Days of Gold (Edilean 2)

He was the second cousin of one of her school friends, not a girl she liked especially, but Edilean went to her house rather frequently just in the hope that James would visit.

At first he paid no attention to her. He came to parties and teas, but he sat in silence, playing with the lace at his wrist and rarely looking at the other people there.

This lack of attention was something new to Edilean. For since she was a child, she’d been told she was beautiful, so she was more used to men like that hairy-faced Scotsman who stared at her, dumbfounded, than she was to men who didn’t so much as look at her. The truth was, James’s inattention intrigued her. It was a relief when he didn’t stare at her with great, liquid eyes. In fact, his lack of attention made her start doing things to get him to notice her.

She had a good voice and she could play the pianoforte well, so she played and sang the after-dinner songs. But James yawned and nearly fell asleep.

One day, she suggested that they all go out together and sketch, as she was good at drawing. Later, everyone said hers was by far the best, but James barely looked at it.

She ordered new dresses that she hoped would catch his eye, but even when she asked him if he liked the trim around the low-cut neckline, he only smiled politely.

But one night they were playing whist, and her friend was annoyed that she was losing at every hand. “I’m sure you’ll win the next one,” Edilean said as she claimed the winnings off the table.

“That’s easy for you to say. You can afford to lose all you want.”

As the next hand was dealt, James said, “I thought you were staying with my cousin because you have no home.”

“That’s true,” Edilean said, thrilled that James was addressing her directly. “Before my father died, he sold everything and left me the proceeds.”

“She means he had it all converted into gold, and Edilean gets i

t when she turns eighteen.”

“Does she now?” James said, but he didn’t look up.

After that, James was more attentive. Edilean wasn’t stupid; she knew the dowry was what changed his mind, but she was also a realist. To live well, a person needed money, and she had noticed a few frayed edges on James’s waistcoats. It looked like whatever money his grandfather had made was now gone.

Whatever the reason that got him to finally look at her, it was worth it. What followed were three weeks of heaven. James came to her friend’s London house every day, and he sang and played the pianoforte with Edilean. Their duets became renowned among their friends. He posed for her so she could sketch him, and he heaped lavish praise on her drawings.

Perhaps the dowry had been what made James notice her, but it was their mutual interest in art and music that gradually made them begin to love each other.

The first time he kissed her, she thought she would fall down on the grass right there and let him have his way with her. “Not now,” James whispered. “We must wait until you are mine and mine alone.”

“Yes,” she whispered. She was so in love with him that she would do anything he asked.

When she went back to school for the last half term, she wrote to him every day. He replied, not every day, but often, and his letters were amusing and interesting and full of his love for her. He wrote of how he longed to see her again, how every night before he slept he kissed the miniature portrait of her that she’d given him.

Edilean held James’s letters to her breast, sometimes even slept with them, and counted the days until the end of the term when she and James could marry.

During the courtship, Edilean had never given so much as a thought to her uncle Neville. She knew that, legally, he was her guardian, and she’d met him once when she was a child, but since her father died, she’d not had a word from him. She knew little about him except that he lived in a castle in far-off Scotland. “He’s a gentleman,” her father said, “so all he does is hunt and eat.”

To Edilean it sounded very romantic, and she thought that someday she and her husband, James, would visit him.

But then one night one of the teachers came to her room and woke her. “You have to go,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Edilean asked, rubbing her eyes. She could see the moon through the window; it was still night.

“Your uncle has come for you and you’re to leave with him. Hurry and dress. He says you’re to come in what you have on and nothing more. We’re to send your clothes to you.”

“My uncle?” Edilean asked, her mind befuddled from lack of sleep. “But my uncle lives in Scotland.”

“Yes, he does,” the teacher said in exasperation. “And he’s come from Scotland and he’s going to take you back there.”

“But school hasn’t finished.”

“Edilean! Get up! Your uncle is waiting and he has a fierce temper. He was shouting at the headmistress. He wants you to dress and go with him now!”

The teacher flung back the covers and Edilean got out of bed, but she didn’t understand what was going on. If someone else had come for her, she would have thought that her uncle had died, but he hadn’t, and he was her only relative, so what was his rush?