Days of Gold Read online

  “But, James, with your looks you could have held out for more. You should have got a wife who comes with a wagon load of gold.”

  At that, Harcourt laughed so hard he nearly choked. “That’s just what I did. I got trunks full of gold, but I just didn’t take the soldier’s daughter who owned them.”

  Angus was staring openly, trying to figure out what the man was saying.

  “Here’s to my lady wife,” Harcourt said, “may she sleep well tonight, for at dawn we board ship and sail to the New World.”

  Dawn? Angus well remembered that Harcourt said he’d pick up Edilean at midday, but his ship would be long gone by then.

  Angus drained his mug of beer, then quietly left the pub. What he had to do was to warn Edilean. He had to— He made himself stop thinking along those lines. What could he do to make her believe him? He imagined breaking into her room and telling her that the man she thought she was to marry was... What? Angus wasn’t even sure of the answer. Maybe he’d misheard Harcourt.

  “I am staying there.” The words seemed to echo in Angus’s head. Harcourt had said he was sending Edilean to the same inn where he was staying. Surely, if the man already had a wife, he wouldn’t put Edilean in the same inn. But then, he’d given Edilean that damned laudanum, so maybe he expected her to obey him and sleep all day. Besides, if he was leaving at dawn, when she did wake up he’d be gone—with her gold on board.

  Angus started running back the way he came, staying in the shadows so he wouldn’t be seen, but going toward the Red Lion. If Edilean was to walk to it, the Green Dragon couldn’t be far away.

  He saw the painted sign with the picture of the dragon from some distance away. It was the middle of the night. How was he going to find out which room belonged to Harcourt’s wife?

  He went to the back of the inn and stood in the shadows as he tried to think how to find out, when the door opened and out came the maid who’d escorted Edilean out of the stables.

  He quickly stepped in front of her, and for a moment she looked frightened, but then her face changed. “I saw you,” she said, a little smile on her face. “I saw you hiding with the horses and spying on those two.”

  “And I saw you,” Angus said, giving her a look up and down. “Harcourt sent me to make sure you got the rooms right, and that you didn’t mix up the women.”

  “Can’t mix up those two, now can I? Don’t look much alike, do they?”

  “You put the little one on the top floor?”

  “I did,” she said and took a step closer to him.

  “And the other one?”

  “Ground floor, like he said. She ate half a haunch of beef for supper, and I was glad I didn’t have to carry it up the stairs.” She gave him a hard look. “Have I seen you somewhere before?”

  “Not me, lass,” he said as he moved into the darkness where she couldn’t see him. She called out for him to come back, but he stayed where he was until she gave a little snort and walked away. He knew he’d made an enemy, but worse, he knew that sooner or later she’d remember that she’d seen him on the handbills that seemed to be all over town.

  Angus walked around the inn, looking in the windows, trying to figure out which one was a bedroom. Since there were only two windows with curtains drawn across them, he figured they were a good bet. He tried the first window and it wouldn’t open, but the second one did.

  He crept into the room and waited while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He could hear someone in the bed lightly snoring. It would be my luck to have walked into the wrong bedroom, he thought, and imagined a man who slept with a loaded pistol under his pillow.

  But he was used to the dark, and after a while he could see clearly enough to move about. As he got closer to the bed, he thought he could make out the outline of a woman. There was flint and tinder on the bedside and, taking a chance, he lit the candle. When he looked at the person in the bed, he gave a gasp. It was a woman all right, and she was as ugly as a witch in a children’s fairy story. She had a big, hooked nose that curved over thin lips and a chin that stuck out in a point. Her head was covered by a big cap with a ruffle around the edges.

  And her small, dark eyes were open.

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” he said. “I must have the wrong room.”

  One second he was standing there looking at her, and the next he was in bed on top of her as she’d grabbed him and pulled him down. She was a big woman, not fat but muscular, with strong arms, and he could feel her huge body under his.

  “You’re a treat,” she said as she tried to kiss him. “And I think you have the right room.”

  “Ma’am,” he said as he pushed away from her, but he only succeeded in landing on the other side of the bed. Instantly, she rolled on top of him.

  “The door’s bolted, so you came in through the window. What did you come for? To rob me? To have your way with me?”

  “Well, no, I, uh...” She was sitting on him, her big thighs clutching his hips. She had on a white nightgown that was so low cut he could see most of her prodigious bosom. She wasn’t young, maybe midthirties, and she was very strong.

  “So? What did you come for if not for me? For that puny husband of mine?”

  “Yes,” Angus said as he grabbed her wrists and held them so they couldn’t reach his head. It was hard to think when a woman who weighed as much as she did was sitting on him. Using all the strength he could muster, he rolled out from under her. When he was again standing and she looked like she was about to leap on him, he put up his hand. “Nay, have mercy, ma’am.”

  Sighing, she lay back down on the bed. “What is it? James owes you money and you want to get it before we sail?”

  “Aye,” Angus said brightly. “That’s it. So it’s true that he leaves tomorrow? He owes me ten pounds.”

  “He doesn’t have it,” she said as she rolled onto her side to face him. “Why don’t you humiliate him by spending the night with his wife?”

  “As tempting an offer as that is...” Angus said, trying to smile but still protecting himself. “So he did marry? You’re the earl’s daughter?”

  “I am that,” she said, turning onto her back. “And I look just like my father.”

  “Oh, well, he must have been proud of that,” Angus said, trying to be polite.

  “I’m thirty-six and just got married. What do you think?”

  “But now you have a husband,” he said and began inching his way around the bed. On the bedside table was one of those little bottles that James Harcourt was so fond of giving to the women in his life. Laudanum. “If you are an earl’s daughter, then I should go to your father to pay my debt.”

  “He has less money than James does.”

  “So...” Angus said. He was at the foot of the bed now and about to turn the corner to reach the table. “You married for love.”

  The woman laughed at that as she turned toward him. “He married me for the title that will pass to our children. Bastard! He only pretended to love me.” She was looking at Angus by the light of a single candle. “Under all that hair you’re a fine-looking man, aren’t you?” As she said it, her eyes widened and Angus knew that she’d seen the handbills and recognized him.

  “I think perhaps you will spend the night with me or I shall start screaming. You wouldn’t like that now, would you?”

  “Depends on why you’re screaming,” he said as he moved closer to her.

  “Not from my husband,” she said, her eyes alight. “I don’t know how we’ll have brats when he hasn’t much down there, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know,” Angus said as his hand slipped around the bottle of laudanum. As he put his knee on the side of the bed, he halted. “How do I know you’re the bride of James Harcourt?”

  “You can look in that chest over there. All the documents are in there.”

  “Well, then,” he said slowly. “Mayhap I will take the repayment out on Harcourt’s wife after all. But do you have anything to drink? You look like a woman who’s going to