Days of Gold (Edilean 2)

Angus picked up the quill pen, dipped it into a pot of ink, and paused over a sheet of paper. “About a year ago your uncle sent me to London to run an errand for him.” He made a few lines on the paper, then looked up at her. “Now that I think about it, I believe the errand was about you. I had to meet a man outside a bank and he gave me a letter to take back to your uncle Neville. At the time I wondered why he didn’t just post the letter, but now I think it was about the gold, and it told Lawler something he wasn’t supposed to know.”

As Angus talked, he was making quick marks on the paper. Edilean wanted to see what he was doing but the pile of books she’d borrowed from the captain was blocking her view.

“Anyway,” Angus said, “as I was riding, I saw a house that had been built only the year before. It was rather plain and very simple, but I thought it was the most beautiful house I’d ever seen.”

He pushed the paper toward her, and she saw that he’d sketched a truly lovely house. As he’d said, it was a rather plain house with five windows on the second floor, four windows and a door on the ground floor.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, not able to suppress her praise. “And your sketch is excellent. How would you arrange the interior?”

“I have no idea. It’s not as though they invited me in for tea. If I’d been wearing this getup and talking like James, they would have, but not as I was then.”

Edilean’s face still showed her surprise at his drawing. He had an eye for proportion, and for all that he held a quill as though it were a foreign object, the rendering was very good. Edilean ducked her head to hide her smile, but he saw it.

“Was that a smile?”

“No!” she said sharply.

“You’ve been angry at me for a whole week! Can you not find it in your heart to forgive a man who took his homesickness out on you?”

“You blame me for all your misfortunes.”

“That’s because you’re the cause of them.” When she looked away, he said, “But now that I’ve talked to some people about this America, I think I might like it.”

“How could you when you left your family back in Scotland?”

“About that, lass, perhaps my life there was not as good as I said it was.”

“According to you it was pure heaven.”

“Did I tell you that my father left me a cottage?”

“No,” she said. “In fact, you’ve told me very little about yourself—except that you were the happiest man on earth and I destroyed it all for you.”

“Perhaps that was a wee bit of an exaggeration.”

For a moment she thought about picking up her book and moving away from him, but she’d missed him in this last week of coolness. “So you owned a cottage?”

“It was a pretty little place with a thatched roof and deep windows. My mother grew roses on one side and I’d wake up to the smell of them.”

“You’ve never mentioned your mother,” Edilean said. “Or for that matter, your father.”

“Died long ago,” Angus said in a tone that told he’d say no more. “It was just my sister and me left and she...” Pausing, he shook his head. “She fell in love with a man who is very lazy, and takes great joy in belittling other people, me in particular.”

“Worse than Shamus?”

“Different. If you held a penny in your hand and Shamus wanted it, he’d break your arm to get it. But my brother-in-law, Gavin, would say how greedy you were and that if he had a penny he’d give it to the church. Of course you’d have to give it away. Either way, you’d end up penniless.”

“How drunk did you get at the wedding?”

Her question startled Angus and made him laugh. “Oh, lass, but I’ve missed your humor. But you’re right. I drank so much I had a sore head for a week. My sister and her new hus

band were to move in with Gavin’s mother, but Kenna—that’s my sister—stood it only six months. Gavin’s mother was just like him, and she used Kenna as a maid.”

“So they moved in with you?”

“Aye, they did,” Angus said. “And three months later, she had her first bairn.”

“Three months? Doesn’t it usually take longer than that? Or is Scotland better in that too?”