Days of Gold Page 4

  “I would feel an obligation, yes, but that hasn’t happened in my lifetime. A girl marries who she wants. It’s the Scots way.”

  “It’s the English way, too, except that I’m cursed with having a dowry and an uncle who needs money, plus, I have no friends or relatives to help me.” She took a breath. “What if I pay you?”

  “I couldn’t go against your uncle. He owns this place now.”

  She took another step forward and he took one back. “What if my uncle decided to marry some pretty girl in your tribe?”

  “Clan.” He couldn’t repress a smile.

  “All right, your clan. What if my uncle decided he wanted to marry ... your sister?”

  “She’s already married and has three bairns.”

  “Bairns. Babies. She has three children now, but if she didn’t and Uncle Neville wanted to marry her, what would you do?”

  He didn’t say what he thought, which was that Lawler would never marry her. He might make her his mistress, but the man had never shown much interest in women. They’d all heard him say that he’d much rather have a good horse than any woman.

  She was still staring up at him with those deep blue eyes and waiting for his reply.

  “I would have to send her away,” he said.

  “You would do that for her?”

  “I would have to, wouldn’t I? Your uncle is a lot of things, but I don’t think he’d make a good husband.” He was teasing her now, but she wasn’t smiling.

  “But not me,” she said. “So what I’ve heard is true, that you’d help another woman, but you won’t help me. Why? Because I’m not a blood relative of yours? Or is it me you hate? And why is that? Because I stood up to you? I see the way the girls look at you. Do you refuse to help me because I don’t swoon at the sight of you?”

  As she spoke she was moving toward him and he was backing up—and he was working hard to keep his amusement from coming to the surface.

  “You’re laughing at me!” she said. “You enjoyed making me fall, enjoyed humiliating me in front of everyone, didn’t you? You know what you are? You’re a bully. You’re a bully, and I hate you! I really and truly hate you!” With that, she once again used her hard-soled boot and kicked him in exactly the same spot where she’d kicked him earlier.

  Angus couldn’t help it. Maybe it was the relief that he wasn’t going to have to hide forever in shame after being caught “spying” on her, or relief that he wasn’t going to be punished for tossing her into the cold water. Or maybe it was just giddiness at being so close to this beautiful woman with her wet hair falling deliciously about her neck, but he started laughing. Days of pent-up anger and fear and embarrassment left him, and he leaned against the wall of the roof and started laughing.

  “You’re disgusting,” she said with contempt as she went through the door that led back into the castle. Even when Angus heard the bolt thrown on the inside he kept laughing.

  3

  EDILEAN TALBOT LEANED against the cold stone wall of her bedroom, looked out the narrow, unglazed window, and stared at the courtyard below. All the people down there seemed so happy—and free. But then, they had families and friends and things to laugh about. She saw a man pick up a little boy and toss him high in the air, and she could hear the child’s laughter four stories above.

  Turning, she leaned against the wall, then in the next moment she slid down to sit on the old wooden floor. Just three more days, she thought. In just three days she was to be married to some repulsive man. Her uncle’s “friends” had made a pact with him that they would make no effort to win her. There was to be no courting, no flowers, no letters, nothing said to her in private. On the day she was to turn eighteen, she’d be asked before the reverend which man she chose, and she was to say which one she would have.

  Edilean knew that if she truly believed the marriage was going to happen she really would throw herself off the roof.

  Her father, a retired military man, had known he was going to die when his only child was still young and he’d done his best to protect her future. That it hadn’t been enough wasn’t his fault. He’d spent long hours making what he thought was an ironclad will. Everything he owned was to be sold and converted to gold, and the gold was to be given to his daughter on her eighteenth birthday. He’d written that she was to marry a man of her own choosing. He knew that if she married, control of her estate would go to her husband, but he’d trusted his daughter enough to choose a man who wouldn’t squander her inheritance. The flaw in his plan was that he’d underestimated his daughter’s only living relative, her deceased mother’s brother, who was to be her guardian until she was eighteen.

  Her father had met the man once or twice, but he didn’t really know him. Neville had assured the dying man that he would take care of Edilean after she got out of school and that he’d follow the will to the letter. He’d even signed a document before witnesses swearing to uphold the will. Edilean’s father’s will further said that in case his daughter died before she was eighteen, the gold would go to charity.

  To Neville Lawler’s mind, he was carrying out the will exactly as it had been written. On her eighteenth birthday, Edilean would be given a choice between two men, and she would marry one of them there and then.

  Neither Edilean nor her father had imagined a man of such greed and such a lack of morals as Neville Lawler existed.

  Now, Edilean knew that she had only one hope, and that was to come from the man she loved: James Harcourt. She’d met James through a school friend of hers. After her father died and their house was sold, when the holidays came, Edilean had to stay with friends. She was well liked both for her humor and because her beauty attracted young men to the houses, so she never lacked for invitations.

  But of all the men who made fools of themselves over her, only James Harcourt interested her. He was tall, broad shouldered, blond, and beautiful. His grandfather had made a lot of money in some trade—James was vague about the details—so James was a gentleman through circumstance if not breeding. She’d soon found that he was sensitive about his background, so she asked him few questions.

  He was the second cousin of one of her school friends, not a girl she liked especially, but Edilean went to her house rather frequently just in the hope that James would visit.

  At first he paid no attention to her. He came to parties and teas, but he sat in silence, playing with the lace at his wrist and rarely looking at the other people there.

  This lack of attention was something new to Edilean. For since she was a child, she’d been told she was beautiful, so she was more used to men like that hairy-faced Scotsman who stared at her, dumbfounded, than she was to men who didn’t so much as look at her. The truth was, James’s inattention intrigued her. It was a relief when he didn’t stare at her with great, liquid eyes. In fact, his lack of attention made her start doing things to get him to notice her.

  She had a good voice and she could play the pianoforte well, so she played and sang the after-dinner songs. But James yawned and nearly fell asleep.

  One day, she suggested that they all go out together and sketch, as she was good at drawing. Later, everyone said hers was by far the best, but James barely looked at it.

  She ordered new dresses that she hoped would catch his eye, but even when she asked him if he liked the trim around the low-cut neckline, he only smiled politely.

  But one night they were playing whist, and her friend was annoyed that she was losing at every hand. “I’m sure you’ll win the next one,” Edilean said as she claimed the winnings off the table.

  “That’s easy for you to say. You can afford to lose all you want.”

  As the next hand was dealt, James said, “I thought you were staying with my cousin because you have no home.”

  “That’s true,” Edilean said, thrilled that James was addressing her directly. “Before my father died, he sold everything and left me the proceeds.”

  “She means he had it all converted into gold, and Edilean gets i
t when she turns eighteen.”

  “Does she now?” James said, but he didn’t look up.

  After that, James was more attentive. Edilean wasn’t stupid; she knew the dowry was what changed his mind, but she was also a realist. To live well, a person needed money, and she had noticed a few frayed edges on James’s waistcoats. It looked like whatever money his grandfather had made was now gone.

  Whatever the reason that got him to finally look at her, it was worth it. What followed were three weeks of heaven. James came to her friend’s London house every day, and he sang and played the pianoforte with Edilean. Their duets became renowned among their friends. He posed for her so she could sketch him, and he heaped lavish praise on her drawings.

  Perhaps the dowry had been what made James notice her, but it was their mutual interest in art and music that gradually made them begin to love each other.

  The first time he kissed her, she thought she would fall down on the grass right there and let him have his way with her. “Not now,” James whispered. “We must wait until you are mine and mine alone.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. She was so in love with him that she would do anything he asked.

  When she went back to school for the last half term, she wrote to him every day. He replied, not every day, but often, and his letters were amusing and interesting and full of his love for her. He wrote of how he longed to see her again, how every night before he slept he kissed the miniature portrait of her that she’d given him.

  Edilean held James’s letters to her breast, sometimes even slept with them, and counted the days until the end of the term when she and James could marry.

  During the courtship, Edilean had never given so much as a thought to her uncle Neville. She knew that, legally, he was her guardian, and she’d met him once when she was a child, but since her father died, she’d not had a word from him. She knew little about him except that he lived in a castle in far-off Scotland. “He’s a gentleman,” her father said, “so all he does is hunt and eat.”

  To Edilean it sounded very romantic, and she thought that someday she and her husband, James, would visit him.

  But then one night one of the teachers came to her room and woke her. “You have to go,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Edilean asked, rubbing her eyes. She could see the moon through the window; it was still night.

  “Your uncle has come for you and you’re to leave with him. Hurry and dress. He says you’re to come in what you have on and nothing more. We’re to send your clothes to you.”

  “My uncle?” Edilean asked, her mind befuddled from lack of sleep. “But my uncle lives in Scotland.”

  “Yes, he does,” the teacher said in exasperation. “And he’s come from Scotland and he’s going to take you back there.”

  “But school hasn’t finished.”

  “Edilean! Get up! Your uncle is waiting and he has a fierce temper. He was shouting at the headmistress. He wants you to dress and go with him now!”

  The teacher flung back the covers and Edilean got out of bed, but she didn’t understand what was going on. If someone else had come for her, she would have thought that her uncle had died, but he hadn’t, and he was her only relative, so what was his rush?

  Her teacher helped her to dress in her warmest clothes. “Scotland is cold, so put on your heaviest wool.”

  “I must get—” Edilean began.

  “No! I’ll send it all, your books, your clothes, everything. He is waiting.”

  In spite of her teacher’s admonishment, she managed to slip the packet of James’s letters into a pocket in the folds of her skirt.

  By the time Edilean was dressed, she was filled with anticipation. Her uncle was so impatient to spend time with her that he was taking her to Scotland before the term ended. Edilean regretted not being able to say good-bye to her friends and favorite teachers, but the excitement overcame her sadness.

  Scotland! she thought. Edilean had never traveled much in her life. She’d lived in London with her father and she’d attended school in Hampshire, and she’d visited the country houses of a few of her friends. But she’d never been outside the English borders.

  Her uncle was sitting in the headmistress’s office eating bread and honey with a pot of tea. When Edilean came in, he looked her up and down in a perfunctory way, then went back to his food. She went to him as though to kiss him, but he pulled away with a face that made her think he’d be horrified by her touch. That was all right with her, as she was a bit put off by the look of him. His face was red, his skin rough, and his little eyes looked like they belonged on a small animal.

  While she waited for him to finish eating—he didn’t offer her any or even speak to her—two of her teachers worked frantically to pack away as many of Edilean’s possessions as possible.

  Outside, an old, heavy coach waited for them, and the headmistress told Edilean that they’d been able to pack most of her clothes and they were in the trunk now strapped to the back of the coach. “The books will have to wait,” her teacher said as they parted.

  Once Edilean was in the coach with her uncle, she asked him why he’d come for her.

  He looked at her as though she weren’t very smart and told her that it was near her eighteenth birthday. “Why else would I want you?”

  Edilean thought of a few sharp retorts to that, but she didn’t say anything. She had an idea that it would be better if she made every effort to get along with her uncle and not antagonize him.

  It took them nearly a week to get to his stone house. Each night they stopped at some inn for a hot meal and a bed. A couple of the inns were nice, but the others were hideous. The first night, Edilean asked to have a bath brought to her room, and that had caused so much hilarity that she’d never asked again. She made do with what water she could get from any sympathetic-looking maid.

  When they reached his house in Scotland, it was late afternoon, and Edilean was tired to her very bones. Her hair was straggling about her face and she was so dirty she itched. She looked out the coach window and saw the tall, narrow old “castle” and wanted to cry. The thing wasn’t a castle such as she’d imagined, but a tower made of stones that looked like they wanted to go back to the earth they’d come from.

  On the long trip her uncle hadn’t addressed a dozen words to her and he’d never once made an inquiry about her comfort. By the time they reached Scotland, she knew that whatever he wanted from her, it wasn’t going to be good.

  She stepped out of the coach into a stone courtyard, where there were what seemed to be a hundred people staring at her in curiosity. They were all wearing pieces of woolen fabric that had been woven in a pattern of squares and lines. The women had on coarse skirts held in place about their waists with thick leather belts, while the men wore wool trousers and big shirts.

  What Edilean liked about them was that a few of them were smiling at her. It wasn’t a full smile, but she could see it in their eyes. She knew she must look awful, but they didn’t seem to mind. An older man came forward and offered his hand to help her down the coach steps. It seemed as though it had been a year since she’d had such kindness. Turning, she smiled at all of them. “Thank you,” she said loudly. “Thank you for your welcome.”

  Some of the people looked embarrassed by her words, but some of them smiled a bit more.

  Her uncle walked toward the old wooden steps leading up to the second floor of the tower, leaving Edilean to make her own way. Right then she knew that this was her only chance to make a good first impression. She’d always been easy in company, and she felt that these people were open to friendliness. Instead of following her uncle inside, she walked about the courtyard and introduced herself as Edilean Talbot. She admired babies and complimented the women on the huge brooches they wore to keep their tartans on their shoulders. She went into the stables and talked to a wonderful man named Malcolm about the horses.

  “I think you’ll like this one,” he said in an accent so heavy that Edilean had t
rouble understanding him.

  She followed him to the end stall and there she saw Marmy, her dappled gray mare. Edilean couldn’t help her tears as she nuzzled the horse’s nose. Her mare was the one constant in her life. When she was in school, Marmy was boarded nearby, and when she visited anyone, her horse was sent ahead so Edilean would have her own mare to ride.

  “She’s glad to see you,” Malcolm said.

  “And I’m glad to see her. We’ve been together since I was just twelve. She likes her oats.”

  “Aye, she does.”

  Edilean spent several minutes talking to the man, having him repeat things she didn’t understand, then finally, she went into the tower.

  That her uncle’d had her horse brought to Scotland made Edilean think more kindly of him and she wanted to thank him. He was nowhere to be seen, but there was a maid there, a tiny woman named Morag, who took Edilean almost to the top and showed her a cold, bare room that was to be hers. Edilean was shocked at the ugliness of it, but she kept her face from showing her feelings as she turned to Morag and thanked her for her help.

  For a couple of days, Edilean hardly left her room. Morag saw that she had food and water and was given the necessities, but Edilean needed rest and to prepare herself for whatever her uncle had planned for her. Her intuition told her it was going to be bad.

  When he finally called her to him, it was worse than she thought. He bolted the heavy door behind her so no one could hear them, then he sat down between two men who repulsed her. One was old and ugly; the other was young but had eyes like a mad dog. Her uncle told her that on her birthday, at one minute after midnight, she was to marry one of the men. “You’re to choose one of them.” The way he said the word made it sound as though he thought it was the biggest joke in the world.

  “I’m sorry,” Edilean said politely, “but I cannot marry either of them, for I’m already engaged.”

  The three men stared at her as though they’d never heard the word before.