Nobody's Angel

by Karen Robards

  That pricked the vertigo that half-blinded and deafened him. The chit snickered at him, of course. The burning shame reared its head again. How had he, Ian Connelly, fallen to such depths of ignominy? But he knew very well, of course, and knew who was responsible, too. He could consider himself fortunate that he'd not been murdered outright. But what had been done to him was almost as bad.

  His sentence was seven years. Seven years was not that long a time for a man of thirty-one to wait to get his revenge. Not that he had any intention of serving out the period of his indenture, of course. He could walk away from his dowdy new mistress anytime it suited him and catch the next ship back home.

  And then there would be bloody hell for his enemies to pay.

  A few people with skin in various shades of coffee hovered on the edge of the crowd. They were conventionally clad, the women in long dresses that were certainly finer than the one Susannah wore and the men in shirts and breeches such as any man would wear. But the darkness of their skin made them stand out. Ian blinked at them curiously as he passed. With a sense of shock he realized that he was seeing African slaves. He had heard tell of such, of course, but had never laid eyes on one before. As they left the green, he stared at a tall, ebony- skinned woman with a turban wrapping her head who was approaching along the street. She wore a starched white apron over a full-skirted dress of pale blue calico and walked a pace or so behind a fashionably dressed lady who was presumably her mistress. To his shock, Ian found that the African woman was eyeing him with every bit as much curiosity as he felt toward her. It hit him then that he, as a convict who had been indentured, was as much an oddity to her as she, an enslaved African, was to him. It occurred to him that they had a great deal in common.

  "Convict! Convict!" A rock flew out of nowhere to hit Ian's shoulder and bounce off. He flinched, looking sharply around as his arm came up to ward off other missiles. A tow-headed urchin of perhaps nine years was already running back to join a snickering group of his friends, who peeped around the corner of a dry goods shop.

  "Jeremy Likens, you stop that at once! Or I'll have a word with your mama! And the rest of you had best behave yourselves as well or there will be a painful reckoning for you all in the very near future!" Susannah clapped her hands sharply to emphasize her words, and the boy looked alarmed as he scuttled out of sight. His friends had withdrawn around the corner already, and not so much as a hand or foot remained to be seen of them.

  "Sorry, Miss Redmon. Please don't tell Ma!"

  "Sorry, Miss Redmon!"

  "Sorry!"

  The culprits peeped out at them and were dismissed by Susannah with a stern look and a monitory gesture. Ian was impressed anew with the respect she seemed able to command at will. More than one able-bodied man of his acquaintance would not have been able to deal half so effectively with such a gang of restive boys.

  "You are not hurt, are you, Connelly?" She did not stop walking but slanted him a glance over her shoulder. Those kind eyes were accented by lashes as long as his thumbnail, Ian noticed, and her nose was small and surprisingly pert. Had she possessed a better figure and a keener sense of style, she would not have been so very unattractive after all. But she was waiting for an answer. His head was throbbing and the sidewalk was beginning to undulate beneath his feet, but the spot on his shoulder where the rock had struck troubled him not at all.

  "No," he said after a moment spent summoning the word to his tongue. Then, as an afterthought, he added, "Ma'am."

  That bow to courtesy earned him a glimmering smile. She half-turned, slowing as though to allow him to catch up. It was her sisters she waited for, of course. He was not quite so light-headed that he did not realize that. But the smile was for him, and once again Ian was struck by what a smile did for her face.

  "I did not think so, or I would have been more severe. Jeremy is not a bad boy, you see, but he is much interested in impressing his friends. His mother is a good woman, but his father is a notorious scoundrel, and that makes Jeremy susceptible to such behavior as you bore the brunt of."

  "You would find excuses for the Devil himself, if he came in the guise of a child," the lovely one said, as, cautiously giving him a wide berth, the three girls scooted around him to gain their sister's side.

  "I make no apologies for liking children." Susannah's answer was brisk as she turned her back and quickened her step again.

  "By rights you should have some of your own, Susannah," Miss Pink-bonnet put in.

  "She must needs be married first, dolt, and no one's come asking her that I have seen." That leveler came from the plump one in the yellow dress.

  "Hush, Em!" said Miss Pink-bonnet, with a conscious look over her shoulder at Ian.

  "It's all right, Sarah Jane. Emily is telling no more than the truth and must not be scolded for that." Susannah sounded untroubled, and Ian deduced that her apparently unwed and unsought state was not something that bothered her unduly. To his surprise he found that he rather admired her for that. Almost all the females with whom he'd been acquainted up till now had viewed marriage as their ultimate goal in life.

  They turned onto a wide avenue lined on both sides with shops, the four girls in a fluid cluster with Ian a few paces behind. The few people who were not attending the auction sauntered along, in pairs or singly. The ladies they passed were surprisingly well-dressed, Ian considered, taking into account Susannah's appalling gown and the provincial nature of the area. Some carried baskets over their arms to hold their purchases, while others clung to the arm of a male escort. Nearly all called or nodded greetings to Susannah and her sisters, their faces reflecting their curiosity as they discovered Ian, filthy and tattered, lurching in the ladies' wake. Had he been feeling more himself, he would have snarled at the most avid, just to hear the women squeal and to see their eyes widen with fear. But he was growing more and more woolly- headed, and it required all his concentration to keep on his feet.

  "Here we are." Susannah halted before a dusty, iron- wheeled wagon. Her sisters stopped too, as did Ian. A man sat on the high plank seat, his head in his hands, the picture of misery.

  "Miss Susannah," he said thickly, glancing up. The movement must have pained him mightily, because he groaned and dropped his head back into the cradle of his hands.

  "I have a very great deal to say to you, Craddock, but I will reserve it for a later time. You will oblige me by getting into the back, if you please."

  "I didn't mean . . ." the man began miserably, but Susannah cut him off.

  "At once, Craddock." Her voice was cool and perfectly polite, but Craddock said no more. Moving as if he were eighty years old and crippled to boot, he got down and crawled into the wagon-bed, where he sat with his back propped against an ironbound barrel and his feet dangling toward the street.

  "You may get into the back as well, Connelly." Susannah turned her eyes on him. There was nothing of feminine coyness in the look, nothing that said that she was conscious of herself as a woman at all, but only the kind of directness that he might have expected from another man. A redoubtable woman was Miss Susannah Redmon, Ian found himself thinking even as he took a step forward to obey. But that step proved to be a mistake. His head whirled, and all of a sudden the ground seemed to tilt.

  "Connelly, are you all right?"

  Ian swayed. Susannah moved toward him, frowning into his face, and placed a steadying hand on his arm. Ian heard her voice, felt the surprising coolness of her fingers against the bare skin of his forearm where his shirt had been ripped away, and smelled the fresh scent of soap and —was it lemon?—that hung about her person. Then, so suddenly that he was at a loss to do anything about it, the sidewalk seemed to heave beneath his feet. His knees buckled. He felt himself collapsing and clutched at the nearest solid object in a vain attempt to save himself.

  That that object was Miss Susannah Redmon and that his arms were around her pulling her down with him was the last conscious thought he had before he spun away into oblivion.

  5


  Susannah pulled the horse to a stop before the two-story white clapboard house that the Redirions had called home since before her birth. Brownie, the family dog, rose from her preferred spot on the front porch directly in front of the main door to yap a welcome. She was a fat brown creature whose sole claim to distinction was that she had only three legs; her left hind leg had been amputated by a carriage accident some years before. Susannah had been in town that day and witnessed the accident and had brought the maimed stray home to save it from being "mercifully" shot. She had nursed the dog back to health and now Brownie's missing limb slowed her not at all. Only her age-acquired girth hampered her movement. But she was still capable of a mighty bark. Chickens that had been scratching in the yard clucked and fluttered, alarmed by the dog. From the pasture near the barn, Old Cobb the mule brayed a welcome to his stable-mate Darcy, who drew the buckboard. Darcy nickered back. Clara the cat, roused from her nap, stretched lazily on the porch railing, adding her voice to the general hubbub. Susannah, accustomed to being welcomed in such a fashion, paid no attention beyond telling Brownie, in a distracted tone that did no good at all, to hush. Her shoulder ached from where she had hit the ground when the bound man had collapsed on her, but she ignored the pain that shot down her arm as she moved.

  "Craddock, you take his shoulders. Girls, you may help me with his legs."

  "You can't mean that you expect us to move him?" Mandy pouted prettily. Unfortunately, the effect was entirely wasted on her sister. Susannah finished wrapping the reins around the knob at the front of the buckboard that had been put there for just such a purpose and gave Mandy an exasperated glance. The four of them were crowded onto the plank seat, and until that moment both Mandy and Em had been crossly remarking on how very cramped they were and how glad they would be to reach home. Now neither of them, nor Sarah Jane either, made the least effort to get down. Only Craddock, grimacing as if every muscle pained him, clambered to the ground.

  "Yes, I expect you to help move him. How else are we to get him inside, pray? In his present sorry state, Craddock could not lift much more than an egg without help."

  "Surely you don't mean to take that convict into our house!" Sarah Jane's eyes widened as she turned them on Susannah.

  "Where would you have him taken? The barn? Crad- dock's quarters? Mayhap the chicken coop? Or shall we let him sleep in the loft with Ben? He's ill, and he'll need nursing. Of course I mean to take him into the house, for now at least. It ill becomes you, as the daughter and prospective wife of men of God, to speak of convicts in that tone." Susannah jumped to the ground. Her jarring landing sent pain shooting along her shoulder again, but she dismissed it. As always, she had too much occupying her mind to pay heed to any trifling physical discomfort.

  "You are right, of course, and I don't mean to sound uncharitable, but—but he's filthy! And 'tis anyone's guess what he may try to do to us when he recovers! The only thing we know about him is that he has been convicted of attempted murder. You could be endangering all of our lives! I declare that I will be terrified to sleep in my own bed with that con—er, that man in the house!" There was real distress in Sarah Jane's voice.

  "You're as poor-spirited as a declawed crab lately, Sarah Jane, do you know that? I have no objection to helping to carry him in, or to having him in the house, either," Emily said, sounding virtuous. She was seated next to Mandy who still occupied the far right end of the bench, and she did not let Mandy's presence keep her from jumping to the ground. She simply pushed her sister out of her way. Mandy, thrust from her perch without ceremony, fortunately hit the grass feet first, stumbling forward as she landed before finally gaining her balance.

  "Em, you great cow, be careful what you're about!" Mandy, clutching folds of her elegant skirt in both hands, whirled on Emily, who was grinning widely as she watched her sister's less than graceful descent. Even as she appeared ready to box her sister's ears, Mandy recollected her status as a young lady rather than a squabbling child. Her eyes left Emily to shoot self-consciously toward Craddock. A large component of Mandy's reach for self- control stemmed from the knowledge that a man—even so ineligible a one as Craddock—was witness to her behavior, Susannah knew. She stifled an inward sigh. Really, Mandy in the throes of man-fever was getting to be almost more than she felt equipped to handle. But of course she would handle it, because who else would if she did not?

  Emily was sensitive about her weight, as Mandy of course knew very well, and was still young enough that she felt no compulsion to preserve her dignity. She flushed with anger in turn, "Don't you dare call me a cow, Amanda Sue Redmon! You're nothing but a—a preening peahen yourself! All you care about is your mirror! You're lazy, and vain and—and . . ."

  "Emily! That's quite enough! You're far too old for such tricks as pushing your sister from the wagon, and for name-calling as well. And that last goes for you, too, Mandy. Words can be far more hurtful than deeds, remember." Susannah never raised her voice, but the authority that sprang from years of acting the mother to her sisters silenced both girls. They glowered at each other, but neither said anything more. With an inward prayer to the good Lord above to grant her patience, Susannah walked around to the back of the buckboard, beckoning her sisters to follow her. They did, although Mandy and Em both looked sulky and Sarah Jane was openly dubious. All four of them clustered around the end of the wagon, silent for a moment as they stared at the sprawled figure of the indentured man.

  His legs, bare from just below the knee down, stuck out over the edge of the buckboard. They were hairy and dirty, and decidedly unprepossessing. The brogues he wore looked too small for him, and the bottom of one foot could be seen through a large hole worn in the sole. His breeches were tattered, permitting indecent glimpses of male flesh to anyone who cared to look, which Susannah emphatically did not. His shirt was little more than a gray rag, and only the gold waistcoat, which amazingly still retained a button that held it closed at his waist, kept his chest from being bare. Aware of her young and innocent sisters' eyes fixed on what was visible of the convict's very masculine, hair-covered chest, Susannah felt another stab of misgiving. Here was a complication to her compassion that she had not considered: what effect would the addition to the household of a virile and very likely completely amoral male have on the girls?

  Sarah Jane was probably right, Susannah admitted to herself with a sinking feeling. She should never have allowed her annoyance at Hiram Greer and a certain sympathy for the convict's plight to move her to purchase him. Problems of all sorts were very likely to ensue, and more problems were something she certainly didn't need. But the deed was done and could not be undone. She must take care to keep Mandy and Em, whose youth rendered them most vulnerable, from close contact with the man.

  And if he proved to be the kind of rogue who preyed on young girls? Susannah felt queasy at the very idea. Then, as she bethought herself of the stout iron fry-pan that hung from a hook in the kitchen, she felt marginally better. Should the need arise, she would clout the varmint soundly on the head, then sell him to Hiram Greer for his pains! Though perhaps, if she were lucky, it would not come to that.

  "Craddock, you get up there behind his head and lift his shoulders. Mandy, you and Em take his left leg. Sarah Jane, help me with his right."

  "Yes'm." Craddock crawled up in the wagon to do her bidding. Her sisters also moved to obey, though a tad reluctantly.

  "Susannah, he stinks," Em said, wrinkling her nose as she made a discovery that had become known to Susannah an hour or so previously, when she had struggled to get out from under the man who had collapsed on her. Susannah was well-accustomed to nursing the infirm; it was one of the duties she had willingly assumed when she took over her mother's place as the female head of the minister's household. But even she had known an instant's hesitation before sliding her hands around the convict's hair-roughened and filthy leg. Her sisters, whom she had never allowed to be exposed to the very intimate tasks involved in nursing a man, could not be blam
ed for their obvious reluctance to touch him.

  "Yes, he does," Mandy chimed in. Grimacing, she let go her grip on the man's ankle and stepped back.

  "So would you if you had not bathed for months," Susannah said. Before she could expand on this theme, Mandy, an expression of relief easing her frown as she looked beyond Susannah's shoulder, interrupted.

  "Here's Ben, thank goodness!" she said.

  Susannah's hands dropped from the convict's leg as she turned to watch the approach of their second hired man.

  "I'm real sorry about this mornin', Miss Susannah," Ben said, hanging his head guiltily as he hurried toward them. Tall and bone thin, with a shock of auburn hair and a spattering of freckles to go with them, Ben was not an unattractive boy. Susannah liked him, and as a rule he was as biddable a youth as one could wish to encounter. But his recent devotion to Maria O'Brien, oldest daughter of a dirt farmer who, with his large family, barely managed to eke out a living some four miles distant, had rendered him all but useless. She gritted her teeth to hold back the scolding she knew would be better rendered in private and indicated the bound man.

  "We'll talk about this morning later. Right now, you can help Craddock carry this man inside."

  Sarah Jane, Mandy, and Emily stepped back from the wagon with varying degrees of relief. Ben's eyes widened as they found the unconscious figure thus displayed.

  "Who's he?" Ben asked.

  "Our new bound man," Emily said. She and Ben were much of an age, and Susannah suspected that Em found Ben rather attractive. But Ben seemed totally unaware of Emily as anything other than a daughter of the family, so Susannah hoped she had not much to worry about from that direction. Certainly she was not about to borrow trouble by planting a warning to stay away from the other in either Em's or Ben's ear and thus sow seed on what might prove all too fertile ground.