Teresa Medeiros

by Once an Angel

  Rabid ferrets, Emily mused.

  She had been dragged halfway across the world by two rabid ferrets. They walked upright and wore bonnets and caps, but even draping them in silk and diamonds wouldn’t have cloaked their true … ferretness. She rubbed her arms. They were black and blue from Doreen’s pinches. She supposed the woman would bite her if she didn’t fear the captain would find it uncivilized. Or that Emily just might bite her back.

  She sighed. The tiny mail packet chugged through the water, churning an aqua swath through the indigo sea.

  Barney clawed at his collar. The wool suit Miss Winters had bought him before their departure would be well suited for the brisk autumn winds now whipping through London, but not for the balmy breezes of New Zealand. The suit had obviously been tailored for a man two sizes smaller than he.

  He mopped sweat from his brow. “This country ain’t natural. It’s like bein’ in ’ell before me time.” He narrowed his one good eye at Emily. “And if this is ’ell, that wench is the devil’s own imp. Look at ’er. You’d think she owned the bloody steamer and the Tasman Sea with it.”

  His sister glanced not at Emily, but back at the bridge. The elderly captain was slumped over the wheel, half dozing.

  “She might own it after we dump her in the lap of her rich guardian,” Doreen said. “The highfalutin duke’s heir is to pay us all the money he owes poor Miss Winters for looking after the evil little bitch all these years. And a tenth of it’s ours to keep.”

  “Ought to be ’alf,” Barney muttered, fingering the shiny bruise beneath his eye.

  Emily was tempted to agree with him.

  Monday she had smothered all of their rations with salt.

  Tuesday she had poured out Barney’s whiskey and replaced it with the contents of his sister’s privy pot.

  Wednesday she had tossed his only suit overboard. He had been forced to dive after it buck naked while Emily sliced her finger and cheerfully dripped blood into the sea in hopes of attracting sharks. It had taken both Doreen and the burly engine stoker to restrain him from throwing her overboard.

  Only this morning she had blackened his eye with her flailing fist as he and Doreen had stripped off her simple pinafore and crammed her into a skirt and bustle.

  “She ain’t even got the decency to wear a bonnet,” Barney growled.

  While his face blistered and Doreen grew more sallow with each day of the journey, Emily had the sheer audacity to turn her face to the sun and brown like a little butternut.

  “At least we finally got a proper frock on the boyish little fiend,” Doreen snapped.

  Barney’s gaze roamed up and down Emily’s figure, making her shudder. Emily knew he found her less than boyish, much as he loathed to admit it. Her breasts still ached from the horrid press of his bony chest as he had held her down for Doreen to tie the bustle tapes. She edged as far down the rail from him as the deck would allow. Leering at her, he adjusted his trousers. Emily hoped he was strangulating.

  Doreen boxed his ears. “Keep yer bloody hands where I can see ’em. We can’t muck this up now. We got this job only because Miss Amelia couldn’t afford to send another detective.”

  Barney’s answering whine was interrupted by the captain’s drowsy cry: “Land ho!”

  Emily’s pulse quickened.

  The steamer slowed. A green flush appeared on the horizon. Doreen gripped the rail, her drawn features made almost pretty by anticipation. When they drew closer, Barney fumbled at the ropes on the small lifeboat that would carry him ashore. He was determined to find the elusive Mr. Connor himself before he risked Emily running away again on dry land. She had run away once in Sydney and twice in Melbourne. But Barney was as dogged as a bloodhound. He’d simply thrown her over his shoulder and carted her back.

  Doreen sucked in an excited breath through her pinched nostrils. “Shall I go with you? Do you think you can find him alone?”

  “If this bloke is as fine and uppity as Miss Winters said ’e was, I’ll march straight up to ’is fancy ’ouse and fetch ’im. Then we’ll be rid of the brat and rich to boot.”

  Emily waited until Barney had hoisted the little boat into the bucking waves before leaning over the side and waving her handkerchief at him. “Do take care, Barney. One of Mr. Connor’s partners is dead. The other disappeared without a trace.” She smiled sweetly. “I should so hate for the same thing to happen to you.”

  Barney’s complexion paled to green. Shooting her a nasty look, he steered around and began rowing for shore.

  A gull circled the dingy steamer, then soared into the sky. Emily’s gaze followed its flight toward the silvery rim of the island.

  “Never forget,” she whispered to herself. “Justin Connor is a very dangerous man.”

  “The devil take that blasted Winters woman!”

  As his soft-spoken master exploded in a burst of temper, Penfeld jumped, rattling the teacups on his tray. The sea gull marching across the windowsill cocked his head in curious reproach.

  Justin Connor threw down the crumpled letter and paced the hut, ruffling his dark hair into wild disarray. “Am I never to be left in peace?”

  Penfeld set the tray on the stained tablecloth, fearing for his precious china with Justin’s long limbs at such odds with his gait. “It must have been the gum digger, sir. I told you the man was asking too many questions.”

  Justin turned with a sweeping gesture that made Penfeld thankful he had eased his sturdy bulk in front of the tea service. “What makes you think the tenacious Miss Winters would require a mere mortal for her endeavors? She probably spotted me in her crystal ball.” He flapped his arms. “I’m only surprised she posted a letter instead of flying straight over on her broom to fetch me.”

  Penfeld’s lips twitched, but he hid it behind a somber cough.

  Justin stabbed an accusing finger at the gull. “Are you one of her familiars, too? No black cats for our indomitable Miss Winters.”

  The gull tucked his head shyly beneath his wing.

  Justin growled. “Ought to wring your scrawny little neck. Put you in the pot for supper.” He started for the bird, hands outstretched.

  Penfeld cleared his throat meaningfully.

  Justin swept up the letter that had been posted from London over five months before and had arrived per a native runner only that afternoon. “The sheer arrogance of the woman! She insists I retrieve the girl immediately. She’s concocted some fabulous hints about her being involved in a scandal. What could the child have done? Spilled her milk at supper? Pilfered the sugar bowl?”

  Penfeld patted his rotund belly fondly. “I was once caned myself for a similar crime.”

  “The grasping creature. I’ve sent every halfpenny I could scrape together for the girl’s education.”

  Penfeld already knew that. He had been the one to post the slim envelopes devoid of a return address.

  Justin sank down on an upended rum barrel. His shoulders slumped. “She must want more money. But I’ve nothing left to sell. What am I to do?”

  Penfeld directed all of his attention to polishing the immaculate spout of the teapot with his sleeve. “The Winters woman might not be the only one to learn of your whereabouts. Perhaps your family, sir …”

  Justin lifted his head and looked at him with amber eyes that were dusted with flecks of ruthless gold. He spoke with the level enunciation that had been known to freeze the staunchest Maori warrior in his tracks. “I have no family.”

  For a moment the only sound was the clink of one cup against another. Justin’s gaze slowly melted from furious to imploring. “I’m a bachelor. Doesn’t that woman understand? I can’t be responsible for a child. It’s quite impossible. She’s far better off staying in England, where she can get a proper education.”

  Penfeld blew an imaginary speck of dust from the cream pitcher. “And when she’s of an age to marry?”

  Justin’s laughter had a wild edge to it. “We’ve years to worry about that. She was only three when David di
ed. She can’t be more than ten or eleven now.” Fueled by purpose, he donned his gold-rimmed spectacles and began to scribble furiously on the back of the paper. “I’m sending a letter back with the runner. The girl stays in the school her father chose for her. It’s in her best interest. I’ll send more money when I’m able.”

  “Have you ever thought the child might want a home? A family?”

  Justin’s pen hung poised over the paper. As he lifted his naked gaze, Penfeld wished he could bite back the words.

  His master’s sweeping gesture encompassed the dusty hut, the crude dirt floor, the books heaped in every inch of available space. “Does this look like a home?” He touched his stubbled chin, his shirtless chest, the jagged hole worn in the knee of his calico dungarees. “Do I look like a family?”

  Penfeld stared at the floor. Justin folded the letter in a neat square, scrawled a new address on the envelope, and held it out. Penfeld took it.

  He paused at the door, glancing back to find Justin still slumped on the barrel, his hand cupped around the gold watch he wore on a chain around his neck. In their years together, Penfeld had rarely seen him without it. As Justin snapped open the cover, a distant mist haunted his amber eyes.

  Sighing with regret, Penfeld turned away and plodded toward the native village.

  He caressed the worn envelope between his fingers, fearing it was not the poor little girl who needed his master, but his poor master who needed the girl.

  Emily shifted her bustle with both hands, watching with amused interest the battle taking place at the stern of the steamer. Three hours had passed with no sign of Barney’s boat. Doreen alternated between searching the horizon with a rusty spyglass and threatening the half-deaf, and, Emily suspected, half-daft steamer captain into drifting for one more hour. The captain’s little mail packet ran only once a month from Melbourne to Auckland, and he was determined to sail.

  While Doreen squawked and the captain bellowed, Emily turned back to the water, preferring the soothing lap of the waves against the hull. The balmy wind tore at her curls. The sun drifted like a golden feather into the sea. How ironic that after all those years of waiting, she had spent her last ounce of energy trying to abort this trip. They would never have gotten her aboard the ship from England if they hadn’t laced her coffee with a dose of belladonna that had almost killed her.

  They were determined to deliver her to the one man in the world she loathed more than them—Justin Connor.

  The roar of the steamer’s engines shook the deck. Emily clutched the rail, feeling the pistons throb to life like her hatred for her guardian.

  Rumors had flown through London society when the only son of the wealthy duke had failed to return from his New Zealand expedition. Girls Emily had once called friends brought her the murmured tales from their parents’ drawing rooms, their malice masked by well-meaning sighs of pity and pointed glances at her shabby frocks and scuffed boots.

  In the best London circles Justin Connor’s very name came to embody danger and romance. At the school it was whispered in tones of naughty reverence. Emily wasn’t the only girl who drifted into sleep with his image swashbuckling through her dreams.

  Most believed him a dashing adventurer, a speculator who had made his fortune gambling in land and gold and human lives. They swore he had cast aside his own family and had scoffed at their written pleas to come home and take his rightful place as heir to the Winthrop shipping fortune.

  Emily narrowed her eyes. She could well imagine him ensconced on the fertile New Zealand coast, living in the handsome Victorian mansion he had built with her father’s gold … and her father’s blood. Perhaps he had his own daughter by now—a golden-haired little doll-child swathed in love and lace. In seven years he had sent her not one personal note, not one word of kindness. Miss Winters had taken great pains to show her the stilted messages, the pathetic handfuls of pound notes and shillings.

  After a few weeks of such obvious neglect, they had given her spacious sitting room to Cecille du Pardieu, a china-faced brat who was rumored to be the illegitimate daughter of an Austrian prince. It was only Miss Winters’s fear of Emily’s mysterious guardian that stopped her from casting her into the streets. It was decided she would earn her bread by teaching the younger girls who had once been her adoring equals.

  In her tiny attic box-room, Emily had crawled beneath the gables and rubbed a clean spot on the sooty glass with her sleeve. She had gazed for hours across the grimy ocean of roofs and chimneys and waited for Mr. Connor to come and take her away.

  Groaning, the steamer jolted into motion. Doreen screeched a protest. As the island melted into the horizon, Emily’s nails dug into the rail.

  “We won’t meet today, Mr. Connor,” she whispered. “Not today. Not ever.” He would never have the chance to laugh in her face for daring to believe he might want her in his life.

  But as the steamer chugged into its tidy rhythm, Doreen’s moan of despair careened into a whoop of joy. Emily’s gaze followed the stretch of her outflung arm.

  Barney’s tiny boat cut through the waves. Emily’s breath caught in her throat. She took two dazed steps toward the rail and watched as Doreen and Barney struggled to hoist the boat up the side.

  Before Barney could climb out, Doreen was poking him in the ribs. “What did he say? Didn’t you bring him back with you?” She craned her scrawny neck to peer into the boat as if her brother might be hiding someone under the narrow seat. “Is he coming? Is he sending a fancy boat for us?”

  Barney slowly raised his head, his eyes flat peridots in his sallow face. “He ain’t there. Ain’t no one there but a pack o’ bleedin’ savages and some old ’ermit named Pooka livin’ in a hut. There ain’t no fancy ’ouse and there ain’t no fancy gentleman either.”

  “It can’t be. He has to be there. Our Miss Amelia said so.”

  Barney’s gaze came to rest on Emily with pure malevolence. “You ’eard me. ’E ain’t there.”

  Doreen’s shoulders slumped. “Miss Amelia was afraid of this. She didn’t even tell him we were bringing the brat in the letter she sent.”

  “Then ’e must o’ found out some other way and moved on. Wouldn’t you?”

  A bolt of raw pain shot through Emily, shocking her with its intensity. She hated Doreen. She hated Barney. She hated the whole world. But most of all she hated the tiny corner of her heart that had dared to hope.

  Tears sheened her vision. She threw back her head and burst into laughter, speaking for the first time in that long, sullen afternoon. “I’m sure Miss Winters will be receiving an explanation very soon. ‘Dear Miss Winters, I regret to inform you my present situation is not suited for the care of a child. Enclosed within is my generous offering of three pounds and five shillings for the continuance of her education, her board, her dowry, and an extra halfpenny to buy her a sweetmeat.’ ”

  Barney and Doreen gaped at her; their pointed jaws dropped to their throats.

  “Christ, the two of you are so pathetic! You trot halfway around the world at the bidding of some grasping, senile old woman on an idiot’s mission. You with your hideous bonnet and you with your short, ugly suit. You’re both clowns! We’re all clowns in Miss Amelia Winters’s bloody traveling circus!”

  Emily spun around. She was gulping back tears now and she would be damned to eternal hell before those two leeches would see her cry.

  She heard them whispering behind her and wondered if she had gone too far. She doubted if any of Miss Winters’s genteel pupils had ever dared address the prickly Miss Dobbins in such a manner.

  The creak of a plank warned Emily. She turned around. Barney and Doreen slunk toward her, shoulders hunched like two alley cats. Emily cast a frantic glance at the bridge. The captain was draped over the wheel, snoring with his eyes open.

  “You were poor Miss Amelia’s last hope,” Doreen said, her voice as oddly flat as her eyes.

  “Ungrateful little witch,” Barney muttered.

  Emily pressed herself
to the rail. The rough wood dug into her back. “Stay away from me. I’m warning you.”

  “Why?” Doreen taunted. “Is the great and mighty Mr. Connor going to swoop down from the sky to save you? He don’t want you. Nobody does.”

  The words should have lost their power to sting. But Emily discovered they hadn’t. Silently cursing the weight of her heavy skirts, she gauged her chances of dashing past them on the narrow deck.

  Barney cocked his head. “What was it Miss Amelia said about bringin’ ’er back?”

  Doreen lapsed into pure cockney. “Said she was a disgrace to the school. Drivin’ ’er finest pupils away. Said if I brought ’er back, I’d be lookin’ fer a new position meself.”

  Barney nodded smugly. The twilight wind blew cooler as brother and sister gazed at each other in a moment of silent accord. With a resourcefulness born of surviving a motherless childhood in the East End of London, they rushed her.

  Barney caught one leg, Doreen the other. Emily balled up her fist and smashed it into Barney’s face. Blood spewed, and she knew she had broken his nose. She enjoyed a fierce second of triumph. Then the sky and water swapped places as they heaved her up and over the rail of the steamer into the darkening sea.

  Chapter 2

  You haunt my thoughts both day and night.…

  Emily sank like a stone. The narrow double skirts twined around her legs in serpentine cords, cutting off her feeble kicks. The weight of the whalebone bustle dragged her down, deep into the murky depths until the shimmer of the sunset on the water faded to black.

  God? Her voice was shy and hesitant, as it had been when her father was alive before she learned that swearing and stomping got more attention than tugging politely on someone’s skirt.

  No answer.

  God? Are you there? Louder this time, more strident. The crushing pressure in her chest worsened. I know I haven’t been very nice the past few years. Miss Winters says I’m quite a naughty girl, especially after that sordid incident with the gardener’s son.

  Her skirt wrapped around her face in choking folds. Perhaps this was an inopportune moment to be reminding God of her sins.