“Aye, I do,” he said, and he was sincere.
“I guess I got too angry too fast,” she said. “It’s always been a problem of mine. Adam says it’s my biggest fault.”
“And of course Adam is always right,” he murmured.
She looked at him hard, trying to see if he was teasing or being honest.
Alex worked to keep his eyes calm and not let the laughter inside him escape. “Will you no come with me now, lass?”
“Only if you call me by my name,” she said. “I know you were told my full name, but I’m called—”
“Cay,” he said. “For your initials of C-E-H. It’s what your brother Nate thought your name was because your mother embroidered everything with your initials before you were born. She was determined that you were going to be a girl. Now . . . Cay, are you ready to go? We should be at the town very soon.”
When he turned his horse around and headed south, obviously hoping she would follow him, Cay couldn’t move. What a great lot of information Uncle T.C. had told him! In her opinion, he’d told too much family business to a stranger. Frowning, she at last began to follow him.
When Alex heard the clip-clop of her horse, he smiled to himself and thought that maybe he’d just learned something about women. He knew he’d tarnished his pride by apologizing and begging her to go with him, but he’d also won because she was now following him. Maybe pride and women didn’t go together. Whatever the truth was, he was glad she was doing the sensible thing and allowing him to protect her.
“I don’t like this,” Cay whispered as Alex jiggled the nail he’d pulled out of the side of the building in the door lock.
“Do you think I do?” he whispered back. “I’d like to be at home with my wife right now, not here.”
“I’m sorry,” she said contritely. “I sometimes forget about your loss.”
Alex pulled up on the lock and pushed down on the nail, and the door finally came open. “Quickly,” he said as he let her go inside before him. He stayed outside for a moment as he looked around to see if they’d been seen. But it appeared that every person in the small town was in church on this Sunday morning, so they were safe for a while.
“It’s a nice store,” Cay said as she looked around at the well-stocked shelves on the walls. Toward the back were cabinets full of clothes. “It’s not Charleston or New York, but for where it is, it’s not bad.”
Alex didn’t care how good the store was as long as they could get what they needed and get out of there before they were discovered. “We need to get out of here and go,” he said, his voice low. “And be quiet.”
“You always think that I know nothing,” she said as she walked to the back of the large store. In the front was a long counter, with boxes and bottles behind it. There were barrels of hard crackers and one of pickles.
Alex took a big canvas bag from behind the counter and began to fill it with crackers and dried apples. He hadn’t told Cay he was worried that news about T.C.’s involvement in the jail break had reached Mr. Grady and he would be looking for a man of Alex’s description. He hated to think that they could travel all that distance only to reach a trap.
When Alex heard nothing from Cay, he assumed she was changing her clothes, so he didn’t want to bother her. He set the bag down by the door and walked quietly to the back of the store. There were cabinets full of clothing there, none of it of the quality he was sure she was used to, but of sturdy, serviceable cloth and well made. It took him only moments to strip off his torn, dirty clothing and put on new fawn-colored breeches that hugged his thighs, a white shirt with a cravat that tied about his neck, and a long vest of dark green. When he saw a shelf full of wide-brimmed straw hats, he took one. It would protect him from the Florida sun. As he looked down at himself, he fancied that he looked like a rich plantation owner, certainly not an escaped convict recently from the Highlands of Scotland.
Smiling, he stepped out to show Cay and to see what she’d found to wear, but when he saw her, he halted.
There was a tall mirror on a stand in the back, and she was standing before it, a brush in her hand, and quietly stroking her hair. He would have said that he was used to the sight of her by now, but he’d never seen her without the covering of the cloak. Her dress was tattered along the hem and he saw places that weren’t in the best repair, but it was still a beautiful gown. The neckline was low and her breasts rounded over the top. Short sleeves exposed her long, bare arms, and he could see they were well shaped by years of dealing with stubborn horses. The white gown was tight over her breasts, tied with a ribbon just below, then fell loose to the floor.
He stood still for a moment, watching her, and thought of how she’d dressed to go to a ball in Charleston. She’d probably imagined moonlight trysts with young men, maybe even adding another marriage proposal to her repertoire that she’d tell her grandchildren about.
But because of her good nature, she’d agreed to do something that few wealthy—or poor, for that matter—young women would do. She’d risked her life to save a man she’d never met, a man she had reason to believe was guilty of murder.
He kept watching as she brushed her hair, and he figured she was thinking that it would be the last time. And he knew by the look of loss on her face that she was going to agree to cut it.
How he wished he could turn the clock back! If he could, he’d go back . . . He couldn’t think of that because he knew he’d go back to the time when he’d been the happiest in his life, when he’d married Lilith.
Taking a deep breath, Alex stepped out from between the shelves full of goods and went to her. “May I have this dance, Miss Cay?”
He held out his arms for her and hoped that she didn’t mind about his dirty hair, and the stench of the prison that was still on his body.
But she had been taught her m
anners well. She smiled graciously at him, held up her skirt, and put her other hand in his. As Alex put his fingertips at her waist, he wished he had music, but the best he could do was hum an old, slow Scottish ballad that his mother used to sing to him. It wasn’t a proper dance, with the intricate changing of partners, but a private one, just between the two of them.
When she began to hum with him, showing that she knew the song, his smile broadened, and he swirled her about the room, between tables and shelves, in front of the counter and behind it. When she reached out and took a dark brown bottle and set in on the counter, he laughed out loud. She wasn’t forgetting the business side of why they were there.
It was several minutes before he took her back to the mirror, then bowed as he stepped away from her. “I must say, Miss Cay, that I have never enjoyed a dance as much as I did that one.”