“What would I do if I were Jessica?” she wondered aloud. It came to her that she’d remove all her clothing and walk naked into the river. The pale evening light, the warm air, being alone with a man . . . It all seemed to be right.
But Cay leaned against a tree and sighed. What was wrong was that this wasn’t the right man. This was a man she hardly knew, he was much too old for her, and he wasn’t the sort of man her family would be proud that she’d chosen. Even if he were proven innocent of murder, there would always be the stigma of the accusation and the trial attached to him.
No, she thought, and gave another sigh. Maybe the circumstances were right, but the man wasn’t.
She waited until she heard him leave the water, then she went in. She stayed a good distance from where he had been, and even though she wanted to swim and play in the water—which was colder than it looked—she didn’t. She soaped and washed her hair, rinsed, then used one of the two towels that had been in Uncle T.C.’s supplies to dry off.
When she went back to their camp, he had built a fire and was sitting there in his clean clothes, and he looked and smelled much better. In fact, maybe it was the light, but he looked younger and maybe even a little bit handsome.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much. Except that now I’ll not be able to find you by smell alone.”
He was leaning over the fire and seemed taller than he had when she first met him, and now his hair was wet and clean and no longer standing out from his head.
Cay held up the brown bottle of jasmine oil. She’d seen the bottle of oil, probably made by the storekeeper’s wife, and known that it would work on nits and lice and all manner of vermin. But then, so would several other oils. The object was to smother the creatures so they couldn’t breathe. She’d chosen jasmine over the other oils that the storekeeper had because she liked its smell so much. She’d had to retrieve it after Alex had tried to hide it. He’d been so involved in his flattery of her that he’d not seen her slip the bottle into the bag.
Alex didn’t say anything, just nodded that she could pour the oil on him. When she sat down behind him, a comb in her hand, his eyes widened.
“What do you mean to do to me, lass?” he asked in a soft voice.
“Not what you’re hoping. Bend down so I can see your hair.”
Smiling, he sat in front of her, but when she did nothing, he looked back at her.
“You’re too tall for me to reach.” She spread her damp towel across her lap. “Stretch out and put your head on my lap.”
“Lass, I don’t think—”
“That you can control your ‘passion’ for me?” she asked without a smile. “Are you afraid you’ll touch me and fall in love instantly?”
He knew she was making fun of him and he didn’t like it, but on the other hand, she had a knack for making him laugh. “I’ll save myself for someone older and let Michael have you.”
“Micah,” she said as he put his head on her lap and she began to comb his hair. When she had the tangles out, she poured the oil on it, and began to work it through. The heavenly fragrance of jasmine filled the air around them.
“I did this once to my brother Ethan when he got honey and beeswax in his hair. My father wanted to shave his head, but I couldn’t bear that, so I said I’d get it out.”
“How old were you?”
“Eleven, I guess.”
“So that means he was . . . ?”
“Fourteen.”
“Were you always like a mother to them?”
“Not at all.” She massaged the oil into his scalp. For all that she’d complained often about his having lice, she didn’t feel anything, just his scalp and his too-long hair. “Maybe I was a bit of a mother to Ethan, but he’s the sweetest of my brothers, and the most gentle and the prettiest.”
“Pretty? Like a girl?”
“No. At least no girl thinks he’s pretty in that way. Women old and young make such a fuss over him.”
“That must be pleasant.”
“He takes it well. It’s my mother who has the hard time. She says that girls of my generation have no restraint and no shame at all. She says that girls today throw themselves at men.”
“Like you and your young man?”
“I never—”
“Didn’t he teach you about using your . . . ?” He waved his hand about in the general area of his mouth.
“No,” Cay said hesitantly, reluctant to admit that she’d lied. “Jessica told me about that. She’s had more experience with boys than my other friends and I’ve had.”
“So you didn’t do anything you shouldn’t have with the boy Micah?”
Cay didn’t like the way he sounded like her father. “He’s hardly a boy. He’s thirty years old, has never been married, and conducts services on Sundays.”
Twisting about, Alex looked up at her. “He’s a minister? You’re thinking about marrying a pastor?”
“And what’s so wrong with that?”
“You agreed to help a convicted murderer escape from prison. Don’t you think that’s a wee bit against what the good wife of a holy man would do?”
“I told you that I didn’t do it for you but for Uncle T.C.”
“And this is the man who was passionately in love with a woman named Bathsheba?”
“Yes,” Cay said, not understanding what he was getting at.
“Tell me, child, did T.C. ever do anything about his passion?”
When she didn’t say anything, he looked up at her.
“Come on, lass, I can see it on your face. What did he do?”
“Hope.”
“He hoped he’d find the woman he loved alone someday?”
“No!” she said as she put her hands on his scalp and turned his head back around. “Bathsheba had a daughter named Hope and she looks a lot like Uncle T.C.” She glared down at him. “If you keep looking at me like that I’ll pour this oil into your smirking mouth.”
Alex closed his eyes, but he was still grinning. “All I’m saying, lass, is that if you marry the pastor and people find out what you did, it won’t make life easy for your husband. But then, he might be an understanding man and forgive you for your sins.”
“I haven’t . . .” She trailed off, not sure what to say. What would Micah do when he was told what she’d done? How could she explain that she’d spent days alone with this man, had even had his head on her lap, but nothing sinful had happened? When she saw the way Alex was smiling at her, as though he actually could read her mind, she was tempted to make good her threat and pour the oil in his mouth. “Are you forgetting that you’re a convicted murderer and we’re alone out here? I know you don’t want me to talk to you about . . . about men.”
“And rightly so. I just wanted to know that you haven’t done something you shouldn’t have.”
“The more I know you, the more you sound like one of my brothers.”
“Which one?”
“Part Nate and part Tally.”
“But not the beautiful Ethan?”
“Definitely not Ethan.”
“What about the perfect Adam?”
“Adam is unique. No one is like Adam.”
For a while they were quiet and Alex closed his eyes as the smell wafted about him and Cay’s small hands worked on his scalp. “I swear, lass, that you have put me in a trance.”
As she stroked his hair, pulling it out across her legs, she began to think more about her family, and where she was, and the fact that she didn’t know where she was going or what was going to happen. All her life had been well planned, and she’d always known what she wanted to do with her life. She could have drawn pictures of herself at thirty. She would have two boys and a girl by then. All she had to do was decide which man was to be her husband. Now she wondered if one of her prospects would even want her after her time of running from the law.
Suddenly, tears began to form, and one of them dropped on Alex’s forehead.
He had his eyes closed, his m
ind and body given over to the first comfort he’d felt in a very long time, but he knew what she was feeling. He didn’t like to think that he’d made a girl cry, especially such a sweet and innocent one as she was. “Did you know that I came here to this country to race horses?” he asked, his voice so soft she could barely hear him.
“No. I . . .” She hiccuped and sniffed as she drew back her tears. “Actually, I know very little about you.”
“Except what you read in the papers,” he said, and she felt his body stiffen.
“Actually, I didn’t read them. All I know is what Hope told me.” When her words had no effect on him, she did what she would have with one of her brothers and began to stroke his hair in a way that she knew would calm him. “Do you like any other animals besides racehorses?”
“I like all of them,” he said. “Birds, horses, raccoons, I like them.”
“What about spiders?”
He smiled. “Less so, but yes. I did a very bad thing back in Scotland. I did it twice.”
She continued combing. His hair was spread out over her lap and it was coated with the fragrant oil. “My brothers have done some things that my father didn’t like. One time, I’m not sure what Nate did, but my father was angry at him for an entire week.”
Alex couldn’t help grinning. He knew exactly what Nate had done, why he’d done it, and what his father had thought his son had done. But he wasn’t going to tell Cay that. “I secretly mated my mare to Lord Brockinghurst’s great stallion. Twice.”
Cay laughed. “Did you?”
“Aye, I did. I had a lovely little mare, as feisty as can be. A bit like you, really. And I took her down south to England and waited until the man’s fastest stallion was put in the pasture at night. He charged a lot to mate a mare with the great beast, but I couldn’t afford it.”
“So you stole what didn’t belong to you.”
“I like to think that I gave the horse the pleasure of my pretty mare for the night.”
“So you were a philanthropist.”
“More or less.” He was smiling.
“And what was the result of your generosity?”
“The first colt was female, and as you know, mares can’t run as fast as males.”
“Maybe they don’t want to,” Cay said. “Maybe they want to stay in one place and be with their families.”
Alex opened one eye to look up at her. “I’ll get you home, lass, don’t worry about it.”
“Looking like a boy? Maybe I should take up chewing tobacco.”
He was still looking at her. “Mayhaps you should, lass, for you don’t look like a boy now. Your hair is—”
When he started to reach up to touch it, she pushed his hand away. “We were talking about horses.”
“Ah, yes.” Turning back around, he closed his eyes. He well knew that whatever had been in his hair had long since been combed out, but he was glad she wasn’t pushing him away. “The second colt was a beauty, perfect in every way.”
“Meaning that it was male.”
“Of course. What else could be perfect?” When she started to push his head out of her lap, he laughed and caught her hand. “I’m only teasing, lass. Do you not know that?”
She relented and continued combing. “So what did you do?”
“I had a plan, you see.”
“And what was that?”
He wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t, for the plan involved her family. He knew that about ten years ago, Nate’s father, Cay’s father, had purchased a horse farm not far from Edilean. There was a house and a barn, a stream, a pond, everything a man could need to raise a family and horses. Nate had written about the place and said that his father had too much to do to take proper care of it, so the farm was losing money. When Alex wrote back that it sounded like his dream farm, Nate had begged his father not to sell it, hinting that he might someday want the place for his own.
It had been the possibility of someday owning a farm near his friend that had spurred Alex on in his life. His father had told him about the opportunities to be found in America, and Alex had long dreamed of going there. His plan had been to win enough money from racing his horses to buy the farm, then his father would come to America and live with him. Everything had gone a little off track when he’d met Lilith and married her before he had enough money to purchase the farm, but he knew enough to take love when he found it. Of course Lilith hadn’t exactly been what a man thought of as a farm wife, but he’d been sure all that could have been worked out.
“What was your plan?” Cay asked when he was silent.
“To make a lot of money. Isn’t that why everyone comes to America?”
“And did you?”
“Yes.” He opened his eyes to stare into the darkness. There was light from the fire, but the sun had gone down and evening had come quickly. “I boarded a ship with my three horses, the mother and her two children. My plan was to breed the mares and race the son. Tarka was a fast—”
“Tarka? That was the name of my father’s fastest pony when he lived in Scotland. I rode him when I was a girl.”
Alex almost said that Nate had written the story to him, and it’s why Alex had named his horse that, but he didn’t. “It’s a common enough name.”
“Is it? I thought it was rather unusual. So you brought your horses to America and you raced them? Or just Tarka?”
“My little mare could beat most of their horses. I saved Tarka for when I wanted to win a big purse.”
“I see. You made them think that they might be able to beat you, but then you brought out another horse. Did you keep him hidden?”
“You have a devious mind,” he said, but he was smiling.
“Is that what you did?”
“Aye, it’s exactly what I did. I kept Tarka hidden so far out in the country that not one of those rich boys could find him. I won races and lost them, but then I brought out Tarka.” His smile broadened. “You should have seen him. Tall and black and as beautiful as the sunrise. He was a magnificent animal, and he knew it. He walked with his head high and his tail up, and he wouldn’t so much as look at the other horses. And run! On a racetrack, he took off as though the other horses were there to graze. He beat them by lengths. There was nothing in America that could touch him.”
Cay was frowning. “You sound as though he’s . . .” She hesitated. “As though he’s no longer alive. What happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said, and the joy went out of his voice. “When I was accused of murder, everything I had was taken from me. I asked T.C. what happened to my horses, but he knew nothing and could find out nothing.”
“You should have told Uncle T.C. you’d found a plant that no one had ever seen before and he would have moved the earth to find it.”
Alex smiled, his good humor back. “You always make me laugh, lass.” He turned over on his side and looked up at her. “When I get my name cleared, I’ll get Tarka and his mother and sister back.”
“And how do you mean to clear your name?”
“I have—” He started to say that he’d already done a lot of work toward clearing his name, but since what he’d done involved her brother, he couldn’t tell her of it. When T.C. visited him in prison, Alex had written to Nate about the facts of what had happened to him. Alex knew the guards wouldn’t let him keep pen and paper, so he’d had to write the letter over many visits, and T.C. had taken the pages when he left. When Alex had written everything, T.C. hired a rider to take the long, detailed letter to Nate. Alex had thought there’d be enough time for Nate to come to him and they could talk about what had happened, but the judge said that Alex’s crime was so heinous that he was to be hanged two days after the verdict came in. There hadn’t been time for Nate to receive the letter, then get to Charleston and clear Alex.
“You have what?”
Alex got up and put more wood on the fire. “Nothing, lass. I have nothing at all.”
She knew he was lying. She was sure he’d meant
to say that he’d figured out something to do, but he wouldn’t tell her what it was. She was trusting him with her life, but he couldn’t so much as tell her what he was going to do to defend himself. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. When she put the towel beside her, the scent of jasmine was all around them. “Could you please call me something besides ‘lass’?”
His mouth went up on one side in a half smile. “As soon as you call me anything at all.”
“That’s absurd. I call you . . .”
“Aye, what do you call me?”
“Mr. McDowell.”
“I like that.” When he stretched, his damp shirt clung to the muscles in his back. “It shows that you have respect for your elders. Perhaps you could add a ‘sir’ to it now and then, as is proper in our present situation.”
“Present . . . ?” she said. “If it weren’t for my rescuing you, you’d be dead by now. When I first saw you, you were on foot and being chased by men who were shooting at you. What happened to the men who broke you free?”
“One was shot and the other turned himself in,” Alex said quietly.
“How did you get away?”
“Rolled away in the dark and came up running. I didn’t think I’d escape them.” Looking at her, he smiled. “But a lovely young girl dressed for a party was waiting there to save me. You looked like an angel.”
“That’s not what you said at the time. You told me you were doomed.”
“You misunderstood me. I said I thought I’d died and gone to Heaven.”
“You said—” she began, then realized he was teasing her. “Yes, I do believe that you referred to me as an angel and you were oh, so very glad to see me there waiting for you.”
“That’s just how I remember it, too.” His eyes were twinkling in the firelight, and she couldn’t help smiling back.
“Lass, I think . . .” He looked at her. “Cay, I think we should get some sleep. We’ll leave early tomorrow morning.”
She groaned. “Before daylight again. When I’m at home, my maid wakes me with a pot of hot chocolate, and I lie in bed and sip it while she asks me what I want to wear that day.”
“Sounds very boring,” he said as he stirred the fire.