The Scent of Jasmine (Edilean 4)

“That was a stroke of good luck. Did the twins come with her?”

“Aye, they did,” Cay said, realizing she was slipping into the Scottish brogue that they’d always used between them. “And my mother found husbands for them.”

“Did she?” Alex picked up one of the brushes from the wooden box on the ground and handed it to her.

Turning her head just slightly, Cay took the brush and looked at Alex’s hand, but not at his face. It was a hand that she knew so very well, and it had touched every inch of her body.

“I hear that Armitage came to visit.” Alex’s voice was serious.

“Yes, he did, and we had a long talk. He told me that he knew who I was on the trip. Not at first, but after he saw my drawing, he said he remembered me. He said he also figured out who you were.”

“I thought he did. I was afraid he’d have me locked up when we got to the trading post.”

“Jamie said he thought about it, but that he’d watched us and knew that you weren’t hurting me. Adam told him everything about what happened.”

“Your brother’s been a good friend to me.”

“He’s like that.” Cay used the brush that Alex handed her to paint the ducks purple. “Jamie asked me to marry him.”

“Adam wrote that to Nate and he told me,” Alex said. “When he read that to me, I went out and got drunk for three days, and I had to wait for nearly a month before a letter got to us saying that you’d turned him down.”

“My mother was glad, but my father thinks I’m an idiot.”

“And what do you think?” Alex asked softly.

“That I haven’t a brain in my head.”

Alex laughed. “I never loved you for your brain, anyway.”

His words made Cay’s heart pound so hard that her corset stays were straining. She wanted so much to look at him, but she’d had a year to think about her life and her future, and there were things that bothered her. “I heard that you and she spent a lot of time together in Charleston. I was told that you two make a beautiful couple.”

“And I heard that your mother introduced you to a thousand young men.”

“She did,” Cay said, smiling as she put a blue bill on a duck. “She took me to London, Paris, and Rome for eight whole months, and I met everyone. My father’s distant cousin married an earl’s daughter, so that makes their son an earl. They have little money and no estate, but he does have the title. My mother used every connection she could get to introduce me to every eligible bachelor in three countries. She wanted to take me to Vienna, too, but by that time she was so miserable from missing my father that I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“What did you do?”

“I got sick. None of the doctors were clever enough to figure out what was wrong with me until I finally told one of them. We conspired, and he informed my mother that I was suffering from such a severe case of homesickness that she had to take me home immediately. My mother packed and had us on a ship within twenty-four hours. The funny thing was . . .”

“Was what?”

“That when she got home, she was so ill that she had to stay in bed for four whole days—and my father was so worried about her health that he stayed in there with her.”

Alex laughed, and when he did, he reached out to take the hem of her skirt in his hands. He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think he’d laughed even once in the last year. Between the hell that he’d been through and the seriousness of Nate’s company, there hadn’t been much to laugh about. “And what about the young men you met?”

“Some of them were wonderful,” Cay said enthusiastically. “But some of them were horrible. I met a duke’s son who told me that if I asked him to marry me, he would consider it. I think he believed I should be flattered by his offer.”

“But you weren’t?”

“Not in the least. I went on enough picnics that I nearly turned into a basket. Opera, ballet, concerts. And dances! I must have worn out a hundred pairs of shoes with dancing.”

“And the result was?”

“What my mother wanted: marriage proposals, of course. My family is rich, thanks to what my mother came into the marriage with, and my father increased the money. Add that to the fact that I’m not difficult to look at, and that even the Englishmen admitted my manners didn’t embarrass them, and I had dozens of men on their knees before me.”

“And did you accept any of their proposals?”

She took a moment before answering. “I was so angry at you for leaving me behind that I wanted to. I fantasized about writing a letter telling you that I was very happy, madly in love, and going to marry a fabulous man.”