Days of Gold (30 page)

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 her 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.”

“Sell the farm, make thousands, and marry someone else,” Edilean said quickly.

“You seem sure of yourself,” Harriet said as she picked up a plum and inspected it.

“Is it good enough for our table?” There was amusement in Edilean’s voice.

“Why don’t you go look around and see what the others have to offer?” Harriet said impatiently. “But just look; don’t buy.”

As Edilean took her up on the suggestion and began to walk around, she saw what Harriet meant. Several of the carts held produce that didn’t look fit to buy. It had been thrown into the wagon, so it was bruised, which meant it would rot in a day or two.

When she got to the end of the long row, there was a woman with her back to her who looked familiar. When she turned, Edilean saw that it was Tabitha, and in spite of herself, she almost felt
that she was seeing an old friend. Edilean knew so few people in America, and here was one of them.

She wasn’t sure if Tabitha saw her, but when she moved away, Edilean followed. She turned a corner, then stopped, for Tabitha had disappeared.

In the next second, Tabitha slipped out from beside a building and confronted Edilean. “What do
you
want?” Tabitha asked in anger. “You didn’t get enough of hurting me the last time? You came back to do more?” As she spoke, she was looking Edilean in her silk dress up and down with contempt.

“What happened to you after our confrontation?” Edilean asked, noting that Tabitha was filthy. On the ship she’d had enough pride in herself that she’d kept her hair neat and her clothes clean, but now she looked like she’d given up.

“What do you care?”

“I don’t,” Edilean said as she started to turn away.

“I could kill you for what you done to me,” Tabitha called out after her.

“Whatever do you mean?” Edilean asked, looking back at her. “You’re the thief, not me.”

“How was I to know your lover had diamonds? I thought they were just glass. They were in his pocket like so much rubbish, and when I brushed up against him, I just slipped them out. Who carries diamonds about in his pocket?”

Edilean wondered the same thing but didn’t say so. “And I took them from you and gave them back to him. Is that why you’re so angry and so...” She looked her up and down.

“Dirty?”

Edilean gave a little shrug.

“They... the people in the camp took the bracelets, then threw me out on my own because of what you did to me. They said I was
worthless to not know what I’d taken—and to let a lady like you beat me in a fight. But you was fightin’ for your life. I wasn’t.”

“True,” Edilean said coolly. “But I did beat you.” She knew that, logically, she owed this woman nothing, but still, she couldn’t seem to make herself leave. “Where are you living now?”

Tabitha’s face hardened. “Anywhere I can. With whatever man will have me for the night.”

A month ago, Edilean wouldn’t have fully understood what Tabitha meant, but she did now. To think of doing
that
with a man you didn’t love! It almost made her sick at her stomach. And Edilean well remembered that Tabitha had loudly declared she was no whore. She’d been branded by a man rather than bed him. But because of what Edilean had done to Tabitha, the woman was now walking the streets. “I have to go,” Edilean said. “Someone is waiting for me.”

“People always wait for rich women like you,” Tabitha said with a sneer.

Edilean’s temper rose to make her face red. “You may think you’ve had it easy, but I’ve been betrayed as often as you have!”

“So you didn’t get the man?” Tabitha smiled. “At least I’ve heard something good today.”

Edilean couldn’t help it as her hands made into fists and she had an urge to punch Tabitha. They were glaring at each other like two dogs about to fight when Edilean said, “Why did you leave your father’s farm?”

For a moment Tabitha looked startled, but then she straightened her shoulders. “He wasn’t my father but my stepfather, and he married my mother to get at her daughters. After three years of it I ran away. What does that matter to you?”

Edilean took a step closer to her. “What kind of farm was it?”

“What does that mean?”

Edilean stared at her.

“It was a farm with cows and pigs and corn. What other kind of farm is there?”

“What if I bought a farm and gave you a job?”

“You? Buy a farm?” Tabitha asked, her lips curled into a sneer.

Edilean turned and started back down the street.

“Wait!” Tabitha called out.

Edilean stopped walking but she didn’t turn around.

“Who else would be on the farm? I can’t do it all by myself. There’s a lot of work on a farm.”