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“Maybe that would be better than chasing after stolen cattle,” he said.
“Or better than farming?” she asked.
When they got back to their own cabin, they saw that a hammock had been hung up and the trunks had been repacked. Edilean watched as Angus checked that the box of jewels was still where he’d hidden it, and smiled when he saw it was still there.
Minutes later, she asked him to untie her corset laces, and he groaned. “You’ve made rules that I cannot touch you, but I have not said the same to you,” she said.
“Take that back or I’ll let you sleep in that cage all night.”
Smiling mischievously, she said, “Then I’ll have to go to that adorable Mr. Jones and ask for his help.”
“You are a truly wicked woman,” Angus said as he quickly untied her laces, then went to the far side of the room.
Edilean undressed slowly as she thought about the evening and how it felt to belong to someone. Since her father died, she’d always been someone’s guest. She’d always had to “sing for her supper” as she thought of it. She’d had to walk when she didn’t want to, talk when she wanted to be quiet. She’d been a guest, never the owner of the house—and the worst had been in her own uncle’s house. There, she’d been a prisoner.
But now it was nice to think that she had her own husband and they were going to a new world and would build their own house. Even if it wasn’t quite the truth, she liked to think of it.
Minutes later she was in bed and lay in the shadows, watching Angus struggling with the hammock. He rolled from one side to the other and seemed about to fall out.
“I want to hear you say my name,” she said.
“What?”
“You heard me,” she said. “You’ve never said my name to me and I’ve sometimes wondered if you even know it.”
He took a moment before he spoke. “Edilean,” he said softly. “Edilean... Harcourt.”
“I guess it is. If the captain has seen the handbills of you he may have heard of the missing Miss Talbot. And you are Angus Harcourt.”
“That I am—for now anyway. Maybe when I get to Virginia I’ll name my place McTern Manor.”
“So you want to go to Virginia?” she asked, her voice quiet. She could hear the ocean outside, and inside she could hear Angus breathing. “I’m not sure, but I think Virginia is a long way from where we’re landing in Boston.”
“I like the sound of this Virginia.”
“So do I,” Edilean said sleepily. She’d had no sleep the night before when she’d cut Angus’s hair and shaved him, and today she’d met people and had many new experiences. When she fell asleep, it was so deep that she didn’t hear Angus when he fell out of the hammock and hit the floor hard. Nor did she awaken when he pulled the quilt over her and stood looking at her for a long while.
He used the blankets from the hammock to make a pallet on the floor on the far side of the cabin and settled down to sleep. As he dozed off he remembered that he’d said he’d like to give her an entire town to design. “Edilean, Virginia,” he whispered just before he slept, and he liked the sound of it.
12
NO, NO, NO!” Angus said as he stood up from the chair and backed away from her. “I’m so sick of this I’m going mad. You hear me? Mad! Insane!”
Edilean looked at him in consternation. It had been raining hard for four days now, so they’d stayed inside the cabin and she’d started teaching Angus how to read. The process would have been easier if he’d bothered to apply himself, but he kept looking out the window at the sea. One time she asked him what he was thinking and he told her he was remembering Scotland and his family.
When he’d said that, Edilean moved away to sit on the bunk and let him have his own thoughts. She was glad that she was leaving no one behind who she really cared about. She had a few friends from school she’d like to exchange letters with, but there was no one she would really miss.
Too often, she thought of James and wondered how he liked his life with his new wife. She was glad that since he was now married, he’d never again have a chance to fool some schoolgirl into thinking he was in love with her.
But she didn’t miss him, the man. In fact, as she got to know Angus, she realized that she’d never known James. In the few days she’d been with Angus she’d learned what he liked to eat—meat—and what he hated—seafood or anything that looked what he called
“suspicious.” She knew how easily he was embarrassed, and how his sense of humor was always just under the surface. When he got frustrated at trying to learn his letters, she’d seen that if she could make a joke, he’d get his good humor back.
She’d thought about what he’d told her about not flirting with him and acting as though they were brother and sister, and she’d done the best she could. It hadn’t been easy. Leaning over him hour after hour as she corrected his work had been difficult. Sometimes she inhaled the fragrance of his hair and closed her eyes, the physical pleasure of the scent of him nearly overwhelming her.
In the days they’d spent together, they’d developed habits that now seemed second nature to them. She got out his clothes each morning while he shaved—he’d refused to let her do that task for him—and she tied his cravat, as he could never seem to do it correctly. And he helped her with her corset morning and night—and was already so used to it that he often yawned while pulling and tying.
For Edilean, the days had been wonderful. They were as close as she’d come to having a home and family since her father died. But now Angus was saying that he’d hated those days.
