The Scent of Jasmine Read online

  Cay glanced at him over her shoulder. “A few hours? Then you didn’t . . . ?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but no, we didn’t.” He was frowning at the buttons.

  “Hope said that you fell asleep on your wedding night, but I didn’t believe her.”

  “I did not ‘fall asleep.’ I was drugged.”

  “Ah, yes, glass of wine, then sleep. Who drugged you?”

  “If I knew that, I could have saved myself at the trial.” He was two-thirds of the way through the buttons.

  “Hope said the door was locked from the inside and that only you and your wife were in her room.”

  “That’s about the only thing the lawyers got right.” Alex pulled on the last button. “There, now, get out of that dress and let’s get going. Someone may come in here.”

  “On a Sunday? Surely not. Not even my father works on Sundays.”

  “So I guess that means that no man does,” Alex said in a derisive way. He was looking at the back of her dress as though he’d just climbed a mountain and was proud of what he’d done.

  “Turn around,” she said. “I’m still a girl and you’re a man and . . .” Breaking off, she stared at him as though she was just realizing that he was in new clothes.

  “You like this?” he asked, holding out his arms.

  “You look like a planter,” she said softly. “Those clothes suit you.” She turned back around to face the mirror but kept looking at him in its reflection. “Of course the fact that you’re the dirtiest man in the country, and that you have nits in your hair takes away from the overall effect.”

  He ran his hand over his hair. He used to keep it neatly trimmed and tied back at the nape of his neck with a black ribbon, but now it had grown wild and long, and she was right that it was very dirty. “Maybe I can wash it when we get to where we’re going.”

  “No. You’re going to take a whole bath today or I’m not going to put on boy’s clothes.”

  Alex smiled at her. “Too late for that. You’ll never get those buttons done up without my help.”

  Cay grabbed a dress from a shelf near her and held it up. It was a plain thing, made of brown plaid, with black braid around the collar. There was a look of threat in her eyes.

  He wasn’t going to tell her, but if she was going to continue wearing a dress, he much preferred the white one she had on. He’d grown used to the way it flashed in the sunlight. The surprise was that she’d seemed to know, through some mysterious female way, that he wouldn’t like for her to wear the plain brown dress.

  “You have to take a bath.”

  “I promise that I’ll wash.” He was smiling at her. “I’m not a barbarian, even if you think I am.”

  Cay looked back at the mirror. She was holding her beautiful dress about her, and she took one last, long look, glanced at Alex as he turned his back to her, then she let the dress fall and stepped out of it. She looked at herself in the long corset, her pantaloons going down to her knees, and at her torn stockings above the worn and dirty slippers. This was her last glimpse of herself as a girl.

  Worse, she knew that she was going to have to get his help in removing the corset. Her maid had tied it for her days ago, and she hadn’t had it off since then.

  “You have to untie me,” she said.

  “I’ll have to turn around to do that. Or should I wear a blindfold?”

  “You wear a blindfold when you get shot for untying a woman’s corset strings when she doesn’t want you to, but I’m asking you to do this, so it’s all right.”

  Laughing, Alex turned around, and Cay was pleased when he drew in his breath. He was the only man to have ever seen her in her underwear. Except for her father and brothers, she thought, but they didn’t count. Tally had once put itching powder in her corset just before she was to meet her mother’s old friend, Thomas Jefferson, who had become the governor of Virginia. At the memory of what she did to Tally afterward, she couldn’t help smiling.

  “Where do I start?” Alex asked, keeping his eyes on the back of the boned garment.

  “Pretend it’s a horse harness and untie it.”

  “I could use my knife and—”

  “No!” she said. “No cutting.”

  He almost made a joke about “not yet,” meaning that he wouldn’t do any cutting until he took his knife to her hair, but he thought better of it. The strings had been tied in a way that had hardened into a knot over the last few days, and it took a while to get them loose. As he began to pull the strings out, he could feel her take deep breaths.

  “My maid pulled it in tighter than usual because of the ball,” Cay said as she let out another breath.

  “Isn’t that painful?” He had hit a snag and he dearly wanted to pull out his knife and slash the blasted thing.

  “Of course it is, but you men love a small waist.”

  Bending, he put his face closer to the laces. It looked like the maid had tied a knot in the middle as well as at the top. “But those dresses you women wear today hide your waist.”

  “Do they really?” she asked, her voice all sweet innocence.

  He pulled the laces loose, stepped back from her, and smiled. She had him there. The high-waisted fashions concealed little. “No, they don’t hide much of anything. When a woman stands in front of a candle you can see—” He cleared his throat. “It’s done.”

  Cay was already shrugging out of the corset. He’d left the bottom of it fastened, so she had to step out of it. Alex meant to turn away, but she started twisting about in such a manner that he couldn’t stop looking at her—and laughing.

  “I can breathe!” She ran her hands up her back and scratched through her long cotton shift, and when that wasn’t enough, she went to the wall and rubbed up against it, her face showing her utter delight.

  “You shouldn’t have been afraid of the bear, he would have thought you were one of his tribe.”

  “Do shut up,” she said amiably. “If you had spent days in a corset, without even taking it off at night, you’d—” She turned her back to him. “Make yourself useful and come over her and scratch my back. It itches until I could go mad.”

  Alex hesitated, but he did as she said, gently scratching her back through the fabric.

  “I know you’re a weak man, but surely you can do better than that.”

  He began to scratch harder and when his nails weren’t enough, he took out his knife and used the handle of it to rub her back until he was sure he’d remove the skin.

  At last she stepped away. “Better. Much better.” She was still twisting about, shrugging her shoulders, and moving her arms in circles.

  Again, he marveled at how pretty she was. Why hadn’t Nate thought to mention that in all his letters? “Do you think you could get dressed now, lass?”

  “Sure. What should I put on?”

  “Anything that covers you,” he muttered, and went back to searching the store to see if there was anything else that they would need. On the counter was the bottle she’d put there while they were dancing. It was labeled “jasmine oil.” It looked like, even if she was going to wear boy’s clothes, she planned to smell good. He would, of course, have to tell her that she couldn’t wear it, but he wouldn’t ruin her good mood now. He put the oil back on the shelf.

  In the back of the store, Cay was having trouble with the clothes. She left her shift on, but when she put a boy’s shirt on over it, her breasts were still prominent. And they tended to move when she walked. She wasn’t about to tell the Scotsman about this problem and ask his opinion. Instead, she had to look around the store to find cloth she could use to bind her breasts. In a back corner were rolls of fabric and scissors, so she cut a bit of white muslin and made a big bandage of it. She didn’t pull too hard, just enough to stop the movement and make her chest into a lump, and she put the shirt back on. If she kept it loose, she thought it would work.

  It didn’t take long to put on the other clothes. She traded her torn silk stockings for a boy’s th