Days of Gold p.5 Read online

  “Engaged to marry,” she said, this time louder. It wasn’t exactly the truth, since James hadn’t asked her yet, but she knew he would.

  “That engagement is broken,” her uncle said at last. “You’re going to marry one of these men. Care to choose now?”

  “No!” Edilean said as she backed away from the three of them.

  “We’ll wait then,” her uncle said, then turned away, as though there was to be no more discussion.

  “Excuse me, sir!” she said. “I am not going to marry either of these—” She looked them up and down with all the contempt she felt, and lowered her voice. “My father’s will says I may marry a man of my own choosing and I certainly don’t choose either of these... men.”

  “You will do what I say,” her uncle said, and raised his hand in dismissal.

  “I will not!” Edilean shouted at him. She’d spent most of her life in boarding schools, and she was fed up with people telling her when and how she was to do things.

  “You will,” Neville Lawler said, “and if you try to get out of it, I’ll make your life such a misery that you’ll wish you’d never been born. And if you tell any of these nosy Scots about this, I’ll make you sorry. Now get out of my sight!”

  The two men beside him looked at Edilean in triumph. The younger one gave her a look up and down that told her what he wanted from her.

  Turning, she fled the room.

  After that day, war between her and her uncle was declared. Edilean wrote a letter to James and told him the horrific circumstances that had befallen her. But her uncle took the letter from Morag, whom Edilean had given it to to post, and that night read it back to her with great drama in front of the two men, Ballister and Alvoy; then he threw it into the fire.

  “You’d better reconcile yourself to your fate,” her uncle said. “You’re here now and you’ll stay here. The gold your father left is being sent to me two days before your birthday. It will never leave here. As for you, you will do whatever your husband wants you to do.” This made the three men laugh heartily.

  Edilean spent the rest of the day in her room and realized that it was up to her to save herself.

  When Morag brought Edilean her dinner on a tray, she made sure the softhearted woman saw her weeping. “Oh, miss, what ails you?”

  “I’ve had a quarrel with the man I love,” Edilean said. “I wrote him an apology but my uncle says he doesn’t deserve such concern. My uncle tore my letter up.” Edilean was watching Morag and saw the color flush her neck. So! It looked like Morag felt some guilt at having the letter that had been entrusted to her taken away.

  “You write him again and I’ll be sure it gets to London,” Morag said.

  “You won’t let my uncle see it?”

  “Trust me. I won’t come between lovers. I was young once.”

  “And I’ll bet you had lots of beaux.”

  Morag smiled. “In those days the laird liked me, but he married someone else.”

  “The laird?”

  “The chief.”

  “Oh, I see,” Edilean said, but she was too busy composing her letter to James in her head to listen. One thing that she’d seen when her uncle read her first letter aloud was that it was too dramatic, too full of danger and warnings. Her next letter would be calmer, just stating the facts, and telling James everything she knew, including what her uncle said about the gold being brought to Scotland.

  She sealed the letter and gave it to Morag, praying that the woman wouldn’t betray her and give it to her uncle. When Edilean heard nothing from her uncle about the letter, she hoped it had gone through.

  Besides appealing to James for help, Edilean decided to try to make her uncle see reason. For days, Edilean argued with him, and she soon learned how far she could push him before he got so exasperated that he raised his hand to her. He never hit her, but that was only because she learned to duck and run quickly.

  Outside the tower, or “keep” as she learned it was called, the Scottish people were extremely nice to her. Every day she went riding. On the first day, she tried to escape, planning to ride all the way to London by herself, but her uncle came after her. For all that he was fat and rarely moved, he was a great horseman. He sat atop his big hunter as though he’d been born on it, and he grabbed her reins and halted her. “You try that again and I’ll have your mare shot,” he said, and she knew he meant it.

  For weeks, she behaved herself and waited. She had arguments with her uncle, and since he was always careful that the doors were closed, Edilean got the idea that he knew that if she asked the Scots for help they might give it.

  A boy, Tam, about fifteen, was assigned to help her on and off her horse every day, and after her escape attempt, he rode a pony behind her. But Edilean knew he couldn’t help her. He was too young, too inexperienced.

  But sometimes she saw another Scotsman in the background, and he looked strong enough that he might be able to help. She didn’t know what she was going to need, but, somehow, she was going to have to escape, and she meant to take her father’s gold with her.

  The man’s name was Shamus, and she saw the way others got out of his way when he walked by. If she was going to get away from her uncle, she would need someone like him.

  As the days passed, she stopped fighting with her uncle and began, instead, to ask him questions. What she wanted to know was when the gold was coming in and how it was going to be transported. He wasn’t fooled by her questions and told her to get away from him.

  More days passed and there was still no word from James. Had she mistaken him? Did he not want her and her dowry? Was he shrugging his broad shoulders and letting her go?

  She seemed to be at the depths of her depression when a man she’d never seen before, a man as tall and as big as James, but with thick black hair that he didn’t tie back, and a beard that looked as though it had never been cut in his life, loosened the cinch on her horse and sent her flying onto the stones. Wasn’t her life bad enough without some man playing hurtful tricks on her? She looked at the shortness of his outrageous garment—something she’d never seen before—and spat some cutting remarks at him. She was glad that when she walked away everyone started laughing at him.

  Later, she was angry about what the man had done, but she didn’t tell her uncle about him. She liked the Scots and didn’t want to betray them. Because there was one bad apple didn’t mean that the others were rotten. Besides, everyone she spoke to told her who the man was and that he would never hurt her. They wouldn’t say who had cut her cinch, just that it wasn’t the bearded man.

  For days Edilean’s life stayed in the routine she’d developed. But every day she grew more nervous and more frightened as she waited for some word from James. Had he received her letter? Maybe he was in France now and the letter was waiting for him in London. Maybe when he received it, she would already be married.

  When it got down to four days before her birthday and there was still no letter, Edilean was so jumpy that she nearly screamed at every sound. Morag asked her what was wrong, but Edilean couldn’t tell her.

  When she went out for her ride, her escort was the man Shamus, and she was glad of it. Maybe she could talk to him and tell him... She didn’t know what she could tell him. She was sure he could get her away from there, but then what? She had no relatives to go to, and her friends were still in school, too young to help.

  As she sat in the bushes and sketched, as she did every day, she was nearly scared to death by the hairy-faced man jumping out at her. When he shouted, “You are found out!” Edilean wondered why she didn’t die from shock right then and there. She thought he meant that her uncle had found out that she’d written a letter to James.

  After the man jumped up and yelled at her, he ran away as though he were five years old. She’d called for Shamus and he came running, but he only saw the man disappearing into the bushes.

  “He’s the man who made me fall off my horse,” she said.

  “Oh, aye, that he is. A tru