Days of Gold

  “Excuse me,” she said, and her voice was soft and pretty. “I need to get to my horse.”

  All he could do was nod and step back to let her pass. As she came closer to him, he could smell her. Was she wearing a scent or was it her own fragrance? For a second he closed his eyes and inhaled. They were right to mention angels and her in the same breath.

  Using his shoulder to push Angus aside, Tam clasped his hands and let the girl put her tiny foot in them as she vaulted onto the horse. The minute she was in the saddle, the horse began to lift its front hooves off the ground, but the girl seemed to be used to that and easily got it under control.

  “Quiet, Marmy,” she said to the mare. “Calm down. We’re going. Don’t rush me.” As she lifted the reins, Tam stepped away, but Angus just stared up at her. “If you don’t get out of the way, you’re going to get hurt,” she said to him, and there was amusement in her voice.

  But Angus still stood there, gaping, unable to move.

  In the next second, the girth on the horse slipped and with it the saddle. It slid around the horse, sending the girl to the left, toward Angus. She gave a little cry and tried to hold on, but with the saddle falling to one side, there was nothing to hold on to.

  Emergencies were something that Angus was used to and was good at. The girl’s sound of panic brought him out of his stupor and he reacted instantly. He grabbed the reins and pulled them tight to get the horse under control. Still holding the reins, he tried to catch the girl, but she slid to the other side and fell onto the stones.

  By the time she landed, Tam had run forward to help with the prancing horse, moving it forward so that Angus and the girl were no longer separated. He reached down to help her up.

  “Don’t you touch me!” she said as she got up by herself and dusted at her clothes. She glared at him. “You did this! I don’t know who you are, but I know you did it.”

  Angus wanted to defend himself, but his pride wouldn’t let him. What could he say, that he’d seen a clansman sabotaging her saddle and that he, Angus, had tried to save her? Or would he say he should have checked the girth before she mounted but that he’d been so blinded by her beauty he’d completely forgotten about the saddle? He’d rather be flogged than say such things.

  “I am the McTern of McTern,” he said at last, with his shoulders back and looking down at her.

  “Oh, I see,” she said, her face pinkened prettily with anger. “My uncle stole your property so now you take it out on me.” She looked him up and down, sneering at his wild-looking hair and his full beard, then her eyes traveled down to his kilt. “Is your protest of my uncle why you wear a dress? Tell me if you want to borrow one of mine. They’re much cleaner than yours.” With that, she turned and went back into the old castle.

  For a moment there was no sound in the courtyard. It was as though even the birds had stopped singing, then, in one huge, loud shout, everyone started laughing. Men, women, children, even a couple of goats tied along the wall started a high-pitched laugh.

  Angus stood in the middle of it all, and what little of his face could be seen was dark red with embarrassment. Turning, he went back to the stables, and all along the way, he heard the comments that renewed their howls of laughter. “He didn’t want to see her.” “No one could tell him anything.” “Did you see the way he stared at her? You could have cut off his foot and he wouldn’t have felt it.” Angus even heard the women laughing at him. “He’s not so uppity now. He wouldn’t dance with me, but she won’t dance with him. Oh, he deserves this, he does.”

  It was as though in a single minute he’d gone from being the lord of his kingdom to the jester.

  Passing by the stables, he went out through the gate in the tall wall that surrounded the castle and headed toward his own cottage. He wanted to explain himself to someone, to tell his side of what had happened. It was Shamus who had loosened the girth on her horse and Angus had been about to tighten it, but the girl had startled him so that he hadn’t done it. Yes, that was a good word. She’d startled him. She’d shown up wearing her silly little hat and her bright jacket with the big buttons and he’d been so startled by the sight of such ridiculousness that he’d been speechless. And the ribbons in her hair! Had anyone ever seen anything so foolish? Her clothes were so absurd that she’d not last ten minutes in the hills. Yes, that’s what he’d say he’d been thinking. He was looking so hard at the uselessness of her garb that he’d been speechless.

  By the time he reached his cottage he was feeling a bit better. Now he had a story to counteract what everyone seemed to think had actually happened.

  But when he got within a few feet of the door, his sister came out and she was grinning. She had a dirty-faced child holding on to her skirt, another one on her hip, and a third one in her belly, and she was smiling broadly.

  Behind her, her husband stuck his head out the door. He was still red-faced from how fast he must have run to beat Angus back to the cottage. “Did you do it?” he asked. “Did you loosen her stirrup so she’d fall?”

  That was more than Angus could bear. “Never would I hurt a woman,” he said, his voice showing his shock. “How could you think such of me?”

  His sister said nothing, but she was laughing.

  Angus could only stare at the two of them. What had he ever done to make them think he was capable of something this low? He wasn’t about to honor his brother-in-law’s accusation with an answer. Turning, he started walking away.

  He only slowed when he heard his sister call out to him, “Have mercy on me, Angus. My belly slows me down.”

  He halted and looked back at her. “I have nothing to say to you.”

  When she caught up with him, she put her hand on his shoulder. “Either we sit and rest or you’re going to be delivering this baby by yourself here and now.”

  That made him sit on a rock, and Kenna sat by him, working to get her breath while stroking her big belly to calm it. “He dinna mean anything bad,” she said.

  “Your husband or Shamus?”

  “So it was Shamus who loosened the girth. I figured so.”

  “You’re the only one. The rest of them think I did it.”

  “Nay, they do not,” she said.

  “Your husband—”

  “Is sick with jealousy over you,” Kenna said. “You know that.”

  “What does he have to be jealous of me about? He has a home, a family, the best wife there is.”

  “The home doesn’t belong to him and all he seems good at is producing babies. You run everything.”

  “Yet I am the one being laughed at.”

  “Oh, Angus,” she said, leaning against him, “look at you. You’ve been a man since you were a boy and our father was killed. By twelve you’d taken on everything that our grandfather had gambled away. People have always looked up to you. There isn’t a girl within a hundred miles who wouldn’t have you, beg for you.”

  “I doubt that,” Angus said, but his voice softened.

  “Don’t be so small spirited that you begrudge the people a chance to laugh at you. Why canna you laugh with them?”

  “They think—”

  “That you made the girl fall off her horse? Do you truly believe anyone thinks that of you?”

  “Your husband...” Angus trailed off because he well knew that his brother-in-law didn’t really believe he’d loosen the cinch on anyone’s horse. If Angus wanted to hurt someone, he’d do it face-to-face.

  “Gavin and everyone else either knows or can guess who did that to the poor girl. And as for what she said to you...” Kenna smiled. “If she’d said it to someone else, you would have fallen over with laughter. I wish you’d told her that you have a sister who’d like to borrow her clothes.”

  “Would you like to have a silk dress?” he asked softly. His sister was five years older than he was and the person he loved the most. If the truth were told, there was more than a little jealousy coming from him toward her husband. Since Kenna had married, Angus felt as though
he’d been alone.

  “Would I like a silk dress? Trade you a bairn for one.”

  Angus laughed. “If all of them you produce are as bad as your eldest, you’d have to trade six of them for a length of silk.”

  “He’s just like you were at that age.”

  “I never was!”

  “Worse,” she said, laughing. “And he’s the spitting image of you. Or I think he is, but it’s been too long since I’ve seen your face.” Reaching up, she touched his big beard. “Why don’t you let me cut that?”

  He pulled her hand away and kissed the palm. “It keeps me warm, and that’s what I need.”

  “If you married, you—”

  “I beg you not to start on me again,” he said with so much agony in his voice that she relented.

  “All right,” she said as she got up, with Angus pushing on her back to help her. “I’ll leave you be if you promise not to take a girl’s laughter in anger. She bested you with the only weapon a woman has, her tongue.”

  “There are other uses for a woman’s tongue,” Angus said, his eyes twinkling.

  Kenna stuck out her big belly. “Do you think I do not know all about the uses of a woman’s tongue—and a man’s?”

  Angus put his hands over his ears. “Do not tell me such! You’re my sister.”

  “All right,” she said, smiling. “Keep your belief that your sister is still a virgin, but please do not let anger rule you over this girl.”

  “I will not,” he said. “Now, go back to your husband.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “I’m going to crawl under a rock and sleep for a day or two.”

  “Good, mayhap the heather will sweeten your temper so that when a girl makes a remark to you, you can reply in kind.”

  “In kind,” he said. “I will remember that. Now go before I have to play midwife to you.”

  2

  ANGUS MANAGED TO avoid seeing the niece for an entire week. He followed the wisdom of his sister and pretended to laugh at himself with all the other people, but when he turned away his smile didn’t remain.

  At first he’d tried to defend himself, but that only made people laugh harder. It was as though they’d been waiting all their lives to find humor in him and now they were making up for lost time.

  However, Angus was glad that no one—except his own brother-in-law, that is—so much as hinted that Angus had been the one to loosen the girth and make the girl fall. No one said so, but they knew who had done it.

  Angus didn’t catch Shamus alone until three days after the incident. By then Angus had had to answer the same questions a thousand times. “Yes, yes,” he said, each time trying hard to smile, “I was quite stunned by the beauty of the girl.” “No, I’d never seen anything like her before.” “Yes, I’m sure the angels smiled when she was born.” “Oh, yes, what she said was quite clever. Never met a girl as clever as she is.”

  Each time he walked across the courtyard, it was always the same. No one wanted to talk to him about anything but the way he’d stared at the girl—except for his young cousin Tam, who wouldn’t speak to Angus at all. Twice Angus tried to get Tam to go hunting with him, but the boy wouldn’t. “She depends on me to hold her horse, so now I ride a pony and follow her. I’m one of the few men she trusts. She told me that, and she called me a man.” As he said it, he gave Angus a look that told him they were no longer friends.

  By the time Angus was able to catch Shamus, he wanted to smash his big face. Angus grabbed him by the collar while he was in one of the horse stalls, slammed him against the wall, and raised his fist. But Shamus wasn’t afraid of pain; it was something he’d lived with all his life. When they were children everyone knew to stay hidden when Shamus appeared with a black eye. His father had again beaten the boy. Now, his father was dead and there was no longer any reason for Shamus to do what had been done to him, but old habits don’t die easily.

  “Go ahead,” Shamus said. He wasn’t as tall as Angus, but he was older, and bigger. When an oxcart got stuck in the mud, it was Shamus’s strength that helped pull it out.

  Angus lowered his fist. “Are you mad? To do that to Lawler’s niece? She must not have told or her uncle would have had someone lashed. How long has it been since you had the skin on your back torn off?”

  Shamus shrugged. “Not too long. A year or two. But I knew he wouldn’t do anything. He hates her.”

  “Who hates her?” Angus asked.

  “Lawler hates his niece.”

  For a moment Angus didn’t know what to say. How could a man hate his own niece? For all that he complained about his sister’s children, he would die for them, imps that they were. “You’re lying.”

  “If you think so, then you should listen more.”

  “Should I be like you and sit in the shadows and spy on people?”

  “I learn things, like the fact that Lawler can’t abide her.”

  “Then he should send her back to London so she can be with her own kind.” Angus spoke of the girl as though she were an alien species.

  “Angus!” He heard Malcolm’s voice, and when he turned in that direction, Shamus slithered away. For someone as big as he was, he could certainly move quickly when he needed to.

  After that, Angus quit letting everyone’s constant retelling of that day when he’d been humiliated by a bit of a girl bother him, and he started listening. When all of them lived as they did, under the rule and out of the pocket of one man, it was imperative to know what that man was up to.

  They all knew the story—or at least part of it. When Lawler was no more than Angus’s age, on one cut of a deck of cards, he’d won from the McTern laird the castle and the acres surrounding it. What no one knew was that since Lawler was the third son of a man with little property, he was not to inherit anything. His father had told him that if he’d go into the clergy, he’d find him a church to preach at. But there was nothing in the world that Lawler wanted to do less than to spread the Gospel.

  When Lawler proposed to the drunken old Scotsman that they cut the cards for his castle and lands, Lawler had lied and said he owned an estate in York. Had he lost the cut, Lawler would have had no way to pay the debt. But he hadn’t lost.

  The next day, Lawler rode north to find the castle he’d won, and although it was a poor estate, it suited him. All he wanted to do was hunt and fish and play cards, so the old keep and grounds were enough for him. He soon found that the McTerns still thought of the place as theirs, so they did the work and the small profits went to Lawler. Now and then one of the Scots would do something he found intolerable and he’d have the man tied to a post and whipped, but he’d never hanged anyone.

  And as the years passed and Angus, the young man who would have inherited the property, grew, Lawler left the running of the estate to him, as he seemed to love responsibility and work as much as Lawler hated it.

  For days, Angus listened more and stopped letting his anger close his ears to what was going on around him. If Lawler didn’t like the girl, why not? No one seemed to know. Morag, who worked inside the castle, said she’d often heard Lawler shouting at the girl, but it was always done behind closed doors, inside the stone walls, and even as hard as she listened, she couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  “Poor thing, how could he shout at an angel like that?” Morag said, making Angus roll his eyes.

  No one missed the fact that every day when the niece went riding, Angus was nowhere to be found. Her mare seemed to know when she was going to show up because it started prancing about in its stall. The moment the mare lifted a forefoot, Angus seemed to dissolve into smoke. He wrapped his plaid about himself and went into the hills to stay away from her.

  Of course this caused more laughter, but Angus didn’t trust himself to look at her and not lose control. He figured he’d either stand there in a stupor, or he’d— He couldn’t think what he’d do if she again made people laugh at him.

  On the eighth day after Angus saw her, Malcolm ca
me into the stables very upset. “You have to go after her.”

  “Who?” Angus asked. He’d been in the hills all night and had just awakened a few minutes ago.

  “Her. Lawler’s niece. You have to go after her.”

  “I’d rather face the entire Campbell clan alone than follow her. Besides, she can take care of herself.”

  “No,” Malcolm said, “she’s gone off with Shamus.”

  Angus paused for a moment with a harness in his hands, but then he hung it on a hook in the wall and kept walking. “Why would she do a thing like that? Does she like him?”

  “No, you great daft thing. She went riding with him as her guide, her protector. Tam is home sick, puking up his guts, so she looked about the yard and said she’d take Shamus with her. What could anyone do? Tell her that Shamus wasn’t to be trusted? He’d beat anyone who said that.”

  “She’s Lawler’s niece. Shamus would be afraid to hurt her.”

  “If that’s so, then why did he loosen the cinch and make her fall? She could have broken her neck.”

  Angus frowned. “She’ll be all right. He never hurts anyone more than they can stand.”

  “You mean he never kills anyone. Do you know what he might do to a woman if he got her alone? Angus, he is three times the size of her.”

  “Tell someone else to go,” Angus said. “Duncan or... I know, tell my brother-in-law, Gavin, to go. It’ll give him something to do besides lay with my sister.”

  “She’ll be angry if she sees anyone else there, and if Shamus sees anyone, he’ll clobber him.”

  “So you want me to risk a club on my head, all for a girl who believes the worst of me?”

  “Yes,” Malcolm said simply. “You can take a pony and disappear in the hills. You can watch and never be seen. No one else can do that. And if you see Shamus doing something he shouldn’t, then you can stop him.”

  “And how do I do that? Ask him to stop? Perhaps I should say please.”

  Malcolm was a foot shorter than Angus and twice his age, but he looked at him with narrowed eyes. “I have boxed your ears and I can do it again.”