Days of Gold (Edilean 2)

Part of him was sure that no matter what he said, she’d know he loved her—and she’d forgive him. She’d thought the worst of him after the night in her bedroom, but she’d forgiven him. He almost smiled when he remembered how she’d been so cool to him at first. But it had taken little to melt her.

Love was like that, he thought. Cold one moment, fiery the next.

But never in his life had he had to do anything close to what must be done now—and he knew this was unforgivable. Slowly, he opened the door to his room and slipped inside. In her sleep she’d pushed the cover half off of her. He started to replace it, but instead he sat down on the side of the bed and looked at her, at her small body on the bed, her breasts rising and falling as she slept. It had been his plan to ask her to marry him today. As she lay in his arms, he’d thought about the service and that afterward they’d go together to Virginia to start a life there. He imagined building the house they’d created while on the ship. He had the drawings with him, and they were something he treasured.

But that was all gone now. He’d not been cautious enough, hadn’t taken the anger of James Harcourt seriously. It had all seemed so long ago and far away that he’d not put himself in the place of the other man. They had thwarted the long, carefully laid plans of a man who was without conscience or morals. Did they think he was going to sit back and take it?

Angus stroked Edilean’s hair. He knew she was safe from Harcourt. There was nothing he could do to her. She was past eighteen now, and by her father’s will, no longer under her uncle’s care, and the gold was hers. If she married—Angus nearly choked on the thought—her husband could protect her from any claims that Harcourt made up. It would be easy to prove that he’d married the earl’s daughter when he was supposed to be engaged to Edilean.

Angus’s only worry was Harcourt’s sister, Harriet. Would she take Edilean’s side or her brother’s? But he knew the answer to that. Edilean had the money. It was a cruel fact of life, but a true one. From what Edilean had told him of Harriet, she was a sensible woman, and she despised her lazy, conniving brother.

Angus picked up Edilean’s small hand, kissed each finger, and the palm. He held her hand to his face. “Don’t hate me too much,” he whispered, but he knew that he’d have to make her hate him. If he didn’t, she’d follow him.

He got up and began to throw his clothes into a canvas bag. He hesitated over the diamonds, which were still on the table by the bed, but not to take them would seem disdainful of what she’d done for him. He took the necklace and the other pieces—they were too gaudy for Edilean to wear—but left the single earring.

After another look at her beautiful face and before he got to the point where he’d never be able to go, he left the room, closing the door behind him. Sitting outside was the young man who’d brought her the day before, and he jumped up when he saw Angus.

He looked at Angus as though he didn’t know whether to call him “sir” or to smirk about what must have happened during the night. Behind him the two horses were saddled and ready.

“I didn’t know if she’d be wanting to leave this morning,” Cuddy said, and his anger of the day before was gone. “I can go back into Boston if she wants me to.”

“She can do whatever she wants.” Angus gave the boy a leer, as though they were men together and knew about the world. “I got what I wanted from her, if you know what I mean.”

He saw the way the boy’s spine stiffened, and Angus knew he’d rightly guessed that he was half in love with Edilean.

“Here,” Angus said, tossing the boy a coin. “Take her home now. Wake her up and get her back to”—Angus waved his hand—“to wherever her sort comes from. Do you understand me? Take her now!”

“Yes...” Cuddy said. He was looking at Angus as though he wanted to kill him. “I’ll take her away from here. I’ll take care of her.”

“You do that.” Angus threw his pack over the better of the two horses.

“That’s Miss Edilean’s horse,” the young man yelled. “You can’t take that!”

Angus looked down at the boy from the saddle. “This is the least of what I’ve taken from her,” he said with a smirk that was unmistakable.

“If I had a gun I’d kill you,” Cuddy said under his breath.

“And save the devil from work?” Angus did just what Edilean had done and made the horse step backward to leave the stableyard. “Tell her from me that it was most enjoyable.”

Cuddy watched the horse and rider leave the barn, then he said the foulest words he knew. He didn’t want to wake up Miss Edilean, but he also wanted to get her out of there. It would be better if she got as far away from this place as soon as possible.

He took a few deep breaths, then knocked on the bedroom door.

19

YOU DON’T FOOL me,” Harriet said as she looked at Edilean across the breakfast table. “Something has deeply upset you.”

“Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” she said, glaring at Harriet.

Edilean had been back from her night spent with Angus for three whole weeks now. And everything had changed. For her, being cast aside yet again had hurt so much that she was almost unable to feel it. The first time Angus left her, she took her rage out on some furniture and clothes, but this time her anger was so much deeper that she was unable to deal with it. It was as though a red-hot coal had been stabbed into her chest and was growing with each day. Things that had once been pleasurable were no longer. The men who called, with flowers and candy in their hands, didn’t receive smiles. Instead, Edilean glared at them. She didn’t act coy and flirt and make them feel that they were the smartest and wisest men on earth. Instead, she corrected their grammar and their poetry recitations, then told them they needed to finish school. The men crept out of her house with their faces red, muttering that they were needed elsewhere. They didn’t return.

The first time Edilean repulsed an eligible man, she expected Harriet to give her a scolding, but she didn’t—which was odd. Since they’d met, Harriet’s main occupation had seemed to be to get Edilean married, but since Angus, since the night with the fight with Tabitha, it was as though Harriet had changed.

After her night with Angus, Edilean returned to the house in Boston, and she thought she’d do what she did before and disappear into her room and cry. But she didn’t. She hadn’t shed even one tear since then.

Edilean had expected that Harriet would lecture her about her wounds and her bloody clothes, but she didn’t. Instead, Harriet had ordered hot water to be carried upstairs for a bath and she’d put out clean clothes for Edilean. But she hadn’t asked a question about where she’d been or what she’d done. Instead, Harriet seemed to have her mind on something else, and she jumped at every sound.

After about the twentieth time that Harriet was startled by some everyday sound, Edilean said, “Do you think I’m going to hit you?”