Days of Gold (3 page)

“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.”

A
NGUS 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 came 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.”

The statement was so absurd that it made Angus smile. “All right, but I’ll stay far away from her. I don’t think Shamus will harm her. And you should send someone to tell Tam to stop drinking whatever Shamus hands him.”

“I did that this morning,” Malcolm said, his face serious.

Angus lost his smile. He’d meant his words as a jest when he’d hinted that Shamus had poisoned young Tam, but maybe it was true. “I’ll take Tarka,” Angus said, referring to his favorite pony, one that could cover the rocky terrain easily, and he’d stay off the trail that the girl would most likely take with her elegant city horse.

It wasn’t long before Angus found them. She was riding in front, her back straight, looking ahead to the easy, flat trail, seeming not to have a care in the world. Well behind her, Shamus rode one of Lawler’s big hunters, looking bored and half asleep. He didn’t seem in the least interested in the young woman riding ahead of him.

Angus thought of turning and going back. If she saw him, he didn’t like to think what she’d believe. That he was following her? He stayed well hidden in the rocks, trailing the two of them as though they were cattle thieves, but he saw nothing suspicious. Maybe someone had told Shamus that it was in his own best interest not to do anything the girl could report to her uncle. Maybe they’d all misjudged him when they thought he’d given Tam something to make him ill. Maybe—

Angus’s head came up when he saw the girl halt. Turning her horse, she motioned for Shamus to come forward and help her
down. The big English sidesaddle she rode was difficult for a woman to climb onto, and it was a long drop to get off of by herself.

Angus thought that if Shamus was going to do something, now was the time. Angus got off his pony and moved down into the rocks to watch them. When he realized that if Shamus did try to do something to the girl, he was too far away to stop him, Angus stealthily made his way through the grass to get closer. He moved on his stomach, the stiff branches and the rocks scraping his bare legs, but it was the way he sometimes stalked a deer, so he knew how to move silently.

“Thank you,” he heard her say when Shamus helped her down. “I want to walk.”

Acting like a good servant, Shamus nodded, and the girl began to walk, leaving him to hold the reins to her horse. He wasn’t sure why, but Angus thought her actions were suspicious. It was almost as though she were sneaking off somewhere and didn’t want to be seen. Was she meeting someone? Was that why she was leaving her chaperone with the two horses and going off by herself?

Angus felt sure he’d found out the cause behind her fights with her uncle. Lawler probably knew she was secretly meeting someone, and he was angry about it.

Angus slithered through the bushes on his belly, being as quiet as a snake, not moving too quickly, so he didn’t scare up a flock of birds and give her warning that she was being watched. He wanted to see who she was meeting. It couldn’t be someone from the McTern clan; he’d know if it was.

But then, since she’d arrived, no one had treated him in quite the same way as they had. Since she had caused them all to laugh at him, no one had come to him to tell of something they were worried about, or to report something they suspected.

He moved slowly, quietly, then as he went over a little ridge, he
could just see the top of her ridiculous little hat. She was bending now and he felt sure he saw someone else. There was a flash of something white—a man’s shirt? Then he saw her arms move. She was in a love tryst! No wonder Lawler was angry at her.