Days of Gold (40 page)

“Tam’s clothes.”

“Ah,” Angus said coldly. “Tam. Is he still staying with you?”

“As if you don’t know everything there is to know about my life,” Edilean said as Angus lifted the latch on the barn door. Tam was just outside, mounted, and holding the reins to Edilean’s horse.

Angus looked at Tam. “If I do this, I want to be told everything.”

“We made a vow to Miss Prudence, but I think it’s gone past that now.”

Edilean put her foot up to the stirrup of her horse, but Angus picked her up by the waist and set her aside. “What do you—?” she began but cut off when Angus swung up into the saddle, and offered his hand down to her. “I’d rather ride with Tam,” she said.

Angus started to get off the horse.

Edilean muttered a curse word under her breath, and put her hand up to his, and he pulled her onto the saddle in front of him. It wasn’t two seconds after they started moving that he began talking to her, his mouth close to her ear.

“I left you that morning because James showed up at the tavern. He hung up handbills of me. I didn’t want you to love a man who was to be executed.”

“Is that supposed to make me forgive you?” Edilean was trying to sit up straight and stay away from his big, warm body. She had on only a cotton shirt and a vest, and it was cold out.

“I did think that if you knew my reason for leaving you that night you might feel more kindly toward me.”

His breath was warm against her face, and she well remembered the sweet smell of it. “I’m to feel good that you decided my entire future in a second? Without asking me what
I
wanted to do? You had your way with me, then you left me there to rot! Tabitha walked the streets, and she was
never
treated so badly.”

Angus leaned away from her, his back stiff. “You told her about me?”

“Oh, yes.”

“You told Tabitha, one of your bound girls, about you and me?” His voice showed his disbelief.

Smiling, Edilean said, “Every word. And for your information, Tabitha and I have become good friends. I have to bail her out of jail now and then, and I’ve had to dock her more than a year’s wages to repay the people she steals from, but when you overlook that quirk about her, she can be pleasurable company. She knows everything about snaky men.”

“Snaky? Oh. As in snakes.”

“Lying, cheating—”

Angus sighed. “I get the idea. So tell me what happened about James—if you can drag yourself away from reciting all my faults, that is.”

“It will be difficult, but then I’ve had years and years and years to think on your faults.”

“That would be six, but I was away only four.”

“Six what?” she asked.

“Years. One ‘years’ plus another ‘years’ plus—” He stopped when she twisted in the saddle to look at him. “Sorry. You were about to tell me about Harcourt and his wife. I don’t know anything about them together.”

“Except that she killed him.”

“Yes, I do know that, but
why
did she kill him?”

Edilean turned to give him a look.

“Oh, right. I see your point. He deserved it. I’m afraid I have to agree with her. Where is she now?”

“With Shamus.”

“With... ?” Angus’s face showed his horror. “You left that frightened woman with
Shamus
?”

“After Prudence shot James she began to kick him, and Shamus was the only one big enough to hold her. But then I guess you know all about the size and shape of her, being as you spent so much time in bed with her.”

“And lived to tell of it,” Angus said under his breath.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m just trying to think how I’m going to dispose of a body in a town the size of Boston. Where did she shoot him?”

“I told you. In my parlor.”

“No! Where on his body?”

“In his head. Dead center. A perfect shot.”

“I’m glad
she
wasn’t shooting at me,” Angus mumbled.

“Does that mean you think she’s a better shot than I am?”

“No, dear, I’d never think that. Edilean, why did you leave that poor, distraught woman with a ruffian like Shamus?”

“You know, as far as I can tell, you’re the only person who thinks Shamus is bad. So what happened? Did he thrash you when you were children?”

She was too close to the truth, and as they were approaching the house, he didn’t answer her.

T
HE FIRST THING
they heard when they opened the door was laughter. Under the circumstances, it was an incongruous sound, and Angus looked at Edilean in question.

She shrugged. “I think it’s love. It seems to be everywhere around me, not for me, but around me. Surrounding me. Like a disease that I can’t catch.”

Angus rolled his eyes, and went to the room where just three weeks before Edilean had come close to shooting him. When she started toward the kitchen where the laughter was coming from, he grabbed her hand.

“I don’t want to see... him again.”

“If you want my help, you have to stay with me.”

“And why is that?”

“Because if James Harcourt is dead, then I plan to do my best to get you to forgive me for every bad thing I’ve ever done to you.”

His words nearly took her breath away, but she would have died before she told him that. “I’ll never forgive you,” she said.

Angus smiled. “Funny how your words say one thing but your eyes another.” He pulled her into the sitting room.

Lying on the floor was indeed James Harcourt, and he had a bullet wound in his forehead. Under his head was a big, green wax-covered canvas.

“Harriet must have done that,” Edilean said, smiling fondly. “I complained about my floor, so she protected it.”

“I think you should have a little respect for the dead,” Angus said, looking down at the man.

“Not for him. I guess you knew that James was blackmailing Harriet.”

“I was told only recently, and I can assure you that I wasn’t told much.” Angus bent down to look at the body. “I tried to find out—” He was interrupted by a loud burst of laughter from the kitchen. “Who’s in there?”

“I’m not sure, but I assume it’s Malcolm and Harriet, and Shamus and Prudence.”

For a moment, Angus’s mouth opened and closed. “They’ve paired off like that?”

“Why not?” Edilean said. “It’s a normal thing to do. In fact, I just met a young widow who I think would be a perfect match for Tam. She’s a few years older than he is, but I think they’ll like each other. I’m going to invite her here. I know Tam’s going back to Scotland to be the laird, but maybe she’ll want to go with him.”

“And live in that old keep? Without glass windows? Will she want to have to look after over two hundred people who are of the McTern clan?”

“I don’t know,” Edilean said. “That sounds more like something
Harriet would like to do. She mothers all the bound girls. She—” Her eyes widened.

Angus gave a smile, for he’d read her mind. “You say that Malcolm likes Harriet?”

“You were there when they met, so you saw how they looked at each other.”

“You mean the day you were shooting at me? I beg your pardon for being otherwise occupied and not realizing Harriet’s glares at my uncle were a love interest.”

She ignored his complaint. “Harriet and Malcolm are inseparable. She’d follow him if he said he was going to set up house on the moon.”

“I think that describes the McTern keep rather well.”

He stood up again and looked down at James. “First, we have to get rid of this body and make sure that Mrs. Harcourt isn’t charged with murder. After that’s done, we can plan other things.”

“Like sending Malcolm and Harriet back to Scotland and keeping Tam here?”

“Our minds work exactly alike,” Angus said, smiling at her, love in his eyes.

“Our minds are nothing alike,” she said. “And now that I think about it, it’s a very bad idea. Malcolm and Harriet are too old to have children, so who would inherit?”

They looked at each other and said, “Kenna,” in unison.

“It’s good to see that the two of you have made up,” Malcolm said from the door.

Edilean glanced at Angus as though to ask how much Malcolm had heard.

“We can make up anything,” Angus said, “but I can’t forgive
you
. This has come about because you didn’t tell me the whole of
why the lot of you were in this country. If you’d told me, I could have stopped this before it happened.”

“And how would you have done that?” Malcolm asked, unperturbed. He had a large pewter mug of beer in his hand, and he looked as though he’d drunk several of them.

“By getting Mrs. Harcourt out of the country, that’s how,” Angus said.

“But she didn’t want to leave until she’d done what she came here to do.”

“Are you saying that you helped her kill him?”

Malcolm shrugged. “She didn’t plan on doing that, but if she had, I could see why. You should get her to tell you the whole story. You and Miss Edilean left Scotland and had a laugh at having stopped Harcourt’s treachery, but you left poor Miss Prudence to bear the brunt of his rage. He didn’t like being crossed. Now, lad, what are you going to do with that body to get rid of it?”

“Hack it into pieces and take it out bit by bit.”

Edilean gasped, her hands to her throat, but Malcolm laughed. “I’ll get my saw.”

“Tell Tam to get the large carriage ready.” He looked at Edilean. “Do you still have the heavy trunks that the gold was transported in?”

She nodded. “They’re in the attic.”

“Then have Shamus get one of them down here.” He looked at Malcolm. “Is Prudence fit to travel and to talk? Or have you made her so drunk that she’s incoherent?”

Glancing toward the kitchen, Malcolm lowered his voice. “You don’t know her, do you, lad? She can outdrink Shamus.”

Angus lifted his eyebrows so high they nearly disappeared in his hair.

“I guess now you wish you’d married
her
,” Edilean muttered as she started to follow Malcolm out of the room.

But Angus caught her arm and pulled her close to him as his mouth came down on hers and he kissed her with all the pent-up emotion and longing that he’d felt for the last four years. When he stopped, her feet were off the floor and she was completely in his arms.

“I want to get something straight between us,” he said. “I’ve been in love with you for what seems to be my entire life. From the first moment I saw you I’ve not been able to stay away from you. In Glasgow I couldn’t bear to leave you.

“Edilean,” he whispered, his lips on her neck. “I’m sorry that I left you after our one night together, but I had to. There were demands for my arrest. If I’d remained with you, I would have been caught, then what would you have done?”

“Stayed by your side,” she whispered, her arms around his neck, her eyes closed at his kisses.

“Exactly,” he said. “You would have watched while I was dragged away to prison—or to the gallows. Then you would have—”

“Could you two do this later?” Tam asked from the doorway.

“You’re just angry because you have no woman of your own,” Angus said, his eyes still on Edilean’s.

“If I did have one, I’d want to protect her from the sun rising and being caught with a dead man on her floor.”

Angus gave one more kiss to Edilean and set her down. “Go!” he said to her. “Get Shamus to bring that trunk down.” He looked at Tam, who was frowning. “Is the carriage ready?”

“It has been ready for about an hour,” Tam said, exaggerating.

“Good, then get the women into it.”

“I don’t think—” Tam began, but Angus cut him off.

“As far as I know, I’m still the laird and I didn’t ask what you think. Get all the women into the carriage and do it quickly.”

Tam hesitated for only a second before hurrying back to the kitchen.

When Angus was alone in the room, he looked down at the body of James Harcourt on the floor. With his death and that of Edilean’s uncle, the fear that Angus had lived under for so long was gone. There would be no one else who would testify that Angus had stolen the gold—and Edilean.

It seemed to Angus that most of his life he’d been on the run and in hiding. It wasn’t true, but it certainly felt so. Now he was free, and he and Edilean could at last be together—if she’d have him, that is. At that thought, he smiled. Her mind might still be angry at him, but he’d just proved that her body wasn’t.

It took forty-five minutes to get James into the trunk and the heavy box on the back of the carriage. Malcolm and Shamus rode on the top front, guiding the four horses, with Tam on the back, and Angus inside with Edilean beside him, Harriet and Prudence across from him. When Angus had told Malcolm the name and address of where they were going, Malcolm smiled. “The lad whose life you saved?” he asked.

“Yes,” Angus answered. “Matthew Aldredge. He’s in Boston now and going to school here.”

“To become a doctor?” Malcolm asked.

Angus nodded. “He’ll know what to do with a dead body.” Angus got inside the carriage beside Edilean.

There’d been a brief scrimmage inside the carriage when Harriet said that it was impossible for Edilean to go out in public wearing the clothes of a man. “Your... your limbs are exposed!” she said.

“Yes, they are.” Edilean extended a leg and looked at it in the breeches that were much too big. “But they feel wonderful. I’m thinking of cutting my hair and dressing as a boy all the time.”

“You’re much too pretty,” Prudence said. “It won’t work.” The solemnity of her voice brought them all back to the present.

“Edilean can stay in the carriage so no one will see her,” Angus said as they pulled out of the courtyard between the house and the
carriage shed. He settled back against the seat, looked at Prudence in the dim light, and said, “I want to hear every word of your story.”

She began by apologizing to Angus for her behavior on the night she first met him. “I was unhappy about my marriage and I thought you were one of James’s many creditors.”

Angus shrugged in dismissal and ignored the look Edilean was giving him. This would be something else he’d have to explain, he thought with a grimace.

He still wasn’t used to the look of Prudence. She was a large, mannish-looking woman, with big hands and wide shoulders. The only thing feminine about her was her thick auburn hair.