Days of Gold (Edilean 2)

Angus stared at the man, and even if he hadn’t spoken, he knew he would have disliked him on sight. To Angus’s mind the man was Ballister and Alvoy, only a few years earlier.

“I knew you’d be in a hurry to see me!” Edilean said, and launched herself into his arms. He caught her, but just barely.

“You’re filthy! What is that all over you?”

“Sawdust. That coffin you sent for me was full of it. James, darling, aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Of course I am,” he said, but he pulled away when she tried to kiss him. “Look at what you’ve done to me. I’m as dirty as you are. Here! You!” he shouted to two burly men standing at the back of the wagon. “Be careful of those. I don’t want the bottoms falling out.” He moved away from her to direct the men in the unloading of the trunks full of gold.

Angus was still sitting on the wagon seat, too tired to get down. Two young men had come from the back and were unhitching the horses. “Be sure you feed them well.”

“Mr. Thomas raised them from colts,” one of the men said. “He won’t like to see them used this hard.”

“Nothing I could do about it,” Angus muttered as he got down. He looked about at the stalls, hoping to see a clean one so he could sleep in it.

“Did you see him?” Edilean asked as she went to Angus, her beautiful face alight.

“Aye, I saw him,” he said, not able to keep from smiling at her. “He’s as bonnie as you are. They should put his face in a story-book.”

“Oh you! You’re always teasing me. I want you to stay here while I get some money from James. I want to give you something for your time and trouble.”

“I will make my own way,” he said stiffly. “It was my choice to do this, and you paid Shamus for the task. You shouldn’t have to pay twice.”

“But you can’t end up here with no money. You have to at least have a place to stay tonight.”

“Are you asking me to share your room?”

“No!” Edilean said, her eyes wide, then she shook her head at him. “What would it take to make you too tired to laugh at me?”

“That will never happen. Now you should go to your young man. Perhaps this time tomorrow you’ll be married to him and you’ll be a happy bride.”

“Yes,” she said, but she didn’t move away from him. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes, of course.” He kept looking down at her, and tired as he was, what that man said when he first saw her kept running through his head. Now the man was overseeing the unloading of the gold while his bride-to-be was left alone. Maybe Harcourt didn’t realize how much she wanted to see him, or how much she’d been through to get to him.

“All right, then,” she said. “I guess this is the last time I’ll ever see you.”

“By tomorrow you won’t even remember my ugly, hairy face.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” she said softly. “I will never forget your face. I think I might remember it for the rest of my life.”

He wanted to touch her, wanted to put his hand to her soft face, but he didn’t. “Go, lassie,” he said. “Go to your husband.” It took some doing on his part, but he turned and walked out of the stables and into the night.

His bravery lasted until he was at the front of the inn, when he saw a handbill with a woodcut of his picture on it. It had been nailed to the side of a fence and offered a five-thousand-pound reward for him. Angus tore the paper off the fence and stared at it. How had they done this so fast? And where had the likeness of his face come from?

He looked down the dark streets, fearful that someone would recognize him, but no one was looking at him. He was just another man in from the country, wandering the streets and looking for a way to spend his money.

Angus went back into the stables to give himself time to think about what to do. He’d been so sure that Malcolm would keep Lawler away from him, that Angus hadn’t even been anxious during the trip. So why hadn’t they found him?

He knew that the answer was that someone had told Lawler a lot of lies. If the truth had been told, Angus would have been caught a day ago.

He stood inside a stall, leaning against the wall, with the handbill crumbled in his hand. He could read the numbers on it enough to know how much Lawler was offering for his capture, but he didn’t know what else it said about him.

“James,” he heard Edilean say, “I don’t want to stay in my room all day tomorrow. I want to be with you.”

“Well, you can’t!” Harcourt snapped.

Turning, Angus could see them through the openings between the boards. Edilean looked radiant, thrilled even, to at last be with the man she loved, but Harcourt didn’t look glad to see her. He certainly didn’t look like a man who was about to be married to a beautiful, intelligent, and very rich young woman should.