“But you didn’t,” Alex said, and there was the beginning of relief in his voice.
“No, I didn’t. But then none of the men knew me. They looked at me to see whether or not I’d fit into their lives. How many children could I bear? Was I capable of taking care of their estates? And my favorite was whether or not I would put up with their affairs. You know who was the only man I was truly attracted to?”
Alex tried to hold his frown back, but he couldn’t. “No, who?”
“One of the horse trainers on the huge estate of an Englishman who wanted to marry my dowry. He was a tall man, with broad shoulders, and lots of dark hair. The English called him a ‘wizard’ with horses.”
“A wizard?”
“I called him Merlin, and when we went out riding, I kissed him.”
“Did you?” Alex’s hands clenched into fists.
“Yes.” Cay’s voice changed to anger. “Yes! While you were kissing your wife”—she sneered—“sleeping with her, for all I know, I kissed a man.”
Alex’s hands unclenched. He was glad to hear her anger and her jealousy. “I kissed her just that once, when you were hiding behind the cupboard and saw it. Other than that, I didn’t touch her, and I can assure you that I didn’t sleep with her. Thanks to you, I was able to look past what had attracted me to her and saw the person. She never quit swearing that she didn’t know I was put on trial for her murder, but there’s no way she could not have known. Nate went to that little town in Georgia where she ran to right after what she did to me, and the newspapers there were full of the trial. The editor even had a record that she, under the false name she used there, had subscribed to the paper.” He took a breath. “I could hardly bear to be near a woman who was capable of what she did to me.”
“I know,” Cay said. “Nate wrote us about how much you disliked her. But my brain and my heart don’t seem to be connected. One hears and understands, but the other feels.”
When Cay slid her foot toward him, he touched her ankle, encased in a silk stocking. When she didn’t move away, he put his hand on her foot.
“Did Nate tell you that her husband’s nephew is alive? She hadn’t killed him, just knocked him unconscious. The men in Charleston who’d been searching for her were from her husband. He wanted her back.”
“Nate wrote me everything.” There was emphasis in her voice, letting him know that he, Alex, had never written her even once. But, through Nate, they had communicated. “So she’s back with her husband?”
“Aye, she is.” Alex removed her shoe and began to caress her foot. He knew that Nate had been writing and telling Cay what was going on, but there were some things that Alex had saved to tell her himself. “I talked to her husband in private and told him all that the woman had done to me. I even made Megs tell him the truth about her early life and how she lied to meet him. But he already knew it. She hadn’t told me, but she’d worked in his kitchen when she was a girl, and he remembered her. He knew who she was when she showed up at his house wearing the clothes of his cousin’s daughter. It didn’t take much for him to figure out what had happened.”
“And he forgave her?”
“More than that, he loved her. He told me that he’d married the first time to please his father and he’d hated his rich, aristocratic wife, but the second time he married to please himself.”
“So they’re happy?”
“When Nate and I left, Megs was carrying his child.”
“Nate’s child? Father won’t like that at all!”
For a moment, Alex was confused, then he began to laugh—really laugh. It started inside him, rumbled up like a volcano erupting. He had forgotten her way of constantly making jokes about everything. He’d had a year of nothing but seriousness, of little laughter, as he cleared his name and dealt with judges and lawyers and Megs. He’d soon found that her beauty was a poor replacement for someone who wanted to make him feel good.
His laughter relaxed him, and Alex’d had all he could take of Cay’s refusal to look at him. Her painting of the pond looked like something a color-blind child had drawn, what with its purple ducks with their blue beaks swimming in a pink pond. His hand went up her leg, and in the next second he pulled her down onto the grass beside him, and he began to kiss her face and neck.
“I’ve missed you,” he said. “Every second of every day, I thought about you and wanted to be with you. Nate read me the letters you and your mother wrote to him, about every party and every dance you went to. Your mother even wrote about your damned shoes wearing out from so much dancing.”
“I told her to put that in,” Cay said, her eyes smiling as she looked up at him. Her hands were on his cheeks, feeling the smoothness of his face. She knew she’d probably show him the hundred or so pictures she’d drawn of him from memory in the last year. No matter how many men she met or how handsome they were, all she ever saw was Alex.
“I thought maybe you did, but I told myself, no, that my darling Cay could never be that cruel.”
“Me cruel? You invented cruelty. The Spanish Inquisition could take lessons from you. My horrible brother wrote every word that you two found out about that . . . that woman and her stupid husband. He should have hated her! Are you sure she didn’t murder that girl in the carriage? Maybe she—”
When Alex kissed her, she stopped what she was saying. He moved his lips from hers, and looked at her, his eyes searching her face, memorizing it, as he smoothed her hair back. “I thought of that, too, but her husband knew about the accident. One of his workmen had already seen it, and the husband was on his way there when Megs showed up at his door, saying she was the dead girl. He was amused by her audacity, and it wasn’t long before he was in love with her.” Alex’s voice lowered. “Who can understand love?” He ran his thumbs over her eyebrows, smoothing them. “I agree with your father, and if you had any sense at all, you’d take Armitage up on his offer to marry him. He’s much more your class and—”
“My mother told me the truth.”
He looked at her curiously. They were lying on the ground, and he was half on top of her, but he was too heavy for her to move. “The truth about what?”
“About her and my father.”
“And what truth would that be?” His voice showed his amusement.