Days of Gold Read online

  “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.

  Harriet reached out and squeezed Prudence’s big hand, and Angus realized that they were sisters-in-law, and it looked as though they were friends as well. “I think I should start,” Harriet said as she looked at Edilean. “Remember about four years ago when you returned from your meeting with Tabitha?”

  “Meeting?” Edilean asked. “You mean when I fought her nearly to the death, then spent the night—” She glanced at Angus. “I do believe that I remember that night. After that you were so nervous you jumped at every sound.”

  “That’s because James had shown up the day before with papers saying you were his wife.”

  “His what?” Edilean asked. “I never married him!”

  “I know, but he had marriage papers with your name on them. He told me that he was going to a lawyer to make a case that you and he were married in England, but you’d used his name and his gold to run off with your lover to America.”

  “He couldn’t have got away with it,” Edilean said.

  “He also had a sworn statement from the captain of the ship you two sailed on that you traveled as Mr. and Mrs. Harcourt. You still used the name Harcourt.”

  “But—” Edilean began.

  “He had your uncle’s backing,” Prudence said. “I didn’t see it, but I was told that there was a letter from your uncle certifying that you were the wife of James Harcourt.”

  Edilean fell back against the cushioned seat. She couldn’t comprehend such outright lies.

  Angus took her hand in his and held it. “And what about you?” he asked Prudence. “What happened to you after that night you and I uh... met?”

  “I went back to my father’s house, and I’m glad to say that he was happy to see me. Without me there, the few servants we had were running the place, and my father couldn’t even get a decent meal out of them. I put it all back in order and we never spoke of my husband or what happened.”

  Angus looked at Harriet. “And you paid James off.”

  “It was the only thing I could think to do.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Edilean asked. “I could have handled James.”

  “You were so unhappy about whatever had happened that night.” Harriet cut her eyes at Angus. “I couldn’t bear to add to your misery. And you were overwhelmed with the business you were just starting. I couldn’t put more burdens onto you.”

  “So you paid him off instead,” Edilean said. “How did you do it?”

  Angus squeezed Edilean’s hand, but she didn’t stop looking at Harriet.

  “I made a few adjustments in the accounting books. It wasn’t so difficult to do.”

  “How much did you give him?” Edilean asked. “Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be enough for James, since he thought he was entitled to all of it.”

  “We can talk about numbers later,” Angus said as he looked at Prudence. “What I want to know is how you got back into this and how my family became involved.”

  “James killed me,” Prudence said.

  Both Angus and Edilean stared at her.

  Harriet’s eyes filled with tears as she held Prudence’s hand with both of hers. “It was all my fault.” She looked at Edilean. “You’re right about the money. James kept wanting more and more. I... you paid the rent on a town house in New York and you bought him clothes. You paid his liquor bills. You—”

  “For how long?” Edilean asked.

  “Until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Three years.”

  “I don’t even want to think about how much it totaled,” Edilean said. “Is James the reason our profits were down in the third year of the business?”

  “Yes,” Harriet said as tears began to roll down her cheeks. “Edilean, I’m so sorry. You trusted me completely, but I betrayed that trust. I—”

  “You saved her,” Angus said impatiently. “How did James—?”