Days of Gold (24 page)

“Your belief that you can do anything and that you deserve everything is what I like best about you—and what drives me mad.” Harriet picked up a stack of clean linen and left the room, but she was smiling.

Edilean looked about her bedroom and saw the aftermath of the destruction she’d done. The little tables had been taken away to be repaired—or thrown into the fire, she didn’t know which. The bed had huge gashes in it where she’d attacked the wood with the knife, and there were more cuts in the big chest of drawers.

When she looked inside, she saw that there were only two dresses. It looked like she’d ruined the rest of them.

She put on one of her remaining gowns and made a mental note to go to the local dressmaker. But first, she had some other things that had to be taken care of.

An hour later, she called the footman, Cuddy, into the parlor. She sat while he stood. He was a man of medium height and medium looks, a person you’d never remember ten minutes after you met him—which is why she wanted him for the job.

“Feelin’ better now?” he asked in an insolent way, but she was already used to the way of the Americans. They didn’t believe they were anyone’s servants, and they let their employers know it.

“I’m feeling fine,” Edilean said, “and I have a job for you to do.”

“Anything I can do to help,” he said with a bit of a smile.

“For one thing, you can take that look off your face,” Edilean said. “If you want to remain here, then I suggest that you act like you want the job.”

“Yes, Miss,” he said, straightening up.

“I want you to find this man.” She handed him the picture of Angus, which had taken her hours to draw. It was a good likeness of the way he looked now, without his beard and wild hair.

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know what name he’s using.”

The man’s eyes widened. “Is he the one that attacked you?”

“Attacked me? Who told you such a thing?”

“Miss Harriet said that—”

“Forget that,” Edilean said. “No one attacked me. A man—” She took a breath. “I threw a very childish temper tantrum because I didn’t get my way, and that’s an end to it. I think this man is in trouble and I want you to find out what you can about him.”

“He’s here in Boston?”

“I think so. At least he has been for the last six weeks. He may have left for Virginia, but I don’t think so. I want you to find out where he’s been for these past weeks and what he’s been doing. Do you think you can do this?”

“Is he wanted for a crime?”

“No!” Edilean said. “At least not in this country. Here.” She handed him a little leather bag full of coins. “I’ll want an accounting of how you spend that. If you find him in three days, I’ll give you the same amount for yourself.”

“Yes, Miss,” Cuddy said, then left the room, the picture in his coat pocket.

At lunch, Harriet asked Edilean why she was so nervous.

“No reason,” Edilean said. “I just thought I heard a noise, that’s all.”

“Probably another man come to see you. I wish you wouldn’t be so nice to them. It makes them think they have a chance with you.”

“I did like one of them, that young man Thomas Jefferson. He was quite good-looking.”

“Then you should
marry
him!” Harriet said. “Take what you can get when it’s offered. Don’t wait.”

“The man didn’t ask me to marry him, he just visited with those other young men. But he’s as tall as Angus and nearly as handsome, but he lacks—” She stopped when Harriet sat down across from her to stare at her.

“Please don’t do what I did and compare all men to one of them. After the man I loved jilted me, no one else would suit me. There was one man I didn’t like because of the sound he made when he sneezed.”

“I won’t do that,” Edilean said. “I promise that if this man Thomas Jefferson asks me to marry him, I’ll do so. Now do you feel better?”

“No,” Harriet said, getting up. “I don’t know you well enough yet, but I think maybe you’re up to something. Did I see that dreadful young man Cuddy coming out of the parlor this morning?”

“I think I’ll take a walk and buy the newspapers,” Edilean said, then left the room quickly.

It took Cuddy only two days to find Angus, and he rightly guessed that the information was being kept a secret from Harriet, so he stepped out of an alley when Edilean was in town alone.

“Good heavens!” she said. “You nearly scared me to death.”

“I thought maybe you wanted to keep this quiet.”

“I do,” she said. They were between two tall buildings, and Edilean was using her open parasol to hide from passersby. “What have you found out? Did he leave for Virginia?”

“No. He’s still here. He runs a tavern and a carriage stop about ten miles south of here. He don’t own the place, but he does all the work. He’s well liked by the people who go through there, and he stands for no nonsense. It’s clean too.”

Edilean looked at Cuddy but she didn’t see him. “Angus is running a tavern?”

“His name is Harcourt, same as yours. Is he your brother?”

“No, he most emphatically is
not
my brother!” she said. “What did you see? Who did you talk to?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but he was easy to find. I asked a coach driver and he knew him so I rode out there and there he was. Your drawin’ is a good likeness. I had a drink and a meal and watched what was goin’ on, then I went into the yard and talked to the stablemen. They all like him.”

“That’s well and good, but why was he there?”

“They said the owner was a lazy man and he’d hired Angus to work in the stables, but he was so good at everything that the owner just turned the whole place over to him.”

“I understand that he’s good at his job. What I don’t see is
why
Angus is working there.” She was talking more to herself than to him, and when she looked up, she saw that the man couldn’t understand what she was asking. Didn’t everyone work for a living?

Cuddy handed her a paper with the name of the tavern on it and a little map of how to get there. She thanked him, and later, at the house, she gave him the second bag of coins that she’d promised him.

But all day, the question of why Angus had taken a job in a tavern
haunted her. Why hadn’t he sold the diamonds and bought the land he wanted?

That afternoon, Harriet asked what was wrong with her. “You’re very distracted, as though you’re thinking hard about something.”

“It’s nothing,” Edilean said. They were in the tiny garden behind the house, and Harriet was pulling the weeds from around the asparagus. She’d not let them eat all the asparagus, saying that some of it had to be left to grow into beautiful, tall, feathery ferns.

Edilean had said, “I think they would look good with roses.”

“Then get us some roses,” Harriet replied, but at the time, Edilean had been too busy being miserable because Angus had left her to think about anything else. So today, Edilean was planting roses while Harriet worked on the weeds.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Hmph!” Harriet said. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing,” Edilean answered sweetly as she stood up. “So few people in these cities have gardens that they might
buy
our roses.”

“What a ridiculous idea,” Harriet said quickly. “Let them grow their own. I want to know what’s in your mind. You can’t go from destroying an entire room in a wild rage to being so peaceful all in a few days without there being something devious going on in your mind.”

“Not devious, but maybe good.” Edilean stepped back to look at the roses she’d planted. It was late in the season for them, but a neighbor had given her cuttings that were well rooted. Edilean knew that the plants had been given to her because the neighbor was curious, wanting to know the who, why, where, etc. of her life, but Edilean had just smiled, thanked her for the roses, and told her nothing.

“I don’t know what’s in my mind,” she said, looking at Harriet. “It’s as though I have an idea in my head and it’s just about to emerge, but it hasn’t yet.”

“Let me know when it does so I can remove the furniture.”

Edilean gave a little laugh. “I think that was a one-time event in my life. I don’t plan to do that again.”

“Good!” Harriet said, and sat down on the wooden bench by the low wall that surrounded the garden, and took off her gloves. “Did I tell you what I did after I was jilted? Other than cry bucketsful, that is.”

“No, you didn’t.” Edilean sat down by her. “Tell me every word.”

Over the next few days, Edilean was tempted to tell Harriet the story of the diamonds and Angus, and ask her opinion of what was going on. But Edilean couldn’t tell Harriet about the diamonds because, legally, they belonged to James’s wife, which meant that they were closer to belonging to Harriet than to Edilean or Angus. No, it was better that Edilean figure out things herself.

After much contemplation, she came up with some reasons why Angus was working at a tavern. One, he wanted to be near Edilean, so he’d taken a job nearby. But that made no sense. With the money from the sale of the diamonds, he could have bought a place outside of Boston. He didn’t have to spend his days cleaning someone else’s stables.

The second thought was that he no longer had the diamonds. She wondered whether, if the jewels had been stolen, he would tell her about it. No. They could drive nails into him and he’d tell no one. His insufferable pride would never let him tell anyone anything.

There was the third thought—that he’d changed his mind about selling the diamonds and they were now locked away in a safe somewhere. But Edilean dismissed that idea. She well remembered that Angus had said he wanted his own home. If she knew him at all—and she did, no matter what he said—then he’d buy himself a place
and work to death to make money from it, probably while vowing to repay Edilean.

The more she thought, the more she was sure that some catastrophe had caused Angus to lose the diamonds.

“And I know just where they went,” she said under her breath.

“What was that, dear?” Harriet asked.

“Nothing. I was just thinking out loud.”

“You seem to be doing a lot of that lately,” Harriet said. “Not the out loud part, but the thinking.” She was frowning because Edilean was refusing to tell her what was in her mind.

That evening Harriet went out to buy some fish from the men just coming in on their boats, and Edilean again called Cuddy to her. “I want you to find this woman,” she said and handed him a drawing of Tabitha. There was a face and beside it was a full-length picture of Tabitha in her clothes, with her heavy top and bottom.

“Oh, yes, Miss,” Cuddy said. “I’ll like finding this one.”

“You get too near her and she’ll steal your purse. She has fingers like an eel sliding through jelly. Remember that and stay six feet from her.”

Cuddy nodded solemnly and put the picture inside his jacket.

“You should go now and look. I think she probably works better at night.”

“Will she be with the man at the tavern?”

“No,” Edilean said. “At least I don’t think so. Angus might not be able to see through her, but she’d know he’d catch on sooner or later. Go, now, and let me know what you find.”

“Yes, Miss,” he said, and hurried out of the room.

I
T
T
OOK
C
UDDY
over two weeks to find Tabitha. During that time Edilean had to deal with Harriet wanting to discharge him. “And why shouldn’t I get rid of him? He’s not here to do the work.”

Edilean would have done most anything to keep Harriet from finding out what she was doing. Besides the set of jewelry she wanted to hide, there was the fact that Edilean had told Harriet she was going to put Angus behind her. “I’ll do the work. What does a footman do?”

“Muck out after the horses, for one thing,” Harriet said, her hand on her hip and giving Edilean a look that said it would snow in July before Edilean did such a thing.

But Harriet hadn’t taken into account all the years Edilean had spent at other people’s houses—and all she’d done to get away from people. She borrowed one of Harriet’s workday dresses, hiked it up under a heavy belt, and went into the stables. Four hours later, there was a pile of horse manure in the stone courtyard and fresh straw in the stalls.

Afterward, she was tired, but it felt good to have done something besides sit in the parlor and listen to young men try to impress her. Harriet had been so shocked she’d been unable to speak. Edilean considered causing speechlessness in Harriet a triumph.

When Cuddy at last returned, he looked the worse for wear. His clothes were torn, and his face was dirty. “Pardon me, Miss,” he said as he sat down heavily on a chair in the kitchen.

Edilean sent the cook away. “What did you find out?”

“She was bought by a man at the docks.”

“Yes, a bondwoman,” Edilean said. “It’s for seven years, isn’t it?”

“That’s what she agreed to, but the man said she stole him blind the first night, then ran away. I liked to not have found her. If it weren’t that I know some people who are of, shall we say, a less than better class, I wouldn’t have found her.”

Edilean knew he was elaborating so she’d pay him more, but she didn’t have time for that. “Did you find her? Did you
see
her?”

“I did,” the man said. “Do you mind if I have a bit to eat and drink?”

Impatiently, Edilean went into the larder, got some cheese and bread, and put them on the table. She saw that there were also some bottles of homemade beer on the floor, and she picked one up. “I don’t know who in this house drinks beer, but you can have one.”

“Miss Harriet,” he said as he sliced off cheese. “She makes it and gives some to us men. She’s a good brewer.”

Edilean stared at him for a moment. It was her own house, paid for by her, but it looked as though things went on in it that she knew nothing about. She sat down on a chair across from him, even though she knew that sitting in the kitchen with a footman was something that her friends back in England wouldn’t have done on penalty of death.

“Where is she?” Edilean asked again.

“Living rough in the woods with a band of other prisoners. I think they mean to move south and buy a place to live, but they’ll stay here for a while.”