Free The Scent of Jasmine by Jude Deveraux Page A

derision that she raised up on an elbow to look at him. He had stretched out on the damp grass, with no covering over his thin clothing, his back to her. “And what does that mean?”
    “Nothing, lass. Go to sleep.”
    She sat up. “No, I want to know what you meant by your hateful little snort.”
    “Snort?” he murmured, seeming to be amused by what she’d said. “It was no ‘snort,’ just a sound I make when I hear something so unbelievable that I can’t even understand it.”
    “If you don’t tell me what you mean I’ll . . .”
    “You’ll what, lass?”
    She leaned toward him. “I’ll make your life miserable,” she said softly.
    Alex turned to look at her, and she could see he was imagining ways she could use to carry out her threat. “I guess that means you’ll talk me to death tonight.”
    “That would be the starting place.”
    He rolled onto his back and put his hands behind his head. “From what I’ve seen of marriage, it’s not easy, and the only way to get through it is if you love the other person.”
    “I agree with that,” she said hesitantly, not understanding what his complaint was.
    “So you love all three men?” He was looking up at her, as she was sitting and he was lying down.
    “I could love them. For your information, I’ve had eight proposals of marriage since I was sixteen years old, and I’ve narrowed them down to three men who I would consider. It’s not like all I’ve had are three proposals and I’d take any one of them. The man who first offered for me was . . . Well, he was very unsuitable, and I didn’t include him.”
    “Ah, so you chose three of them who you think you can love, and you went all the way to Charleston to decide which one it’s to be?”
    “Yes,” she said, glancing at him, but not understanding what he was laughing at her about. “ What is so funny?”
    He seemed about to answer, but then he sat up and looked at her. “Lass, you need to feel passion.” When she started to speak, he put his hand up. “You should look at a man and feel that you’ll die if you don’t spend the rest of your life with him. Your heart needs to leap into your throat and stay there.”
    “I think you learn to love someone. I know you believe I’m little more than a child, but I’ve seen some of your ‘passion’ marriages, and they never work out. One of my mother’s friends ran off with a man much younger than she is, and . . . Well, now they argue all the time. Their daughter is my friend and she spends half her life at my house rather than go home to be with her arguing parents.”
    “How many children do they have?”
    “Eleven.”
    “They have eleven children but they argue all the time?”
    Cay willed her face not to blush, but she couldn’t control it and hoped he wouldn’t see it. “They are not a happy couple.”
    “Sounds to me like they do all right. It’s the ones who are polite to each other that are so unhappy.”
    “That’s ridiculous. My parents are very polite to each other.”
    He looked at her hard.
    “Perhaps not all the time,” she conceded. “My mother is a bit headstrong, and my father gets a tad out of sorts about it sometimes, and there have been a few times when my brothers and I said we were going to leave home if they didn’t make up. But they love each other very much.”
    “And they chose each other because they were a sensible match, did they?”
    “My father was the laird of a clan and my mother was an heiress. Yes, I think they were very well matched.”
    With another little snort, he stretched out on the ground, his arms across his chest and looking as though he meant to go to sleep. “They were the most ill-matched couple in all of Christendom,” he mumbled.
    “I want to know how you know so much about my family.”
    “T.C.—”
    “I don’t believe that Uncle T.C. told you so much about us. Did he tell you about Bathsheba and him?”
    “He mentioned her,” Alex said, but he didn’t turn over.