“Why you—” Tally made a lunge for Nate, who put up his fists. Nate had had boxing lessons from a professional.
Adam’s long arm reached out and stopped Tally. “Sit! I want to know what happened, and since you, Tally, seem to be incapable of coherent thought, I’ll let Nate tell me. First of all, why does our angry brother think you aren’t concerned about our little sister?”
“Tell him!” Tally said as he slumped down on to a chair.
“Alexander McDowell is Merlin.”
Adam stared at Nate for a few moments before he spoke. “Now I understand. It’s why you’ve been so involved in this hunt for the truth.”
“Yes, it is,” Nate answered. “With both my sister and my friend involved, I could do no less than my best.”
“So what happened after Cay fainted?” Adam asked.
Tally answered. “I carried her to Nate’s room.”
Adam nodded. Last night, he and Cay had stayed in one hotel, while Nate, Tally, and Alex went to another one. It was at Nate’s hotel that they had arranged for Alex to meet with his wife. “What did Alex do that so upset Cay?”
“He kissed the woman,” Tally said angrily.
“If by ‘the woman’ you mean his wife, then he had a right to, didn’t he?” Nate said.
“In front of Cay?” Tally shot back.
“If you had kept proper vigilance, she wouldn’t have been concealing herself behind some cabinet doors and seen it all.”
“Since when am I her sitter?”
“Stop it!” Adam said. “I want to know what happened between Alex and that woman.”
Tally and Nate looked at each other, then at Adam.
“We don’t know,” Nate said. “We were more concerned about Cay. We got her to my room, I revived her with smelling salts, and she . . .” Nate didn’t like great emotion and he especially didn’t like to see his sister crying in such pain.
Tally continued. “When I got back to the room where McDowell was to meet his wife, they were gone. Think they’re on their honeymoon by now?”
“If they’re in this city, I can find them,” Nate said.
“No,” Adam answered. “What’s between them is none of our business. Tally, I want you to take Cay home. Let Mother deal with her tears. She’ll know how to handle them.”
“Our father will be very angry,” Nate said.
“Yeah, won’t he?” Tally said, grinning. “He’ll skin McDowell alive and nail his hide to the barn door.”
“Tally,” Nate said, “I really don’t think there’s a need for your bloodthirsty declarations.”
“I’d like you to take care of our sister,” Adam said to his youngest brother.
“Gladly!” Tally stood up. “I want her as far away from McDowell as possible.”
Nate remained seated, looking at Adam. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to wait here for Alex to come to me.”
Nate couldn’t repress a smile. “He will come.”
“Yes,” Adam said, “I’m sure he will. My fear is that after we talk, he’ll go to Cay, and she’ll forgive him everything, then we’ll have a war on our hands. Now, while she’s angry at him, I want to get her out of here.”
“You’re going to talk to the bastard?” Tally asked.
“I’m going to listen to every word he has to say. I think it’s time that someone listened to him. Now go and get Cay while she’s still upset. When she comes to her senses, I want her to be in Edilean and under Father’s care.”
“I like this plan,” Tally said as he headed for the door, but he stopped and looked back at Nate. “And what do you plan to do?”
“After Merlin . . . Alex talks to Adam, I am going to help him however he needs me.”
“You’re going to choose that bastard over your own family?”
“No,” Nate said calmly. “I’m going to—”
“Tally,” Adam said, “would you please see to Cay and do what you can to calm down? And Nate—”
But Nate was already on his feet and ready to leave with Tally. “I’ll give you time alone with him. I hope that you’ll . . .”
“I’ll be fair and I’ll listen,” Adam said. “The man was falsely accused and convicted of murder. I can’t imagine what that must have done to him.”
After giving a quick nod, Nate left Adam’s hotel room.
It was late, and someone was knocking on Adam’s door, and he felt sure it was Alexander McDowell.
“Is she gone?” Alex asked as he stepped inside Adam’s room.
“Yes. Cay left for Edilean with Tally this morning. Nate is waiting to help you in whatever needs to be done. Cay wanted to stay, but we all think it’s better that she be with our family now.” Adam did his best to think and act in a rational manner, but he couldn’t help himself. “What in the hell were you thinking when you kissed that woman in front of Cay?”
Alex sat down heavily on a chair. He looked as though he’d aged twenty years in one day. “First of all, I didn’t know Cay was hiding in the room. I told her—” He ran his hand over his eyes. “That I’d told her she couldn’t go should have made me know that she’d be there.”
Some of Adam’s anger left him; that was exactly like his sister. “So why did you kiss a woman who’d done what she did to you?”
“I don’t know. I think it was relief that she was alive and not dead, which meant that the nightmare of my life was going to end. A thousand things went through my mind.”
“Cay . . .” Adam was torn between wanting to shout at the man and feeling sympathy for him. But if there was one thing he knew, it was that Alex loved Cay. He’d seen it. Their love for each other was so strong a person could almost touch it. “Are you in love with your wife?”
Shaking his head, Alex gave a derogatory little laugh. “I’d never spent a whole day with her, and after today, I don’t know how I ever believed I was in love with her. Cay told me I was a fool for marrying someone I didn’t know, and she was right.”
“I saw her, and her beauty dazzles a man.”
“Aye, it does. That she wanted me made me feel that I had been given some great honor. But she also made me feel that I needed to earn masses of money so I could give her everything, houses, carriages, beautiful clothes. I wanted to give all that I could to her.”
“She isn’t like my little sister?” There was curiosity in Adam’s voice.
Alex smiled. “Cay couldn’t be more different. I think that if I told her I wanted to set up housekeeping on the moon, Cay would start packing.”
“I always knew that if she fell in love, it would be hard.”
“So she wasn’t in love with her three men?”
Smiling, Adam sat down on a chair across from Alex. “It was me who persuaded our father to let her go to Charleston to have some time to think about her three marriage proposals. I wanted her to meet some other people, to see new places. I hoped that time and distance would make her forget those men she was thinking about marrying.” Adam got up and poured two glasses full of single malt MacTarvit Scotch and handed one to Alex. “Did she tell you about the Daisies?”
“Never heard of them.”
“Several of my father’s friends, your father’s friends, too, settled in Edilean, and got married. By chance, there were five baby girls born in the same year as Cay, and as they grew up, they became fast friends. When they were eight, they announced that they were going to call themselves The Chain because their friendship was as strong as steel. I think the idea came from Jess, the daughter of Naps and Tabitha who . . .” Adam waved his hand in dismissal. “If you knew them, you’d understand. Anyway, Tally heard this decree and said they were more like a chain of daisies than of steel. The name stuck. The five girls are still the best of friends, and we all call them the Daisies.”
“All Cay talked about was her brothers,” Alex said. “Night and day, it was all about the four of you. I didn’t hear anything about her friends, except about one of them having ten brothers and
sisters, and parents with a bad marriage. She said the daughter stayed at her house all the time to escape her home.” Alex also remembered what Cay had told him about a girl named Jessica and her tongue, but he didn’t say that.
“That would be Jess. Yes, her parents fight a lot, but Jess stays at our house because my sister rolls out the red carpet for her. Dresses, riding, schooling. Whatever Jess wants, Cay gives it to her.”
“That sounds like her.” Alex was smiling.
“Are you hungry? I haven’t had dinner. I could order something to be brought up. I figure you have a lot to tell me, and we can do it just as well over dinner.”
“That sounds good,” Alex said. He got up to look out the window as Adam pulled a cord on the wall and a white-coated steward appeared. Alex knew he was being given time to relax because Adam wanted all the information he could get, and he felt sure that Adam had some decrees of his own to make. Alex suspected that Adam was going to tell him that he couldn’t see Cay again until the mess about Lilith was finished. Marriage, murder, all of it had to be done with and behind him before Alex could see Cay again. That was all right, because that was the same decision Alex had reached.
The two men didn’t talk much until the food arrived, and they sat down to eat. Adam held out a plate of brussels sprouts and his eyes told Alex that it was time for him to start talking.
There was so much to tell that Alex wasn’t sure where to start. “I’m not married.”
“Oh?” Adam asked.
“The woman who walked down the aisle to me has a husband living in England. It seems that she murdered her husband’s nephew, his heir, and I was used as a way for her to get out of being arrested. When she was living in Charleston, she discovered that some men were searching for her, so she came up with the plan to fake her own death in a very public way. She thought the men would report back to the English authorities that she was dead, then she’d be free to change her name again and . . .” He waved his hand. “I have no idea what she planned to do.”
Alex took a few bites. “As soon as she told me she had a living husband, I took her to a judge here in New Orleans. I can tell you that that was no mean feat to get her there.” Alex took a bite of food and chewed slowly. It was difficult to tell all that he’d learned in the last day. “The judge told us that if all two people had to do was swear that one of them was still married to someone else and thereby their marriage would be dissolved, there wouldn’t be even one marriage left in this country. He said, ‘I need proof! If she was married in England, then go to England and get me some documents. I want papers with seals on them. Gold seals. Just so I believe all of it.’”
“So you have to go back to England with her?”
“If I want all this horror taken from my life, yes I do.” Alex took a deep breath. “I think that all I’ve been through because of that woman has taken away my ability to feel pity—at least for her.” Alex took a bite of his steak and waited before speaking again. He was determined to get his anger under control.
“Even Nate didn’t find any of this out . . . Merlin.”
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.”