“What the hell is that?”

“A mummy,” Angus said.

“Bless me,” the man in front said as he moved his horse forward to take a look at the wooden box.

At that moment, a sound came from inside the coffin, and it was all Angus could do not to take off running into the forest, but in the next second he realized Shamus had done it. No doubt he’d put a cat in the coffin to scare Angus.

“It’s just a mummy,” Angus said. “It’s been dead for a thousand years. Nothing to be afraid of.” When their eyes were fastened on the coffin, Angus saw his time to make a move. He leaped at the man standing near him, grabbed his pistol, and put it to his head.

But it didn’t matter that he did, because in the same second, the lid on the coffin moved to one side and a woman with sickly white skin and clothes sat up. The moonlight hit her in a creepy, eerie way that made all of them, including Angus, stand absolutely still.

In the next second, the men wasted no time in running away. The man Angus had at gunpoint ignored him as he leaped onto his horse and took off into the dark of the forest, the other two close behind him.

Angus stood where he was, seeming to be paralyzed to the spot. He recognized Lawler’s niece, but was she dead and rising?

“You’d think they could have cleaned it out,” Edilean said as she wiped at the white sawdust on her face. She was blinking hard, as even her eyelashes were covered in the fine dust of the newly made coffin.

Angus was standing still and staring at her. “Holy hell! It’s you.”

“And it’s you,” she said angrily. “What have you done with Shamus?”

Angus looked up at the moon for a moment. At last he was beginning to understand what was going on. “It’s after midnight. Who’s locked in your room at the keep?”

“No one,” she said, rubbing at her face and clothes, then coughing at the dust. “Morag knows I’m not there, but she covered for me. Unlike you, other people don’t stand by and do nothing when another person’s life is threatened.”

“I hardly think marriage is death.”

She stood up in the coffin, unsteadily, and grabbed the back of the wagon seat. “If you were a prince and forced to marry an ugly princess you’d not be so calm about it.”

“Me, a prince?” He was still standing in one place and looking up at her.

“Could we just go? If it’s after midnight, then my uncle will come for me soon.”

Angus was trying to think about what to do. “I’ll get you back to him as soon as I can, and we’ll sort this marriage out.”

“I’m not going to return to him.”

“Yes, you are,” Angus said as he climbed onto the wagon seat. “I’ll talk to him. We’ll all talk to him. He’ll find some handsome lad for you to marry, and-”

“Handsome!” She was standing in the back of the wagon, and he was on the seat, so their faces were nearly level. “Do you think that is my worry? Do you think all this is about whether or not I have a beautiful husband? No, it’s about those!” She pointed to the trunks.

“Some old statues?”

“No. They’re not historical objects. Those trunks are full of gold and they’re my dowry. I told you that the man who marries me gets the gold. But my uncle has made an arrangement with Ballister and Alvoy that if I marry one of them, my uncle will keep the gold and give my husband and me only ten percent of it. I’m not only fleeing a hideous marriage but poverty as well.”

The full realization of what Angus had become a part of was coming to him. It would look as though he’d kidnapped Lawler’s niece and stolen six trunks full of gold. Hanging would be too light a punishment for him. This crime was so great they’d have to invent a new way to kill him.

“Why are you looking sick?”

“They will hang me,” he whispered.

“For what? Stupidity?”

“Kidnapping and stealing!” he said loudly as he put his face close to hers.

“Oh. Yes, I see. If it helps any, Shamus didn’t know either that I was in the wagon or that he carried gold.”

Angus wiped his hand over his face. “And what would have happened when he found out?”

“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.”

Edilean slipped her arm through his, and pressed her body close to his.

Under his beard, Angus couldn’t help smiling. “Shamus would probably have held you somewhere for days and tortured you. Tickled your bare feet with a goose feather.”

She looked up at him in puzzlement, then grimaced. “You’re teasing me.”

“Yes, fool that I am. Now be quiet and let me think.”

Angus was sure that when the girl was found to be missing, Malcolm would get Shamus and figure out what had been done. Malcolm would even figure out about the coffin-and he would make sure he misled Lawler long enough for Angus to get to Glasgow.

At these thoughts Angus relaxed a bit and he could feel the girl, still close by him, slumping so much he wondered if she’d fallen asleep. Laudanum was a powerful drug. Take too much and a person never woke up.

As he drove, Angus began to realize the enormity of the situation. He could never go home again. Never again would he see any of the people he’d known all his life. He wouldn’t see his sister’s children grow up. Wouldn’t see young Tam grow into manhood.