Days of Gold (19 page)

Edilean could see herself in a blue silk dress, her hair in curls about her neck—and a baby in her arms and one standing, his little hands on her skirt. The vision was so clear that she could see the faces of the children. The older one was a boy and he looked like Angus, and the baby was a girl who looked like her.

Getting up, she went to the windows and looked out, trying to rid herself of the vision, but it stayed with her. Maybe it was his drawing of the house that was making it all so clear to her, but it was as though she were looking into a crystal ball and seeing the future.

But that was ridiculous! Angus McTern had made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with her once they were in America. She was on her own.

Turning, she picked up one of the books the captain had lent her and set her mind to reading it.

Angus stood by the ship’s rail, looking over the side. Part of him wanted the ship to slow down and another part wanted it to hurry up so he could get the good-byes over with. The captain said that if the weather held, they’d be landing at Boston harbor in about a week.

And that would be the end, he thought. That would be the last time he’d ever see Edilean. “Edilean,” he whispered, with only the sea to hear him.

The last days of her coolness had been difficult for him, but he’d been glad for her anger. He knew that if they’d kept on in the
way they had been, he would have gone insane with wanting her. Wanting not just to touch her but also to make her smile, to laugh, to come back at him with one of her little rejoinders that made him want to pull her into his arms and kiss her.

But he couldn’t do that. Oh, he knew that she was beginning to think she was in love with him, but that had happened before with other girls. What was different was how he felt about her. No other woman had come close to making him feel as she did, as though he could do anything. It wouldn’t surprise him if she told him she believed he could fly. And when she looked at him with such wonder in her beautiful eyes, Angus thought maybe he could develop wings and soar away.

No, he couldn’t do that, he thought. She was just a girl, barely past eighteen, while he was, at twenty-five, not old, but compared with her, he felt as though he’d lived a thousand years. He’d never told her, but her uncle had sent him on many errands, some of them a great deal less noble than protecting some sissy Englishman as he drew pictures of old castles.

Angus knew Edilean thought she’d had a difficult life because she’d not had a mother and father to tuck her in at night, but he knew she’d been sheltered and taken care of. Her father’s money had been there, even if he hadn’t been there in person. So she spent a week or two with some girl she didn’t like. What horror was that?

She’d not seen her father die before her eyes, as Angus had. She’d not seen her mother waste away from too much work and the loneliness of her life. And Edilean hadn’t been told since the day she was born that she was responsible for the health and well-being of an entire clan of people. More than once, Malcolm had taken him by the shoulders and said, “The fate of Clan McTern rests with you, lad. It’s all up to you. You must undo what your grandfather—my father—did.”

All his life, Angus had heard in detail what a nasty piece of work his grandfather had been. He’d raided other people’s sheep during the night, had stolen from everyone within a hundred miles. He’d been caught often and several times had escaped death by mere minutes. When he was thirty a young woman, a lover, had rescued him from the gallows. Three days later his wife gave birth to Angus’s father. But his wife forgave him for whatever he did. It was said that all the women forgave him for anything.

Maybe his wife forgave him, but his three sons didn’t. The eldest one lived to adulthood, but he was killed when his son, Angus, was only five. The second son had tried to follow his father, to be as “tough” as he was, but he couldn’t. He died in a nighttime raid and a month later his young wife gave birth to Tam. Only Malcolm survived his father’s treachery.

Angus’s father had done his best to hold the clan together, but too much hatred had been created over the years. During a raid on McTern sheep, Angus’s father was stabbed in the stomach by a man hiding in the bushes. He’d lived long enough to get home, but died soon after, with his wife and young son beside him. His last words had been to his little son, telling him he had to take care of the McTerns. “Don’t do to them what my father does.” He’d held the hands of his wife and son. “I’m glad I won’t see the old bastard as I know he’ll go to hell.” He’d smiled at the words, then closed his eyes and died.

It was said that on the night Angus’s grandfather gambled away everything on one cut of the cards, the moon was full and the wolves came out to howl in protest. No one knew what happened to the old man after that. He’d laughed off every bad deed he’d done, every tear—and every death—he’d caused, but losing his family’s past as well as their future was too much even for him. Three weeks later, he was found sitting in a chair in a pub in Edinburgh, dead.

Angus’s mother died a few years after that, leaving Angus and his sister alone.

“And why that sad look?”

Turning, he saw Tabitha standing close to him, her dark eyes giving him suggestive looks. Had he met her a year ago, he would have liked the way she looked at him.

“You have another fight with the missus?”

When he gave her a look that said he was going to tell her nothing, she laughed.

“I’m going to find out the truth between you two,” she said.

“There is no hidden truth,” Angus said. “We are what you see.”

Tabitha gave a little laugh to let him know she didn’t believe him. “Will you set up a house together in America?”

“Yes, of course,” he said, gritting his teeth. The woman really was an annoying creature. He’d seen her three times since the first day and she was always prying into his life—and nearly always right. She saw what others did not. “If you’re so perceptive, how did you get caught by a man?”

“Love,” she said quickly. “You can’t help what love does to you, now can you?”

He didn’t bother to answer but turned back to look at the sea. Behind them a man yelled that the women were to go back down below.

“They’re afraid we’ll corrupt the men,” Tabitha said.

“And haven’t you?”

“Any corruption I’ve done has been mutual,” she said as she went to where the other women were gathering and grumbling about having to go down again.

Angus looked back at the sea and thought about how Edilean was so jealous of Tabitha. At even a hint of the woman, Edilean’s eyes flashed fire and she looked like she wanted to attack someone.

Love, Angus thought. Tabitha said she’d had an affair with her employer because of love, and Angus knew that Edilean was beginning to think she was in love with him. But she wasn’t. She was just scared of being alone in a new country. And alone she had to be. Or at least separated from him, from Angus McTern.

It was tempting—oh, so very, very tempting—to make a few advances toward her, to “accidentally” touch her hand, to look at her in a way that would let her know what was in his mind. He knew that if he did, it would take only minutes before she fell against him, before she gave herself to him.

But then what? he thought. He had to close his eyes as he imagined delicious weeks, perhaps even months, of lovemaking. They’d have quiet dinners that they’d never finish because they’d be on each other’s bodies.

But somewhere in there he knew that their true selves would begin to show. Edilean had spent her life in school, while Angus couldn’t read. Edilean loved silk dresses and afternoon tea; Angus liked to roll in a tartan and sleep on the ground.

There was no common ground between them. Now, on the ship, with Angus wearing another man’s clothes, and using a false accent, it was almost as though they were equals. He saw the way her beautiful face lit up when she saw he could do something besides run through the heather.

But that wasn’t him. He couldn’t spend his life trying to be someone else. It wouldn’t take long before people saw through him. Even Tabitha, a woman who’d lived in the dregs of society, had seen through him. She knew he was an imposter.

Angus had a vision of some handsome young man who had a degree from a university making Edilean laugh about some French poet. And that night she would look at Angus with contempt.

What if they married? He could see her telling their children not
to ask their father. “He knows nothing,” she’d say. Or no, she’d be too polite to say it, but they’d know. He’d be in the midst of a family that laughed together over poetry and stories written in Greek, and Angus would be left out of it.

Even now he could imagine his anger at being so treated. What would he do? Have an affair with a woman like Tabitha? While his wife and children were at home in their pure, innocent beds, would he be like his grandfather and spend his nights out with loose women? Would he need them to feel like a man?

Angus ran his hand over his face to clear away his ugly thoughts. All he knew for sure was that he could not continue to be with Edilean after the voyage ended. He knew that when they docked she’d no doubt look at him with her “save me” eyes. They’d be near to tears, and she’d be so beautiful that he’d be ready to grab a sword and lead an army into war for her. But he had to resist her!

If he knew anything in life, it was that if he stayed with her, married or not, they’d come to hate each other. She would hate him, or worse, come to despise him, because underneath the elegant clothes he was no gentleman. And he’d hate her because he couldn’t make himself into what she wanted him to be.

He took a few breaths and tried to strengthen his resolve. No matter how she looked at him, no matter what her eyes said—he doubted that her pride would let her say the words—he wouldn’t give in to her. For all that she loved to think she was a grown woman, she wasn’t.

When they got to America he’d stay long enough to make sure she was set up in a society of her own, then he’d leave. For all that she said good things about Virginia, he couldn’t see her living anywhere but in a city, and from what he’d heard, Boston was as bristling as London.

Angus pushed himself away from the railing. If he ever needed strength in his life, now was the time.

O
N THE DAY
they were to reach Boston, Edilean awoke feeling calm. She hadn’t slept for the three nights before as she lay awake, worrying about what was coming, but last night had been different. It was as though her fate was sealed, there was nothing she could do about it, so she resigned herself.

But she couldn’t say the same thing about Angus. As far as she could tell he was a nervous wreck. Yesterday as she’d been packing, he’d hovered over her, asking if she had everything, was she sure she wasn’t leaving something behind?

“Captain Inges said he would be in Boston for weeks, so if I do leave a hairpin behind I can return to the ship and get it,” she said patiently. “Why don’t you sit down and draw something? Or go up on deck and dance with those women?”

“Are you sending me to Tabitha? Or maybe you’d like for me to go down into the hold to see her?”

“If you’re trying to make me jealous, you aren’t even coming
close. Once we get to America, you’re a free man. You can go after Tabitha and buy her for all I care.”

“Buy her? Oh, her bondage papers. Yes, I could do that,” he said, still looking about the cabin and pacing now and then. “And maybe I will marry her. She’d make a good wife.” When Edilean said nothing to that, Angus kept on. “She’s already proven that she’s fertile.” As he spoke, he looked at Edilean as she knelt by the trunk, putting away the clothes that Margaret had remade for her.

“Has she?” Edilean asked without much interest. “How nice for you. Did the father keep the baby?”

“It was stillborn.”

“If it ever existed.”

“What does that mean?”

Edilean got up to get a book off the table where they’d eaten breakfast together every morning of the entire voyage. Angus was right behind her. “You sound like you don’t believe that Tabitha had a baby.”

She put the book in the trunk. “I’m sure she’s done what it takes to create a baby.”

“As you have not,” Angus said, looking at her.

She turned, her hands on her hips, and glared at him. “Why don’t you go on deck and bother someone else with your questions? You could ask each of the women if she’s had a hard time in life, then you could tell yourself that compared to them, my life has been easy because I have money.”

“I never said— I never meant—You don’t think that I—”

“Go!” she said as she put her hands on the small of his back and pushed him toward the door of the cabin. “Get out of here. I have work to do, and I can’t do it with you in here trying to start a fight.”

“I was doing no such thing,” he said as he went through the door.

When he was gone, Edilean leaned against the door, closed her eyes for a moment, and smiled. She enjoyed his nervousness, because it was the same way she felt. The prospect of a whole new country was daunting. But more than the idea of a country, the thought of her future scared her. She’d reconciled herself to the fact that she and Angus would separate when they arrived, but that was easier for him than for her. Angus had shown that he could be anyone he wanted to be. He could put on the clothes of a workman and get himself a wife who would spend her days scouring floors, then at night pop out a pair of ten-pound twins. Or he could put on James’s clothes and get a woman who read Cicero in the original Greek. Whatever he wanted, he could have.