Teresa Medeiros

by Once an Angel

  But this man wore nothing but sheared-off dungarees that clung low on his narrow hips. The chiseled muscles of his chest and calves drank in the sunlight. To Emily’s shocked eyes, he might as well have been naked.

  Another unwelcome memory returned—damp sand clinging to her own bare skin. The pulse in her throat throbbed to mortified life. She glanced down to find herself wrapped in the voluminous folds of a man’s frock coat. The sleeves hung far below her hands, nearly enveloping the duster.

  “My man Penfeld was kind enough to lend you his coat.”

  The husky scratch of the stranger’s voice sent shivers down her spine. An endearing lilt had been layered over his clipped English, flavoring it with an exotic cadence. She had heard similar accents in Melbourne.

  Disconcerted to find her thoughts read so neatly, she shot him a nasty look. A dazzling smile split the somber black of his stubbled chin. Dear Lord, the amiable wretch had kissed her! What other liberties had he taken while she lay in his embrace? Dropping the offensive duster, Emily buried her fists in the coat and hugged herself, fighting a sudden chill.

  Penfeld-the-Hamster leaned forward in his shirtsleeves and suspenders and peered into her face with concern. “You look a trifle pale, miss. Would you care for some tea?”

  “Coffee, please. Very strong and very black.”

  Penfeld looked as dismayed as if she’d asked for a straight shot of arsenic. His whiskers quivered.

  “You’ll have to forgive him,” said the man. “He’s been waiting years for the opportunity to serve a lady tea.”

  “He’ll have to wait a bit longer, then, won’t he?” she snapped.

  She couldn’t tell if it was laughter or reproach that kinked the corner of the stranger’s well-shaped mouth. While Penfeld retreated to the cast-iron stove, shaking his head sadly, the native squatted and grinned at her. To Emily he still looked hungry.

  “Fix some for him, too,” she commanded. “Or does he prefer blood?”

  The stranger crossed his muscular arms over his chest. “Only the blood of virgins.”

  Emily pasted on her cockiest smile, determined to boast her way past these half-naked rogues. “Then I’ve nothing to worry about, have I?”

  A shadow flitted over his face but was gone before she could define it. Her mind raced feverishly. She was not in London, but halfway across the world in New Zealand. What if the dim-witted Barney had been wrong? If Justin Connor was living somewhere on this isolated stretch of coast, she would have to flee as soon as possible. No body of land was big enough to hold the two of them.

  A silver tray wielded by a pristine white glove slid into her vision. A dainty china cup perched on its gleaming surface. Penfeld held one hand behind his back with painstaking care. “Do forgive me, miss. I lost my other glove in a thermal geyser.”

  “My condolences.” She snatched the steaming cup. As she brought it to her lips, her sleeve threatened to swallow it before she could.

  The stranger knelt beside her and deftly rolled the cumbersome sleeves past her wrists. Emily gazed at the top of his head. Threads of sun-burnished silver webbed his silky, dark hair. She brushed a riot of tangled curls from her own eyes, shied by his nearness.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “My pleasure, Miss …?”

  “Scar—” the word was halfway out before Emily could stop it. She took a deep swig of the coffee, scalding her throat “—let,” she finished. “Miss Emily Scarlet.”

  If Justin Connor was somewhere nearby, she couldn’t afford to have her name bandied about the island. Her guardian did not want her. He’d made that painfully clear by never retrieving her from the seminary. If she showed up on his doorstep demanding her share of the gold mine, she might meet the same fate as her father’s other partner, Nicholas Saleri. She might disappear. For good.

  The man straightened. “Well, hello, Miss Emily Scarlet. I’m”—Emily noticed his hesitation as he exchanged a wary glance with Penfeld—“delighted to meet you. Would you care to tell us how you stumbled upon our humble shore?”

  “I fell off a boat.” That much was true anyway. She hoped God was smiling down on her. From the skeptical gleam in the man’s crystalline eyes, she had a feeling she’d be needing all the heavenly help she could get.

  “Shall we send a message to Auckland for you? Perhaps we could locate this boat. Find your family.”

  Wonderful, she thought. Just what she needed. Another chance for the darling Dobbinses to sink their claws into her.

  She shook her head violently. Coffee sloshed onto Penfeld’s coat, eliciting a soft moan from the valet. “That won’t be necessary. I have no family. I’m an orphan.”

  She couldn’t help feeling rather pleased with herself. That was the second time she’d told the truth today. And it wasn’t even noon yet.

  Her confession seemed to disturb her host. He rose and paced the hut, raking a hand through the scandalous length of his hair.

  Emily sipped her coffee, studying him from beneath her lashes. Tansy would love to dig her pearly little teeth into this one. She had to admit he was handsome in an unpolished sort of way. Tall, broad-shouldered, and just a shade too thin. The kind of man any woman would love to fatten up. She tucked her toes beneath the coat, wondering where that last treacherous thought had come from.

  A gold chain gleamed on his chest. The sun glinted off a single earring as he turned.

  Pirates! Emily thought. They must all be pirates! That would explain his reticence in introducing himself. His name and face must be plastered on wanted posters all over the South Pacific. Perhaps he would sail her off the island before Justin Connor found her. Emily’s imagination soared. Why, she wouldn’t mind turning a hand to pirating herself! She and Tansy had often sneaked off to play at Jean Laffite until Miss Winters had discovered them dueling with two of her finest parasols while Cecille du Pardieu, squealing like a piglet, prepared to walk the plank. Miss Winters might have forgiven them if they hadn’t balanced the plank on the roof—forty feet above the street.

  A little pirating and she would be powerful enough to win back her daddy’s gold and send old Justin Connor himself to a watery grave.

  Emily gulped the last of the coffee, immensely cheered at the thought. “You’re so very kind to let me stay. I promise to be very little trouble.”

  “Stay? Stay here?” The man turned so fast that his knee dislodged a stack of books. They toppled to the floor, sending up a new cloud of dust. Penfeld wheezed.

  Emily reclined against the wall with what she hoped was convincing frailty. “I don’t wish to impose on your hospitality, of course, but I do feel dreadfully weak. You’d be very generous to show mercy to a homeless orphan.” She pursed her lips in a beguiling pout that had been known to drop grown men to their knees.

  But this man only rested his hands on his slim hips. A muscle clenched in his jaw, and suddenly Emily was afraid. Wasn’t it Tansy who had warned her that someday she would cajole the wrong man?

  The native slipped soundlessly to his feet. As Emily’s bravado wilted beneath the heat of the stranger’s gaze, she rather wished the savage would eat her.

  But he only bowed with a flourish, then slipped a sprig of greenery from behind his ear and laid it at her feet. “Trini Te Wana welcomes you to our humble abode with the most celebratory of congratulations.” He backed away, still bowing.

  The stranger’s sun-flecked eyes challenged her. “It seems Trini has made his wishes known. Go on. Take it. It’s a Maori sign of welcome.” When Emily frowned skeptically, he squatted beside her, lifted her curls, and whispered, “It means he doesn’t intend to eat you.”

  His warm hand lingered against her nape. At the flash of his wolfish grin Emily wondered if it was Trini’s appetites she ought to be concerned about.

  She took the sprig of shiny leaves with trembling fingers. A warbling cry sounded from outside the hut. The man leaned one elbow on his knee and snapped open the watch case dangling from his chain.

>   “Trini, Penfeld, could you see to that?” he asked. “I’ll be along shortly.”

  As Trini and Penfeld left, the watch spun on its golden chain, sending a blinding dart of sunlight across Emily’s eyes. She stared at it, hypnotized.

  “Miss Scarlet? Are you all right?” he said gently. When she didn’t answer, he nudged her chin up with his knuckle.

  “I’m fine,” she whispered, studying his features with a fresh mixture of wonder and horror.

  He gazed down at her; a frown deepened the tiny sun creases around his eyes.

  She forced a smile. “Really. It’s nothing a fresh cup of coffee won’t cure.” She held out her cup.

  As he sauntered to the stove, whistling under his breath, Emily stared at his broad back through a fractured prism of tears. She had lied. Heaven had stopped smiling, and she wasn’t sure if she’d ever be fine again.

  She had caught only a glimpse of the tiny tintype mounted in the watch case. An angelic moppet smiled out at her, her brown eyes twinkling with hope. Emily knew that child had died long ago with her father. And no matter how hard she tried, she could think of only one reason why the gentle pirate with the stunning eyes would be wearing Claire Scarborough’s portrait around his neck.

  Her hand closed in a convulsive fist, crumpling Trini’s friendly offering to shreds.

  Chapter 3

  The memory of your tender smile brightens even my drearest day.…

  Emily silently whispered frantic words of hope to herself.

  Perhaps the handsome pirate had kidnapped Justin Connor, tossed his fat corpse overboard, and kept her father’s watch as booty.

  “Here you go. Careful, it’s hot.” The man’s husky voice interrupted her reverie.

  She took the cup he offered and watched him settle his lean hips against the windowsill. The breadth of his shoulders blocked the sunlight, leaving him in silhouette. At least she was to be spared the temptation of gawking openly at his face. She took a swig of the coffee, but its bitter warmth failed to ease her chill.

  Maybe the cannibal had eaten Justin Connor but been unable to digest the watch.

  Her spirits lifted at the thought. She tilted the cup to hide her grin. Ending up as an English delicacy at some native feast was more than equal to the various tortures and lingering deaths she had devised for the scoundrel over the years. This man simply couldn’t be Justin Connor, she assured herself. If he were, he’d be living in a mansion, not a ramshackle hut with only a prim valet and an overeducated cannibal for company. She opened her mouth to ask him his name, then closed it again, part of her quailing from what he might answer.

  “I could hardly sleep last night, wondering about one thing,” he said. Suspicion shaded his voice and Emily sensed he was a man who did not trust easily. They had that much in common.

  She set down the cup, embarrassed to discover how badly her hands were shaking. “I should hate to be the cause of your insomnia. Do satisfy your curiosity.”

  Pulling off his hat, he fixed her with a gaze of disarming candor. “Were you naked before or after you fell off the boat?”

  A fierce heat burned her cheeks. She resisted the urge to tug the coat down over her pale calves. “After,” she croaked dutifully. “My dress was pulling me under the water, so I tore it off.”

  Justin knit his hands at the small of his back, struggling not to smile at her bold ingenuity. “Most of the women I once knew would have gracefully drowned before shedding their precious petticoats and corsets.”

  Anger surged through Emily. This scowling stranger suddenly represented all the narrow-minded prigs she’d left behind in London. “Forgive me if I offended your delicate sensibilities. Better dead than immodest. Wasn’t it our noble Victoria who said that?”

  Except for a faint quirk of his eyebrow, he ignored her sarcasm. “So you’re English.”

  “No. I’m Chinese,” she snapped.

  She knotted her hands in Penfeld’s coat, struggling to control her temper. Miss Winters always said it would be her downfall, along with her profanity, her ardor for green apples, and her penchant for sliding down the banister in her Sunday pinafore.

  “Why were you expelled from boarding school?”

  Damn. Could the man read her very thoughts? she wondered. “Which time?” she replied innocently.

  The question took him aback. “The most recent?” he offered.

  She crossed her arms over her chest, mentally arming both barrels. She liked to see how well a man stood up under fire.

  Drawing in a deep breath, she recited, “I ate a bucket of green apples and threw up on the headmistress’s best cloak. I put a snake in Cecille du Pardieu’s bed. I substituted firecrackers for the candles on last year’s Christmas tree. I cut off the buttons on the teacher’s boots … while she was teaching. I sawed off the newel post at the end of the banister. I replaced all the pepper in the kitchen with saltpeter, and I called the neighborhood curate a pompous, lily-livered, Satan-spawned, son-of-a—”

  “Enough!” he shouted. “Thank you very much. That will be quite enough. There’s really no need for further explanation.”

  She ducked her head modestly and cast him a shy look from beneath her lashes. “Oh,” she added as if in afterthought. “And the headmistress caught the gardener’s son and me in a rather … um … compromising position.”

  Justin gazed down at her, thinking that a man could become intoxicated from the wicked sparkle of her eyes. Her grin slashed an impish dimple in one cheek and crinkled her nose. What manner of girl was she? She had tossed the torrid facts of a ruinous scandal in his face with the naughty aplomb of a fallen angel. Thank God he had a few more years of reprieve before David’s little Claire was faced with temptations so grave.

  He was forced to turn away, the image of Emily rolling in the leaves with some pimpled gardener’s lad filling him with unexpected fury. Did they rendezvous in the gazebo? he wondered. Behind the toolshed? Did he bring her roses? Weave chains of daisies to crown her chestnut curls?

  He found himself at the stove, fiddling aimlessly with the tin coffeepot. She’d been kicked out of other schools, had she? Had there been other boys? Grocery lads? Lamplighter’s nephews? Chimney sweeps? A series of visions, erotic and vivid, raged through his mind, obliterating all his hard-earned sanity in their path. Because in those visions it wasn’t some boy who took her, but he himself who knelt between her thighs and showed her how it felt to be loved by a man.

  His knuckles whitened on the warm edge of the stove as he struggled to remind himself how fast a desire this hot could scar.

  He stole a glance at her. With her tousled curls and flushed cheeks, she looked to be no more than a child, a little girl playing dress-up in her father’s coat.

  Perhaps he should be locked away for even entertaining such notions about her. “How old are you, Miss Scarlet?” he choked out.

  She lifted her cup in a mocking toast. “Grown.”

  Taking a deep breath, he turned. His voice came out with the cool detachment of a stranger’s. “I am terribly sorry, but I fear it’s impossible for you to remain here unchaperoned. There are missionaries in Auckland who can help you.”

  “The curate suggested an exorcist.”

  Justin suspected she needed an exorcist less than a sound spanking. He lowered his voice to a hollow whisper. “I could call on Trini’s tohunga, the high priest. I’m sure he’d know some way to get those nasty spirits out of you.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” She shook her head violently. “I’ll not be an hors d’oeuvre for some leering skull shaker.”

  “Why, Emily, you insult the Maori! They’re quite civilized, you know. They never eat their friends. Only their enemies.”

  “How benevolent.” Emily blew a stray curl out of her eyes. She had no intention of being frightened off so easily. Not until she’d quenched her burgeoning suspicions. “Very well, then. If you want to be rid of me, then rid of me you shall be.”

  Justin thought he had won until s
he began to briskly unbutton Penfeld’s coat. His mouth fell open as the ebony folds parted to reveal the creamy swell of her breasts.

  He leaped across the hut and grabbed her wrists. “What in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing?”

  She blinked up at him. “Returning your valet’s coat. I’m not blind. I can see he cherishes it.”

  “I’ll buy him another in Auckland,” Justin growled. He released her, ashamed to find his fingers had dug red marks into her creamy flesh. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “We’ll borrow a wagon from Trini.”

  He pulled her up. Before she could take a step, her leg collapsed. Justin caught her in the circle of his arms.

  Moaning, she clung to him. “Oh, my ankle. I must have twisted it when I crawled ashore.”

  Her curls tickled his nose, maddening him with their softness. He was tempted to drop her, but forced himself to lower her gently. He knelt to examine her ankle. No swelling. No bruising. Not so much as a freckle marred the smooth satin of her skin. He pressed the bone with his fingertips. She winced and clenched her teeth.

  “Terrible pain, eh?” He cocked a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Dreadful.” Tears welled in her luminous eyes. “Do you think it might be broken?”

  Her face was next to his, her lower lip soft and trembling. Justin wanted to bite it. He trailed his fingers up her calf to the hem of Penfeld’s coat, helpless to keep from envisioning what she wore beneath it—nothing. She gave him one of those melting glances—her eyes all sparkling coffee innocence. He was tempted to give her what she was so unwittingly asking for. Tempted to continue the slow glide of his fingers up her thigh toward a dark and sensual destruction. But whose destruction? Hers or his own?

  He snatched back his hand and stood, his spirits sinking. Unless he wanted to carry her all the way to Auckland, the girl was staying for a few days. He suspected she was faking her injury, but other than setting fire to the hut and hoping she’d run out, he had no way to prove it. A thread of relief ran through his irritation. Auckland would swallow a girl like her without a qualm. If it was a hint of purity shining in her eyes, he didn’t care to see it destroyed. New Zealand took little mercy on innocents. He was living proof of that.