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.”