The Scent of Jasmine Read online

  But she awoke five minutes later as a mosquito bit her. It was followed by another, then another. She was slapping at her hands and neck, and even her face, before she jumped up and started waving her arms about to try to get away from them. Eli was calmly cooking and didn’t seem to notice the treacherous insects.

  “They don’t bother me,” he said.

  “Try this,” Mr. Grady said as he handed Cay a round metal container full of a thick salve. “Rub it on your neck and face. It should help.”

  She put some between her palms, rubbed them together, and slathered her face, neck, and the back of her hands. Just the smell was enough to help relax her. “What is it?”

  “My mother makes it,” Mr. Grady said, shrugging. “Some kind of oil, with lavender and something else. If it works, I’ll get you the receipt.”

  “Thank—” she began, but Alex cut her off.

  “Our mother would like that, wouldn’t she, little brother?”

  “Very much,” Cay said, looking up at Mr. Grady. The firelight made his eyes sparkle, and the long dimples in his cheeks were shadowed in the dim light. He was a very handsome man, and she couldn’t help thinking about his family. He was an Armitage.

  “You want something to eat?” Alex asked gruffly.

  “Sure.” Reluctantly, Cay took her eyes from Mr. Grady’s—from Jamie’s.

  “One sin a day isn’t enough for you?” Alex said in her ear when Grady had moved away. “What would your mother say?”

  “My mother is a very practical woman. She’d say that I could crawl into his tent with him if it got me married to an Armitage. It’s the criminal she’d not want me to kiss.”

  As soon as she said it, she regretted it. All she could see of Alex’s face was his eyes, but there was pain there.

  “Well, then,” he said as he stepped away from her, “you have my blessing.”

  Cay watched Alex leave the campsite and head out of sight toward the grove of fruit trees. She looked with longing at the roast birds, their skin dripping with a sauce made of oranges, then back at the pathway. She was tired and hungry, but she’d hurt Alex’s feelings and she needed to make amends.

  Eli solved her dilemma by handing her a tin plate heaped with two roast birds. “Take these to him,” he said softly.

  Cay remembered herself just in time to keep from kissing Eli’s cheek in gratitude. Taking the plate from him, she headed back into the darkness after Alex.

  “Why does he get first choice?” she heard Tim say from behind her. “Shouldn’t he be made to come back here to eat?”

  “Sit down, boy,” Eli said, “and tend to your own business.”

  Cay easily found Alex. He was standing under the tree where they’d sat just a while before. “I brought you some food.”

  “I’d think you’d be sharing it with Armitage.”

  Cay sat down on the ground at his feet, tore off a bird leg, and began to eat. “This is wonderful. Such an extravagance to eat all the oranges we want. Do you think we’ll be sick of them by the end of this journey?” When Alex didn’t answer, she said, “What is it that bothers you so much about him?”

  “Nothing about him bothers me. It’s you.”

  “What did I do?”

  Alex sat down across from her and began to eat. “It’s the money.”

  “That he has it?”

  “No,” Alex said. “It’s that you’re willing to marry for money.”

  “You did,” she said and braced herself for his anger, but it didn’t come.

  “No, I didn’t. Lilith wasn’t rich like everyone thought she was.”

  “Please tell me about it,” Cay said.

  “Lilith was the paid companion of a hate-filled, rich, old woman named Annia Underwood. The old hag had run even the greediest of her relatives off, so she had no one. But she didn’t want all of Charleston to know that, so she hired Lilith to work for her, but she told the town that Lilith was her grand-niece.”

  “Was she nice to your wife?”

  “Not at all, but Lilith took it until she met me. I said a few things to the old woman that made her stand back a bit. She was angry that Lilith was going to leave her to live with me after the wedding, which, by the way, I paid for.”

  “How angry? Enough to commit murder?”

  “If she’d had anyone killed, it would have been me, not Lilith.”

  Cay looked at him in the darkness, the roar of the alligators around them, and said, “I’m no lawyer, but if Lilith wasn’t wealthy as everyone thought she was, doesn’t that take away your motive for murder? If you’d told your attorney—”

  “Do you think I didn’t?” he nearly shouted. “Do you think I didn’t tell my lawyer all of this? He went to old lady Underwood, and she kept to her lie. She said that Lilith had been her grand-niece and was her heir and that’s why I’d married her. She said I’d killed the poor girl to try to take away Lilith’s inheritance. She even said she’d warned Lilith against me—but at least that part was true.”

  He took a breath and calmed himself. “The truth was that the old woman begrudged Lilith every crust of bread she gave her. The expensive clothes Lilith wore were to put on a show for the town, not because the woman was generous.”

  Cay thought about what he’d told her. “So this is why when I mention the riches of Jamie Armitage you run off into the woods and won’t speak to anyone?”

  It was dark, but she felt him relax. “Aye, lass, that’s what it is.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I speak so sweetly of Jamie because I want to make you jealous?”

  He paused, a bird wing on the way to his mouth. “No, I canna say that that thought ever entered my mind.”

  “Sometimes,” she said as she wiped her mouth, “a person should look at what—and who—is around him now instead of always dwelling on the past.” She looked at the plate full of bones. “I feel much better and I’m going to bed. When you come, would you bring the plates?”

  She got only four steps away before he put his hand on her shoulder and pulled her around to face him.

  “You always make me feel better,” he said as he buried his face in her neck. “You take the worst things in my life and make them something I can bear.”

  “Alex,” she whispered. “Make love to me.”

  “Lass, I canna do that.”

  “Today I was a second away from being killed. When I met you, you were one day away from death. Your Lilith didn’t live to have her wedding night.”

  He put his fingertips over her lips. “I’m not a whole man. What’s been done to me has taken away something inside of me. I can’t be the man you want.”

  “And I’ll never be the woman you lost, so we’re even.” Pulling away from him, she took a step back toward the camp, but he caught her.

  He took her in his arms, and she stood on tiptoe to kiss him. For a moment he looked into her eyes, searching them to see if she was sure of this. In the next second, his mouth came down on hers in a way that she’d never felt before. She’d had chaste kisses with each of her suitors, and she’d exchanged two kisses with Alex, but she’d never felt anything like what she did now.

  His hands slid down her back, and went over her, touching her arms, the back of her neck, her hair. “Do you know how you’ve driven me crazy since the day I met you?” he murmured as he kissed her neck.

  Cay put her head back and her chin up to give him better access. “You hated me.”

  “You looked like an angel in that dress. I wasn’t sure that I hadn’t died and you were there to welcome me to Heaven.”

  “Alex, that feels so good.”

  He put little biting kisses along the sensitive cord of her neck, and when he felt her knees begin to give way, he bent and picked her up, his arms under her legs. Carefully, he put her on the soft grass and began to unbutton her shirt. Under it, she had the tight binding cloth over her breasts, but Alex lifted her and soon had removed her shirt and the cloth.

  When his lips touched her br