Days of Gold

by Jude Deveraux

  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 be
cause 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.

  13

  ON 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.

  But Edilean knew that her choices weren’t going to be so easy. By her manner and dress, she’d be able to have only one type of man, meaning someone like James. But Angus had made her not want a man like James. Whereas once she’d thought of James as elegance personified, now when she thought of him he seemed rather useless.

  But she knew she wasn’t to have a choice in what she was to do with her life. Because of the trunks of gold in the hold of the ship—which Angus had checked on four times—her life had been decided for her. She was where she was now not by choice but because of gold.

  When Angus returned to the cabin a couple of hours later, he was sweaty and in a much better mood.

  “Dancing again?”

  “Rope climbing and betting,” he said. “I won.”

  Smiling, she wished she could have seen him. No doubt the sailors thought that Angus was, well... as unlike James as it was possible to be. “The sailors must have been surprised at what you could do.”

  “Aye, they were,” he said as he sat down at the table and picked up the quill and began to draw. Since he’d made the sketches of the house, he hadn’t stopped drawing. Out of curiosity, she’d asked him to draw something besides buildings, and she’d even posed for him to do her portrait, but he couldn’t. He’d turned out something little better than a child would. “I think I’ll stay with my buildings,” he’d said, and she’d agreed.

  I can’t think about this, she told herself. If she thought about leaving and never seeing Angus again, she knew she’d start crying and never stop.

  Now, as she woke and, as she always did, glanced over at Angus, she felt more calm than she had in days. It had taken him a week, but he’d finally learned how to sleep in the hammock without falling out of it. When she looked, he was staring at her, and his eyes were so red that he looked as though he hadn’t slept all night.

  “Are you all right, lass?” he asked softly.

  “I’m fine,” she said and meant it. Surprisingly, she was all right. In fact, she was feeling a bit of excitement running through her as she thought about what was to happen today. They were to disembark in a brand-new country.

  It was Angus who was the nervous one. “What if there’s not a house ready for you?” he’d asked yesterday. “What if Harcourt didn’t make provision for you?”

  “You’re the one who said he would have made arrangements for himself, so I’ll just use them as long as I can. Please stop fretting so.”

  “I have never ‘fretted’ in my life,” Angus said, looking affronted, and she had to hide her smile.

  Hours later, when the ship had at last dropped anchor and they were in the harbor of Boston, Edilean was sure she’d never seen so much hustle and bustle in her life. She’d spent a lot of her life in London, but this place was different. It was louder, dirtier, and bigger. She could see people and wagons and animals far down the streets. But for all the noise and dirt, there was an excitement that she’d never felt in ancient London.

  “It’s wonderful,” she said to Angus, who was standing close beside her.

  “It smells bad.” He took her arm in his and held it tightly.

  “No more than London,” she said.

  “That’s what I said. It stinks.”

  She laughed, then pulled away from his arm. “Come on, we have to oversee that the trunks are brought up. I want to count them to make sure that no one runs off with one of them.”

  “Too heavy,” Angus said grumpily, but he followed her away from the rail.

  Minutes later they were back in their cabin and Edilean was having a last look around. “I think we got everything. I don’t think we left anything.” She started for the door, but Angus caught her arm and pulled her close to him.

  “Lass,” he said, looking down at her. “If you ever need anything, anything at all, I’ll come to you. You know that, don’t you?”

  She put her small hands on his chest and looked up int
o his eyes. “Yes, I know that, and if you need anything, I’ll help you.”

  “Me? What could I need?” he asked, his voice full of amusement.

  “If you marry Tabitha you’ll need a lot of everything. Be sure she doesn’t steal you blind.”

  “I don’t think that’ll happen,” he said, smiling, his arms loosely about her waist.

  “Let me go,” she said and pushed against him. “The captain will want to say good-bye to us, and I need to see if anyone is waiting for me. Do you think it will be a man?”

  “A man?”

  “Yes,” she said, smoothing her skirt. “A man. You’ve heard of them, haven’t you? If I’m to stay in this country I think I’m going to need a husband. I don’t like living alone.”

  “A man,” Angus said.

  “Will you stop repeating that? What did you think I was going to do when I got here? Sit in my parlor doing my embroidery and pining away for you as you romp with Tabitha or someone of her ilk?”

  “I think I should see any man you want to marry,” he said, his jaw set in a firm line.

  “But you don’t need to do that,” Edilean said. “You’ve spent these weeks teaching me what is valuable in a man. I won’t fall for a pretty face again, and I won’t fall for a man who just wants my money. I’m going to hold out for a man who likes me, one who doesn’t see me as a nuisance of a child as you do.”

  “You have been a sweet companion,” he said, looking at her as though trying to memorize her face.

  “And you have been...” She hesitated. “When you weren’t making a fool of yourself over Tabitha’s bosom, you’ve also been a good companion.”

  “A fool of myself?” he asked, repeating her words under his breath as though he couldn’t believe them.

  “Shall we go?” she said, looking at the door, waiting for him to open it.

  “Yes,” Angus said as he held the door for her.

  As soon as her back was to him, Edilean let out her pent-up breath. She congratulated herself on carrying that off as well as she had. It hadn’t been easy to pretend to be unaffected by their parting. For all that she felt excitement at the prospect of a new life, the idea of leaving Angus was about to split her in two. If she let herself go she would have thrown her arms about his neck and begged him to stay with her. But she knew that he’d tell her something about their not being of the same class or the same education or some other nonsense, then he’d put on his “hero face” and do whatever he thought was noble and good—and leave her. Since there was no hope at all that she’d be able to make him change his rock-hard, stubborn mind, she wasn’t going to let him have the satisfaction of knowing how she felt about him.