“You don’t do anything different. You’re to stay here with the others and go south, just as planned.” Turning, he left the store. Cay was about two inches away from his heels.
“And what do you plan to do?” she asked him.
“Go to New Orleans, of course.”
Cay wasn’t sure, but there seemed to be a different step to his walk, a quickness that hadn’t been there before. “I’m going with you.” She had to nearly run to keep up with him.
“No you’re not.”
She stopped walking and glared at the back of him. “Good! Then I’ll have weeks and weeks alone with Jamie Armitage.”
Alex halted in his tracks, stood still for a moment, then turned around to glare at her.
She smiled sweetly at him.
“Meet me back here in one hour.” He walked ahead too fast for her to catch up with him.
“You leave without me and I’ll send you an invitation to my wedding,” she called after him. He raised his hand, but he didn’t look back at her.
Cay stood still for a moment. Lilith might still be alive. Alex’s wife might be alive and living in New Orleans. The woman he loved more than life itself could possibly be waiting for him just a few days’ hard ride from where they were.
Cay’s hands made into fists. “I hope she’s not too big,” she said under her breath. “I don’t want to have to take too much trouble to kill her.” That said, she felt better, and in the next second, she was running. She had to get ready to travel, this time on horseback, and alone with Alex. She’d heard of worse ideas.
Twenty-three
New Orleans, 1799
“How in the world are we going to find your brother?” Alex asked. The two of them were dirty, sweaty, and tired beyond imagining. But as he looked across his horse at her, he couldn’t help but give a one-sided grin.
“I’m glad you see something amusing because I don’t. I want to take a bath and sleep for about three days.”
“I was just remembering the first trip we took together. You were exhausted after just a couple of hours on a horse.”
“Couple of hours?” She rubbed her itchy nose with her sleeve. “You mean when you made me ride without stopping for a day and a half, and you left me under a tree at the mercy of whatever scalawags came by? That trip?”
“Aye,” Alex said. “That’s the one I mean. You’ve ridden much harder this time.”
“Had to, didn’t I?” Cay mumbled as she followed him into the outskirts of the city. Even though it was well after midnight, she could see lights and hear music in the distance.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. I didn’t say anything.” What she’d meant was that he was so determined to find the woman he loved, that he would have ridden all the way without sleep if it were possible. As it was, that’s nearly what they’d done. From the trading post, they’d hitched a ride upriver on a boat, but it went too slow for Alex’s taste, so they’d stopped at a plantation and used the last of the money T.C. had given them to pay an exorbitant price for two horses. Alex had ridden hard along the shore of the river, always heading north, and Cay was right behind him. They’d only stopped every other night, and one time they’d had what Alex called an “unfortunate” encounter with a bunch of alligators that were hiding in the sand.
Cay would have loved to have climbed a tree to safety, but that would have left Alex alone. He shot one with a rifle, tossed a loaded pistol to her, and Cay shot another one. There was no time to reload, so they’d had to use knives. Running, they did what they could to escape the creatures that were chasing them. In one of Eli?
??s stories he’d said that alligators couldn’t run in a zigzag pattern, so Alex and Cay went back and forth as they sought higher ground.
When they reached safety, Cay looked at Alex, and in the next minute she was in his arms and crying from fear. He held her so tightly she thought her ribs might break, but she didn’t care. She clung to him just as hard.
They didn’t sleep much that night, and the next morning, Alex had to find their horses. Cay didn’t think he’d be able to, but he did. When he returned, she ran to him and kissed his face in such relief that they ended up taking a hour to make love, then they were off again, this time staying farther from the shore.
That evening they’d had to stop early because both of them were asleep on their horses, and their animals were too tired to go any farther. Alex built a fire, so they could eat and drink before bedding down together. Cay had been thinking about her brother Nate all day, wondering what he’d found out about the murder accusation. As she and Alex snuggled together after making love, and just as they were going to sleep, she told him the story of her brother Nate corresponding with someone in Scotland for most of his life. “My brother thinks we don’t know anything about it, but we all know. We’re pretty sure it’s our cousin Lachlan. He’s only a few years older than Nate and they get along well when we visit. Want to hear a big secret?”
Alex hoped she wasn’t feeling how hard his heart was beating. “Aye, lass, I would like to hear a secret. Just so it’s something good.”
“It is to us, but I doubt if you’ll think so. Nate calls his pen pal Merlin.”
“Does he?” Alex asked, trying to sound disinterested and sleepy. “And why does he call him that?”