Days of Gold (Edilean 2)

She turned, her hands on her hips, and glared at him. “Why don’t you go on deck and bother someone else with your questions? You could ask each of the women if she’s had a hard time in life, then you could tell yourself that compared to them, my life has been easy because I have money.”

“I never said— I never meant—You don’t think that I—”

“Go!” she said as she put her hands on the small of his back and pushed him toward the door of the cabin. “Get out of here. I have work to do, and I can’t do it with you in here trying to start a fight.”

“I was doing no such thing,” he said as he went through the door.

When he was gone, Edilean leaned against the door, closed her eyes for a moment, and smiled. She enjoyed his nervousness, because it was the same way she felt. The prospect of a whole new country was daunting. But more than the idea of a country, the thought of her future scared her. She’d reconciled herself to the fact that she and Angus would separate when they arrived, but that was easier for him than for her. Angus had shown that he could be anyone he wanted to be. He could put on the clothes of a workman and get himself a wife who would spend her days scouring floors, then at night pop out a pair of ten-pound twins. Or he could put on James’s clothes and get a woman who read Cicero in the original Greek. Whatever he wanted, he could have.

But Edilean knew that her choices weren’t going to be so easy. By her manner and dress, she’d be able to have only one type of man, meaning someone like James. But Angus had made her not want a man like James. Whereas once she’d thought of James as elegance personified, now when she thought of him he seemed rather useless.

But she knew she wasn’t to have a choice in what she was to do with her life. Because of the trunks of gold in the hold of the ship—which Angus had checked on four times—her life had been decided for her. She was where she was now not by choice but because of gold.

When Angus returned to the cabin a couple of hours later, he was sweaty and in a much better mood.

“Dancing again?”

“Rope climbing and betting,” he said. “I won.”

Smiling, she wished she could have seen him. No doubt the sailors thought that Angus was, well... as unlike James as it was possible to be. “The sailors must have been surprised at what you could do.”

“Aye, they were,” he said as he sat down at the table and picked up the quill and began to draw. Since he’d made the sketches of the house, he hadn’t stopped drawing. Out of curiosity, she’d asked him to draw something besides buildings, and she’d even posed for him to do her portrait, but he couldn’t. He’d turned out something little better than a child would. “I think I’ll stay with my buildings,” he’d said, and she’d agreed.

I can’t think about this, she told herself. If she thought about leaving and never seeing Angus again, she knew she’d start crying and never stop.

Now, as she woke and, as she always did, glanced over at Angus, she felt more calm than she had in days. It had taken him a week, but he’d finally learned how to sleep in the hammock without falling out of it. When she looked, he was staring at her, and his eyes were so red that he looked as though he hadn’t slept all night.

“Are you all right, lass?” he asked softly.

“I’m fine,” she said and meant it. Surprisingly, she was all right. In fact, she was feeling a bit of excitement running through her as she thought about what was to happen today. They were to disembark in a brand-new country.

It was Angus who was the nervous one. “What if there’s not a house ready for you?” he’d asked yesterday. “What if Harcourt didn’t make provision for you?”

“You’re the one who said he would have made arrangements for himself, so I’ll just use them as long as I can. Please stop fretting so.”

“I have never ‘fretted’ in my life,” Angus said, looking affronted, and she had to hide her smile.

Hours later, when the ship had at last dropped anchor and they were in the harbor of Boston, Edilean was sure she’d never seen so much hustle and bustle in her life. She’d spent a lot of her life in London, but this place was different. It was louder, dirtier, and bigger. She could see people and wagons and animals far down the streets. But for all the noise and dirt, there was an excitement that she’d never felt in ancient London.

“It’s wonderful,” she said to Angus, who was standing close beside her.

“It smells bad.” He took her arm in his and held it tightly.

“No more than London,” she said.

“That’s what I said. It stinks.”

She laughed, then pulled away from his arm. “Come on, we have to oversee that the trunks are brought up. I want to count them to make sure that no one runs off with one of them.”

“Too heavy,” Angus said grumpily, but he followed her away from the rail.

Minutes later they were back in their cabin and Edilean was having a last look around. “I think we got everything. I don’t think we left anything.” She started for the door, but Angus caught her arm and pulled her close to him.

“Lass,” he said, looking down at her. “If you ever need anything, anything at all, I’ll come to you. You know that, don’t you?”

She put her small hands on his chest and looked up int

o his eyes. “Yes, I know that, and if you need anything, I’ll help you.”