Days of Gold (8 page)

“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 stand by and do nothing when another person’s life is threatened.”

“I hardly think marriage is death.”

She stood up in the coffin, unsteadily, and grabbed the back of the wagon seat. “If you were a prince and forced to marry an ugly princess you’d not be so calm about it.”

“Me, a prince?” He was still standing in one place and looking up at her.

“Could we just
go
? If it’s after midnight, then my uncle will come for me soon.”

Angus was trying to think about what to do. “I’ll get you back to him as soon as I can, and we’ll sort this marriage out.”

“I’m not going to return to him.”

“Yes, you are,” Angus said as he climbed onto the wagon seat. “I’ll talk to him. We’ll
all
talk to him. He’ll find some handsome lad for you to marry, and—”

“Handsome!” She was standing in the back of the wagon, and
he was on the seat, so their faces were nearly level. “Do you think
that
is my worry? Do you think all this is about whether or not I have a beautiful husband? No, it’s about those!” She pointed to the trunks.

“Some old statues?”

“No. They’re not historical objects. Those trunks are full of gold and they’re my dowry. I told you that the man who marries me gets the gold. But my uncle has made an arrangement with Ballister and Alvoy that if I marry one of them, my uncle will keep the gold and give my husband and me only ten percent of it. I’m not only fleeing a hideous marriage but poverty as well.”

The full realization of what Angus had become a part of was coming to him. It would look as though he’d kidnapped Lawler’s niece and stolen six trunks full of gold. Hanging would be too light a punishment for him. This crime was so great they’d have to invent a new way to kill him.

“Why are you looking sick?”

“They will hang me,” he whispered.

“For what? Stupidity?”

“Kidnapping and stealing!” he said loudly as he put his face close to hers.

“Oh. Yes, I see. If it helps any, Shamus didn’t know either that I was in the wagon or that he carried gold.”

Angus wiped his hand over his face. “And what would have happened when he found out?”

“He wasn’t supposed to.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a little bottle. “James sent me a bottle of laudanum, and it was to keep me asleep the whole way. James was to wake me with a kiss,” she said, smiling dreamily.

Turning, Angus looked over the horses’ heads to the road. Was there a way to right this? “And this James is... ?”

“The man I love. James Harcourt. I wrote him of my predicament and he took care of everything. He found when the gold was to be shipped to my uncle, took it, and put it on this wagon. He also put the coffin in the back for me. All I had to do was get someone—Morag—to let me out of my room and get someone else—Shamus—to meet the wagon and drive it back to James.”

“So where is he?”

“My uncle?”

“No! This man you say you love. Where is he?”

“Waiting for me in Glasgow.”

“Then he himself took
no
risks. He gave a drug to a woman he loves, let her travel in a coffin at the mercy of a man like Shamus, not to mention highwaymen, and he—”

“What’s wrong with Shamus?”

“I would need a week to tell you.” He looked about at the dark forest. “We have to go. Now.”

“To my uncle?”

“Do you think he’d believe the truth, that I knew nothing about this?”

“Shamus could tell him—”

“The Shamus you seem to think is so good is—” He threw up his hands. “We have to go and I need to think.”

“I don’t have to get back in the coffin, do I?”

“I ought to put you in it and nail it shut.” Instead, he had to practically lift her over the back of the seat to sit beside him. A minute later, they were moving. Angus was grinding his teeth as he thought of the situation he was now in and how to get out of it. How could he ever again go
home
?

“I don’t know why you’re so angry at me,” she said. “All you have to do is drive to Glasgow and let me off. James will take care of everything after that.”

“Then what? I go back to my own clan? To my own family? Do you think your uncle is too stupid to know
I
took his rich niece, that
I
stole his gold?”

“This isn’t the way it was supposed to happen. Shamus—”

“Do not mention his name again. If he’d taken the wagon all the way to Glasgow—which I doubt—whatever money he got he would have kept and he would never have returned to Clan McTern. One by one his brothers have left, so he would have too.”

“And if I had woken up early in the coffin?” Her voice was a whisper, as what he was telling her was beginning to sink in.

“Let’s just say that by the time you got to this John—”

“James.”

“Harmon—”

“Harcourt.”

“To this man who doesn’t risk his own skin to get both a bride
and
a wagon full of gold, you wouldn’t be something he wanted.”

“Oh.” She moved closer to Angus and looked around her with frightened eyes. “Shamus is actually bad?”

“Very, very bad.”

She moved even closer.

“The worst I’ve ever seen.”

Edilean slipped her arm through his, and pressed her body close to his.

Under his beard, Angus couldn’t help smiling. “Shamus would probably have held you somewhere for days and tortured you. Tickled your bare feet with a goose feather.”

She looked up at him in puzzlement, then grimaced. “You’re teasing me.”

“Yes, fool that I am. Now be quiet and let me think.”

Angus was sure that when the girl was found to be missing, Malcolm would get Shamus and figure out what had been done. Malcolm
would even figure out about the coffin—and he would make sure he misled Lawler long enough for Angus to get to Glasgow.

At these thoughts Angus relaxed a bit and he could feel the girl, still close by him, slumping so much he wondered if she’d fallen asleep. Laudanum was a powerful drug. Take too much and a person never woke up.

As he drove, Angus began to realize the enormity of the situation. He could never go home again. Never again would he see any of the people he’d known all his life. He wouldn’t see his sister’s children grow up. Wouldn’t see young Tam grow into manhood.

He couldn’t help it as a tear came to his eye and it dropped on the girl, making her stir. “Ssssh, lass, go back to sleep.” Had she been any other girl he would have put his arm around her and held her while she slept, but not her.

But she didn’t go back to sleep. “Were you telling the truth when you said you can’t go back? Or were you just angry at me?”

“I canna return. It’s one thing to stand before your uncle and admit you threw his niece into a horse trough, but another to admit to... to this.”

“I’m sorry I hit you on the neck with my whip. I meant to hit your shoulder, but you bent and...”

“The whip hit my neck,” he finished for her. “It healed.”

“How can you tell under all that hair?”

“Some girls like my hair.”

“I never cared for facial hair on a man.” She was quiet for a moment. “What will you do? Where will you live?”

“I’ll be all right. Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m sorry I got you into this. It’s all my fault, Mr. McTern. I know! Why don’t you go to the New World with James and me?”

“Is that what you have planned?”

“Yes. He has the tickets, and we have the best cabin on the ship,
the
Mary Elizabeth
. James did so very much work. After I wrote him of my predicament and the treachery of my uncle, he planned everything.”

“So he’ll take care of you as soon as I leave you there?”

“Oh, yes. He’s meeting me at the inn with men to load the trunks onto the ship. Then the next day we sail at four
P.M
. and James says we’ll be wed by eight. We’re going to get married on board the ship.” When he said nothing, she added, “By the captain.”

“Aye, I understand.”

She was quiet for a while. “Do you leave a sweetheart behind?” She looked at him in shock. “Do you leave a
wife
behind?”

“No, no wife, no bairns, but there will be at least a dozen women who will be heartbroken.”

She knew he was making light of the situation, but it was a serious matter. By trying to save her, he’d inadvertently given up his entire world. “What will you do?” she asked again, not knowing what else to say.

“You’re not to worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

“Do you think my uncle will send men to hunt you?”

“Aye, I’m afraid he will.”

“Then, Mr. McTern, you
must
go to America with us. People are free there. Or more free than they are here, anyway.”

“What would I do in a new country?”

“What will you do in this one?”

“I don’t know, lass, but that’s a big decision. To leave my homeland? I don’t know if I can do that. But it is kind of you to worry so about me.”

For a moment, with the moonlight on her beautiful face, he found himself leaning toward her.

But she moved away and said quickly, “James will take care of you.”

Angus’s shoulders stiffened at her comment. Her words hurt more than that little whip on his neck had. She’d reminded him of the class difference between them. She could play the lady and talk of “helping” him, but when he got too close, she pulled away, and spoke of how a higher-class man would “take care of” him.

Unaware of his thoughts, Edilean sat in silence for a moment, looking at the dark around them. There was a lantern on the wagon, and they could see the road, but the darkness surrounded them.

Angus didn’t know what he was going to do with his life, what his future would be. The only thing he was certain of was that he’d never put himself in a position where “James” would have to take care of him.

E
DILEAN KNEW SHE
was talking too much, but she was trying to cover her nervousness. She felt bad that her problems had changed this man’s life. The reason she’d asked Shamus to drive her to the port near Glasgow was because she’d sensed that he was like her and an outcast. But this man wasn’t.

After her first encounter with him, people had gone out of their way to tell her that it wasn’t possible that Angus McTern had loosened her saddle. “He takes care of us all,” she was told.

In the week between when she’d struck him and when he’d dropped her into the horse trough, she’d heard nothing but good about him. Wherever she went, someone told her about Angus. Often, she wasn’t told directly. She’d visit Marmy in the stables and people would suddenly appear outside the stall and they’d put on a “conversation” about Angus.

According to them, he was the epitome of every virtue known to mankind. After four days of these staged talks she’d wanted
to shout, “Do you expect me to
marry
him? Is that what you’re after?”

During the last of that week, as Edilean went over every point in her life, she thought that she shouldn’t have been so awful to the man. She should have worked harder to make him like her. If she had, then maybe he would have helped her when she’d asked him to. She even thought that maybe she could have offered the current laird to her uncle as an alternate husband. If Angus McTern was half as honorable as she’d been told, he might have been persuaded to relinquish the gold to her uncle.

But then what? she thought. Was she to go live with him in one of those two-room stone cottages and make a baby every year?

Now, she could feel the warmth of him at her side. It was cold, and she wished she could move closer to him, but things had changed when he’d leaned toward her and she’d acted as though she found him repulsive. But she didn’t. It was the way she’d survived years of aggression from too-friendly men.