There were three men at the table next to him, and one of them said, “Come join us. You can’t be alone on such a fine night.”
“I’m waiting for my, uh, my brother.”
“Then both of you can join us,” the second man said.
“No, but thank you,” Alex answered, doing his best to remember his American English. He hadn’t used it since he’d met Cay. When the three men kept looking at him, he said, “My brother is shy. He doesn’t do well with strangers.”
“Is he a pretty boy?” asked the third man. “Thin as a reed?”
Alex tried not to gasp or let the man see how his words had startled him. Alex fully expected the next sentence to be that the man knew she was a girl. But Alex managed to nod.
“Then he’s not so shy,” the first man said, smiling. “I saw him with the barman’s daughter, and they were anything but shy with each other. They were laughing and talking.”
Alex could do nothing but look at the men in horror. What in the world had Cay done now? She was going to give them away! He was half out of his chair when the front door opened and in she came. She’d left her coat on her horse so her slight figure was well outlined by the big white shirt and the breeches that slid over her slim hips. What in the world had made him think that she could ever look like a male?
“Here he is now. So, boy, did you make any progress with the girl?”
Cay grinned and said, “Aye, I did. But I’ll not tell you old men about it, so you can stop hoping.”
Laughing hard, the three men went back to their mugs of ale.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Alex said, his teeth clenched, as soon as she took a seat next to him.
“I’ll tell you later,” she said under her breath as she raised her pewter mug to the men at the next table, who were still chuckling. She drank deeply of it.
“Put that down!”
“I’m thirsty.”
“All I need is for you to get drunk and start dancing about the place and show everyone what you really are.”
“So what if I did dance?” Cay asked. “No one would think I was a girl. It’s only you who sees me that way.” She reached for a pickled egg from the bowl in the center of the table and took a bite. “Do you want to hear what I was doing? This is good. Maybe I could get the recipe.”
“Males do not ask people for receipts.”
“I could say that my mother . . . No! That I want my fiancée to make them for me after we’re married.”
He took the uneaten half of the egg from her and ate it. “Say as little as possible to anyone and do not ask for any receipts. Understand me?”
“I understand that you’re fretting about things that don’t need to be worried about. Ah, here’s our food.”
“At least that’s one place where you’re as good as a man: your appetite.” Alex was so worried about what was going on that he hardly noticed the girl who delivered their two heaping plates full of food. There were thick slices of ham, green beans, buttered potatoes, cornbread, and apple butter. When Alex saw that Cay had been given almost twice as much on her plate as was on his, he looked up at the waitress in question.
She was a pretty girl, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and a bosom that took up all the space from her neck to her waist—and a good deal of her was exposed by her low-cut blouse. When he glanced at the men at the next table, they were staring at the girl with their mouths hanging open.
“Your bodice isn’t straight,” Cay said as she put both her hands on the girl’s prodigious bosom and proceeded to straighten the entire front of her blouse. If Alex had taken a bite, he would have choked. As it was, all he could do was stare in speechless shock.
“There now,” Cay said, “much better.”
“Thank you, sir,” the girl said as she dropped a curtsey to Cay, who turned her attention to the food.
&n
bsp; Every other eye in the tavern—all of them male—watched the girl leave the room to go back to the kitchen.
When she was gone, all the men started to laugh, and their good humor was directed toward Cay. Two of the men walked over and slapped her on the shoulder.
“Good for you, boy!”