Days of Gold Read online

  “Back to Scotland?” she asked. “Oh. To see your clan.” It looked as though he’d changed his mind about remaining as the laird. She had a vision of the derelict old keep and all the people who looked up to Angus—and how she’d be the lady of the castle. Would she ever see America again? This new country was where she’d shown everyone, including herself, that she was worth something.

  “No, you don’t see,” Angus said as he got out of the carriage and helped her down. “You don’t see at all. I need to go back home to pass the clan on to Tam. We have to do it legally.”

  He held out his arm to her, and she took it. Angus, in his old-fashioned kilt with his knees bare, was causing a bit of a stir. Both men and women were staring at him, but it was the women whose eyes sparkled.

  When he led her toward the ship, Edilean pulled back. “Did everyone else know about this? You told them and not me? Is everything packed and on board?”

  Angus halted. “If by ‘them’ you mean Malcolm and Tam and—”

  “And Harriet and Prudence and Shamus.”

  “Yes, the entire lot of them. Might as well have the whole clan here. The answer is no, I didn’t tell any of them anything. They know nothing.”

  “Which is exactly as much as I know.” Edilean put her heels down firmly on the ground and looked at him. “I want to know what’s going on. Where have you been?”

  Angus looked as though he was contemplating picking her up and carrying her up the gangplank to the ship, but then seemed to think better of it. “If you must know—not that I wasn’t going to tell you, just not here in public—I went back to the fort.”

  “But that’s—”

  “A long way away,” Angus said. “I gave up sleep and food, but I did it. I sold my shares in the Ohio Company to Captain Austin.”

  “Oh, yes, the man who’s in love with a girl you wanted.”

  Angus gave her a look.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m only repeating what I was told.”

  “I do wish you’d stop listening to gossip.”

  “When you stop running off and leaving me to deal with it alone, I will.”

  Angus gave a smile, took her by the shoulders, and looked as though he was going to kiss her, but then he glanced at the people around them and didn’t. “I promise that I’ll tell you everything when we’re on board, but in private.”

  “Angus,” Edilean said, “you really can’t expect me to board a ship sailing for Scotland without any preparation. I need clothes and books and gifts. I can’t visit your family empty-handed. And did you forget about my business? Who can run it without me? I know you think I’m worthless, but I have many people to look after, and they—”

  “Captain Inges said that this time we couldn’t travel with him unless we were properly married, so he’s waiting with his Bible to perform the ceremony.”

  She blinked at him.

  “At last I’ve said something that you can make no reply to,” Angus said in wonder. “Now, do you want to go on board and get married, or do you want to go back to that house of yours and gloat to those people who think I’ve abandoned you and sign papers for that business of yours?”

  For a moment all Edilean could do was open and close her mouth a few times. At last she said, “You have a ring?”

  “Solid gold.” Reaching out, he touched her blonde hair. “Not that I need any gold, for this is worth more than all the gold in the world.”

  She leaned her cheek against his hand for a moment, then she grabbed her skirt, lifted it, and began to run up the gangplank. “Come on!” she called to him. “Do you think I have all day?”

  Chuckling, Angus ran up the gangplank after her.

  Epilogue

  THEY WERE IN bed in the captain’s cabin, nude beneath the sheet, and Edilean was still staring at her left hand.

  “You’re going to wear it out just from looking at it,” Angus said, yawning.

  “You’re the one who’s worn out.”

  “I’ll show you who’s tired,” he said, but then he gave another jaw-cracking yawn and lay back down, with Edilean’s head on his shoulder. Moonlight shone into the cabin, and the water was lulling him to sleep.

  “Why this?” Edilean asked. “Why not stay in Boston and be married there?”

  “And share you with all the others?” he said.

  “Are you saying that I’ve been... That I have... ?”

  He kissed her bare shoulder. “Been unfaithful to me? Nay, lass, I’m not. I talked to people in Boston and there’s been no hint of any man with you.”

  “What does that mean, that you ‘talked’ to people? Did you ask about me?”

  “I dinna have to, did I? All of Boston talks of the beautiful Miss Edilean who runs a business with all those women. You’ve done something that no one believed could be done.”

  “I did, didn’t I?” she said, snuggling against him. “But what does that have to do with this?” She waved her hand at the ship.

  “With the way you take care of people, I figured you’d want to get married in the biggest church and you’d want to walk down the aisle with Harriet and Prudence beside you. Then I’d have to share my wedding day with Shamus.”

  “You did all this just to get away from Shamus?”

  “Nay,” Angus said tiredly. “I did it all to get you to myself. I don’t want to share you at the wedding or afterward or ever again. I’ve had all I can take of being separated from you.”

  For a while, Edilean was content to lie against him, and she could feel him drifting off to sleep. She hadn’t heard the full story of what he’d done after the night James had been killed, but she would. She thought how they’d have a lifetime together to tell each other everything. For now they were going to have at least three weeks, and if the weather was bad they could be on the ship for longer. When they arrived in Glasgow, they’d go back to the old keep where she’d first met him and... She smiled as she thought of the Scots laughing and saying that they’d known on that first day that their beloved Angus had fallen in love and how they’d been glad of it.

  Edilean glanced at Angus, asleep now, and she ran her hand over his bare chest. Hers and hers alone. Forever, she thought.

  And it’s a good thing they were married, because she had yet to tell him that she’d received a letter from Abigail Prentiss saying that Tam wanted to stay in Williamsburg and not return to Scotland. When Angus made over the lairdship to someone, it would be to Malcolm, not young Tam.

  “Stop thinking so much and go to sleep,” Angus said.

  “I can’t help it,” Edilean said. “So much has happened, so much has—” She could feel Angus’s body move, as though he were laughing. “What?”

  “James,” he said.

  “All of you thought it was very funny, but I didn’t.”

  Angus looked at her.

  “Well, after the first few minutes, I didn’t.”

  Angus kept looking at her.

  “All right, I laughed harder than anyone else did, but I shouldn’t have. I wonder what happened to him?”

  “Matt said his body would probably be sold to the college to use for dissection.”

  “How awful!” Edilean said as she thought back to that night. Angus hadn’t liked it very much when all three women rushed into Matthew Aldredge’s little house right behind him.

  When the eyes of all the women widened at the sight of the beautiful Matt, Angus glanced down at Edilean and said with his mouth half closed, “Don’t even think of marrying him off to someone.”

  “I have no idea what you mean,” she said haughtily, and shook hands with Matt.

  Malcolm and Tam came inside a few minutes later and greeted Matt, and the men started talking in quiet tones about what to do with the body of James Harcourt. Their voices were so low that the women had to strain to hear them. Edilean was the only one who noticed that Shamus slipped into the room. Once again, as big as he was, he was able to move about unnoticed. He went to the window so he could watch the car