Days of Gold (Edilean 2)

Edilean meant to stay in Connecticut for only a few days, but she ended up staying at Abby’s farm for three weeks. She left because she feared that Bound Girl might need her. If Harriet was still enamored of Malcolm she wouldn’t be paying attention to the business, and if Tabitha wasn’t constantly supervised, who knew what she’d do? Reluctantly, Edilean left the farm and her new friend, and went back to Boston.

But no one paid much attention to her arrival. There were no crises that only she could handle. In just a few weeks, her household had changed so much that she felt she didn’t know it. Harriet’s every sentence seemed to start with, “Malcolm says—”

As for Tabitha, she’d taken the opportunity to buy some new wagons and have the company’s Bound Girl symbol painted on them. Edilean thought they were hideously garish and said so. “But they sell more,” was Tabitha’s reply.

Now, Edilean was watching Harriet dither about as she set the table as though the king were coming when it was just Malcolm, Tam, and Shamus. As far as Edilean knew, Shamus still ate all his food with a spoon.

She left the table, unable to sit there and—She hated to think that she was such a shallow person, but it was difficult not to feel jealous and envious of the happiness that everyone in her household seemed to have found.

She went to the big warehouse where the produce from the farms came in. Usually, she was so busy that she could think of nothing else, but today she was distracted. She kept remembering Abigail and her beautiful young daughters.

When Tabitha said something to Edilean, she just stared at her.

“You comin’ down with somethin’?” Tabitha asked her.

“Yes. No,” Edilean said as she looked at two young women who were bent over boxes of cherries and saw that they were watching her and laughing. No doubt all of Boston knew about her shooting at some man. And they could easily guess why.

Edilean grabbed her skirts and fled the warehouse. All in all, she thought, it would have been better to have killed Angus and now be sitting in a jail cell.

She wandered about Boston for a while, looking at what the stores had to offer, and listening to men complain about England. Edilean didn’t understand what the problem was. If the men thought King George was bad, they should read the history books and look at past kings. What did the Americans think they were going to do? Start a new country without a king? Really! Sometimes she didn’t understand Americans at all.

It was dusk by the time she got back to the house, and she hadn’t eaten all day. She asked to have a tray taken to her room. She ate little of the food, then undressed down to her chemise and went to bed. She fell asleep instantly.

She was awakened by a shot and angry shouts coming from downstairs. “Now what?” Edilean mut

tered as she slipped her arms into a dressing gown and went out her door. She had to wait her turn to go down the stairs as the three men and Harriet were ahead of her.

When Edilean got to the parlor, the others were blocking her view. They were standing there and staring, transfixed into immobility by whatever they were seeing. “Would you mind!” she said angrily as she pushed through them. When she got to the front, she also stood still and stared. Two candles were lit in the room, and her good silver candlesticks were sticking out of a bag on the floor. Beside the bag was the body of James Harcourt, and he had a bullet hole smack in the middle of his forehead. He was staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

Over him stood a large woman with her back to them, but they could see the pistol in her hand. “That’s what you get for stealing my life from me,” the woman said. “You bastard. I hope you’re already in hell. I wish you were alive so I could kill you again.”

The woman drew back her foot and proceeded to kick James’s inert body. Suddenly, in a fury, she began to kick him over and over, her feet moving so fast they were a whirl of motion. “I hate you! Do you hear me? I hate you. Hate you!”

Shamus pushed past the others, went to the woman, and grabbed her arm, but she fought him off. She turned her anger onto Shamus and began to hit him with her fists and kick at his shins with her hard-soled shoes.

“There now,” Shamus said, pulling her close so her arms were pinned between his body and hers. She was a large, strong woman, and Shamus was the only one who could have held her still. When he got her arms to stop pounding him, he pushed her head down to his shoulder and turned her face to the others, who were still standing in the doorway.

It took all Edilean’s self-discipline to keep from gasping, for the woman was extraordinarily ugly. Her nose was huge and curved down so it overshadowed her sharp chin.

Harriet said, “Prudence.”

Edilean didn’t know the name, but she knew who had the most reason to kill James Harcourt, and she’d heard about his wife’s unfortunate looks. “James’s wife,” she said.

Edilean came out of her lackluster mood. “Harriet!” she said sharply, then had to repeat herself. “Harriet! Listen to me! I want you to get her upstairs and give her some of that laudanum your brother loves... loved so much. Are you listening to me?” When Harriet didn’t respond, just kept staring at her brother’s body on the floor, Edilean looked at Malcolm for help.

“It’s over,” he said softly, and took Harriet into his arms. “It’s all over now. He won’t be bothering you anymore.”

“When has James bothered her?” Edilean asked.

“He’s been blackmailing Harriet for years.”

“You knew?” Harriet asked as she raised her head from his shoulder to look at him.

“Yes, we knew, and we’ve been waiting for him to return. Come now, and we’ll get you back to bed. Shamus! Take Miss Prudence upstairs. We’ll put the women in the same bed and give them that...” He looked at Edilean.

“Laudanum,” she said, blinking at him. Blackmail. She couldn’t help wondering how Harriet had paid the blackmail. James wouldn’t be cheap.

“What you’re thinking is right,” Malcolm said, glaring at her, anger in his voice. “It was your company’s money that paid the blackmail, but Harriet was protecting you. If you plan to try to put her in prison, I tell you now that you’ll have to go through me first.” With that, he helped Harriet up the stairs; Shamus with Prudence was right behind him.