“How about if I tell you that when I was in prison I shared the cell with rats? Or maybe you’d like to hear about the townspeople throwing rocks at me when I was dragged into the courtroom?”
Cay’s face lost its smile and she handed the cornbread to him.
He ate it in two bites. “That soft heart of yours is going to get you in trouble one day. I win!” He kicked his horse forward.
“You—” she called as he raced ahead of her. Blast it! Why hadn’t she listened when Tally wanted to teach her curse words? “You’re a very bad person, Alexander McDowell!” she called out, and his laughter floated back to her, but by then she was smiling, too.
Twelve
“What if those people at the boardinghouse don’t like me?” Cay asked.
Alex was kicking the remains of the fire out. “How could they not like you?” he asked softly.
“What?”
“I said that you’re not going to live with them forever, just a few weeks, so you’ll be fine.”
“How many weeks?”
“I don’t know.” He stepped on a branch that was still smoldering. When he glanced up at Cay, she was looking at him as though she thought he knew the answers to all her questions. “Lass, I really don’t know what to expect. I can’t very well ask someone what they’ve heard about the escaped murderer from Charleston, now can I?”
Cay sat down on a log and thought she might stay there. According to Uncle T.C.’s map—which she’d just seen—they were a mere three hours from the tiny town on the St. Johns River where Alex was to meet Mr. Grady. The town had a dozen or so houses, a trading post, and a few other stores. One of the houses took in paying customers, and that’s where she was to stay. She’d thought she was to be the guest of “friends” of T.C.’s, but it was just a boardinghouse.
Alex sat down beside her. “Come on, lass, buck up. It’s only for a while, then you’ll be back with your family.”
“And how am I to get there by myself? What if robbers attack me?”
“You can outrun them. Or maybe just slip to the side of your horse and hide, as I taught you to do.”
She heard the laughter in his voice. Standing up, she glared down at him. “While you go running into the wilds of Florida enjoying yourself!”
Late last night they’d made camp amid a thicket of spiny plants, and as had become the way between them, they slept near each other. It was too warm to need the cloak or a fire, so there was no real need to sleep just a foot from each other, but they were too tired to make up excuses of why they shouldn’t be together. Alex put a blanket on the moist ground and started to put a second one several feet away, but after a glance at Cay, he put the other blanket next to hers. After all, it was their last night together.
They were too tired to do much talking, but this morning Alex showed her T.C.’s map and she saw how close they were. All morning they’d ridden hard, and Cay hadn’t so much as cracked a smile.
“Come now, lass, surely you have a joke in you,” Alex said as he rode beside her.
“No, not one.”
“What if I poured more oil on my hair?”
She tried to think of something funny to reply, but couldn’t.
In the early afternoon, Alex pulled off the rough road into a clearing among the fierce shrubs that threatened to overtake them, and built a fire. He knew he was wasting time, but like Cay, he was well aware of how much longer they had before they would part forever. He was going to miss her. He didn’t tell her, but he was deeply worried about what they’d find waiting for them.
Now, sitting on the log, he looked at her. “I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t have to. You know that, don’t you? If I had my way I’d . . .” He smiled. “I’d go back with you and meet your brothers.”
She sat back down on the log beside him. “If you didn’t need to hide in the jungle, you’d be a married man and you wouldn’t even have met me.”
“True,” he said. “But maybe if I can find out the truth of what has been done to me, I can visit you one day.”
“You won’t.” She sighed. “I think my entire life is ruined.”
“I’m sorry for that, lass. I never meant to make you into a fugitive, to have gunmen chasing you, or—”
“But that’s just it,” she said, standing up again. “I think I like all this. Before this happened I was a very happy person. I have a wonderful family, nice friends, and I live in a great little town. I had everything. But now—” She stretched out her arms. “Now I have nothing but the clothes on my back and—”
“And the dress in my saddlebag,” he added, “plus three diamond pins.” He was so glad to see her energetic again that he wanted to dance about with her, as he’d done in the store.