When she was sixteen, she saw her chance to run away and took it. About twenty miles from where she grew up, she saw a carriage that had overturned, and the driver and the passenger, a young lady, were lying on the side of the road, both of them dead. I have to give it to Megs that she can think fast—and she seems to have no conscience about what she does to people. Anyway, she traded clothes with the dead girl and rolled her corpse into a river. When the bloated body was found weeks later, her father identified it as his daughter.”

“So she got rid of him by faking her own death,” Adam said. “Since it worked that time, I guess that’s why she decided to use the same ploy again years later. What did she do when she was dressed in her fine clothing?”

“She went to the nearest rich estate and presented herself as a young lady who had lost her memory.” Alex grimaced. “When I knew her, she said she couldn’t understand my accent, but today I found out that she’s good at mimicking. She showed me her original, impossible-to-understand London accent, then switched to the sounds of the English aristocracy. She even imitated my Scottish brogue. She should have gone on stage.”

“I give it to her that she has courage.”

“That’s not what I would call it.” Alex lit his cigar. “To make a long story short, a few years later, she married the rich widower who owned the house. He was forty-five and she was nineteen.”

“Were they in love?”

“Megs said they were, but who knows? She used to tell me that she loved me more than life itself.”

“Maybe she wasn’t lying,” Adam said, and Alex gave a guffaw.

“With her, I’ll never know. It seems that her entire life has been a lie.”

“Maybe a necessary one.”

“If that’s supposed to make me have sympathy for her, I ask you to go through what I did and see if you can make yourself care about her unhappy life.”

“But then, she was the reason you met my sister,” Adam added.

Alex smiled. “Even evil sometimes has good inside it.”

“Was the murder what made her come to America?”

“Aye, it was. Her husband’s nephew, who was to inherit, showed up, and he didn’t take kindly to his rich uncle marrying a young, fertile woman. He hired some men to search and found out who she actually was.”

“Ah, blackmail.”

“At first, but she says it became something much worse. When he persisted in trying to blackmail her, molest her, all of it, Megs picked up a candlestick, hit the nephew over the head, and killed him.”

Adam sat there, looking at Alex for a moment. “For her to go back to get a certificate declaring your marriage to be invalid would mean she’d have to stand trial for murder.”

“Aye, she would,” Alex said quietly. “I told her that I hope she can escape that, so I’ve promised to help her in any way that I can, but I’m not going to give up my life for her.”

“And she’s willing to return to England to face this?”

“Not at all. In fact, she threatened to hit
me
with a candlestick.” Alex looked at Adam. “I don’t trust her. Right now I have those guards Nate hired
in
the room with her. I know that if she were given half a chance, she’d flee. Any woman who could do what she did to me, I don’t trust. I’m going with her, first to Charleston, then to England. Whatever I have to do to get the proof that an American judge needs, I’ll do it. If she has to stand trial for murder, so be it. I’ve sworn to her that I’ll stay with her out of . . . of respect for another human being, but that’s all. Maybe I’ll change, but right now, I feel that if they hang her, she deserves it.”

Alex rubbed his hand over his face. “How could I have thought I loved a woman I didn’t really know? I should have been like Cay and made a list of the woman’s good and bad points.”

“I think my sister would disagree with you on that. I think that if you asked her now, she’d tell you that you should let passion carry you away.” He was looking hard at Alex.

“What woman treats a man convicted of murder with all the kindness and consideration that she would a guest in her own home?”

“My sister,” Adam said. “Since the day she was born, she’s been nothing but loving to us. Tally’s done some truly awful things to her, but Cay’s always managed to stand up to him.”

“And what did you do to Tally when you caught him?”

Adam gave a one-sided grin. “I’d rather not say, but by the time he was eight, he knew better than to torture his sister.” Adam’s eyes turned serious. “What do you plan to do about my sister?”

For a moment, Alex couldn’t speak. He walked to the far side of the room. “I think I’m going to need at least a year to clear all of this up.”

“I take it you mean that during that time you won’t see my sister?”

When Alex took a breath, it caught in his throat. “I want to give her a chance to make up her own mind. I want her to know what she really and truly wants. She was put with me in a live-or-die situation, and I worry that maybe she thinks she loves me because of what we went through together.” Alex straightened his shoulders. “And there’s the subject of class. I’m just a poor man from the Highlands. I’m good with horses and not much else, but Cay is beautiful, educated, and used to a life that I’ll never be able to give her.” He looked at Adam. “Unless I used her father’s money, and I won’t do that. I know Cay’s been sheltered, and she’s had little exposure to life. Those men she wanted to marry—”

“Horrible!” Adam said. “They were all half my sister’s intelligence, a quarter of her education, with not an ounce of her talent. Cay wants to please our parents, and she thinks to do that by making a suitable marriage.”

Alex didn’t smile at Adam’s words. “And I’m not ‘suitable.’ If she chooses me, I want it to be of her own free will, not because of . . . of memories.”

“That’s very noble of you. If I were in your place and had found a woman I could love, I’d never let her go. If I had to, I’d lock her in a room and hide the key.”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll—” Adam’s look cut him off, and Alex laughed.

“You want something from me, don’t you?” Adam said.

“Yes. While I’m away settling this horror, I want you to see that Cay is exposed to more of life. She found our foray into the wilds exciting, and I fear that that’s what she likes about me. Wild rides across the countryside, sleeping in tents, hacking at alligators with a knife.”

“I don’t think I know the girl you’re talking about. My little sister likes silk dresses and tea parties with French porcelain.”

“She also likes—” Alex didn’t finish that sentence because he’d been about to say that she liked making love in the moonlight. “I saw a different side of her, one that she’s just beginning to discover.”

“And you want her to see more of that?”

“Yes, I do.”

Adam looked at Alex for a long moment. “She’s young, beautiful, and rich. Are you sure you want to put her out there so other men can see her?”

“Of course I don’t. If I’d never met Megs . . .” Alex paused, then looked back at Adam. “The truth is that I would never have looked at Cay if it hadn’t been for all I’ve been through. If I’d met her under normal circumstances, I think I would have seen her as Nate’s little sister, and I would have ignored her. I’ve always been attracted to the tall, beautiful, mysterious type.”

Adam smiled. “Aren’t we all? But in this case, the mystery had an evil core to it. I think that what you ask has some sound reasoning behind it, but in the same circumstances, I don’t know that I’d be as generous as you are. I’ll talk to Mother and she’ll see that Cay is introduced to men outside of Edilean.”