Days of Gold (Edilean 2)

“What is this?” She picked it up and opened the buckle, and went through the papers inside. “It’s our passage to America. Everything that James and I need to get on the ship is in here. Even the captain’s name. And here’s our marriage certificate. It’s...” She looked at him. “I don’t understand. This isn’t my name on the certificate and it says James was married last week.”

“Harcourt’s wife’s name is on there because he married her.”

“No,” Edilean said impatiently. “That’s not possible. I am to be his wife.”

Angus put his head back against the chair. Maybe he’d go to sleep right there and then. “He already has a wife.”

Edilean got up off the floor to stand before him. “Angus McTern, so help me, if you go to sleep now, I’ll hit you with the candlestick.”

“Please do,” he mumbled. “Then I could sleep for sure.”

She pulled back her foot and kicked his shin, just as she’d done twice before. But she forgot that she had on her nightgown, and her feet were bare.

The next moment she was hobbling about the room in tears of pain. “I think my toes are broken. Your shin is as hard as stone.” She sat down on the end of the bed to examine her foot.

Angus couldn’t help smiling. She looked sweet in her white nightgown, holding her foot and looking at it. He pushed himself out of the chair, sat down beside her, lifted her foot, and pulled each of her toes. “None of them is broken.”

She looked at him, his eyes red from weariness, holding her small foot in his big hand, and said, “Could you please tell me what is going on? Why did you hit James and who is the woman on the marriage certificate?”

He put her foot down, but stayed seated beside her. In her nightclothes she looked, if possible, even more beautiful. “I didn’t trust him so I followed him, and I heard him talking about his wife who is the daughter of an earl.”

“But my father wasn’t an earl.”

“I know,” Angus said. “That’s the point.”

Edilean was at last beginning to understand. She looked at James lying on the floor, still unconscious. “My friend, his cousin, told me that James was holding out for a woman with a title.”

“But he agreed to marry you for the money,” Angus said softly, looking at her hair in the candlelight. He raised his hand to touch it but dropped it when she turned back to him.

“I heard James tell the men to put the gold on the ship. Was he planning to sail off with his wife and my gold?”

“He was,” Angus said softly.

“But he can’t do that,” she said. “That gold belongs to me, not to him.”

“It’s called thievery and it’s been done for a while now.”

“Will you please stop treating me as though I’m a silly child? What am I supposed to do now?”

“I think you should go to America on your own. Your dowry is already on the ship, and the passage is booked.”

“Alone? I’m to go to a new country by myself?”

He looked at her beautiful face and thought how every fast-talking, dishonest cad in the country would go after her, and she’d fall for the first pair of blue eyes she saw. “Just be careful about the men who will flock around you,” Angus said.

“What does that mean? You make me sound like a pile of oats.”

“Rich oats.”

Edilean leaned back on her arm to look at him. “Why are your clothes torn, and what’s that mark on your cheek?”

“I, uh...” Angus began, trying to come up with a lie.

“You got those papers from his wife, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

Edilean got off the bed and put her hands on her hips. “What enchantment does this woman have that she’s taken the man I love and... and you?”