Tally was a tall young man, with dark hair that had a reddish tint. He was handsome in a mischievous way that Alex thought women would like, and he looked as though laughter was never far from him. Silently, Tally left the lighted hotel doorway and walked into the dark back alley. Alex wondered why Tally wasn’t calling to his sister. Instead, the young man walked slowly, looking about him cautiously.
When Cay stepped to the edge of the roof and looked like she was about to jump, Alex left the shadows. What in the world was she doing?
Tally stopped walking when he saw Alex, and his eyes widened. In the next second, Cay emitted a sound that was a combination of Indian war cry and an alligator roar, and she leaped from the roof onto Tally.
Alex ran forward to try to catch her, but she hit Tally hard. He staggered backward but didn’t fall. And Alex could see the way he was holding her, protecting her, so that not even a strand of her hair was hurt.
Alex stepped back and watched. Obviously, this was something that had happened between them many times. But, still, just in case, Alex stood nearby, ready to step in if he was needed.
“What the hell are you wearing?” Tally asked as he struggled against her.
It was Alex’s guess that Tally wasn’t used to the muscle his sister had developed in the last weeks, so he was unprepared when she slipped her ankle about his foot and pulled. Tally hit the ground hard, but as he fell, he held Cay in a way that kept her from being injured.
“I’m going to tell Mother that you were cursing and Alex made me into a boy.”
Tally looked up from the ground at Alex; Cay was on top of him. “Is this the man that kidnapped you and put you in mortal danger?” When he started to get up, Alex braced himself.
Cay put all her weight on Tally’s left arm, and it looked like she was going to break it. “Who! Who, you idiot!”
Tally stopped struggling and looked at her in consternation. “What?”
“It’s ‘who’ not ‘that.’ Alex is the bastard who stole me and took me into the wilds of the Florida jungle. I can see that you haven’t been studying while I was away.”
“I was traipsing all over the country looking for you, so how was I to read anything?” He twisted his arm out from under her and tried to get up, but Cay threw her body over the top of his.
“You touch him and I’ll make you into a girl,” Cay said as she pushed him down.
Out of the shadows came another young man, one Alex had not seen inside. He had dark blond hair, very serious eyes, and he was handsome, but in a calm way, very unlike Tally’s fiery good looks. In an instant, Alex knew who he was, and for a moment the two of them stood there in the dim light and stared at each other. They’d been corresponding since they were children and they knew more about each other than anyone else did. They had confided things in their letters that they had never told another person.
“No one is castrating anyone,” Nate said calmly as he put his body in front of Alex and looked down at his brother and sister wrestling on the ground.
Cay didn’t hesitate as she got off of Tally and threw her arms around Nate. There was no wrestling, no falling to the ground, and no raucous remarks, just a quiet embrace.
“You’re all right?” Nate asked. “Not hurt in any way?”
“Not at all,” Cay said, standing on tiptoe, her arms around her brother’s neck.
“Did you learn anything on your journey?”
“Everything. And more than that, I drew pictures of it all.”
Nate’s eyebrows rose. “Did you? Where are they?”
“Jamie Armitage has them.”
“What?” Tally asked as he got up from the ground and dusted himself off. “An Armitage is involved in all this?”
“He calls himself Mr. Grady, and he led the trek.”
“How many of there were you?” Nate asked. “And where did you go? Down the St. Johns? What wildlife did you encounter? What—?”
Cay kissed Nate’s cheek. “I think you should talk to Alex about all that. He studied the books and knows the names of everything. I’m going to give the drawings to Uncle T.C. and let him identify the plants.”
“And I guess this is Alex?” Tally asked, still looking as though he’d like to hit him.
“Yes.” Cay moved away from her brothers to stand near Alex. It was all she could do not to slip her hand into his, but she thought that would be too much for Tally to handle. With his hotheaded temper, touching Alex might make Tally start hitting. “Alex and I—”
She broke off when she saw Tally look to his right, down the side of the building, and draw in his breath. Cay looked at Nate, and he gave a brief nod. She didn’t see that he gave another look to Alex.
“He’s here?” Cay asked in a whisper.
“Who’s here?” Alex asked, speaking for the first time in minutes. Only Nate saw the way Alex stepped closer to Cay, as though to protect her from whatever, whomever, Tally was looking at.
But when Cay looked at Alex and shook her head, he stepped back. Nate noted that it had been a silent communication between them, saying that she was safe and he didn’t need to protect her.
Slowly, Cay walked around the side of the building, Alex close behind her. Walking toward them was a big man, as tall as Alex, but with several more pounds on him, and from the way he moved, it was all muscle. Alex instantly knew he was the brother Cay talked about so often: Adam. From what Alex had gathered, her eldest brother was a stern and formidable character, and Alex braced himself. He didn’t care if Adam was her brother or not, if he said even one unkind word to her, if he started to bawl her out, Alex was going to take him on. After all Cay had been through, no one, not even a brother, had the right to hurt her in any way.
Alex watched as Cay stood still and her brother stopped several feet away from them. Alex looked to see if she was so still because she was afraid of him, but he couldn’t read her expression. Alex’s hands made into fists. He might lose a fight with the man, but he’d die protecting her.
When Adam went down on the ground on one knee, Alex wasn’t sure what was happening, but in the next second Adam opened his arms, and Cay went running. With his kneeling, she was almost the same height as he was. She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. And in the next second, the air was full of the sobs of both of them.
Embarrassed at such a display of raw emotion, Alex turned to look at Nate and Tally. Their eyes were on their siblings, who were locked together, their heads bent in a position of surrender, their quiet sobs coming to them on the hot night air. There were tears running down the cheeks of both Nate and Tally, but they didn’t bother to wipe them away.
Alex stepped away from them and into the shadows. It was as though he’d already lost Cay, as though their time together had never been, and she was now going back to where she belonged. Alex had never felt more superfluous or unneeded in his life than he did at that moment. What was going on was between her and her brothers, and he had no place in it.
Quietly, he turned and started to walk away, but Nate’s hand on his arm stopped him.
“Don’t leave. They’ll calm down in a moment, Adam will start telling her how she scared all of us, and how she’s never going to be allowed out of the house alone again. When it gets back to normal, you and I can go somewhere and talk. You look different than I imagined.”
Alex knew what Nate meant. Both of them had been very modest in their letters about what they looked like. Alex had said he looked like a horse, and Nate had said he was as plain faced as all scientists. But Alex had the dark good looks of a Renaissance angel, and Nate had the chiseled features of a Greek sculpture.
“I’d hoped you were better-looking,” Alex said with a straight face.
“It’s evident that you’ve spent a great deal of time in the company of my sister,” Nate said just as seriously. “There is no situation about which she doesn’t make a jest. Ah! I see that the two of them have stopped crying. Perhaps we can get some dinner out of them. I hav
e a lot to tell you, and I’ll be able to think better if I have some sustenance inside me.”
Alex couldn’t resist a grin. Nate talked as formally as he wrote. And oh! how wonderfully familiar he sounded. After months of everyone and everything being new and different, it was very good to hear something that was known to him.
“Will you need a handkerchief?” Nate asked, one eyebrow raised.
“I leave the crying to your family,” Alex answered, and was glad to see Nate give a small smile.
“You must show me what you do with the horses.”
“And you have to solve the mystery that condemned me to be hanged,” Alex answered.
“Even Tally figured that one out.” Nate sounded as though a trained dog had done an extraordinary trick, and the two of them shared their first laugh, in person, together.
“Who is it that’s made my very serious little brother laugh?” came a deep voice that was unfamiliar to Alex.
Nate and Alex turned to see Adam, his arm around Cay in such a way that if she tried to escape, she wouldn’t be able to. Alex couldn’t keep his hands from clenching. He didn’t care if that was her brother, he didn’t want someone else touching her.
“I think we should all talk,” Adam said and Alex nodded.
Adam had arranged for a restaurant to remain open, and they had it all to themselves. Once they were seated at a round table, Tally and Adam began to speak at once, but Adam let his young brother tell what they’d been through to find Cay. “And Mac’s son,” he added as an afterthought, obviously as yet undecided as to whether Alex was friend or foe.
When the waiters started filling the table with plates of food, Alex had a momentary fear of their being heard. Maybe they’d forgotten that he was a wanted man, but Alex would never forget. It wasn’t until he saw a confused look on the face of a waiter that he realized the entire family had slipped into a Scottish accent so thick they sounded as though they’d left the Highlands just yesterday.
Tally told of going to the trading post and meeting Thankfull and her twin sisters. “I got there two days after you left.” For a moment he stared into space and shook his head. “Those girls! They followed me wherever I went. I’ve never seen anything like them.”
“Then not all girls are as aggressive as they are?” Cay asked. When Tally said no, she looked at Alex with an I-told-you-so expression.
“But I wish they were!” Tally said enthusiastically. “I wouldn’t have to work so hard if all girls were like them.”
Adam gave Tally a look that told him to keep his mouth shut, but Cay and Alex couldn’t suppress their laughter.
“I told you we men liked that,” Alex said.
“And I told you we women weren’t all like them,” Cay responded, laughing.
“Yet again, we’re both right.” Alex was laughing with her.
Adam looked at Tally, and the younger man shrugged. They had no idea what Cay and Alex were talking about.
“Nate stayed in Charleston, while I went to New Orleans,” Adam said over the laughter.
“But you didn’t tell Uncle T.C. where you were going.” Cay’s voice was stern with disapproval.
“At the time, I was a bit vexed with him.” Adam took a sip of his wine.
“He was ready to tear Uncle T.C.’s head off,” Tally said to Cay. “I was wishing you were there so you could draw a picture of the fight. Wouldn’t that have been something to see?”
“I hardly think such a thing would have happened,” Adam said.
Tally went on telling of all his trials and tribulations of getting down to Florida to try and reach Cay before she took off on the boat. “Uncle T.C. didn’t tell us you were with one of the Armitage boys.”
“I doubt if it was important to him,” Adam said. “Unless the man sprouts leaves and blooms on schedule, I don’t think T.C. would think he was interesting.”
“Was Grady warned about me, about us?” Alex asked.
Adam answered. “Not that I know of, but the last time I saw Jamie, he asked if my little sister had grown up yet. I don’t think it would have taken much for him to add things up.”
Throughout all the talk, Nate sat in silence and watched. He liked to observe whatever was going on around him, whether it was people, animals, or even the changes of the landscape. He had a formidable memory and remembered all that he saw and heard.
He now watched Alex and Cay with all the concentration of observing them under a magnifying glass. He saw the way his sister had changed, both physically and mentally. He knew that all her life she’d been protected. He’d even told his father that the way Cay was treated wasn’t necessarily good for her. If she married and moved to someone else’s house, she was going to have a difficult time adjusting. She was used to only the best and the finest; no bad parts of life had been allowed to touch her.
But Nate saw that now his young sister was different. The fact that she was sitting next to a man who’d been tried for murder, but of whom she didn’t seem in the least afraid, was a big change. On the walk to the restaurant, two men, obviously drunk, had nearly run into her. Adam had instantly reached out to push them away, but Cay had already sidestepped them. And she’d done it in such a deft way it was as though she’d done the same thing a hundred times. More unusual, she hadn’t seemed to notice the men. Her eyes were on Alex. Always on Alex.
Now, in the restaurant, Adam was seated across from Cay, Tally and Nate on either side of him, and Alex was beside Cay. Adam had been telling what they’d done to track them down, while Tally was adding as much drama as he could to the story.
“When I was at Thankfull’s I even saw an alligator,” Tally said. “Really, I did. It was no more than fifty feet from me, but I stood still and let it pass.”
“Did you?” Cay asked as she glanced at Alex, their eyes registering mutual merriment.
Tally looked from one to the other and frowned. He and Adam were too polite to comment on the fact that Cay and Alex were eating off each other’s plates. They seemed to know every food the other liked, and without so much as a look at each other, they traded vegetables. The whole family knew that Cay didn’t like green beans, so when they saw her eat them and share them with Alex, even Adam paused with the fork halfway to his mouth.
“I can’t get over how you look,” Tally said to his sister. “You’ve changed.”
“My hair will grow back,” she said. “Although maybe I don’t want it to. I can ride better without fifty pounds of hair trailing behind me.”
“Bad for your neck,” Alex said, and Cay laughed, as though it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.
Tally looked at Nate, but he was staring at Cay and Alex so hard that he didn’t seem to be aware of what was going on. But Tally knew his brother was doing what they’d come to call “conjuring,” meaning that he was studying something to figure out what it meant. He knew that later, Nate would tell them in one concise sentence what had actually taken place.
“After we eat,” Adam said to his sister, “we’ll go to the hotel I’ve arranged for us, and tomorrow morning I’ll have some proper clothes brought to you. You won’t need to dress like a boy anymore. I have enough brothers, I don’t need any more.”
Alex glanced up from his food. “No. The corset hurts her. Let her have as much time of freedom as possible. When she sees her mother, that will be soon enough to strap her back into that cage.” His voice was quiet, but it held command in it, and Adam looked straight into Alex’s eyes.
Nate had seen few men stand up to his oldest brother, and he’d never seen anyone except their father win against Adam, but Alex’s unblinking stare and his immovable jaw said that he wasn’t going to back down.
“Well, then,” Adam said at last. “I guess that tomorrow we’ll be five men moving about New Orleans. But Cay, you can’t—” He broke off at a look from Alex.
“She can’t what?” Alex asked, and his voice was that of a man who was ready to fight.
All three brothers looked at th
eir sister, but she had her nose nearly on her plate.
“What do you think she should do?” Nate asked Alex.
“I think she should—” He cut himself off, and the challenging look left his face. He turned to Cay. “I think she should do whatever she wants to do.”
The change in Alex’s tone was dramatic. He’d been ready to fight all two-hundred-plus pounds of Adam, but when it came to telling Cay what to do, he blanched. In a second, his voice went from confrontational to conceding.
The men looked at one another, all of them over six feet tall, then looked at tiny Cay, and suddenly, they all burst into laughter. Cay tried to remain aloof, as though she had no idea what they were laughing about, but then she, too, joined in the merriment. When she slipped her hand to Alex’s side and withdrew his big knife from its sheath and waved it around, the laughter grew louder.
Nate watched as Cay looked at Alex with eyes that seemed to melt. She’s in love with him, Nate thought, and he had to repress a smile. How convenient it was that his sister was in love with his best friend.
But when he remembered that Alex had a wife who was alive and well and living not two miles from where they were sitting, Nate’s smile left him. Alex was going to have to make a choice, and if he hurt Cay, Nate wondered if he’d have to choose between his sister and his best friend.
Twenty-four
Cay was in bed asleep, dreaming about being on the flatboat and floating down the calm, peaceful Florida river. Mr. Grady and Eli were there, and Alex was sitting close beside her. Tim was by the side of the boat, his hand trailing in the water, and there was a little alligator following his fingers, its mouth open. She was just about to warn him when a sound woke her.
“Hey! Sleepyhead,” Alex said softly as he slid into bed next to her.
She kept her eyes closed and snuggled against him. “You smell wonderful.”
“That’s not what I can say about you. You haven’t had a bath, and you smell like a swamp.”
“Mmmm. I thought you liked the swamps.” She put her leg over his and moved, as though to get on top of him.
The Scent of Jasmine Page 26