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“He wasn’t supposed to.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a little bottle. “James sent me a bottle of laudanum, and it was to keep me asleep the whole way. James was to wake me with a kiss,” she said, smiling dreamily.
Turning, Angus looked over the horses’ heads to the road. Was there a way to right this? “And this James is... ?”
“The man I love. James Harcourt. I wrote him of my predicament and he took care of everything. He found when the gold was to be shipped to my uncle, took it, and put it on this wagon. He also put the coffin in the back for me. All I had to do was get someone—Morag—to let me out of my room and get someone else—Shamus—to meet the wagon and drive it back to James.”
“So where is he?”
“My uncle?”
“No! This man you say you love. Where is he?”
“Waiting for me in Glasgow.”
“Then he himself took no risks. He gave a drug to a woman he loves, let her travel in a coffin at the mercy of a man like Shamus, not to mention highwaymen, and he—”
“What’s wrong with Shamus?”
“I would need a week to tell you.” He looked about at the dark forest. “We have to go. Now.”
“To my uncle?”
“Do you think he’d believe the truth, that I knew nothing about this?”
“Shamus could tell him—”
“The Shamus you seem to think is so good is—” He threw up his hands. “We have to go and I need to think.”
“I don’t have to get back in the coffin, do I?”
“I ought to put you in it and nail it shut.” Instead, he had to practically lift her over the back of the seat to sit beside him. A minute later, they were moving. Angus was grinding his teeth as he thought of the situation he was now in and how to get out of it. How could he ever again go home?
“I don’t know why you’re so angry at me,” she said. “All you have to do is drive to Glasgow and let me off. James will take care of everything after that.”
“Then what? I go back to my own clan? To my own family? Do you think your uncle is too stupid to know I took his rich niece, that I stole his gold?”
“This isn’t the way it was supposed to happen. Shamus—”
“Do not mention his name again. If he’d taken the wagon all the way to Glasgow—which I doubt—whatever money he got he would have kept and he would never have returned to Clan McTern. One by one his brothers have left, so he would have too.”
“And if I had woken up early in the coffin?” Her voice was a whisper, as what he was telling her was beginning to sink in.
“Let’s just say that by the time you got to this John—”
“James.”
“Harmon—”
“Harcourt.”
“To this man who doesn’t risk his own skin to get both a bride and a wagon full of gold, you wouldn’t be something he wanted.”
“Oh.” She moved closer to Angus and looked around her with frightened eyes. “Shamus is actually bad?”
“Very, very bad.”
She moved even closer.
“The worst I’ve ever seen.”
