“You recovered,” Angus said to Prudence.

“I did, but only by accident. I’d forgotten the cake the farmer’s wife had baked for my father, and she came hurrying down the road in her little pony trap, trying to catch me. I think she’s why James and his hired killer didn’t stay to make sure I was dead. They must have heard her because by the time she saw me lying by the road, they were gone.” She took a breath. “For three months afterward I could drink only liquids. Everything had to be mashed up for me, and it was nearly a year before I had full use of my voice.”

Harriet looked at Angus. “The strain of it all caused her father’s heart to give out.”

“After he died,” Prudence said, “I had to sell everything to pay off the debts. The house, the home farm, all of it was sold. It’s where my family had lived for four hundred years, but it’s gone now.”

“So you came to America to find James,” Angus said.

“No. First, I went to your uncle,” she said to Edilean.

“But why? You couldn’t have thought that he’d help you. He wasn’t a man who believed in justice.”

When Prudence didn’t answer the question, Angus asked, “How did you know of him?”

“That day,” Prudence said, shaking her head. “That day when everything changed.” She glanced at Angus with a look that almost made him smile, but Edilean was watching him intently, so he didn’t. Prudence meant the day when Angus and Edilean had foiled James in his attempt to escape to America with the gold. “I slept all that day and only woke when James came into the room. He was staggering about from the drug, but he was lucid enough to be in a rage. He had on only his underclothes.” Prudence put her hand to her mouth, as though to stifle a giggle. “The only clothes he had were what he had on; the rest of them were on the ship-and on you.”

Prudence looked at Angus’s waistcoat. “I believe that one was James’s favorite.”

“Was it?” Edilean said. “I like it the best too. But then, I always did like James’s taste.”

“He charged everything to you,” Prudence said.

“I know, I saw the bills. But I didn’t have to pay them,” she said, smiling.

“What did he do after he found out the ship had sailed?” Angus asked.

“Went insane with rage. He’d planned it all so carefully.”

“He told you about what he’d done?” Angus asked.

“Not straight out, not as though he was talking to me.” Prudence tightened her mouth so that what lips she had couldn’t be seen, and her pointed chin almost came up to touch the tip of her nose. “He raged about how he’d married something like me to get the gold of the beautiful one, but that you”-she glanced at Angus-“you stole everything. James said I was-”

“I think we can all guess what James said,” Edilean said loudly. “Did you leave him that day?”

“Yes,” Prudence said. “I took the public coach to my father’s house, and I didn’t see or hear from James again until three years later when I was being strangled-and he was sitting on a horse looking down at me and smiling.”

“But when you healed, you went to see Lawler,” Angus said.

“I wanted to know if he knew where you were,” she said to Edilean.

“Me?” she asked and moved back in the carriage. She may have been able to fight off Tabitha, but Edilean knew that if this woman attacked her, she wouldn’t win.

Angus gave Edilean’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “It’s my guess that you were looking for something that Edilean had.”

“Yes,” Prudence said, looking hard into Angus’s eyes.

Edilean said nothing, but she sat up straighter in the carriage. The parure. That’s what Prudence was after. But that was long gone. Angus had taken it with him on the night he’d left Edilean.

“What you want is safely in a bank vault here in Boston,” Angus said.

“What?” Edilean said. “I gave those to you. Are you telling me that after all I went through to get those back from Tabitha’s thieving hands that you put them in a bank and didn’t sell them?”

“They were never mine,” Angus said. “How could I take such things?”

“Would you mind telling me what you’re talking about?” Harriet asked.

“The whole set is safe?” Prudence asked, and when Angus nodded, she started crying loudly. “It hasn’t been sold? Didn’t go to James to pay his gambling debts? You still have it?”

From above them, Shamus looked through the window to the inside of the carriage and glared directly at Angus. “You make her cry and I’ll tear you into pieces.”

“It’s all right, Shamus, dear heart,” Prudence said, sniffing, and blowing her nose loudly into the handkerchief that Harriet handed her. “It’s fine. I’ll tell you everything later.”

After another look of warning at Angus, Shamus sat back up on the driver’s seat.

Angus reached between the two women and slid the window shut. Prudence grabbed his hand. “You are a good man.”

“Sometimes,” Edilean murmured.

“I would really like to be told what everyone is talking about,” Harriet said, so Edilean told her.

“A parure? An entire set of jewelry?”

“Diamonds,” Edilean said.

Prudence nodded. “My father told me about them just before he died. I didn’t know he still had them, and neither did the bank. He told me that he’d kept them for his daughter’s wedding and that’s what they were for.” She blew her nose again. “He could have sold them and paid off a lot of debts but he didn’t. He saved them for me and had them secretly placed in my trunk. He didn’t let me see them before the wedding, for fear that James would steal them. He rightly guessed that James would never look inside my trunk. We didn’t have a marriage of intimacy.”

“When we get this done, I’ll give you the entire set,” Angus said. “An earring is missing, and some bracelets but-”

“I have all the pieces,” Edilean said, and they all looked at her. “My footman found them after the man who stole the diamonds from Tabitha sold them.”

“And why did you want the rest of the set?” Angus asked. “I’d think that if you hated me, you’d want nothing to do with any of it.”

Edilean kept her eyes on Prudence and didn’t answer him. “I guess you met Malcolm when you went to my uncle.”

“Yes,” Prudence said, and her face softened. “And it was there that I met Shamus. He knew a great deal about you, about where you’d gone, and who you went with, and about the wagon full of trunks of gold. Oh!” she said.

“What is it?” Harriet asked.

“The trunks of gold. James talked of little else when he found out that you’d sailed without him and now… Now…”

“He’s inside one of the trunks,” Angus said, and whispered, “be careful what you wish for.”

“You got Malcolm, Shamus, and Tam to help you,” Edilean said.

“Yes,” Prudence answered. “I had some money from the sale of my family’s estate, so I paid our way to America.”

“So you were on the ship with Shamus?” Edilean asked.

“I was,” Prudence said, and her entire face took on a glow.

“How lovely,” Edilean said.

“How strange,” Angus muttered, then moved his leg away from Edilean before she could kick him.

“He’s such a kind man, but he’s been ill treated all his life. Shamus wants to start over, where people don’t judge him by what his father did.”

“Like loosening the cinch on a girl’s saddle?” Angus muttered.

“He would never do such a thing! He’s a kind, thoughtful man.” Prudence gave Angus a look that let him know what Shamus had told her of him.

Angus glanced at Edilean as though for sympathy, but she’d always liked Shamus. Angus moved aside the leather curtain over the window and glanced outside. “We’re almost there.” He looked back at Prudence. “I want you to tell me how you came to shoot James.”

Everyone in the coach was quiet, their eyes fixed on Prudence.

“I didn’t mean to,” she began. “I was… Shamus and I were…”

“In Cuddy’s room over the carriage house,” Harriet said impatiently. “We all know that, and, by the way, I think you paid Cuddy much too much for the use of his room.” Harriet looked at Edilean. “Ever since he helped you that night when you and-” She broke off for a moment. “Anyway, I think Cuthbert takes too much liberty on himself.”