8

ANGUS HURRIED TO the pub and saw that Harcourt and his cronies were still drinking, still laughing. As he looked at him, Angus marveled that a man could live with himself with what Harcourt was planning to do. He’d married one woman to get her title and he was taking the money of another woman so he’d never have to support himself.

And of what use was that title going to be when he got to America? Angus had heard that those people didn’t believe in aristocracy.

Angus was too tired to think about any of it. Right now he had anger pumping through him, which was keeping him awake, but when this was done, when the girl sailed away on her ship, he meant to hide somewhere and sleep for a week.

When Harcourt came out of the pub he was with the other men, but they soon separated.

“Going to your bride, James?” one called in a teasing voice.

“Will you make the first babe tonight?”

“I might have to hire one of these Scots to do that task for me,” he said, his voice slurring as he spoke.

For a moment Angus felt sorry for the woman he’d married. She was big and ugly, and very strong, but she wanted love just like the rest of the world.

When the men left Harcourt, Angus slipped up behind him.

“What do you want?” Harcourt yelled in fear.

“Quiet! I’m the driver, remember?”

“Oh, you. Yes, I remember you. What do you want? I believe you were paid for your trouble, so go away.”

“She wants you.”

Harcourt shivered. “She always does. Morning, noon, and night, she wants more.”

“More than you have?” Angus said under his breath.

“What?”

“Do you want more than you have?” he asked louder.

“What are you blathering on about, man? Out with it!”

“Edilean Talbot wants to see you,” Angus said.

“Tell her I’ll see her tomorrow,” Harcourt said and started into the inn.

He isn’t so drunk that he forgets his lies, Angus thought. “No, sir.” He nearly choked on the “sir.” “She wants to see you now.”

“Oh, I see,” Harcourt said, and he had a look on his face that Angus wanted to knock off with his fist. “Now. Tonight. Yes, I can see that. My last hooray, so to speak. The last time-” He looked at Angus in speculation. “And she sent you to tell me this?”

“She did.”

“And I guess she paid you to do it?”

“Not a cent.” Angus again wanted to hit the man.

“I think I will go to her. You stay here.” He gave Angus a look up and down, then straightened his clothes and went inside.

Angus slipped in behind him, and when Harcourt reached the top floor, Angus was hiding at the end of the hall.

Harcourt used his nails to scratch at the door. “Edilean?” he whispered, glancing at the other doors down the hallway. “Edilean? It’s me, James.”

If she’s taken that drug she’ll never hear him, Angus thought, and tried to come up with another plan to get to her.

But he’d underestimated Edilean. She opened the door a crack and looked out. “James? Is that you?”

“Yes, darling,” he said as he tried not to slur his words. “I couldn’t stay away from you. I want to see you one last-I mean before I sleep. May I come in?”

“Of course,” she said. “You’re very nearly my husband.” She opened the door wide, and Harcourt, after a stumble, went into her room.

Before she could get the door closed, Angus slipped inside. In one swift motion, he grabbed a candlestick off the table by the wall, and whacked Harcourt hard on the head with it. He went down in an instant.

When Edilean opened her mouth to scream, Angus looked at her and said, “Don’t.”

She closed her mouth but went on her knees to James. “What have you done? Are you insane? Get me that cloth! He’s bleeding.”

“He’s all right,” Angus said as he sat down on a chair. “This night has been hell.”

Edilean got a cloth from the basin on the table, and sat on the floor to wipe the blood from James’s head. “Did you do this out of jealousy? Is it that you cannot stand to see me marry another man? Any man? Even one who loves me? Or is this about the gold? James, darling James, please wake up.”

Angus shook his head at the ridiculous things she was saying and pulled the portfolio from inside his shirt. “Look in there. I think that should explain my actions well enough.”

“What is this?” She picked it up and opened the buckle, and went through the papers inside. “It’s our passage to America. Everything that James and I need to get on the ship is in here. Even the captain’s name. And here’s our marriage certificate. It’s…” She looked at him. “I don’t understand. This isn’t my name on the certificate and it says James was married last week.”

“Harcourt’s wife’s name is on there because he married her.”

“No,” Edilean said impatiently. “That’s not possible. I am to be his wife.”

Angus put his head back against the chair. Maybe he’d go to sleep right there and then. “He already has a wife.”

Edilean got up off the floor to stand before him. “Angus McTern, so help me, if you go to sleep now, I’ll hit you with the candlestick.”

“Please do,” he mumbled. “Then I could sleep for sure.”

She pulled back her foot and kicked his shin, just as she’d done twice before. But she forgot that she had on her nightgown, and her feet were bare.

The next moment she was hobbling about the room in tears of pain. “I think my toes are broken. Your shin is as hard as stone.” She sat down on the end of the bed to examine her foot.

Angus couldn’t help smiling. She looked sweet in her white nightgown, holding her foot and looking at it. He pushed himself out of the chair, sat down beside her, lifted her foot, and pulled each of her toes. “None of them is broken.”

She looked at him, his eyes red from weariness, holding her small foot in his big hand, and said, “Could you please tell me what is going on? Why did you hit James and who is the woman on the marriage certificate?”

He put her foot down, but stayed seated beside her. In her nightclothes she looked, if possible, even more beautiful. “I didn’t trust him so I followed him, and I heard him talking about his wife who is the daughter of an earl.”

“But my father wasn’t an earl.”

“I know,” Angus said. “That’s the point.”

Edilean was at last beginning to understand. She looked at James lying on the floor, still unconscious. “My friend, his cousin, told me that James was holding out for a woman with a title.”

“But he agreed to marry you for the money,” Angus said softly, looking at her hair in the candlelight. He raised his hand to touch it but dropped it when she turned back to him.

“I heard James tell the men to put the gold on the ship. Was he planning to sail off with his wife and my gold?”

“He was,” Angus said softly.

“But he can’t do that,” she said. “That gold belongs to me, not to him.”

“It’s called thievery and it’s been done for a while now.”

“Will you please stop treating me as though I’m a silly child? What am I supposed to do now?”

“I think you should go to America on your own. Your dowry is already on the ship, and the passage is booked.”

“Alone? I’m to go to a new country by myself?”

He looked at her beautiful face and thought how every fast-talking, dishonest cad in the country would go after her, and she’d fall for the first pair of blue eyes she saw. “Just be careful about the men who will flock around you,” Angus said.

“What does that mean? You make me sound like a pile of oats.”

“Rich oats.”

Edilean leaned back on her arm to look at him. “Why are your clothes torn, and what’s that mark on your cheek?”

“I, uh…” Angus began, trying to come up with a lie.

“You got those papers from his wife, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

Edilean got off the bed and put her hands on her hips. “What enchantment does this woman have that she’s taken the man I love and… and you?”

“Me?” he asked, astonished, but then his eyes began to twinkle. “It’s not so much her virtues as it is… well, lass…” He made a movement with his hands to show a huge bosom.

“That’s it?” Edilean said. “You and James fell for a woman with great-”

When she realized Angus was again teasing her, she shook her head in disgust, then looked at James on the floor. “I can’t go to America alone. I can’t do it. I’ve never done anything alone before.” She looked back at him. “You’ll have to go to the ship’s captain and tell him that I want my gold back.”

“And who should I tell him says that? Mrs. Harcourt? That gold on the ship is under his name, not yours. If you or I tried to take it off, they’d shoot us.”

“But how will I live here without money? I can’t very well go back to my uncle’s house, now can I?”

“No, you canna. You have to do what I tell you and that’s to get on that ship by yourself. Tell them you’re Mrs. Harcourt and that you’re a widow.”

“But what if the captain knows her or James?”

“Wear a veil. And add some padding to make yourself look bigger. Better yet, tell the captain that you’re leaving because Harcourt got married.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, then her eyes widened. “Oh, no, you don’t. I’m not getting on that ship as James’s… as his mistress.”

“It’s only for a few weeks. When you get to America you can be whoever you want to be. Change your name. You’ll have the gold and you’ll be well set up.”

“Then what do I do? Marry one of those men in the New World? Savages is what my uncle says they are.”

“Then why did you want to go in the first place?” Angus half yelled. He was still sitting on the end of the bed and all he had to do was fall back into its softness and close his eyes.

Reluctantly, he made himself get off the bed. “I think-” he began, but stopped because out of his shirt had fallen one of the handbills he’d torn off a wall.

Edilean picked it up and looked at it. “This is the picture I drew of you from memory. I think it’s a good likeness, don’t you?” When he just stood there staring at her, she looked back at the handbill and realized what it was. “This is serious,” she whispered. “You have to get out of here. You have to leave Scotland.”

“I can go to Edinburgh or to the Highlands. I can-”

“No you can’t,” she said as she stood close in front of him, her eyes big. “You don’t know my uncle as I do.”

“I’ve known him a great deal longer than you have.”

“This isn’t a matter of time, this is a matter of knowing him well,” she almost shouted. “You can’t stay here. My uncle will hunt you down.”

“I’ll be all right, lass,” he said, smiling and wanting to touch her so badly that it was like a pain in his chest.

Behind them, James groaned and Angus reached for the candlestick.