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When he’d discovered the jewels were missing, he went into a rage that would have killed a lesser man, but on the night he slipped into her room, he believed he’d hidden everything from Edilean. He would have died before he let her see what a fool he’d been to have let them be stolen. The worst thing was that he couldn’t figure out where and when. He’d spent days retracing his steps to look for them—to look for whoever had stolen them—but he came up empty. He could ask no one anything. Who was going to admit to having even seen the jewels?
Of course he’d thought of the women prisoners on the ship, but he’d naively thought that... Well, that they wouldn’t steal from him. Or maybe he just didn’t want Edilean to be right about Tabitha. He’d liked believing in Tabitha’s innocence and Edilean’s jealousy.
But Edilean had been right, and she’d figured out what Angus couldn’t—and she’d done something about it.
Reluctantly, he went into the tavern. As always, there was so much work to be done that it was sundown before he realized it. Suddenly, it hit him what a fool he was. He was in the tavern and Edilean was in his room.
“What’re you smilin’ about?” the barmaid, Dolly, asked as she filled three pewter mugs of beer from the barrel behind the bar.
“Love,” he said, and broke into a bigger grin. He looked across the bar at the tired travelers in the room, then he put his hands on Dolly’s sizable waist and gave her a resounding kiss on the cheek. “I won’t be working anymore today. In fact, I may never work in here again.”
“The boss’ll have your hide!”
“If he can find me, maybe he will.”
In the next minute Angus was back in his room.
When he opened the door, Edilean was just waking up. “I feel awful,” she murmured. “Every muscle in my body hurts.”
“Let me see,” he said as he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled back the cover. He touched her shoulders through the shirt, his fingers gently massaging her.
“Angus...” she whispered.
“Yes, what is it?” he asked, his face full of concern.
“If I don’t go to the privy I’m going to explode.”
He withdrew his hands, laughing. “Always practical, aren’t you?”
“I’m well past practical. You have to leave so I can dress.”
“Does that mean petticoats, corset, stockings, all of it? And of course I’ll have to help you with t
he corset.”
“I got a new one that laces up the front, but it would still take too long. I’ll never make it,” she said.
In a swift gesture, he picked her up, blanket and all. “Hide your face and no one will see what I’m carrying.”
“Except that my feet are sticking out,” she said.
“And such adorable feet.”
Her head was under the blanket, and all she could see was his face. “Where are you taking me?”
“I’m carrying you into the bushes, what do you think? Or would you rather share our four-holer?”
“Bushes,” she said. “Angus, what’s going on? Has...” She hesitated. “Has something changed?” She knew she was pushing him, trying to make him say what she so wanted to hear, that he’d at last realized he loved her and wanted to spend his life with her.
“No, nothing’s changed,” he said. “It’s the same as it was.” He was smiling. He knew what she wanted him to say, but not yet. He’d told her the truth. Nothing had changed. He still loved her just as he did before they parted.
Edilean had no reply to his words, and a minute later, when he set her down, she found herself in high meadow grass, with trees shading them.
“I’ll leave you here,” he said. “Follow the path to me and I’ll take you back.”
It took her only minutes to do her business, then she stood and looked around her. The sun was going down, and the light across the field was beautiful. The brilliant colors of wildflowers were sprinkled among the grasses.
Instead of taking the path back to Angus, she made her way through the field to a big oak tree. The area under it was trampled down, and it reminded her of a place where she’d gone to be alone when she was a child. She’d grown up in the house her father’s family had owned for four generations. As her father was rarely there, she’d spent her early life with governesses and nannies, and the oak tree had been where she escaped them. Smiling, she remembered that in her trunk, which was back in Scotland, she had a bagful of acorns from that tree. She planned to keep her girlhood vow and plant an acorn from that tree wherever she settled.
