Jude Deveraux - Days of Gold

“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.

“Yes,” Prudence answered. “I had some money from the sale of my family’s estate, so I paid our way to America.”

“So you were on the ship with Shamus?” Edilean asked.

“I was,” Prudence said, and her entire face took on a glow.

“How lovely,” Edilean said.

“How strange,” Angus muttered, then moved his leg away from Edilean before she could kick him.

“He’s such a kind man, but he’s been ill treated all his life. Shamus wants to start over, where people don’t judge him by what his father did.”

“Like loosening the cinch on a girl’s saddle?” Angus muttered.

“He would never do such a thing! He’s a kind, thoughtful man.” Prudence gave Angus a look that let him know what Shamus had told her of him.

Angus glanced at Edilean as though for sympathy, but she’d always liked Shamus. Angus moved aside the leather curtain over the window and glanced outside. “We’re almost there.” He looked back at Prudence. “I want you to tell me how you came to shoot James.”

Everyone in the coach was quiet, their eyes fixed on Prudence.

“I didn’t mean to,” she began. “I was… Shamus and I were…”

“In Cuddy’s room over the carriage house,” Harriet said impatiently. “We all know that, and, by the way, I think you paid Cuddy much too much for the use of his room.” Harriet looked at Edilean. “Ever since he helped you that night when you and-” She broke off for a moment. “Anyway, I think Cuthbert takes too much liberty on himself.”

“Did he embezzle half the year’s profits?” Edilean shot back at her.

“I did that because-” Harriet began but Angus cut her off.

“You two can settle this later. I make it a rule to never argue when there’s a dead body in the same carriage with me. Now, Mrs. Harcourt, you were saying?”

“Please don’t call me that,” Prudence said. “I can’t bear the name. I will be glad to take Shamus’s name of Frazier. We-”

Angus gave her a hard look.

“Yes, right, back to the shooting. I looked out and saw a light in the kitchen of the house, and I thought it was Harriet and that something was wrong, so I went inside. But when I got there, the light had moved to the parlor. There was James, filling a bag with the silver candlesticks. I guess I made a sound because he turned around and he had a pistol in his hand.

“He said, ‘But you’re dead.’

“I tried to think quickly and I said, ‘Yes, I am and I’ve come to take you to the grave with me.’

“He said, ‘Like hell you will,’ and he aimed the pistol at me. I leaped, we tussled, the gun went off, and he fell to the floor. Dead. I believe I screamed.”

For a moment the others were silent as they looked at her. Each of them knew that her story was a fabrication, but no one said anything. A wrestling match with a pistol does not leave one person with a bullet hole squarely in the middle of his forehead. In his midsection perhaps, but not in his head. Besides, they all knew that the pistol Prudence had used belonged to Cuddy.

Harriet and Edilean looked at Angus to see what he would say.

“It’s as I thought,” he said. “It was self-defense.”

“Yes, clearly,” Harriet said, and looked at Edilean, who said, “It couldn’t be anything else.”

No one looked at the other for fear their doubts would show.

Angus was glad when the carriage halted. “We’re here. I think it would be better if I went in and talked to the young man alone. He and I know each other, but not all that well, and I’m afraid this might be a shock for him. I’ll sort it out, then we can all go home. All right?”

The three women nodded and sat there while Angus got out of the coach. When they were alone, Edilean looked at the others and said, “Who’s going to get out first?” Since by the time she finished the sentence, she was half outside, it was a rhetorical question. Prudence, by sheer size, was second, and Harriet came last, smoothing her hair and trying her best to look as though she were on a mission that was nothing like what they were actually doing.

Harriet glared at Edilean in her masculine clothing and started to speak, but Edilean gave her a look that made her close her mouth.

The three women went into the house of Matthew Aldredge, the three Scotsmen behind them.

TWO WEEKS, EDILEAN thought. Two entire, whole weeks since she’d seen Angus. After that night when they’d gone to Matthew Aldredge’s house, and after what happened to poor James’s body, Angus said he wouldn’t be returning to the house with them.

It wasn’t until that moment that Edilean realized she’d been looking forward to the coming fight they’d have. Angus would tell her how sorry he was for having left her, she’d tell him that she’d never forgive him, then-And then they’d end up with him on his knees begging her to marry him. She would, of course, finally say yes, but she’d take her time, and she planned to make him suffer.

Edilean had even imagined how she’d work with Harriet and Prudence to plan their triple wedding in the largest church in Boston. They’d all get married together, but afterward, they’d separate to go on their bridal tours. Edilean felt dizzy with the romance of it all.

But as with everything with Angus, nothing went as she’d planned. Angus stayed behind with Matthew while the others went back to Edilean’s house. For two days she’d smiled, anticipating that Angus would come to the front door with his arms full of roses and apologies on his lips. While the other couples around her snuggled and cooed at each other, Edilean kept smiling as she imagined what would happen when she next saw Angus. Would he have a ring for her?

But the days went by, and he didn’t show up. On the fifth day, Shamus volunteered to go find him. “And I’ll tell him what I think of him for treating you this way, Miss.”

“Oh, Shamus,” Prudence said, her voice full of love. “You’d hurt him.”

“It’s what I mean to do,” Shamus said in a voice that was deeper than normal.

Edilean could almost see Angus rolling his eyes and telling Shamus that he was ready to take him on anytime, anywhere. But Angus wasn’t there, and no one knew where he was.

Just as she knew they would, the others had paired off permanently. Malcolm asked Harriet to marry him and go back to Scotland to live. She hadn’t hesitated in saying yes, and at the end of the summer they were to be wed. Since then, they’d not stopped talking about all the things they were going to do in their new, old country. Malcolm told her in detail about every person of the McTern clan, so Harriet felt as though she already knew them. Edilean heard Harriet going over the names of the children.