Days of Gold (42 page)

“Did he embezzle half the year’s profits?” Edilean shot back at her.

“I did that because—” Harriet began but Angus cut her off.

“You two can settle this later. I make it a rule to never argue when there’s a dead body in the same carriage with me. Now, Mrs. Harcourt, you were saying?”

“Please don’t call me that,” Prudence said. “I can’t bear the name. I will be glad to take Shamus’s name of Frazier. We—”

Angus gave her a hard look.

“Yes, right, back to the shooting. I looked out and saw a light
in the kitchen of the house, and I thought it was Harriet and that something was wrong, so I went inside. But when I got there, the light had moved to the parlor. There was James, filling a bag with the silver candlesticks. I guess I made a sound because he turned around and he had a pistol in his hand.

“He said, ‘But you’re dead.’

“I tried to think quickly and I said, ‘Yes, I am and I’ve come to take you to the grave with me.’

“He said, ‘Like hell you will,’ and he aimed the pistol at me. I leaped, we tussled, the gun went off, and he fell to the floor. Dead. I believe I screamed.”

For a moment the others were silent as they looked at her. Each of them knew that her story was a fabrication, but no one said anything. A wrestling match with a pistol does not leave one person with a bullet hole squarely in the middle of his forehead. In his midsection perhaps, but not in his head. Besides, they all knew that the pistol Prudence had used belonged to Cuddy.

Harriet and Edilean looked at Angus to see what he would say.

“It’s as I thought,” he said. “It was self-defense.”

“Yes, clearly,” Harriet said, and looked at Edilean, who said, “It couldn’t be anything else.”

No one looked at the other for fear their doubts would show.

Angus was glad when the carriage halted. “We’re here. I think it would be better if I went in and talked to the young man alone. He and I know each other, but not all that well, and I’m afraid this might be a shock for him. I’ll sort it out, then we can all go home. All right?”

The three women nodded and sat there while Angus got out of the coach. When they were alone, Edilean looked at the others and said, “Who’s going to get out first?” Since by the time she finished the sentence, she was half outside, it was a rhetorical question. Prudence,
by sheer size, was second, and Harriet came last, smoothing her hair and trying her best to look as though she were on a mission that was nothing like what they were actually doing.

Harriet glared at Edilean in her masculine clothing and started to speak, but Edilean gave her a look that made her close her mouth.

The three women went into the house of Matthew Aldredge, the three Scotsmen behind them.

T
WO WEEKS
, E
DILEAN
thought. Two entire, whole weeks since she’d seen Angus. After that night when they’d gone to Matthew Aldredge’s house, and after what happened to poor James’s body, Angus said he wouldn’t be returning to the house with them.

It wasn’t until that moment that Edilean realized she’d been looking forward to the coming fight they’d have. Angus would tell her how sorry he was for having left her, she’d tell him that she’d never forgive him, then—And then they’d end up with him on his knees begging her to marry him. She would, of course, finally say yes, but she’d take her time, and she planned to make him suffer.

Edilean had even imagined how she’d work with Harriet and Prudence to plan their triple wedding in the largest church in Boston. They’d all get married together, but afterward, they’d separate to go on their bridal tours. Edilean felt dizzy with the romance of it all.

But as with everything with Angus, nothing went as she’d
planned. Angus stayed behind with Matthew while the others went back to Edilean’s house. For two days she’d smiled, anticipating that Angus would come to the front door with his arms full of roses and apologies on his lips. While the other couples around her snuggled and cooed at each other, Edilean kept smiling as she imagined what would happen when she next saw Angus. Would he have a ring for her?

But the days went by, and he didn’t show up. On the fifth day, Shamus volunteered to go find him. “And I’ll tell him what I think of him for treating you this way, Miss.”

“Oh, Shamus,” Prudence said, her voice full of love. “You’d hurt him.”

“It’s what I mean to do,” Shamus said in a voice that was deeper than normal.

Edilean could almost see Angus rolling his eyes and telling Shamus that he was ready to take him on anytime, anywhere. But Angus wasn’t there, and no one knew where he was.

Just as she knew they would, the others had paired off permanently. Malcolm asked Harriet to marry him and go back to Scotland to live. She hadn’t hesitated in saying yes, and at the end of the summer they were to be wed. Since then, they’d not stopped talking about all the things they were going to do in their new, old country. Malcolm told her in detail about every person of the McTern clan, so Harriet felt as though she already knew them. Edilean heard Harriet going over the names of the children.

“And Kenna has six children, five boys and one girl. Her daughter’s name is... No! Don’t tell me, I’ll remember.”

Edilean couldn’t bear to hear such happiness.

As for Shamus and Prudence, they seemed to care about only one thing, and that was the physical part of their lives. After one afternoon when she and Harriet and Malcolm had returned to the
house to hear some enthusiastic pounding from upstairs, Malcolm gave Shamus a piece of his mind, and their wedding was also to be at the end of the summer.

There was one unexpected development, though. To Edilean’s horror, Tam started making eyes at Tabitha—and Edilean let Tabitha know what she thought of the situation. “He’s a boy!” she half yelled at Tabitha. “Just a boy and you’re—”

Tabitha was unperturbed by Edilean’s anger. “I’m what can teach him all he needs to know.” She looked Edilean up and down. “So did he leave you again?”

“No!” Edilean shouted. “He did not ‘leave’ me. Angus—” She broke off because she had no idea where Angus was or what he was doing. The day after they’d gone to Matthew Aldredge’s house, Malcolm had insisted that Edilean sit with him in the parlor so he could talk to her at length about Angus’s fine qualities.

“Lass,” Malcolm said, “he’d never do to you what you think he has. When he left you before, he did it for your own good.” Malcolm went on to tell Edilean in detail what Angus had done after James again put up the handbills for Angus’s arrest. Years later, it had taken Malcolm, Shamus, and Tam a lot of time to find Angus. They’d told him that it’d been easy to find him, but it hadn’t been. It was as though Angus had disappeared off the face of the earth, and they began to think that James Harcourt had found him and had him killed.

For weeks the three Scotsmen went from city to city, searching for him. The problem was that they had no picture of Angus without his beard, and they had no idea what name he was using.

It was Shamus, drinking in a tavern in Charleston, who heard about a man named Angus Harcourt who worked with the army in the far west. “Slips around in the dark like he can see in it as well as in sunlight,” the former soldier said.

“What’s he look like?” Shamus asked.

“Big man.”

“As big as me?” Shamus shot at him.

“I’ve seen mountains smaller than you,” the man said, making Shamus smile. “No, Angus is a big man but he’s also pretty.”

“Pretty?” Shamus asked in disbelief. “You mean like a girl?”

“No, more like a...” The man waved his hand. “The girls like him, but I heard he’s been havin’ trouble with the fort commander’s daughter.”

“Ah.” Shamus gave a half smile. “Think he’ll marry her?”

The man laughed. “Not if Captain Austin has anything to do with it, he won’t. He’s a nasty piece of work. Downright scary.”

“So where is this Angus Harcourt?” Shamus asked.

“I can’t tell you but I could draw a map.”

“So,” Edilean said to Malcolm, “Angus was at some fort with another woman.”

“No, lass,” Malcolm said, frustrated. “He was
not
with her. As far as we could find, he’s not been with a woman since he left you.”

“I don’t believe that. I think he’s had hundreds, thousands of women. I think—”

“He left you because he had to!” Malcolm said loudly. “Canna you see that the man is daft about you and always has been? Why do you think we laughed so hard that first time he saw you? We all knew he’d been struck by a bolt of lightning. And when he threw you in the horse trough! Ah, now, that was proof that—”

“That he hated me,” Edilean said gloomily.

“It showed he was fightin’ what he felt for you,” Malcolm said as he reached out and took her hands in his, and lowered his voice. “In a way, Angus had been the laird since his father died. It was
my
father who cheated the McTerns out of what was theirs, but the lairdship goes down through the oldest sons. Our clan is an old one,
and they looked to the eldest son of the eldest son even though he was just a boy.”

“I understand,” she said. “Like the divinity of kings.”

“I guess so. But even as a boy, Angus tried to make up to all of us for what his grandfather did. Angus had no life of his own until he saw you, none at all.”

Standing up, Edilean looked down at Malcolm, her face cold. “I’m sick unto death of hearing about how wonderful Angus McTern is. Sick of it! Do you hear me? If he’s so in love with me, where is he? Why isn’t he
here
? Why aren’t I planning my wedding as Harriet and Prudence are? Why isn’t some man sneaking kisses with me when he thinks no one is looking? Why—?” She couldn’t say any more but turned and ran up the stairs to her room.

“I don’t know,” Malcolm whispered as he sat alone in the room. Surely Angus couldn’t have run off again, he thought. Surely the lad couldn’t have abandoned Edilean. It wasn’t possible.

It was when Shamus gave her a look of pity that Edilean changed her mind about Angus and began to defend him. Every time she entered a room, the engaged couples would break apart and look guilty.

“That’s it!” Edilean said at dinner one night as she stood up and threw her napkin down. “Maybe none of
you
believe in him, but
I
do! I don’t know what Angus is doing, but I know that when he’s finished, he’ll come for me.”

The others’ faces didn’t change. Harriet tried to look as though she believed Edilean, but the others looked at her with sympathy.

“I’m sure he will,” Tam said, but there was no enthusiasm in his voice.

After that night, Edilean decided to quit waiting and to go about her business. The first thing she took care of was Tam and Tabitha. Knowing that Tam had a kind heart, she asked if he’d please help her
with a task that she couldn’t handle by herself. What she needed was for him to journey all the way down to Williamsburg to get Mrs. Abigail Prentiss to sign the final papers that transferred her farm to the Bound Girl company. Edilean held her breath as she handed the papers to Tam because she was staking everything on her belief that he couldn’t read. She gave him a sheaf of documents that dealt with a farm she’d bought three years before. “Oh! And take this,” she said, handing him a bolt of yellow silk. “Abby said she’d make it into a dress for me. She’s an excellent dressmaker.” Edilean didn’t know if Abby could sew or not. “You won’t come back without the dress, will you? Even if you have to wait for her to finish it?”

Tam looked about for a reason to get out of the long trip. “Maybe your coachman, Cuddy, would be better at this.”

“Than you?” Edilean asked, batting her lashes. “How can you say that? I couldn’t trust
him
with these papers, now could I? But if you think that you can’t do it...”

“No,” Tam said with a sigh, “I’ll do it. But maybe she could send the dress later.”

“Perhaps,” Edilean said, “but she’s a recent widow and she might like someone to talk to. If you’re going to be the laird of the clan, then perhaps you should get some practice in comforting widows.”

Tam straightened his shoulders a bit and took the leather portfolio she handed him. “It might be good for me to see more of this new country.”

“I think that’s a splendid idea,” Edilean said.

The next day after Tam left, she told Tabitha, who laughed and shrugged. “Maybe I’ll get Harriet to take me back to Scotland with her and I’ll get a man there.”

“Isn’t there a law saying you can never return to England?”

Tabitha shrugged. “I guess I’ll have her send me a man then. By the way, how often have you seen
your
man in the last five years?”

In the past, Tabitha’s innuendos had made Edilean angry, but not now. “It takes a man time to recover from a night with
me
,” she said, and turned and left. Tabitha’s laughter echoed behind her.

By the fourth week of Angus’s absence, the others seemed to have accepted that he was never returning. Even Malcolm had lost his faith that Angus was going to come back to them.

One day Edilean overheard him talking to Harriet and saying that he was disappointed in Angus, that he’d misjudged the boy. It was all Edilean could do to keep from giving him a piece of her mind, but she didn’t. They’d see, she thought. If Angus was alive, he was going to come back to her.

It was at the end of the sixth week, while Edilean was at the market inspecting the produce stands that had made her company so prosperous, that a closed carriage stopped near her. It was an ordinary carriage, black, worn along the footings, obviously hired, but when she moved, it moved. When she stopped, it stopped. The fifth time it halted, she knew Angus was inside the carriage.

“Excuse me,” she said to three women who worked for her and were overseeing the big produce cart. “Would you tell Harriet that I might not be home for dinner but not to worry about me?”

“Of course,” the young woman said. She’d been transported for stealing a silver bowl from the earl who owned the house where she’d worked since she was nine. That the man had been raping her since she was thirteen meant nothing to the court.

As Edilean started walking toward the carriage, the girl called out, “Where shall I tell her you’ve gone?”