“I hardly think so,” Cay said, but she was smiling. Modestly, she looked down at her hands on her lap.
“And you want to risk this lovely young woman to rescue a murderer?” Hope was glaring at T.C.
“No. I just want her to do something for a man who has lost everything! If you’d visited him in jail with me, as I begged you to do, you would have seen his grief. He was more concerned about what he’d lost than what was going to happen to him.”
Hope was unmoved and Cay guessed that this was an argument they’d had many times before. “And after this man is rescued, then what does he do?” Hope asked. “Spend the rest of his life running from the law?”
“As I said, the original plan was for Alex to travel with me into Florida with Mr. Grady.” He glanced at Cay. “Mr. Grady is the leader of this expedition and we’ve been planning this trip since the spring. I was to be the recorder, to draw and paint all that we see. Mr. Grady was kind to hire me, as he knows I can’t draw a person or an animal. Only plants interest me. Cay can—”
Cay didn’t want to hear more praise of her artist skills; they seemed superfluous when someone’s life was in danger. “If no one is there to meet him, what will this man do?”
“Get caught, returned to jail, and hanged tomorrow morning,” T.C. said.
Cay looked at Hope for confirmation, but she refused to make a comment. “So you want me to take a horse to him?”
“Yes!” T.C. said before Hope could speak. “That’s all. Pay the men who are to break him out of jail, give the horse to Alex, then leave.”
“And where will he go if I do this?”
“To Mr. Grady. I’ve drawn a map of where Alex is to meet the expedition.” He gave Cay a look of speculation. “I guess that now Mr. Grady will have to get someone else to do the recording as I can’t go. Too bad . . .”
Cay smiled, knowing what he meant. “Even if I were male, that’s not something I’d like to do. I’m quite happy living near my family in Virginia, and I want to stay there. I leave the adventuring to my brothers.”
“As is right and proper,” Hope said. “Women aren’t supposed to run all over the country doing what men do. And they are most certainly not supposed to straddle a horse and ride out to meet a murderer.”
T.C. was looking at Cay with serious eyes. “I’ve known you all your life and you know I’d never ask you to do anything dangerous. You can cover your dress with Hope’s big hooded cloak, and I know you can ride. I’ve seen you jump fences that scare most men.”
“If I didn’t, my brothers would laugh at me,” Cay said. “They’d . . .” As she thought of them, she asked herself what they would do if faced with this situation. Tally would already be saddled, Nate would ask a hundred questions before he left, Ethan would be packing because he’d take T.C.’s place on the expedition, and Adam would . . .
“They would what?” T.C. asked.
“They’d help any friend of our father’s,” Cay said as she stood up.
“You cannot do this.” Hope was looking at Cay from across the bed.
“Didn’t I hear you say that you would go if you could?” Cay asked.
“Yes,” Hope said, “but that’s different. You’re so young and . . . and . . .”
“Childish? Spoiled? Rich?” Cay asked, her eyes narrowing with every word she spoke. Ever since she’d met Hope she’d felt as though Hope dismissed Cay as too young, too frivolous, too pampered, to ever be able to actually accomplish anything. While it was true that Cay hadn’t had the misfortunes that Hope had had in her life, of an accident that had left her with a limp, the death of her mother, and a lifetime of caring for a ceaselessly complaining old father, Cay’d had some setbacks in her life. In her opinion, being the only girl with four older brothers was enough to qualify her for battle pay.
“I’ll do it,” Cay said as she gave Hope the look she used to stop Tally from putting a second frog down her collar.
“Thank you,” T.C. said, and there were tears in his eyes. He grabbed her small hand and kissed the back of it. “Thank you, thank you. And you’ll be fine. Alex is a very pleasant young man and—”
“I doubt if his wife’s family would agree with that,” Hope said.
When T.C. gave her a look, she sat down on her chair. She knew when she’d been defeated.
“Perhaps I should change,” Cay said.
“No, no, I want you like that. Go from the meeting place directly to the ball.”
“That will give you an alibi,” Hope said, some of the anger in her voice gone.
“Yes, it will. Not that you’ll be asked where you were, but . . .” T.C. trailed off.
Hope let out a sigh of defeat. “And keep your face covered. Don’t let anyone see you. Not even that man.”