Holly Read online

  That night they slept in a double sleeping bag on the floor of the overseer’s cabin, a fire burning in the ivy fireplace.

  “To the Holly and the ivy,” Nick said, holding up a champagne glass in toast.

  “This is the best Christmas of my life,” Holly said. “It can’t get better than this.”

  “Yes, it can.”

  “Oh,” she said, looking down. “Taylor and Lorrie. And poor Charles Maitland.”

  “No,” Nick said, looking at her with hot eyes. “Next Christmas we’ll have a couple of kids.”

  “A couple!” she said, laughing. “What an ego you have.”

  “Did I tell you that twins run in my family?”

  “There’s a whole lot you didn’t tell me about your family,” she said, then smiled at him. “Do twins take more work to make than singletons?”

  “I don’t know.” Nick seemed to think about the matter. “But if they do, we’d better get started.” He moved toward her.

  “I want a big tree,” she said under his lips. “And we’ll decorate it with fruit like they did when Belle Chere was built. And we’ll—”

  She didn’t say any more.

  Pocket Books Proudly Presents

  The Scent of Jasmine

  Jude Deveraux

  Available in Mass Market from Pocket Books

  Turn the page for a preview of The Scent of Jasmine . . .

  One

  Charleston, South Carolina, 1799

  “Think about the Highlands,” T.C. Connor said to his goddaughter, Cay. “Think about your father’s homeland, of the people there. He was the laird, so that means you’re the laird’s daughter, which means—”

  “Do you think my father would want me to do what you’re asking of me?” Cay asked, her thick-lashed eyes smiling at him.

  T.C. lay on his bed with a splint from his knee to his hip. He’d broken his leg just hours before and grimaced from pain at the slightest movement, but he gave Cay a weak smile. “If your father knew what I was asking of his precious daughter, he’d tie me to a wagon and drag me across a couple of mountains.”

  “I’ll go,” Hope said from the other side of the bed. “I’ll take a carriage and—”

  T.C. put his hand over hers and looked at her fondly. Hope was the only child of Bathsheba and Isaac Chapman. Her beautiful young mother had died years before, while her grumpy, unpleaseable old father lingered on. T.C. Connor claimed he was just “a friend of the family,” but Cay had heard whispers among the women that there had been more between Bathsheba and T.C. than just friendship. It was even whispered that T.C. could possibly be Hope’s father.

  “That’s very kind of you to offer, dear, but . . .” He trailed off, not wanting to state the obvious. Hope had been raised in a city and she’d never been on the back of a horse. She traveled only in carriages. And, also, she’d fallen down a staircase when she was three and her left leg had healed incorrectly. Under her long skirts she wore a shoe with a two-inch-thick sole.

  “Uncle T.C.,” Hope said patiently, “what you’re asking of Cay is impossible. Look at her. She’s dressed for a ball. She can’t very well ride a horse wearing that gown.”

  T.C. and Hope looked at Cay and the sparkling splendor of her nearly lit up the room. Cay was just twenty years old and, while she’d never be the classical beauty her mother was, she was very pretty. Her dark blue eyes peered out from under extraordinarily long lashes, but her best feature was her thick auburn hair that was now pinned up, with curls escaping and softening the strong jaw line she’d inherited from her father.

  “I want her to go directly from the meeting place to the ball.” When he tried to sit up, T.C. had to suppress a groan. “Maybe I can—”

  Hope gave him a gentle push on the shoulder, and he fell back against the mattress. She wiped his sweat-covered forehead with a cool cloth.

  Winded, he looked back at Cay. The gown she had on was exquisite. A white satin overlaid with gauze, it was covered with hundreds of little crystal beads set in intricate patterns. It clung to her slim figure perfectly, and if he knew her father, Angus Harcourt, the dress cost more than T.C. had earned last year. “Hope is right,” T.C. said. “You can’t possibly go in my place. It’s much too dangerous for anyone, especially for a young girl. If only Nate were here. Or Ethan or Tally.”

  At the mention of three of her four older brothers, Cay sat down on the chair by the side of the bed. “I can outride Tally,” she said of her brother who was less than a year older than she was. “And I can shoot as well as Nate.”

  “Adam,” T.C. said. “If only Adam were here.”

  Cay gave a sigh. She couldn’t do anything as well as her oldest brother Adam could. But then, only her father was a match for Adam.

  “Uncle T.C.,” Hope said and there was warning in her voice, “what you’re doing isn’t right. You’re trying to goad Cay into doing something that is absolutely and utterly impossible for her to do. She—”

  “Maybe not impossible,” Cay said. “I mean, all I’m to do is to ride to a specified place leading a pack horse, and pay a couple of men. That’s all there is to it, isn’t it?”

  “That’s all,” T.C. said as he again tried to sit up. “When you meet the men, you hand the bag of coins to them, and give Alex the reins to the packed horse. The men will go away, then you’ll ride your mare on to the ball. The whole thing is really quite simple.”

  “Maybe I could—” Cay began, but Hope cut her off.

  Hope had stood up, with her hands on her hips, and she was glaring down at T.C. on the bed. “T.C. Connor, what you’re doing to this poor child’s mind is nothing short of evil. You are twisting her thoughts around until she can’t even remember the facts of all this—if she ever knew them.”

  Hope was nearly thirty, a full nine years older than Cay, and she often treated Cay as though she were barely past the age of rope jumping.

  “I do understand what he’s asking,” Cay said.

  “No, you don’t.” Hope’s voice was growing louder. “All of them are criminals. Every one of them. Those two men you’re to pay—” She glared at T.C. “Tell her where you got them.”

  “Jayz,” T.C. mumbled, but at Hope’s look he said more clearly, “Jail. I got them as they were being released from prison. But where else was I going to get men to do what I needed done? From church? Hope, you’re forgetting that it’s Alex who matters in all this. It’s Alex who—”

  “Alex!” Hope put her hands to the side of her head, and for a moment she turned away. When she looked back at the man on the bed, her face was red with anger. She wasn’t an especially pretty woman and the color didn’t make her more so. “You know nothing about this Alexander McDowell. You never even met him until you went to see him in prison.”

  Cay’s eyes widened. “But I thought—”

  “You thought our dear uncle T.C. knew him, didn’t you? Well, he doesn’t. Our godfather served in the army with this Alex’s father and your father, and—”

  “And the man saved my life more than once.” T.C.’s tone was angry. “He protected us when we were so green we didn’t even know to duck when people started shooting at us. Mac was like a father, or a big brother, to all of us. He—”

  “Mac?” Cay said as she was finally beginning to put the story together. “The man you’re helping to escape from prison is the son of the Mac who my father speaks of?”

  “Yes,” T.C. said as he turned toward Cay. “I don’t think your father would be alive today if it weren’t for Mac.”

  “Tell her what the son did,” Hope said, her face still as red as a sunburn. “Tell Cay what the man did to get himself put in jail.”

  When T.C. was silent, Cay said, “I thought he was—”

  “What? Arrested for drunkenness? For falling on his face into a horse trough?”

  “Hope!” T.C. said sternly, and Cay could see that his face was also red—and in exactly the same way as Hope’s. “I really think that—”

  “That yo