“I didn’t mean to—”
“I know,” she said. “That one prisoner’s quite pretty and she likes you. You have every right to pursue her.”
“I wasn’t ‘pursuing’ her,” he said. “I was dancing with all the women.”
“Yes, of course you were. Again, I apologize for what I’ve done to your life. You were right when you said that if you’d never met me you would still be at home and blindingly happy.”
He wiped his sweaty face with a towel from the bowl and pitcher at the far end of the room. “Lass,” he said, “when a man’s angry he says things he doesn’t wholly mean. Sitting here day after day with nothing to do but struggle with words in a book nearly drives me to madness.”
“Yes, you made that clear.” She picked up the dress again. “As I said, I apologize for what I did to your life. I know I have forever destroyed your chance for happiness.”
“Nay, lass, you haven’t.”
Edilean threw down the dress on the table. “Would you please stop talking to me as though I’m a child! You may see me that way, but I can assure you that other men don’t. I’m trying to apologize to you. I wish with all my heart that I’d thought to tell the captain that you and I were brother and sister, but I didn’t. So now we’re stuck together until the end of this long, dreadful voyage. I made a mistake when I thought to repay you for all you’ve done for me by teaching you to read. Fool that I am, I assumed you wanted to be something different than what you are. I was wrong. You consider yourself perfect as you are and want no change.”
“I don’t think that’s quite true,” Angus said. “Perhaps learning to read would be good for me. In fact...” With a smile, he went to the book she’d been using for a text. She’d found stationery, quills and ink, plus a few novels in the bottom of the smaller trunk, and she’d been using them to show him how to form his letters. He knew numbers and could add and subtract in his head, but he wasn’t used to writing them down. “I think I’m ready for another lesson now,” Angus said. “The exercise did me much good.”
Edilean gave him a little smile. “I’m so glad it did.”
He took the seat across from her and picked up his quill, dipped it in the ink, and wrote his name. It took him several minutes, but he did it. “There. What do you think of that?”
Edilean didn’t look up from her sewing. “Mr. McTern, I am no longer going to be your teacher or your dresser. You can do whatever you want and I won’t interfere.”
“I see,” Angus said as he put the paper down. “It’s that woman, Tabitha, isn’t it? But you shouldn’t be so hard on her. She’s had a bad time in life. She told me her story, and it’s truly awful. She’s been treated unfairly by both people and the law.”
“Poor thing,” Edilean said coldly.
“I think you should have some Christian charity toward her. She’s not had the gentle life you’ve had.”
“My life gentle? Yes, Mr. McTern, you’re right. My life has been so easy. My mother died at my birth and I was raised by my father. But as he was an officer in the army, I saw him so rarely that I spent my life in boarding schools. One time my father came to visit me and he didn’t know which one of the girls was his daughter. He died when I was twelve and I was suddenly without home or family. In school I had to pretend to like girls I despised just so I’d have a place to spend Christmas. Then, when I was seventeen, I was taken from school by an uncle who cared only for the gold my father left me. Since then, I’ve done everything to save myself from having a future as bad as my past.”
“I didn’t mean—” Angus began, but she put her hand up.
“Unfortunately, you have been involved in my life in these last weeks, but that was never my intention. The first time I asked you for help, you not only turned me down but you also laughed at me, so I knew to ask nothing more of you.”
“I apologize for that. I didn’t mean—”
“Didn’t mean?” she asked, her voice rising. “You’ve caused me a great deal of misery that you didn’t mean to do, haven’t you, Mr. McTern?”
“I have,” he said, his jaw stiff as he stared at her.
“But, ultimately, you did save me. Because of your diligence I didn’t sleep all day then find out James had sailed off with my dowry. There’s not enough in the world that I could do for you or give you that could thank you for that. That I have any future is the result of your care and concern for me.”
“Lass, I—”
“I have a name!” she half shouted.
Angus sat up straighter. “Would it be Miss Talbot or Mrs. Harcourt?”
“Mrs.,” she said, then gave a sigh as her anger left her. “I really am sorry for all this. You’re right that I’ve been bossing you around. What was it you said? That I was treating you like a trained monkey? That I was trying to make you into what I hoped James was?”
Angus took a while to answer. “Yes,” he said at
last, “I said those things in a moment when I was so homesick I couldna think of anything else. But it was just a matter of bad temper and it meant nothing.”
“It meant everything to me,” she said. “Every word you said was true. Mr. McTern, I will make a vow to you that I will never again interfere in your life. You can wear what you want, talk any way you want to, dance with whomever you want. All I ask is that you do not humiliate me on this voyage. Everyone thinks we’re married, so I beg that you not... not carry your lust for the prisoners to the point where people look at me with pity. So far in my life, I’ve avoided that particular embarrassment, and I’d like to continue to do so. Do we have an agreement?”
Angus was sitting ramrod straight in his chair, blinking at her. He felt bad for having yelled at her that morning. But he wondered why she wasn’t like other women who fought back in a way that ended with Angus putting his arms around her and comforting her. Right now he wanted to go to her and hold her, tease her until she was smiling again, but the way she was looking at him made him unable to even make a joke.