Days of Gold Read online

  “Nothing,” he said as he moved to sit up on the foot of the bed. “I came here to see how you are. How is this woman treating you?”

  “Harriet?”

  “Aye, that’s her name. The old spinster.”

  “Don’t call her that! She’s a good woman. She’s been very kind to me, and we spend a lot of time together.”

  “So you like her?”

  “Very much.” When Edilean reached out her hands to him, he took them in his and looked at them in the pale light of the room. “Something is wrong. Why are you here? Why aren’t you in Virginia?”

  “I liked it here, that’s all,” he said, still holding her hands and looking at them. “I’d almost forgotten that hands as small and soft as yours exist.”

  He was wearing James’s clothes without the jacket, but she could see that something was different. “I want to know what’s wrong.”

  “Nothing,” he said loudly, then glanced at the door. “Where is she?”

  “Don’t worry. Harriet sleeps like a dead person. She wouldn’t hear us even if we started making love.”

  Angus dropped her hands. “You say that as though you know what it means.”

  “I’ve had enough suggestion of it that I should know,” she said with a grimace.

  “And what does that mean?”

  “What do you think it means but that every man in this country wants to marry me, that’s what. I’ve had old men, young men, short, fat, never wed, widowed, you name it, they’ve all come to visit me and try their hand at winning me.”

  Angus leaned back against the bedpost, his long legs across the bed. “And which one of them do you want?”

  “None,” she said, but when she saw his smile, she changed her mind about telling the truth. “There have been a few who’ve enticed me. Some of them are quite elegant gentlemen.”

  “But you’ve said yes to none of them?”

  “What are you up to? Did you come here to ask me to marry you?” Smiling, he got off the bed and walked about the room. “I never left Boston, and I’ve heard about you. You’re causing quite a stir with the men in this town. A rich young beauty with a fine house. Yes, you’re setting this town on its ear.”

  “What do you mean you haven’t left Boston?”

  He sat down in the chair beside the bed. “I didn’t come to talk about me. I want to know about you. What have you been doing? How do you get along with Harcourt’s sister?”

  “I already told you that she’s a good woman.” She was looking at him hard, studying him. Something was very wrong but she couldn’t figure out what it was. “Have you lost weight? You look on the thin side.”

  “I’ve had no woman to make sure I eat,” he said, smiling. She was in her nightclothes and he’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

  “Angus,” she whispered, then pulled the corner of the bedclothes back a bit in invitation.

  “You’re a she-devil,” he said. “Now stop tempting me. I plan to leave this city tomorrow and I wanted to say good-bye, and I wanted to hear from you that you’re all right.”

  “Yes, I’m...” She closed her mouth and looked at her hands for a moment before meeting his eyes. “No! I’m not going to lie. I’m bored to the point of insanity! Oh, Angus, these men... They’re all so very boring. Sometimes I think I’m going out of my mind with the sheer tedium of them. They either try to impress me with their great education or they talk to me about their crops.”

  “They can read, then?” he asked, smiling.

  “So much so that I sometimes wish they couldn’t. They think to court me with poems or serenades. They think that if they read to me in Latin that I’ll look at them with love.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Not hardly,” she said, waving her hand in dismissal. “Please tell me what you’ve been doing. I’ve missed you so much.”

  “Have you?” he said. “I’ve—” He didn’t want to tell her how he’d thought of her every day. He’d been unable to pry himself away from the city where she was. Every time he tried to make himself leave for Virginia, he couldn’t do it. There was rarely a night when he didn’t stand in the street and look up at her window. He knew when she blew out the lamp and knew the nights when she stayed out late.

  “How’s Tabitha?” Edilean asked, the name like a curse in her mouth.

  “Fine. We’re to be married tomorrow before we leave for Virginia.”

  Edilean’s eyes opened so wide her skin almost cracked.

  “Oh, lass, I’ve missed you too! I’ve not seen Tabitha since we got off the ship. We said farewell”—he didn’t say how “fond” Tabitha made it—“then she slipped away. For all I know, she may have married someone else by now.”

  “Whatever she did, you can bet that it wasn’t good.”

  “What made you hate her so? Because I danced with her?”

  “She has no morals.”

  “That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?”

  “I couldn’t care less about her. Are you really leaving for Virginia tomorrow?”

  “Aye, I am. I have a wagon loaded and ready and a couple of good horses.”

  “And what will you do when you get there?”

  “Buy land. Build a house.”

  “In Williamsburg?” she asked.

  “I can’t bear a city, you know that. This Boston is too loud for me, and there are too many people. I like a place where I know everyone.”

  “Like in Scotland,” she said softly.

  He shrugged. “It’s what I know. And what about you? What do you want? Besides a man who doesn’t bore you, that is?”

  “I don’t know.” She threw back the covers, got out of bed, and reached for a dressing gown on the chest by the foot of the bed. But she didn’t pick it up. No, she’d rather walk around in just her nightclothes in front of him. “When I was in England I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life, but here it’s different. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s all the sunshine, or—”

  “The sweltering heat,” he said. “I can hardly bear to wear clothes it’s so hot.”

  “I hear that it’ll get hotter,” she said and took a step toward him. He was sitting in the chair and she was standing, with just her nightgown on, with not a stitch beneath it. “And it’s hotter in Virginia than it is here.”

  “I imagine I’ll get used to it.”

  She moved closer to him.

  “What are you playing at?” He frowned at her. “I don’t think I should have come.”

  “Angus...” she began. “I want to go with—”

  “Don’t say it,” he said as he abruptly stood up. “Don’t ask of me what I canna give.”

  “Please,” she said. “When I’m with you I feel alive and full of energy, as though I could plan things and accomplish them. Here in this house I feel my life is the same as it would have been in England.”

  “And wasn’t it enough for you then?”

  “Perfectly, but then I knew no better. I had no idea that there was more out there.” He had his back to the window and she took a step toward him.

  “You don’t know what you’re saying. You lived in those boarding schools with other girls. You’ve not seen how it is with a man and woman when they live together.”

  “I’d like to hear all about it,” she said. “You could tell me. Or show me.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders and held her away from him. “Lass, please believe me when I tell you that what you think you want canna be. You want me to be something that I’m not.”

  She shook his hands off her shoulders, and turned away from him. “So we’re back to that, are we? You’ve led a life of hardship while I’ve been pampered all my life.”

  “More or less,” he said.

  “Are you laughing at me again?”

  “I usually do, don’t I?”

  She smiled. “Yes, you do. And you make me laugh at myself.” She sat down hard on the edge of the bed. “Oh, Angus, what am I going to do with my life?