Days of Gold (Edilean 2)

“But when you healed, you went to see Lawler,” Angus said.

“I wanted to know if he knew where you were,” she said to Edilean.

“Me?” she asked and moved back in the carriage. She may have been able to fight off Tabitha, but Edilean knew that if this woman attacked her, she wouldn’t win.

Angus gave Edilean’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “It’s my guess that you were looking for something that Edilean had.”

“Yes,” Prudence said, looking hard into Angus’s eyes.

Edilean said nothing, but she sat up straighter in the carriage. The parure. That’s what Prudence was after. But that was long gone. Angus had taken it with him on the night he’d left Edilean.

“What you want is safely in a bank vault here in Boston,” Angus said.

“What?” Edilean said. “I gave those to you. Are you telling me that after all I went through to get those back from Tabitha’s thieving hands that you put them in a bank and didn’t sell them?”

“They were never mine,” Angus said. “How could I take such things?”

“Would you mind telling me what you’re talking about?” Harriet asked.

“The whole set is safe?” Prudence asked, and when Angus nodded, she started crying loudly. “It hasn’t been sold? Didn’t go to James to pay his gambling debts? You still have it?”

From above them, Shamus looked through the window to the inside of the carriage and glared directly at Angus. “You make her cry and I’ll tear you into pieces.”

“It’s all right, Shamus, dear heart,” Prudence said, sniffing, and blowing her nose loudly into the handkerchief that Harriet handed her. “It’s fine. I’ll tell you everything later.”

After another look of warning at Angus, Shamus sat back up on the driver’s seat.

Angus reached between the two women and slid the window shut. Prudence grabbed his hand. “You are a good man.”

“Sometimes,” Edilean murmured.

“I would really like to be told what everyone is talking about,” Harriet said, so Edilean told her.

“A parure? An entire set of jewelry?”

“Diamonds,” Edilean said.

Prudence nodded. “My father told me about them just before he died. I didn’t know he still had them, and neither did the bank. He told me that he’d kept them for his daughter’s wedding and that’s what they were for.” She blew her nose again. “He could have sold them and paid off a lot of debts but he didn’t. He saved them for me and had them secretly placed in my trunk. He didn’t

let me see them before the wedding, for fear that James would steal them. He rightly guessed that James would never look inside my trunk. We didn’t have a marriage of intimacy.”

“When we get this done, I’ll give you the entire set,” Angus said. “An earring is missing, and some bracelets but—”

“I have all the pieces,” Edilean said, and they all looked at her. “My footman found them after the man who stole the diamonds from Tabitha sold them.”

“And why did you want the rest of the set?” Angus asked. “I’d think that if you hated me, you’d want nothing to do with any of it.”

Edilean kept her eyes on Prudence and didn’t answer him. “I guess you met Malcolm when you went to my uncle.”

“Yes,” Prudence said, and her face softened. “And it was there that I met Shamus. He knew a great deal about you, about where you’d gone, and who you went with, and about the wagon full of trunks of gold. Oh!” she said.

“What is it?” Harriet asked.

“The trunks of gold. James talked of little else when he found out that you’d sailed without him and now... Now...”

“He’s inside one of the trunks,” Angus said, and whispered, “be careful what you wish for.”

“You got Malcolm, Shamus, and Tam to help you,” Edilean said.