“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?”