Days of Gold Read online

  Tonight, Harriet had unabashedly stayed outside Edilean’s bedroom and listened. It all took her back to the one time in her life when she’d been in love like that. The difference was that her beau had tried time and again to make love to her, but Harriet had told him they must wait until the wedding night. After her father’s talk sent the young man packing, Harriet wished she’d spent nights of passion with him. She wished she’d conceived a child and been sent to Devon or even Cornwall to raise the child on her own. But back then she didn’t realize she’d not get a second chance at love.

  When Edilean and her young man seemed to be on the verge of making love, Harriet had walked away, smiling, happy to see the young woman she’d come to care about find happiness.

  But just minutes later Harriet heard a noise on the roof. When she looked out her window, she saw a shadowy figure disappearing down the street and she realized that Edilean’s young man hadn’t stayed with her. It had taken Harriet minutes to recover enough from her shock before she could go to Edilean and comfort her.

  Now, she held Edilean like the daughter she’d never had and let her cry on her shoulder. “There, now,” she said. “It may not seem like it, but you will survive this.”

  “No, I won’t. I don’t understand. He seems to love me but then he doesn’t.”

  Harriet had an idea that the young man loved Edilean as much or more than she loved him, but he was that rare breed of man: one of honor. When Harriet was standing outside the door, she’d heard enough to know what his problem was and she agreed with him. For all that Edilean liked to think she was just like everyone else, she wasn’t. She’d been pampered all her life. She had no idea what it was like to want something, even a new dress, and not have it. If she were to marry Angus now, Harriet felt sure that she’d come to dislike him.

  “Sssh,” Harriet said soothingly. “I’m going to get you some sherry, then I want you to sleep.”

  “I can’t sleep,” Edilean said. “I don’t want to sleep.”

  “I know,” Harriet said. “But you need to. Things will look better in the morning.”

  “No, they won’t. I know I’ll never recover from this.”

  Harriet took Edilean’s hands in her own and looked her in the eyes. “No, you won’t recover from this, but in your lifetime you’re going to go through several events that you’ll not recover from, will barely be able to survive. It’s how life on this earth is. Only in Heaven do we get true peace. Now lie down there and be still, and I’m going to get you some sherry, maybe a whole bottle of it. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” Edilean said as she lay back on the pillows and pulled the cover up to her neck.

  15

  PLEASE, I BEG of you, on bended knee, I beg you to stop moping,” Harriet said two mornings later as she looked at Edilean sitting at the table, an untouched breakfast in front of her.

  “I am not moping,” she said, but then after a glance at Harriet, she sighed. “All right, perhaps I am a bit. But, really, it’s more that I’m... sad, maybe. Rejection hurts.”

  “He didn’t reject you,” Harriet said for what had to be the hundredth time. She’d made Edilean tell her every word of what happened so she could talk to her and not let Edilean know she’d been listening outside the door. “He has very good reasons for what he did.” Harriet didn’t tell her that she thought Angus was right.

  But no matter what was said to her, Edilean was still in pain. For days, she’d gone over and over what had happened. Maybe Angus was right and she’d been spoiled all her life. Maybe she’d had it too easy with men. She knew they liked her. They liked the look of her, the way she smiled at them, and, yes, they liked that she came with a dowry that could support them comfortably all their lives.

  But when she’d finally made up her mind about a man, he’d rejected her. “And that makes two,” she whispered.

  “What, dear?”

  “Two men. I’ve chosen two men and they’ve both rejected me.”

  “Edilean, no one has rejected you,” Harriet said. “If you want to hear rejection, let me tell you about my life.”

  Edilean looked at Harriet. She was going through the morning’s post, perusing the many invitations in it. If anyone in Boston gave a party, they were sure to invite the beautiful Miss Edilean Harcourt. As she looked at Harriet’s tall, lean figure, at the gray in her hair, and when she thought about how Harriet had been shuffled from one relative to another in her life, Edilean shuddered. Would she end up like her? Alone, unwanted by any man? Or would Edilean have to settle for a man she didn’t like as well as she did Angus?

  She got up from the table and went upstairs to her bedroom. Two men, she kept thinking. First James had betrayed her in a spectacular way, and if it hadn’t been for Angus—She didn’t like to think what her life would be like now if James had succeeded in his diabolical plan. She would have had to go back to her uncle and live on his charity for the rest of her life. After all, if men she fell in love with didn’t want her when she had a dowry of gold, who was going to want her when she had nothing?

  She looked at her bed, now freshly made up and looking so calm, but she remembered the way she’d thrown herself at Angus. Harriet had told her how her former fiancé had done everything to get her in bed with him, but she’d refused.

  “But not me!” Edilean said out loud. “Not me. I offered myself to two men, but neither of them wanted me.”

  She didn’t know exactly what happened, but one moment she was standing in the doorway and the next she was attacking the room. There was a little desk with a penknife on it, and she opened the blade and began to stab at the bed. She tore off sheets, blankets, then the mattress, attacking it all with the sharp little knife. She swept her hand across her dressing table and sent bottles crashing, then overturned the table. She was pushing over the big chest of drawers when a man grabbed her about the waist and picked her up. She hit at him and clawed, but he didn’t let her go.

  Vaguely, she heard Harriet’s voice over what sounded like screaming, then someone was thrusting a cup at her lips and telling her to drink. Edilean fought the hands that were holding her down, but someone put strong fingers to her jaw and forced her mouth open. She tried to keep her teeth together, but the hand tightened and the liquid was poured down her throat. She was choking and coughing, but they kept pouring. Someone was holding down her feet and someone else was holding her arms out from her body.

  After a while she began to feel dizzy, and the anger and rage began to recede into a cloud of calmness, and she slept.

  Edilean awoke slowly and she wasn’t sure where she was. When she tried to sit up, her body ached and she winced with pain.

  Immediately, a lamp was turned up and Harriet was hovering over her. “How do you feel?”

  “Awful,” Edilean said as she looked about. “Why am I in your room?”

  “You’ve been asleep for a couple of days and it was easier for me to watch over you in here.”

  Edilean lay back against the pillows. “Why did I sleep?”

  “I drugged you.”

  “You—?” She sat up abruptly, but then it was as though all the blood rushed to her head and it felt like it might explode. She fell back against the pillows with a groan. “What happened?”

  “What do you remember?”

  Edilean turned and looked at her with eyes as hard as steel. “I don’t know what I remember. I want to be told the truth. What happened?”

  Harriet sat down on the chair by the bed. “Do you remember Angus coming to your room?”

  It took Edilean a moment, but then she remembered every second of that night, every word, every touch. Most of all, she remembered the way she’d begged him to marry her and take her with him. But he’d turned her down. Spurned her. Tossed her away, as though she were worthless.

  “Yes,” she said at last. “I remember all of that. But why am I... ?” She looked at Harriet. “I tore up my room.”

  “Yes,” Harriet said. “You cut the bed to ri