The Scent of Jasmine (Edilean 4)

Cay couldn’t contain her laughter as she nodded in agreement, and told the woman that Alex’s hair smelled very good and that’s why she liked him. This made the women laugh, and when they left the Indian village, the women followed Alex and kept sniffing his hair.

Alex put up with it with good humor, but he shot Cay looks, as though he was going to murder her. Eli and Mr. Grady said nothing, but when they got back to the boat, they exploded with laughter.

“What’s going on?” Tim asked, looking at Cay. “Are they laughing because the women took you in to their house? I thought that was pretty funny, too. They must have seen that you don’t even shave.” He rubbed his own sparse chin hair with pride.

That statement made Eli and Mr. Grady laugh harder and Alex frown more.

That night when they were alone in their tent, Cay tried to coax Alex out of his bad humor, but she couldn’t. “What bothered you so much?” she asked in frustration. “That they were teasing you? Is your pride so inflexible that you can’t laugh at yourself? The women liked the smell of your hair. What’s so wrong with that?”

“I would never get angry about women liking whatever part of me they care to, it’s just that . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence because he didn’t want to alarm her, but every day he was growing more sure that Eli and Grady knew that Cay was female. Even more, he felt that Grady knew who Cay was. There were small things that Cay didn’t see, but Alex did. On the surface, Grady treated Cay just as he did that idiot boy, Tim, but there were little things that Alex noticed. Whereas Tim would drop his spoon into the mud and barely wipe it off before eating with it, Grady always made sure that Cay’s plate and utensils were clean. Several times, Alex had seen both Eli and Grady intercept some insect or crawling creature from climbing on Cay while she sat engrossed in her drawings. One time Grady reached out over Cay’s head and grabbed a single strand of web that a spider was spinning as it made its way down to the top of Cay’s head.

There were other things less physical that Alex noticed. Grady talked to Cay in a way that he didn’t use with the others. It was a matter of tone and even vocabulary. What Alex knew from having dealt with the rich plantation boys in Charleston was that Grady treated Cay as one of his own class. Alex had seen that you couldn’t enter that class; you had to have been born into it. For all that Americans liked to brag that the new country was a classless one, Alex had seen that it wasn’t so.

What Alex wondered was how much Grady knew. To Alex, it wouldn’t have been difficult for Grady to guess that Cay was female. She walked, talked, even reacted as a woman would. Even the pranks she pulled on young Tim were done in a female way. Had she been male, by now she would have punched Tim in the face.

What Alex feared was that Grady hadn’t so much as guessed the truth about Cay as that he

’d been told. He seemed to not only know she was female, but also to know she was of his same class, and that made Alex wonder if Grady had received a letter from her family or T.C. telling him of the circumstances. And if Grady had been told about Cay, that meant he knew Alex was an escaped fugitive.

After their visit to the Indian village, Alex became more cautious, and he watched Grady and Eli more closely. As far as Alex could tell, Eli knew only that Cay was a girl, but Grady seemed to know much more. On the personal side, what was worse—to Alex’s mind anyway—was that Grady seemed to be making a play for Cay. Alex knew better than to tell his concerns to Cay. She’d laugh and tell him he was jealous, but Alex saw things that bothered him. At night, Eli’s stories became longer, so there was less time for him and Cay to slip away. Four times now, Grady had told Alex to go ashore and bring back game and any unusual plants that Cay might draw. That Cay would be alone on the boat with them while Alex was trapped onshore was not something he could protest without telling the truth. It had been extremely difficult to travel on foot through the wilds of Florida, bring down a deer, carry it across his shoulders, and get back to them.

“We thought you weren’t going to make it,” Eli said the first time Alex came into the camp late at night.

Alex dropped the deer carcass and looked at Grady, but the man wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Alex wondered what Grady wanted from Cay. It seemed obvious that he wanted to break the alliance between Alex and Cay, meaning that he wanted to stop their lovemaking. But why? Because Grady knew her family and therefore felt responsible for her? Or was he as interested in an alliance with her family as she was in his?

“You look like you ate something sour,” Cay whispered as they went into their little tent together. “Did something happen between you and Mr. Grady?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you’ve been frowning at him for two days now, and every time he so much as speaks to me I think you’re going to hit him with an oar. It’s flattering that you’re so jealous, but I think that what you and I do together proves that you don’t have a right to dislike him.”

“Don’t I?” he asked in a loud whisper. “When we leave here, who are you more likely to stay with? Me or Armitage?”

“Quiet, or they’ll hear you. Mr. Grady doesn’t want anyone to know who he is.”

“You think Eli doesn’t know? He practically kisses the man’s ring.”

“Jamie doesn’t wear any rings.”

“What?” Alex growled, his eyebrows pulled together so they nearly touched in the center.

“Nothing. I was making a joke. I was trying to cheer you up. What has happened to make you suddenly get so angry? I thought you were enjoying yourself.” She put her hand on his chest and lowered her voice. “I’ve been enjoying myself a great deal.”

He took her hands in his and held them. “And when this is over, that’s all it will be.”

“What does that mean?”

“When we get back to a town you’ll reveal yourself to Grady, and what will you two do then? Confess that you’re in love with each other and post the banns for your marriage?”

Cay gave him a serious look. “Every night after you and I make love, as soon as you’re asleep, I sneak away and join Mr. Grady in his tent. We have wild sex all night long, and by the way, he’s a much better lover than you are.”

Alex drew in his breath so sharply that the canvas walls of the tent moved. “You . . . you . . . ,” he began, choking on the words.

“And Eli is the best of all,” she said without a hint of a smile. “Tim’s not any good, but I’ve been teaching him what I’ve learned from you three men. Mostly from Eli, though. Did I tell you that he—”

“Stop talking,” Alex said as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.