Days of Gold Read online

  Shamus handed him a piece of paper. “She wrote it. It tells the name, address, and time on it. James Harcourt. Red Lion Inn. Glasgow by midnight tomorrow.”

  As Angus put the paper in his sporran, he thought that it was going to be difficult to get to Glasgow by that time. “What’s in the back?”

  Shamus threw back the tarpaulin to reveal six heavy, ironbound trunks that had been bolted to the bottom of the big wagon.

  “And there’s a coffin,” Shamus said with a smirk.

  “A coffin?”

  “The little miss told me it was a mummy from Egypt.”

  “A... ?” Angus said, a shiver of revulsion running through him. He got himself under control. “Did you look inside it?”

  Shamus shrugged. “I wanted to, but the miss said it had a curse on it, so it was better not to look. I took her word for it.”

  “As well you should have,” Angus said, throwing the tarp back down and fastening it. He was going to be traveling the roads in the middle of the night with a mummy on board. All for a woman who said she hated him! Angus looked at Shamus and for a moment he felt guilty at thwarting his plans to get away. “Keep the money she gave you to do this,” he said kindly, “and Malcolm will give you more if you do what he tells you to.” Angus climbed up on the wagon seat. “Tell Malcolm I’ll be back as soon as I can with some money and we’ll get her out of this.”

  “Who?”

  “The young miss,” Angus said, his voice exasperated. “Shamus, for once in your life, do what’s right. Go now, and tell Malcolm I’ll be back soon.” He picked up the reins. “Do you know where the young miss is now?”

  “Morag said she’s been locked in her room for days.”

  Angus glanced toward the keep, the top barely seen over the trees. With one more look behind him, he started for Glasgow.

  He wasn’t a mile down the road when young Tam came riding up, and Angus’s heart leaped. Maybe the boy would go with him.

  “Malcolm told me what you’re doing, and he sent this.” He tossed Angus a package. “Clothes and food. They won’t want to see you in the city wearing that.”

  “Would you like to go with me?” Angus asked. “With these beautiful horses?”

  “Nay, I can’t. I must stay with her. We can’t let her be forced into marriage to one of those lecherous old men. She should marry a McTern and put the land back in its proper name.”

  Angus smiled. “Maybe she could marry you.” As the only child of the second son of the old laird, Tam was next in line to take on the responsibility of the McTerns.

  “With you gone, that’s my idea,” he said, smiling at his cousin for the first time in days. “I’ll see you when you get back.” Turning his horse, he lifted his hand in farewell, and Angus sighed. He dreaded the long trip alone.

  5

  ANGUS HAD BEEN on the road a mere three hours and already he was bored and tired. Because of “her” he hadn’t had much sleep in the last few days and now, because of “her” he wasn’t getting any more. Every time he dozed off, the well-trained horses stopped moving. Twice, Angus woke with a jolt and saw that the beautiful horses were munching on the grass at the side of the road. At this rate, he’d never get to Glasgow. If it had been up to him, he would have pulled into the forest and slept for a few hours, but he couldn’t. He had a deadline to meet. For “her.”

  It seemed that it had hardly turned dark when Angus heard galloping horses and a shot fired into the air. He reached for the loaded pistol he had under the seat, but a voice to his right said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  The horse behind him had been a distraction. Damn! Angus thought; he’d been lax. Between anger and fatigue, he hadn’t been vigilant. Why hadn’t he found someone to go with him?

  He pulled on the reins to the big horses and they slowed to a halt.

  There were three brigands, each with their faces masked, pistols held out and aimed at Angus’s head.

  “What foolishness is this?” the man who seemed to be the leader asked. “They send one man on a rig like this? Just one of those horses is worth your life.” He put his pistol in the holster on his horse and scrutinized Angus in his outlawed kilt. “You look like a man from one of the old clans. I like a man who stands up against the English. Get down and I’ll let you live.”

  It was one thing to try to help a girl he didn’t know, but quite another to give up his life for her. “None of this belongs to me,” Angus said in an affable voice as he got down from the wagon, “so I lose nothing.”

  One of the men moved forward and touched the neck of one of the big Clydesdales. “I’ve never seen such beautiful horses. Who’s your master?”

  “No man is my master!” Angus said quickly, making the first man laugh.

  “Rightly said for a Scotsman. What do you have in there?” He nodded toward the back.

  “Things for a museum,” Angus said, backing away from them. For all that they sounded friendly and were saying they weren’t going to harm him, he didn’t trust anyone holding a pistol aimed at his head. The first man had put his weapon away, but the other two still had theirs out. In the back, half hidden in the dark, was a fourth man who hadn’t so much as blinked. His pistol was held at arm’s length and he kept it aimed at Angus.

  “I’d like to see that,” the first man said as he got down off his horse. Since the man was just a few feet from Angus, he thought about leaping on him and grabbing his weapon, but the thief in back kept too steady of an aim.

  Angus untied the corner of the cover and showed the trunks.

  “They look heavy,” the robber said.

  “Bronze statues from Greece,” Angus said.

  “Worth anything?”

  “Not to me,” Angus answered.

  The thief looked to the man in back, and he motioned with his pistol that he wanted to see all the contents of the wagon.

  Angus untied the rest of the tarpaulin and threw it back. When they saw the coffin, the robber stepped away and the man in back’s horse pranced a bit.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “A mummy,” Angus said.

  “Bless me,” the man in front said as he moved his horse forward to take a look at the wooden box.

  At that moment, a sound came from inside the coffin, and it was all Angus could do not to take off running into the forest, but in the next second he realized Shamus had done it. No doubt he’d put a cat in the coffin to scare Angus.

  “It’s just a mummy,” Angus said. “It’s been dead for a thousand years. Nothing to be afraid of.” When their eyes were fastened on the coffin, Angus saw his time to make a move. He leaped at the man standing near him, grabbed his pistol, and put it to his head.

  But it didn’t matter that he did, because in the same second, the lid on the coffin moved to one side and a woman with sickly white skin and clothes sat up. The moonlight hit her in a creepy, eerie way that made all of them, including Angus, stand absolutely still.

  In the next second, the men wasted no time in running away. The man Angus had at gunpoint ignored him as he leaped onto his horse and took off into the dark of the forest, the other two close behind him.

  Angus stood where he was, seeming to be paralyzed to the spot. He recognized Lawler’s niece, but was she dead and rising?

  “You’d think they could have cleaned it out,” Edilean said as she wiped at the white sawdust on her face. She was blinking hard, as even her eyelashes were covered in the fine dust of the newly made coffin.

  Angus was standing still and staring at her. “Holy hell! It’s you.”

  “And it’s you,” she said angrily. “What have you done with Shamus?”

  Angus looked up at the moon for a moment. At last he was beginning to understand what was going on. “It’s after midnight. Who’s locked in your room at the keep?”

  “No one,” she said, rubbing at her face and clothes, then coughing at the dust. “Morag knows I’m not there, but she covered for me. Unlike you, other people don’t