“Then you should marry him!” Harriet said. “Take what you can get when it’s offered. Don’t wait.”
“The man didn’t ask me to marry him, he just visited with those other young men. But he’s as tall as Angus and nearly as handsome, but he lacks—” She stopped when Harriet sat down across from her to stare at her.
“Please don’t do what I did and compare all men to one of them. After the man I loved jilted me, no one else would suit me. There was one man I didn’t like because of the sound he made when he sneezed.”
“I won’t do that,” Edilean said. “I promise that if this man Thomas Jefferson asks me to marry him, I’ll do so. Now do you feel better?”
“No,” Harriet said, getting up. “I don’t know you well enough yet, but I think maybe you’re up to something. Did I see that dreadful young man Cuddy coming out of the parlor this morning?”
“I think I’ll take a walk and buy the newspapers,” Edilean said, then left the room quickly.
It took Cuddy only two days to find Angus, and he rightly guessed that the information was being kept a secret from Harriet, so he stepped out of an alley when Edilean was in town alone.
“Good heavens!” she said. “You nearly scared me to death.”
“I thought maybe you wanted to keep this quiet.”
“I do,” she said. They were between two tall buildings, and Edilean was using her open parasol to hide from passersby. “What have you found out? Did he leave for Virginia?”
“No. He’s still here. He runs a tavern and a carriage stop about ten miles south of here. He don’t own the place, but he does all the work. He’s well liked by the people who go through there, and he stands for no nonsense. It’s clean too.”
Edilean looked at Cuddy but she didn’t see him. “Angus is running a tavern?”
“His name is Harcourt, same as yours. Is he your brother?”
“No, he most emphatically is not my brother!” she said. “What did you see? Who did you talk to?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but he was easy to find. I asked a coach driver and he knew him so I rode out there and there he was. Your drawin’ is a good likeness. I had a drink and a meal and watched what was goin’ on, then I went into the yard and talked to the stablemen. They all like him.”
“That’s well and good, but why was he there?”
“They said the owner was a lazy man and he’d hired Angus to work in the stables, but he was so good at everything that the owner just turned the whole place over to him.”
“I understand that he’s good at his job. What I don’t see is why Angus is working there.” She was talking more to herself than to him, and when she looked up, she saw that the man couldn’t understand what she was asking. Didn’t everyone work for a living?
Cuddy handed her a paper with the name of the tavern on it and a little map of how to get there. She thanked him, and later, at the house, she gave him the second bag of coins that she’d promised him.
But all day, the question of why Angus had taken a job in a tavern haunted her. Why hadn’t he sold the diamonds and bought the land he wanted?
That afternoon, Harriet asked what was wrong with her. “You’re very distracted, as though you’re thinking hard about something.”
“It’s nothing,” Edilean said. They were in the tiny garden behind the house, and Harriet was pulling the weeds from around the asparagus. She’d not let them eat all the asparagus, saying that some of it had to be left to grow into beautiful, tall, feathery ferns.
Edilean had said, “I think they would look good with roses.”
“Then get us some roses,” Harriet replied, but at the time, Edilean had been too busy being miserable because Angus had left her to think about anything else. So today, Edilean was planting roses while Harriet worked on the weeds.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Hmph!” Harriet said. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing,” Edilean answered sweetly as she stood up. “So few people in these cities have gardens that they might buy our roses.”
“What a ridiculous idea,” Harriet said quickly. “Let them grow their own. I want to know what’s in your mind. You can’t go from destroying an entire room in a wild rage to being so peaceful all in a few days without there being something devious going on in your mind.”
“Not devious, but maybe good.” Edilean stepped back to look at the roses she’d planted. It was late in the season for them, but a neighbor had given her cuttings that were well rooted. Edilean knew that the plants had been given to her because the neighbor was curious, wanting to know the who, why, where, etc. of her life, but Edilean had just smiled, thanked her for the roses, and told her nothing.
“I don’t know what’s in my mind,” she said, looking at Harriet. “It’s as though I have an idea in my head and it’s just about to emerge, but it hasn’t yet.”
“Let me know when it does so I can remove the furniture.”
Edilean gave a little laugh. “I think that was a one-time event in my life. I don’t plan to do that again.”
“Good!” Harriet said, and sat down on the wooden bench by the low wall that surrounded the garden, and took off her gloves. “Did I tell you what I did after I was jilted? Other than cry bucketsful, that is.”
“No, you didn’t.” Edilean sat down by her. “Tell me every word.”
Over the next few days, Edilean was tempted to tell Harriet the story of the diamonds and Angus, and ask her opinion of what was going on. But Edilean couldn’t tell Harriet about the diamonds because, legally, they belonged to James’s wife, which meant that they were closer to belonging to Harriet than to Edilean or Angus. No, it was better that Edilean figure out things herself.
After much contemplation, she came up with some reasons why Angus was working at a tavern. One, he wanted to be near Edilean, so he’d taken a job nearby. But that made no sense. With the money from the sale of the diamonds, he could have bought a place outside of Boston. He didn’t have to spend his days cleaning someone else’s stables.
The second thought was that he no longer had the diamonds. She wondered whether, if the jewels had been stolen, he would tell her about it. No. They could drive nails into him and he’d tell no one. His insufferable pride would never let him tell anyone anything.
There was the third thought—that he’d changed his mind about selling the diamonds and they were now locked away in a safe somewhere. But Edilean dismissed that idea. She well remembered that Angus had said he wanted his own home. If she knew him at all—and she did, no matter what he said—then he’d buy himself a place and work to death to make money from it, probably while vowing to repay Edilean.
The more she thought, the more she was sure that some catastrophe had caused Angus to lose the diamonds.
“And I know just where they went,” she said under her breath.
“What was that, dear?” Harriet asked.
“Nothing. I was just thinking out loud.”
“You seem to be doing a lot of that lately,” Harriet said. “Not the out loud part, but the thinking.” She was frowning because Edilean was refusing to tell her what was in her mind.
That evening Harriet went out to buy some fish from the men just coming in on their boats, and Edilean again called Cuddy to her. “I want you to find this woman,” she said and handed him a drawing of Tabitha. There was a face and beside it was a full-length picture of Tabitha in her clothes, with her heavy top and bottom.
“Oh, yes, Miss,” Cuddy said. “I’ll like finding this one.”
“You get too near her and she’ll steal your purse. She has fingers like an eel sliding through jelly. Remember that and stay six feet from her.”
Cuddy nodded solemnly and put the picture inside his jacket.
“You should go now and look. I think she probably works better at night.”
“Will she be with the man at the tavern?”
“No,” Edilean said. “At least I don’t think so. Angus might not
be able to see through her, but she’d know he’d catch on sooner or later. Go, now, and let me know what you find.”
“Yes, Miss,” he said, and hurried out of the room.
16
IT TOOK CUDDY over two weeks to find Tabitha. During that time Edilean had to deal with Harriet wanting to discharge him. “And why shouldn’t I get rid of him? He’s not here to do the work.”
Edilean would have done most anything to keep Harriet from finding out what she was doing. Besides the set of jewelry she wanted to hide, there was the fact that Edilean had told Harriet she was going to put Angus behind her. “I’ll do the work. What does a footman do?”
“Muck out after the horses, for one thing,” Harriet said, her hand on her hip and giving Edilean a look that said it would snow in July before Edilean did such a thing.
But Harriet hadn’t taken into account all the years Edilean had spent at other people’s houses—and all she’d done to get away from people. She borrowed one of Harriet’s workday dresses, hiked it up under a heavy belt, and went into the stables. Four hours later, there was a pile of horse manure in the stone courtyard and fresh straw in the stalls.
Afterward, she was tired, but it felt good to have done something besides sit in the parlor and listen to young men try to impress her. Harriet had been so shocked she’d been unable to speak. Edilean considered causing speechlessness in Harriet a triumph.
When Cuddy at last returned, he looked the worse for wear. His clothes were torn, and his face was dirty. “Pardon me, Miss,” he said as he sat down heavily on a chair in the kitchen.
Edilean sent the cook away. “What did you find out?”
“She was bought by a man at the docks.”
“Yes, a bondwoman,” Edilean said. “It’s for seven years, isn’t it?”
“That’s what she agreed to, but the man said she stole him blind the first night, then ran away. I liked to not have found her. If it weren’t that I know some people who are of, shall we say, a less than better class, I wouldn’t have found her.”
Edilean knew he was elaborating so she’d pay him more, but she didn’t have time for that. “Did you find her? Did you see her?”
“I did,” the man said. “Do you mind if I have a bit to eat and drink?”
Impatiently, Edilean went into the larder, got some cheese and bread, and put them on the table. She saw that there were also some bottles of homemade beer on the floor, and she picked one up. “I don’t know who in this house drinks beer, but you can have one.”
“Miss Harriet,” he said as he sliced off cheese. “She makes it and gives some to us men. She’s a good brewer.”
Edilean stared at him for a moment. It was her own house, paid for by her, but it looked as though things went on in it that she knew nothing about. She sat down on a chair across from him, even though she knew that sitting in the kitchen with a footman was something that her friends back in England wouldn’t have done on penalty of death.
“Where is she?” Edilean asked again.
“Living rough in the woods with a band of other prisoners. I think they mean to move south and buy a place to live, but they’ll stay here for a while.”
“And how did you learn all of this?”
“I stayed with them for a night.”
“Did you?” Edilean asked, her eyes lowered as she poured Cuddy some more beer. “And you saw Tabitha?”
“Thank you,” he said, taking a deep swallow of the beer. “I did. That picture you drew of her looks just like her. If you were a man, you could take to the road doing portraits.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Did Tabitha have on any jewelry?”
“Not that I remember.” His head came up. “Wait! One morning I saw a sparkly bracelet, and when she saw me looking at it, she pulled her sleeve down over it. It was just a bit of glass.”
“More like coal,” Edilean said under her breath. “When you finish that, I want you to come into the parlor and describe everything you saw, from the look of their camp to what Tabitha and the others were wearing.”
Cuddy looked as though he might be sick. “I didn’t look at what she was wearin’.”
“Did she have on a dress like mine?” Edilean was wearing a gown of apricot-colored silk, embroidered across the bodice with tendrils of lavender sweet peas.
“Not likely.” He was laughing at his own joke.
“So then, you did notice what Tabitha was wearing.”
“I guess I did,” Cuddy said, impressed with his own intelligence.
“I’ll be waiting, but hurry up because Harriet will be back soon.”
“Oh, right, Miss, I’ll be there in two shakes.”
Edilean had to use all her cunning to keep the secret of what she was doing from Harriet. Since Edilean had “lost her mind,” as Harriet put it, and destroyed her room, Harriet kept constant vigil over her. It was as though she thought Edilean was going to go insane at any moment. And all her humming and smiling and keeping busy didn’t fool Harriet a bit. She looked at Edilean suspiciously.
In the end, Edilean had to pay an exorbitant amount to a maid who worked two houses down for a dress that would fit. It was a plain gown with a homespun skirt and a white cotton top. The first time she tried it on she’d been alone in her room and Harriet had almost barged in with the clean linen. Edilean’d had to make up a quick lie about what she was doing behind a bolted door.
On the night when Edilean planned to go out and find Tabitha, she was tempted to put laudanum in Harriet’s tea, but she didn’t. While it was true that she planned to sneak out, she told herself that if she wanted to, she could walk out the front door and not tell Harriet where she was going or why. But Edilean knew that Harriet’s “hmph!” could be worse than being yelled at.
Instead, Edilean arranged with Cuddy to put a ladder up against the house, and she climbed down it just after midnight.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Miss?” Cuddy asked. “Those people are dangerous.”
“You have the pistol?”
“Loaded and ready,” he said, “but that don’t mean I like this. If I told the bailiffs where they were, they’d go out there and round them up.”
“And what do you think would happen to the goods they’ve stolen? Do you think that the robbers who escape would leave it there?”
Cuddy looked at her in shock. “Is that what you want? What they’ve stolen?”
“I want one item,” she said. “And it doesn’t belong to me.”
Cuddy looked at her as though he was putting two and two together, what with having found Angus Harcourt and her asking why he was working for someone else, and now talk about the bound girl who’d stolen something that belonged to someone else.
But Cuddy didn’t say anything. He just raised the lantern and led the way to the carriage house, where two saddled horses were waiting. “Are you sure you know how to ride, Miss?” he asked. “That one you’re on can be feisty. Maybe I should take him.”
“I’ll do my best to hang on,” Edilean said without a hint of humor in her voice. “Do you think you can find this place in the dark?”
“Easy,” Cuddy said as he climbed into the saddle. “You just follow me, Miss, and I’ll try to go slow so you can keep up.”
“That’s kind of you,” Edilean said as she got into the saddle.
“Now, Miss, if you’ll just move over a bit so I can turn around and head out, we’ll get goin’.”
Edilean took the reins in both hands, made a few clicking noises, and backed her horse straight out the door. But once the animal was out in the cool night air, it decided to rear up on its hind legs. “Stop that!” she said, and brought the horse back to earth. “If you keep on like that I’ll cut your oats ration.” Turning, she looked back at Cuddy, who was just coming outside.
His eyes were wide. “I ain’t never seen no girl ride like that.”
“It’s nice to know that someone somewhere thinks I can do something,” she said as she pulled to one side so h
e could lead the way out of the courtyard and into the road.
She’d planned the journey for a full moon so they’d be able to see the road and where the cutoff was that led to Tabitha and her gang of thieves. Maybe Cuddy had been right and she should have gone to the authorities, but Edilean felt that this was something she had to do for herself. And she knew that if she’d even hinted to Harriet what she was thinking about doing, she would have said Edilean was jealous. Harriet would have said that Edilean was angry because Angus had turned her down for some poor, downtrodden girl who would never have what Edilean did. And Edilean wouldn’t be able to defend herself because she couldn’t tell Harriet about the jewels.
As she rode behind Cuddy, her mind strayed back to her own horse, Marmy, whom she’d had to leave behind in England. She thought that maybe, when she was settled, she could somehow get her mare back.
But even her sad thoughts couldn’t keep her restless spirit still. She said she’d ride ahead and meet him. She couldn’t let the horse run flat out, as there were too many holes in the road, but she could let the animal show itself a bit, let it dance about—and let Edilean get some exercise as she used her thighs to guide the animal. The horse wasn’t as well trained as Marmy, but it wanted to run.
The night ride reminded Edilean of Scotland and her hell-bent ride back to the old keep. She’d been determined to get back before Angus did so he couldn’t tell his side of what happened before she told hers.
When she stopped, she leaned forward and patted the horse’s neck. It seemed that from the moment Angus McTern had stared at her, looking as though he’d never before seen a woman, her life had revolved around him.
When she’d gone so far that she knew Cuddy would have trouble keeping up with her, she turned and waited. She didn’t want the horse to get too sweaty on the cool night.
“Lordy, Miss,” Cuddy said when he caught up with her. “Where’d you learn to ride like that?”
“In England many women are known for their horsemanship. Do you know where we turn?”
“About half a mile from here, but we can’t take the horses. They’ll hear us.”