3

EDILEAN TALBOT LEANED against the cold stone wall of her bedroom, looked out the narrow, unglazed window, and stared at the courtyard below. All the people down there seemed so happy-and free. But then, they had families and friends and things to laugh about. She saw a man pick up a little boy and toss him high in the air, and she could hear the child’s laughter four stories above.

Turning, she leaned against the wall, then in the next moment she slid down to sit on the old wooden floor. Just three more days, she thought. In just three days she was to be married to some repulsive man. Her uncle’s “friends” had made a pact with him that they would make no effort to win her. There was to be no courting, no flowers, no letters, nothing said to her in private. On the day she was to turn eighteen, she’d be asked before the reverend which man she chose, and she was to say which one she would have.

Edilean knew that if she truly believed the marriage was going to happen she really would throw herself off the roof.

Her father, a retired military man, had known he was going to die when his only child was still young and he’d done his best to protect her future. That it hadn’t been enough wasn’t his fault. He’d spent long hours making what he thought was an ironclad will. Everything he owned was to be sold and converted to gold, and the gold was to be given to his daughter on her eighteenth birthday. He’d written that she was to marry a man of her own choosing. He knew that if she married, control of her estate would go to her husband, but he’d trusted his daughter enough to choose a man who wouldn’t squander her inheritance. The flaw in his plan was that he’d underestimated his daughter’s only living relative, her deceased mother’s brother, who was to be her guardian until she was eighteen.

Her father had met the man once or twice, but he didn’t really know him. Neville had assured the dying man that he would take care of Edilean after she got out of school and that he’d follow the will to the letter. He’d even signed a document before witnesses swearing to uphold the will. Edilean’s father’s will further said that in case his daughter died before she was eighteen, the gold would go to charity.

To Neville Lawler’s mind, he was carrying out the will exactly as it had been written. On her eighteenth birthday, Edilean would be given a choice between two men, and she would marry one of them there and then.

Neither Edilean nor her father had imagined a man of such greed and such a lack of morals as Neville Lawler existed.

Now, Edilean knew that she had only one hope, and that was to come from the man she loved: James Harcourt. She’d met James through a school friend of hers. After her father died and their house was sold, when the holidays came, Edilean had to stay with friends. She was well liked both for her humor and because her beauty attracted young men to the houses, so she never lacked for invitations.

But of all the men who made fools of themselves over her, only James Harcourt interested her. He was tall, broad shouldered, blond, and beautiful. His grandfather had made a lot of money in some trade-James was vague about the details-so James was a gentleman through circumstance if not breeding. She’d soon found that he was sensitive about his background, so she asked him few questions.

He was the second cousin of one of her school friends, not a girl she liked especially, but Edilean went to her house rather frequently just in the hope that James would visit.

At first he paid no attention to her. He came to parties and teas, but he sat in silence, playing with the lace at his wrist and rarely looking at the other people there.

This lack of attention was something new to Edilean. For since she was a child, she’d been told she was beautiful, so she was more used to men like that hairy-faced Scotsman who stared at her, dumbfounded, than she was to men who didn’t so much as look at her. The truth was, James’s inattention intrigued her. It was a relief when he didn’t stare at her with great, liquid eyes. In fact, his lack of attention made her start doing things to get him to notice her.

She had a good voice and she could play the pianoforte well, so she played and sang the after-dinner songs. But James yawned and nearly fell asleep.

One day, she suggested that they all go out together and sketch, as she was good at drawing. Later, everyone said hers was by far the best, but James barely looked at it.

She ordered new dresses that she hoped would catch his eye, but even when she asked him if he liked the trim around the low-cut neckline, he only smiled politely.

But one night they were playing whist, and her friend was annoyed that she was losing at every hand. “I’m sure you’ll win the next one,” Edilean said as she claimed the winnings off the table.

“That’s easy for you to say. You can afford to lose all you want.”

As the next hand was dealt, James said, “I thought you were staying with my cousin because you have no home.”

“That’s true,” Edilean said, thrilled that James was addressing her directly. “Before my father died, he sold everything and left me the proceeds.”

“She means he had it all converted into gold, and Edilean gets it when she turns eighteen.”

“Does she now?” James said, but he didn’t look up.

After that, James was more attentive. Edilean wasn’t stupid; she knew the dowry was what changed his mind, but she was also a realist. To live well, a person needed money, and she had noticed a few frayed edges on James’s waistcoats. It looked like whatever money his grandfather had made was now gone.

Whatever the reason that got him to finally look at her, it was worth it. What followed were three weeks of heaven. James came to her friend’s London house every day, and he sang and played the pianoforte with Edilean. Their duets became renowned among their friends. He posed for her so she could sketch him, and he heaped lavish praise on her drawings.

Perhaps the dowry had been what made James notice her, but it was their mutual interest in art and music that gradually made them begin to love each other.

The first time he kissed her, she thought she would fall down on the grass right there and let him have his way with her. “Not now,” James whispered. “We must wait until you are mine and mine alone.”

“Yes,” she whispered. She was so in love with him that she would do anything he asked.

When she went back to school for the last half term, she wrote to him every day. He replied, not every day, but often, and his letters were amusing and interesting and full of his love for her. He wrote of how he longed to see her again, how every night before he slept he kissed the miniature portrait of her that she’d given him.

Edilean held James’s letters to her breast, sometimes even slept with them, and counted the days until the end of the term when she and James could marry.

During the courtship, Edilean had never given so much as a thought to her uncle Neville. She knew that, legally, he was her guardian, and she’d met him once when she was a child, but since her father died, she’d not had a word from him. She knew little about him except that he lived in a castle in far-off Scotland. “He’s a gentleman,” her father said, “so all he does is hunt and eat.”

To Edilean it sounded very romantic, and she thought that someday she and her husband, James, would visit him.

But then one night one of the teachers came to her room and woke her. “You have to go,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Edilean asked, rubbing her eyes. She could see the moon through the window; it was still night.

“Your uncle has come for you and you’re to leave with him. Hurry and dress. He says you’re to come in what you have on and nothing more. We’re to send your clothes to you.”