Cay arched an eyebrow at him. “Would that be the danger I was in when we were dancing in the store? Or when you had your head on my lap and I was rubbing jasmine oil into your hair?”
Alex turned his face away so she couldn’t see it. “I don’t know, lass,” he said softly. “That first night you were afraid of me.”
“True. I almost cut your throat.”
He chuckled. “Did you know that I still have a sore on my side from where you nicked me?”
“I did not!”
“Aye, you did. It was after we went out the side of the barn and you sliced my breeches half off me.” He looked back at her. “I’ll tell you, lass, that I thought you were going to stab me right then and there, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to move out of your reach.”
“It wasn’t easy for me to choose between you and the man who owned that decrepit old barn.”
“Are you glad you chose me?” Alex asked, laughing, but as he looked at her his face became serious. It was easy to see that she was again letting him know that she didn’t want to be left behind.
“Yes.”
There was an awkward moment as they looked at each other, and the fact that this was their last night together hung in the air.
Alex broke the moment. “So did you kiss them?”
“Who?”
“Did you kiss the girls?”
“You’re sick. You’re worse than a murderer, you’re deranged. You ought to be put away in an asylum.”
“What about young Tim? He was mightily taken with you. Did you sneak back and kiss him?”
“I’m going to tell my brother Adam that you weren’t very nice to me, and he’s going to beat you up.”
Alex laughed. “Oh, how I’m going to miss you, lass. You made me laugh after a time when I thought I’d never so much as smile again.”
“You wouldn’t be alive now if it weren’t for me.” Her voice was completely serious, her eyes burning into his.
Alex turned back to the horses. “No, you’re not going with me, and don’t start on me again. Tell me more about the food in this place. After tonight I might be eating alligators for dinner. I wonder what the meat tastes like?”
“I hope it tastes like festering donkey caresses,” she said, glaring at his back. “And don’t you dare ask me to sleep in the same bed with you tonight, because I won’t do it. You, Alexander . . . Yates, are an ungrateful, mean-spirited, bad-tempered numptie. And I wish I knew some of the words my brother knows so I could call you those things.” With that, she left the barn and slammed the door behind her.
Turning, Alex looked at the door, and sighed. He was going to miss her very, very much.
It was later that night, when Cay was in bed—alone—that she had to struggle to keep from crying. When she’d left Alex, the twins had been waiting for her with more questions and more attempts to touch her. They were so forward in their advances that she was tempted to tell them the truth, that she was female. But she couldn’t do that.
The thought of having to deal with the two of them for even a whole day was enough to make her want to jump in a saddle and head north. She couldn’t even imagine a whole week—or more—near them.
And even worse was that at the end of that horrible time, who was she to see but Tally. Tally! Her brother who liked nothing more than to make her feel as though she were incompetent at everything she tried.
She could hear him now. “So you were in a party dress when you rode out in the middle of the night to re
scue a condemned criminal? Weren’t you worried that your dress might get soiled? Or your hair come down from whatever you do to make it stay up on top of your head?”
He would go on and on at her while she had to stand there and take it.
But then, maybe she could shoot him, she thought. One bullet to his shoulder. Or maybe to a thigh. He’d recover, but in the meantime, it would shut him up.
She was thinking these lovely thoughts, her mind full of satisfying images, when there was a knock on her door. Since she’d heard Thankfull threaten the girls if they bothered Cay again, she felt sure it was Alex come to apologize. She spread what was left of her hair out on the pillow. “Come in.”
When Thankfull put her head inside the door, Cay frantically began to tuck her hair behind her.