Days of Gold

by Jude Deveraux

  After her first encounter with him, people had gone out of their way to tell her that it wasn’t possible that Angus McTern had loosened her saddle. “He takes care of us all,” she was told.

  In the week between when she’d struck him and when he’d dropped her into the horse trough, she’d heard nothing but good about him. Wherever she went, someone told her about Angus. Often, she wasn’t told directly. She’d visit Marmy in the stables and people would suddenly appear outside the stall and they’d put on a “conversation” about Angus.

  According to them, he was the epitome of every virtue known to mankind. After four days of these staged talks she’d wanted to shout, “Do you expect me to marry him? Is that what you’re after?”

  During the last of that week, as Edilean went over every point in her life, she thought that she shouldn’t have been so awful to the man. She should have worked harder to make him like her. If she had, then maybe he would have helped her when she’d asked him to. She even thought that maybe she could have offered the current laird to her uncle as an alternate husband. If Angus McTern was half as honorable as she’d been told, he might have been persuaded to relinquish the gold to her uncle.

  But then what? she thought. Was she to go live with him in one of those two-room stone cottages and make a baby every year?

  Now, she could feel the warmth of him at her side. It was cold, and she wished she could move closer to him, but things had changed when he’d leaned toward her and she’d acted as though she found him repulsive. But she didn’t. It was the way she’d survived years of aggression from too-friendly men.

  She brushed at her hair with her hands. “Am I still covered in sawdust?”

  “A bit, but I’m sure he’ll like you.”

  She rubbed her hands to warm them, glancing up at him, but he said nothing. “Maybe by this time tomorrow I’ll be married.”

  He hadn’t been fooled by her attempt to cover her nervousness. “You’ll do fine, lass.”

  “Do you think my uncle will be searching for us soon?”

  “In a day or two,” Angus said softly. “Malcolm will figure out what’s going on and he’ll give us some time.”

  “By then I’ll be gone,” she said.

  Angus saw her scratching at the sawdust on her neck and decided to let up on her. He halted the horses, and immediately she was scared. But he nodded at her and said he just needed a bit of... privacy. He took a big bag from under the wagon seat, tossed it to the ground, got down, and lifted his arms up to her. “Like to stretch your legs?”

  She nodded and put her hands on his shoulders as his big hands encircled her waist and lifted her down. For a second, they stood together. They were strangers but they were both facing whole new lives. It created a bond between them—a bond that she knew would end when they got to the city.

  She didn’t go far from the wagon to take care of her private needs, but he still beat her back. He’d changed clothes, removing the tartan and exchanging it for trousers, a shirt, and a big jacket. He’d gone from looking like the hero of a romantic novel to looking like a man who worked on the docks.

  She smiled at him, but she knew he could feel the difference. Yet again, she felt that he thought she was lacking in some way.

  “Shall we take you to your future husband?” he asked as he lifted her onto the wagon.

  They drove all that night and through the next day. When they reached the city, Angus skirted the center the best he could as he went toward the dock and the Red Lion Inn, which were both south of the hustle and bustle that he hated so much.

  Edilean yawned. She’d slept half the way, her small body leaning against Angus. Twice, he’d fallen asleep, but she’d woken him up. One time, she said, “I could drive the team.”

  “You?” he’d asked with so much humor that he’d roused from his sleepiness.

  “Why do you persist in telling me that I can do nothing?”

  “You have sawdust on your nose,” he said.

  “Oh!” Edilean exclaimed, rubbing it hard. When she looked at Angus, she narrowed her eyes. “You’re making fun of me.”

  “It keeps me awake,” he said. “Does Harcourt tease you?”

  “No,” Edilean said. “He loves me so much that he never teases me.”

  “Doesn’t he make you laugh?”

  “He sings with me and we go riding together. And we sit in summerhouses and read together. Sometimes he reads poetry to me. Do you like poetry, Mr. McTern?”

  “Very much,” he said. “Sometimes I read a poem or two before I go to sleep. It helps me get calm.”

  She looked at him hard. “Are you making fun of me again?”

  “Yes,” he said, smiling at her. “But I mean no harm, lass. The truth is that I’m usually too busy trying to keep thieves from stealing your uncle’s cattle to have time to sit and sing with a girl.”

  “But you have dances. Morag told me about them, and one of the women said you were a good dancer.”

  “But not for the dances that you know,” he said.

  After a while, Edilean quit trying to hold a conversation with him. It always seemed to end in her not knowing enough about... Well, about life, to be able to talk to him. She’d tried different subjects, but he only ended up teasing her and making her feel useless and incompetent.

  She didn’t say so, but she vowed that she was going to do the best she could to make up for causing him to lose everything in his life. She’d asked him why he’d changed her plan of using Shamus, and when he told her about his idea of getting the pastor drunk, she felt even more guilty. In the end, he had tried to save her, and all he was getting for what he’d done was banishment.

  A couple of times Edilean stole looks at him, thinking how she knew her uncle much better than he did. She’d seen the way her uncle pretended to be something he wasn’t when the men were around, and she knew he would never show his true self if any of the Scots were near. They wouldn’t work so hard for him if they saw the way he raised his hand to strike a woman they’d all come to like.

  Edilean knew that Angus—Mr. McTern—seemed to believe that he had some time before her uncle came after them, but he hadn’t seen the man’s greed as she had. Somehow, she had to persuade this Scotsman to go to America with her and James. The plan she was coming up with was to get James to open one of the trunks and give Angus a large helping of the gold. That way, Angus would be able to buy himself some land in America; he could build a house for him and the family he’d start.

  “What’s that look for?” he asked.

  It was midday and she was hungry and tired, but excited too. It wouldn’t be long now before she saw James. “Where will you stay when we get there?”

  “I’m going to lie down in the straw in the stables and sleep for three days.”

  “You can’t do that. You’ll miss the ship.”

  “Oh, aye. The Mary Elizabeth. Is it a big ship, then? Does it have room to spare for a poor Scotsman?”

  She ignored his teasing tone. “I’ll make sure you have a place on the ship even if the captain has to share his cabin.”

  “Spoken like a woman who has had everything all her life.”

  Edilean gave him a hard look, but he didn’t see it. That was hours ago, and they were in the city now and there were other wagons. He’d halted now and then so she could buy them food, and he took care of the horses’ needs, but mostly he plodded on.

  The day turned into night and they were all, including the horses, very tired.

  Just when she was ready to say that she could go on no longer, she saw the sign for the inn. “We are here!”

  “Yes,” Angus said tiredly. “We’re here at last.” He drove the exhausted team into the open doors of the stable, and immediately a man came out from the shadows. He was exquisitely dressed and had a face that Angus thought would look better on a girl.

  “Edilean!” the man said sternly, “I’d almost given you up. I’ve been standing in this filthy barn for hours, waiting for you.
Couldn’t you have at least tried to hurry?”

  Angus stared at the man, and even if he hadn’t spoken, he knew he would have disliked him on sight. To Angus’s mind the man was Ballister and Alvoy, only a few years earlier.

  “I knew you’d be in a hurry to see me!” Edilean said, and launched herself into his arms. He caught her, but just barely.

  “You’re filthy! What is that all over you?”

  “Sawdust. That coffin you sent for me was full of it. James, darling, aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “Of course I am,” he said, but he pulled away when she tried to kiss him. “Look at what you’ve done to me. I’m as dirty as you are. Here! You!” he shouted to two burly men standing at the back of the wagon. “Be careful of those. I don’t want the bottoms falling out.” He moved away from her to direct the men in the unloading of the trunks full of gold.

  Angus was still sitting on the wagon seat, too tired to get down. Two young men had come from the back and were unhitching the horses. “Be sure you feed them well.”

  “Mr. Thomas raised them from colts,” one of the men said. “He won’t like to see them used this hard.”

  “Nothing I could do about it,” Angus muttered as he got down. He looked about at the stalls, hoping to see a clean one so he could sleep in it.

  “Did you see him?” Edilean asked as she went to Angus, her beautiful face alight.

  “Aye, I saw him,” he said, not able to keep from smiling at her. “He’s as bonnie as you are. They should put his face in a story-book.”

  “Oh you! You’re always teasing me. I want you to stay here while I get some money from James. I want to give you something for your time and trouble.”

  “I will make my own way,” he said stiffly. “It was my choice to do this, and you paid Shamus for the task. You shouldn’t have to pay twice.”

  “But you can’t end up here with no money. You have to at least have a place to stay tonight.”

  “Are you asking me to share your room?”

  “No!” Edilean said, her eyes wide, then she shook her head at him. “What would it take to make you too tired to laugh at me?”

  “That will never happen. Now you should go to your young man. Perhaps this time tomorrow you’ll be married to him and you’ll be a happy bride.”

  “Yes,” she said, but she didn’t move away from him. “Will you be all right?”

  “Yes, of course.” He kept looking down at her, and tired as he was, what that man said when he first saw her kept running through his head. Now the man was overseeing the unloading of the gold while his bride-to-be was left alone. Maybe Harcourt didn’t realize how much she wanted to see him, or how much she’d been through to get to him.

  “All right, then,” she said. “I guess this is the last time I’ll ever see you.”

  “By tomorrow you won’t even remember my ugly, hairy face.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” she said softly. “I will never forget your face. I think I might remember it for the rest of my life.”

  He wanted to touch her, wanted to put his hand to her soft face, but he didn’t. “Go, lassie,” he said. “Go to your husband.” It took some doing on his part, but he turned and walked out of the stables and into the night.

  His bravery lasted until he was at the front of the inn, when he saw a handbill with a woodcut of his picture on it. It had been nailed to the side of a fence and offered a five-thousand-pound reward for him. Angus tore the paper off the fence and stared at it. How had they done this so fast? And where had the likeness of his face come from?

  He looked down the dark streets, fearful that someone would recognize him, but no one was looking at him. He was just another man in from the country, wandering the streets and looking for a way to spend his money.

  Angus went back into the stables to give himself time to think about what to do. He’d been so sure that Malcolm would keep Lawler away from him, that Angus hadn’t even been anxious during the trip. So why hadn’t they found him?

  He knew that the answer was that someone had told Lawler a lot of lies. If the truth had been told, Angus would have been caught a day ago.

  He stood inside a stall, leaning against the wall, with the handbill crumbled in his hand. He could read the numbers on it enough to know how much Lawler was offering for his capture, but he didn’t know what else it said about him.

  “James,” he heard Edilean say, “I don’t want to stay in my room all day tomorrow. I want to be with you.”

  “Well, you can’t!” Harcourt snapped.

  Turning, Angus could see them through the openings between the boards. Edilean looked radiant, thrilled even, to at last be with the man she loved, but Harcourt didn’t look glad to see her. He certainly didn’t look like a man who was about to be married to a beautiful, intelligent, and very rich young woman should.

  Harcourt took her hands away from his face. “I have things I have to do to get ready for our journey,” he said, his voice kinder. “And you have to take a bath and get some sleep.”

  “I’ve slept too much,” she said. “I slept most of the way here.”

  “Edilean,” he said, sounding like a father talking to a disobedient child, “I have things to do for us. I’ve been working since I got your letter. I wish you’d not waited so late to tell me what was happening. I’ve needed every moment to prepare for going to another country. Here.” He handed her another bottle of the laudanum. “Take this and you’ll sleep all day. I’ll come and get you tomorrow at midday and we’ll go to the ship. After that I’ll keep you awake for days.” He kissed her, but only quickly. “Now, will you obey me?” he asked.

  “Yes, but I don’t want to,” she said, sounding sulky. “I wish I could spend every minute with you. Did you get my dressmaker in London to make me a wardrobe? I could bring nothing with me.”

  “I got what I could,” he said, “but there wasn’t time to get much. When we’re in America we’ll buy what you need.”

  “But this is Glasgow. I could shop here.”

  “Edilean!” he said angrily. “Will our entire lives be like this? Will you disobey everything I say?”

  “No,” she said, her head down. “It’s just that I’m frightened. James...” When she saw the anger on his face, she drew back. “All right. I am rather tired. I’ll sleep tonight and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “That’s a good girl,” Harcourt said. “I’ll get someone to take you to the inn. This one isn’t safe, and that driver of yours knows where it is. I don’t trust the look of him.”

  “Angus McTern?” she asked. “But he’s the reason we’re together. If he hadn’t—”

  “Yes, dear, I’m sure he’s the finest of his class. Now, listen. I’ve hired a room for you on the top floor of the Green Dragon, and—”

  “But I want to be near you.”

  “I am staying there,” he said impatiently, then calmed himself. “You’ll have quiet up there and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “All right,” she said, turning away.

  “Don’t I get a kiss from my bride?” Harcourt asked as soon as her back was turned.

  “Oh, yes, James,” Edilean said as she threw her arms around his neck and put her lips on his. But he soon pushed her away and began dusting himself off.

  “If I don’t leave now I’ll never be able to go. I’ll see you tomorrow, and Edilean...” His eyes softened. “I look forward to our wedding night.”

  Smiling, looking as though she had stars in her eyes, Edilean turned away and went to a maid standing in the doorway and followed her out of the stables.

  Angus stood where he was, his head leaning back against the wooden slats of the stall and closed his eyes for a moment. Something wasn’t right. He could feel it in his bones that something was wrong. Maybe it was the way the man treated the girl, but, too, there was something not right in what he’d said. Angus couldn’t put his finger on it, but he didn’t like James Harcourt, and certainly didn’t trust him.

 
When Harcourt left the stables, Angus followed him.

  7

  ANGUS HAD HAD a lifetime of disappearing into the bushes in daylight, so sneaking about the darkened town was easy for him. Twice he saw handbills with a drawing of his face, and both times he pulled them down and stuffed them inside his shirt.

  Harcourt didn’t go far. Just two streets away, he went into a pub, and Angus saw through the window that he went to a table to join three men who welcomed him with loud cheers. And why not? Angus thought. Tomorrow the man was leaving for another country and he was getting married. Perhaps the reason he was so anxious to get away from his bride was because he wanted one last night with his friends. Angus could understand that, and for a moment he considered turning away. Maybe he’d go to Edinburgh. Maybe he’d go far into the Highlands and live. He doubted that the men up there would ask too many questions about where he came from.

  But Angus couldn’t make himself leave. There was something about that girl and the way she trusted people that made him feel he had to take care of her. “Just until she’s on the ship,” he told himself as he went into the pub.

  He knew he was taking a chance by showing himself, but no one looked at him. He had a couple of coins with him so he ordered a beer and took it to a table near where the four men were sitting. For a moment Angus was tense, concerned that Harcourt would recognize him, but he didn’t look at the dirty, bearded man who sat at the next table.

  “I make a toast to my new wife,” Harcourt said. “She may not be a beauty, but as an earl’s daughter, she does have a title.”

  Angus put his tankard down and couldn’t help but stare at the man. No beauty? Edilean was no beauty? And what title did she have? But then titles had never been part of his world, so maybe she had one but he hadn’t heard of it.

  “So her father is rich, heh?” one of the men asked.

  “No dowry,” Harcourt said, “and no beauty, but our children will have that title.”