“It keeps me awake,” he said. “Does Harcourt tease you?”

“No,” Edilean said. “He loves me so much that he never teases me.”

“Doesn’t he make you laugh?”

“He sings with me and we go riding together. And we sit in summerhouses and read together. Sometimes he reads poetry to me. Do you like poetry, Mr. McTern?”

“Very much,” he said. “Sometimes I read a poem or two before I go to sleep. It helps me get calm.”

She looked at him hard. “Are you making fun of me again?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling at her. “But I mean no harm, lass. The truth is that I’m usually too busy trying to keep thieves from stealing your uncle’s cattle to have time to sit and sing with a girl.”

“But you have dances. Morag told me about them, and one of the women said you were a good dancer.”

“But not for the dances that you know,” he said.

After a while, Edilean quit trying to hold a conversation with him. It always seemed to end in her not knowing enough about… Well, about life, to be able to talk to him. She’d tried different subjects, but he only ended up teasing her and making her feel useless and incompetent.

She didn’t say so, but she vowed that she was going to do the best she could to make up for causing him to lose everything in his life. She’d asked him why he’d changed her plan of using Shamus, and when he told her about his idea of getting the pastor drunk, she felt even more guilty. In the end, he had tried to save her, and all he was getting for what he’d done was banishment.

A couple of times Edilean stole looks at him, thinking how she knew her uncle much better than he did. She’d seen the way her uncle pretended to be something he wasn’t when the men were around, and she knew he would never show his true self if any of the Scots were near. They wouldn’t work so hard for him if they saw the way he raised his hand to strike a woman they’d all come to like.

Edilean knew that Angus-Mr. McTern-seemed to believe that he had some time before her uncle came after them, but he hadn’t seen the man’s greed as she had. Somehow, she had to persuade this Scotsman to go to America with her and James. The plan she was coming up with was to get James to open one of the trunks and give Angus a large helping of the gold. That way, Angus would be able to buy himself some land in America; he could build a house for him and the family he’d start.

“What’s that look for?” he asked.

It was midday and she was hungry and tired, but excited too. It wouldn’t be long now before she saw James. “Where will you stay when we get there?”

“I’m going to lie down in the straw in the stables and sleep for three days.”

“You can’t do that. You’ll miss the ship.”

“Oh, aye. The Mary Elizabeth. Is it a big ship, then? Does it have room to spare for a poor Scotsman?”

She ignored his teasing tone. “I’ll make sure you have a place on the ship even if the captain has to share his cabin.”

“Spoken like a woman who has had everything all her life.”

Edilean gave him a hard look, but he didn’t see it. That was hours ago, and they were in the city now and there were other wagons. He’d halted now and then so she could buy them food, and he took care of the horses’ needs, but mostly he plodded on.

The day turned into night and they were all, including the horses, very tired.

Just when she was ready to say that she could go on no longer, she saw the sign for the inn. “We are here!”

“Yes,” Angus said tiredly. “We’re here at last.” He drove the exhausted team into the open doors of the stable, and immediately a man came out from the shadows. He was exquisitely dressed and had a face that Angus thought would look better on a girl.

“Edilean!” the man said sternly, “I’d almost given you up. I’ve been standing in this filthy barn for hours, waiting for you. Couldn’t you have at least tried to hurry?”

Angus stared at the man, and even if he hadn’t spoken, he knew he would have disliked him on sight. To Angus’s mind the man was Ballister and Alvoy, only a few years earlier.

“I knew you’d be in a hurry to see me!” Edilean said, and launched herself into his arms. He caught her, but just barely.

“You’re filthy! What is that all over you?”

“Sawdust. That coffin you sent for me was full of it. James, darling, aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Of course I am,” he said, but he pulled away when she tried to kiss him. “Look at what you’ve done to me. I’m as dirty as you are. Here! You!” he shouted to two burly men standing at the back of the wagon. “Be careful of those. I don’t want the bottoms falling out.” He moved away from her to direct the men in the unloading of the trunks full of gold.

Angus was still sitting on the wagon seat, too tired to get down. Two young men had come from the back and were unhitching the horses. “Be sure you feed them well.”

“Mr. Thomas raised them from colts,” one of the men said. “He won’t like to see them used this hard.”

“Nothing I could do about it,” Angus muttered as he got down. He looked about at the stalls, hoping to see a clean one so he could sleep in it.

“Did you see him?” Edilean asked as she went to Angus, her beautiful face alight.

“Aye, I saw him,” he said, not able to keep from smiling at her. “He’s as bonnie as you are. They should put his face in a story-book.”

“Oh you! You’re always teasing me. I want you to stay here while I get some money from James. I want to give you something for your time and trouble.”

“I will make my own way,” he said stiffly. “It was my choice to do this, and you paid Shamus for the task. You shouldn’t have to pay twice.”

“But you can’t end up here with no money. You have to at least have a place to stay tonight.”

“Are you asking me to share your room?”

“No!” Edilean said, her eyes wide, then she shook her head at him. “What would it take to make you too tired to laugh at me?”

“That will never happen. Now you should go to your young man. Perhaps this time tomorrow you’ll be married to him and you’ll be a happy bride.”

“Yes,” she said, but she didn’t move away from him. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes, of course.” He kept looking down at her, and tired as he was, what that man said when he first saw her kept running through his head. Now the man was overseeing the unloading of the gold while his bride-to-be was left alone. Maybe Harcourt didn’t realize how much she wanted to see him, or how much she’d been through to get to him.

“All right, then,” she said. “I guess this is the last time I’ll ever see you.”

“By tomorrow you won’t even remember my ugly, hairy face.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” she said softly. “I will never forget your face. I think I might remember it for the rest of my life.”

He wanted to touch her, wanted to put his hand to her soft face, but he didn’t. “Go, lassie,” he said. “Go to your husband.” It took some doing on his part, but he turned and walked out of the stables and into the night.

His bravery lasted until he was at the front of the inn, when he saw a handbill with a woodcut of his picture on it. It had been nailed to the side of a fence and offered a five-thousand-pound reward for him. Angus tore the paper off the fence and stared at it. How had they done this so fast? And where had the likeness of his face come from?

He looked down the dark streets, fearful that someone would recognize him, but no one was looking at him. He was just another man in from the country, wandering the streets and looking for a way to spend his money.

Angus went back into the stables to give himself time to think about what to do. He’d been so sure that Malcolm would keep Lawler away from him, that Angus hadn’t even been anxious during the trip. So why hadn’t they found him?

He knew that the answer was that someone had told Lawler a lot of lies. If the truth had been told, Angus would have been caught a day ago.