The Scent of Jasmine Read online

  “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