Days of Gold

  But that was all gone now. He’d not been cautious enough, hadn’t taken the anger of James Harcourt seriously. It had all seemed so long ago and far away that he’d not put himself in the place of the other man. They had thwarted the long, carefully laid plans of a man who was without conscience or morals. Did they think he was going to sit back and take it?

  Angus stroked Edilean’s hair. He knew she was safe from Harcourt. There was nothing he could do to her. She was past eighteen now, and by her father’s will, no longer under her uncle’s care, and the gold was hers. If she married—Angus nearly choked on the thought—her husband could protect her from any claims that Harcourt made up. It would be easy to prove that he’d married the earl’s daughter when he was supposed to be engaged to Edilean.

  Angus’s only worry was Harcourt’s sister, Harriet. Would she take Edilean’s side or her brother’s? But he knew the answer to that. Edilean had the money. It was a cruel fact of life, but a true one. From what Edilean had told him of Harriet, she was a sensible woman, and she despised her lazy, conniving brother.

  Angus picked up Edilean’s small hand, kissed each finger, and the palm. He held her hand to his face. “Don’t hate me too much,” he whispered, but he knew that he’d have to make her hate him. If he didn’t, she’d follow him.

  He got up and began to throw his clothes into a canvas bag. He hesitated over the diamonds, which were still on the table by the bed, but not to take them would seem disdainful of what she’d done for him. He took the necklace and the other pieces—they were too gaudy for Edilean to wear—but left the single earring.

  After another look at her beautiful face and before he got to the point where he’d never be able to go, he left the room, closing the door behind him. Sitting outside was the young man who’d brought her the day before, and he jumped up when he saw Angus.

  He looked at Angus as though he didn’t know whether to call him “sir” or to smirk about what must have happened during the night. Behind him the two horses were saddled and ready.

  “I didn’t know if she’d be wanting to leave this morning,” Cuddy said, and his anger of the day before was gone. “I can go back into Boston if she wants me to.”

  “She can do whatever she wants.” Angus gave the boy a leer, as though they were men together and knew about the world. “I got what I wanted from her, if you know what I mean.”

  He saw the way the boy’s spine stiffened, and Angus knew he’d rightly guessed that he was half in love with Edilean.

  “Here,” Angus said, tossing the boy a coin. “Take her home now. Wake her up and get her back to”—Angus waved his hand—“to wherever her sort comes from. Do you understand me? Take her now!”

  “Yes...” Cuddy said. He was looking at Angus as though he wanted to kill him. “I’ll take her away from here. I’ll take care of her.”

  “You do that.” Angus threw his pack over the better of the two horses.

  “That’s Miss Edilean’s horse,” the young man yelled. “You can’t take that!”

  Angus looked down at the boy from the saddle. “This is the least of what I’ve taken from her,” he said with a smirk that was unmistakable.

  “If I had a gun I’d kill you,” Cuddy said under his breath.

  “And save the devil from work?” Angus did just what Edilean had done and made the horse step backward to leave the stableyard. “Tell her from me that it was most enjoyable.”

  Cuddy watched the horse and rider leave the barn, then he said the foulest words he knew. He didn’t want to wake up Miss Edilean, but he also wanted to get her out of there. It would be better if she got as far away from this place as soon as possible.

  He took a few deep breaths, then knocked on the bedroom door.

  19

  YOU DON’T FOOL me,” Harriet said as she looked at Edilean across the breakfast table. “Something has deeply upset you.”

  “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” she said, glaring at Harriet.

  Edilean had been back from her night spent with Angus for three whole weeks now. And everything had changed. For her, being cast aside yet again had hurt so much that she was almost unable to feel it. The first time Angus left her, she took her rage out on some furniture and clothes, but this time her anger was so much deeper that she was unable to deal with it. It was as though a red-hot coal had been stabbed into her chest and was growing with each day. Things that had once been pleasurable were no longer. The men who called, with flowers and candy in their hands, didn’t receive smiles. Instead, Edilean glared at them. She didn’t act coy and flirt and make them feel that they were the smartest and wisest men on earth. Instead, she corrected their grammar and their poetry recitations, then told them they needed to finish school. The men crept out of her house with their faces red, muttering that they were needed elsewhere. They didn’t return.

  The first time Edilean repulsed an eligible man, she expected Harriet to give her a scolding, but she didn’t—which was odd. Since they’d met, Harriet’s main occupation had seemed to be to get Edilean married, but since Angus, since the night with the fight with Tabitha, it was as though Harriet had changed.

  After her night with Angus, Edilean returned to the house in Boston, and she thought she’d do what she did before and disappear into her room and cry. But she didn’t. She hadn’t shed even one tear since then.

  Edilean had expected that Harriet would lecture her about her wounds and her bloody clothes, but she didn’t. Instead, Harriet had ordered hot water to be carried upstairs for a bath and she’d put out clean clothes for Edilean. But she hadn’t asked a question about where she’d been or what she’d done. Instead, Harriet seemed to have her mind on something else, and she jumped at every sound.

  After about the twentieth time that Harriet was startled by some everyday sound, Edilean said, “Do you think I’m going to hit you?”

  “Why would I think you’d harm me?” Harriet asked.

  “Because that’s where I got all these bruises. From a fight.”

  Harriet seemed to come to the present enough to look at her in curiosity. “Did you? And who did you fight?”

  “Tabitha,” Edilean said. “She—”

  “I don’t believe I know her,” Harriet said quickly, but she was distracted again. “Was that a knock on the door?”

  “I didn’t hear it,” Edilean said. “If it’s a man, tell him he can go to hell.”

  Even the use of that word didn’t make a dent in Harriet’s distraction. She ran out of the room and Edilean heard her open the front door, but no one was there.

  For weeks now, Harriet had been nervous and high-strung, so unlike her usual calm demeanor.

  This morning was particularly bad for Edilean. She’d not allowed herself to say it out loud, but she’d hoped that she was with child. It was, of course, wrong to bring a child into the world out of wedlock, but that didn’t keep her from hoping. When her time of the month came that morning, she knew that she and Angus were truly over. Done with. Forever. She didn’t know what she’d done wrong, but she was sure that he didn’t want her—and now she’d never have anything from him.

  She looked at Harriet with cool eyes. “If you must know,” she said as she buttered a roll, “I was thinking about Tabitha.”

  “Tabitha?” Harriet asked, then jumped half out of her seat when the maid dropped something in the parlor.

  The fact that Harriet didn’t remember the many stories that Edilean had told her about Tabitha was another sign that her mind wasn’t on the present. “When are you going to tell me what’s made you like this?” Edilean asked.

  “It’s nothing. Go on with your story. What about this Tabitha? Maybe we could have her for tea.”

  “With or without her leg irons?” Edilean asked, but Harriet didn’t hear her because the maid dropped something else.

  “I can’t stand this!” Harriet said as she ran out of the room.

  “No noise allowed,” Edilean said under her breath, and pushed h
er plate away. Sometimes she thought of the difference between herself now and as she’d been before her uncle took her from school. While it was true that she’d had to be nice to a few people she didn’t care for in order to get the best invitations, she’d had a feeling that she was worth the finest that life had to offer. Edilean Talbot had been absolutely sure that she was better than and above women such as Tabitha. And Margaret. That woman had asked Edilean for a job once they got to America, but Edilean hadn’t even considered the idea.

  In the last weeks she’d thought more and more about the fight with Tabitha. At the time, Edilean had felt justified about it. But now she wondered what happened to Tabitha afterward. Edilean vividly remembered the branding scar that Tabitha had shown her. Never in Edilean’s life had she had to deal with something like that. Yes, her uncle had tried to make her marry a despicable man, and yes...

  Edilean knew that there were a lot of “yes” answers to questions in her life. But in the end, she’d won. True, men had hurt her, but she’d ended up with a nice home and a fat bank account. Now when she went to the bank, the president came out and addressed her with exaggerated courtesy.

  But what would happen to Tabitha? she wondered. After she lost the jewels, what was left for her? What had happened to Margaret and the other women on the ship? In fact, what happened to most of the women sent to America as prisoners? Did many of the men who bought their contracts brand them?

  “Oh, no!” Harriet said. She’d come back into the room, sat down, and picked up the newspaper, but Edilean hadn’t even noticed.

  “What is it?” Edilean asked. “The cost of chicken go up again?”

  “Worse,” Harriet said. “Mr. Sylvester died.”

  “Before I could marry him?” Edilean asked. “What a shame.”

  “Before you could humiliate him so he wished he were in his grave,” Harriet shot back. “Mr. Sylvester is the man who grows most of what you eat.”

  “Oh,” Edilean said, uninterested. She had no idea what she was going to do with her day. If she painted one more picture of a flower bouquet she thought she might be sick.

  “His poor wife. They have seven children, and the oldest is only ten.”

  “Making that many children probably killed him,” Edilean said.

  “You’re in a worse mood than usual this morning. But then, you usually are in a bad way, aren’t you? Are you sure you don’t want to tell me about it?”

  “I will when you tell me why you jump at every noise that’s made in this house.”

  Harriet looked across the table at her for a moment, then went back to her newspaper. “I wonder what will happen to them now? I can’t see Mrs. Sylvester tending to the farm when she has that many young children. Besides, she didn’t strike me as being interested in growing the best apples.”

  Edilean couldn’t contain how boring she thought this conversation was. “What’s the difference? An apple is an apple.”

  “You wouldn’t think that if you went to the market with me.”

  “I think I can find something better to do.”

  “What? Stay in this house all day and feel sorry for yourself? Draw more pictures of roses? You think I’m bad with my problems, but you’re worse. You are—Oh!” Harriet cut off her tirade because there was a shout in the street, then what sounded like carriages hitting each other.

  “Will you please stop jumping?!” Edilean shouted as she stood up from the table. “I’ll go to the market with you. I’ll look at all the apples. I’ll do whatever you want if you’ll just stop jumping!”

  Harriet threw her napkin on the table and stood up. “I’ll stop being startled when you stop retreating from the world every time that renegade of a man does something awful to you! When are you going to stop letting some man who has proven that he does not want you rule your every thought and action? When are you going to grow up and think about something other than your own pleasure in life? You didn’t get what you want out of life. Neither did any of us! But we don’t have your money and your exalted education so we can’t sit around and paint butterflies while other people wait on us.”

  With that she left the room, her heels echoing on the wooden floors as she went upstairs to her bedroom and slammed the door.

  Edilean sat back down in stunned silence, looking at the space where Harriet had been.

  When Edilean turned around, she saw three maids standing in the doorway, looking at her. They scurried away when she saw them, but she’d seen their eyes. They’d heard every word Harriet had shouted at her, and their expressions said they agreed with her.

  Did they hate her? Edilean wondered. She left the running of the household to Harriet, so she took little notice of the maids. The truth was that she didn’t even know the names of two of them.

  Edilean well knew that every word Harriet had said was true. Since the day she’d met Angus McTern, he’d dominated her every thought and deed. On the ship, it had been the worst. If it was good between her and Angus, she was happy. If it was bad, she was miserable. Happiness, sadness, all her emotions were controlled by a man who, as Harriet said, did not want her. She’d have to remember those words. But the truth was that she was sure she’d go to her grave remembering them. What would be on her gravestone? she wondered. HERE LIES EDILEAN TALBOT, WHO SPENT HER LIFE IN MISERY BECAUSE ANGUS MCTERN DIDN’T WANT HER.

  All in all, Edilean thought, True Love was better to read about than to experience. In real life, love hurt more than it made a person feel good.

  The problem was what to do about it all. How did one change one’s self? In England, no one had questioned her validity. She was a wealthy young woman, nice to look at, and that was everything she needed to be. No one expected her to do anything except to marry well. But her father’s will had changed that. He’d given her rights over her own money and her own life.

  The problem was that in this new country people seemed to expect everyone to pull his or her own weight. Through the church in Boston, she’d met American women from wealthy families who worked harder than the maids. They made their own jam, dug their own potatoes, and an hour later delivered a nine-pound child. It was what she’d feared ending up with in Scotland.

  Just the thought of all that made Edilean want to get on a ship and go back to England. She could buy herself a nice house and... She didn’t know what was to happen after that. Sit there and wait for suitors to come to her?

  When she heard Harriet in the hallway, Edilean got up and went to her. Harriet was angrily tying the ribbons on her bonnet.

  “Would you mind if I went with you?” Edilean asked meekly.

  “You do what you want to, you always do,” Harriet said as she picked up a big market basket, and opened the front door.

  Edilean grabbed her bonnet, but she didn’t need to hurry because Harriet paused on the doorstep and looked around, as though she expected someone to leap out of the bushes. Edilean didn’t ask who or what she was looking for because she knew Harriet wouldn’t tell her.

  Harriet hurried down the streets so fast that Edilean had to run to keep up with her. She held her bonnet on with her hand, the ribbons trailing out behind her. Four gentlemen doffed their hats at her, but she didn’t have time for them.

  Edilean had never been to a street market, but she’d been to many of Boston’s better shops when she was buying what they needed for the house. To her mind, the decoration of a house was something that a “lady” did, but except for overseeing the kitchen garden, food wasn’t her concern. She might go over the menu with the cook, but “ladies” didn’t go to the fish market and haggle. All her life, she’d left that task to other people.

  Harriet turned a corner, and Edilean stopped, her eyes open in wonder at the loud chaos before her. There seemed to be a hundred wagons, all of them laden with produce, meat, and homemade goods that had been brought to town to sell on market day.

  “It’s wonderful,” she said under her breath.

  Harriet turned to look at her, anger still on h
er face, but when she saw Edilean’s expression, she softened. “Stay close to me and don’t buy anything. These merchants will bargain you into the poorhouse.”

  Edilean nodded as she looked at the people and carts lining the street. She started to take a step forward, but Harriet pulled her back. She’d almost stepped into a pile of horse manure.

  “What can I sell a pretty lady like you?” asked a man with most of his teeth black.

  “Nothing!” Harriet said as she pulled Edilean forward. “He’s a dreadful man who’d sell his own mother if he thought he could get a good price.”

  “Do you know all of these vendors?”

  “Most of them,” Harriet said. “You have to learn who you can trust.”

  “And you trusted Mr. Sylvester?”

  “Completely. Oh! Look! His wife has the cart here. Come and see what she’s brought.”

  They went to a large cart where the produce was displayed in a haphazard way that Edilean didn’t think was very appealing, but Harriet didn’t seem to notice as she began to paw through the vegetables. Edilean stood back and looked at the place. It was extremely busy, with what looked to be hundreds of people rushing about. Most of the women carried big baskets like Harriet’s, and they were fighting crowds and arguing with sellers at the top of their lungs.

  For all that it was exciting, there was also an air of frustration about the place, as though the men were enjoying themselves, but the women just wanted to get it all done and over with.

  Behind the wagon was a young woman with a belly swollen with child and a toddler on her hip. She was gently crying into a handkerchief while three women hovered around her, looks of sympathy on their faces.

  “Is that the widow?” Edilean asked Harriet.

  “Yes. She’s much younger than her husband was. She certainly looks young to have seven children, doesn’t she?”

  “Very young,” Edilean agreed.

  “Poor thing. I wonder what she’ll do now.”