"Just what do you think you're doing?" she asked, after she recovered somewhat from the shock she had suffered upon setting eyes on him. That he was totally without modesty had already occurred to her when he had cavorted about the house clad only in the too-small nightshirt. Now he was half-naked and seemed totally unconcerned by his state.
Despite the best will in the world not to look, her eyes slid over his body. He was so thin that his ribs showed, but his shoulders were broad and his legs long and powerfully muscled. Susannah felt a blush heat her cheeks as she realized that his buttocks were nicely muscled, too. An uncomfortable memory of how heavy he was, appearances to the contrary, and how hard his body was to the touch arose to plague her. She banished it almost instantly, but not before sudden, acute embarrassment threatened to overcome her. Her instinct was to avert her eyes, but she guessed that he would get too much enjoyment out of seeing her stare at the wall or the yard or anyplace but his person as she spoke to him.
"Shaving. Want to watch?" He glanced at her over his shoulder as he spoke, and it was clear that he had noticed her discomfiture and was laughing at her. Of course—he could see her reflection in the mirror. Doubtless he'd gotten a good view of her blush. Unable to help it, Susannah blushed more hotly and felt like throwing something at his head again. But she'd already made enough of a fool of herself where he was concerned and had no wish to add to her folly. She was the mistress, he the servant, and she meant to cling to her dignity throughout the rest of their dealings if it killed her.
"I'm glad you feel so much better. Perhaps by tomorrow you'll be ready to start taking on a few chores. Light ones, of course." She could do nothing about the color that she was sure still blazed in her cheeks, but her voice was steady.
"Like slopping the hogs?" He twanged the razor along the strop and then brought it to his face.
"And feeding the chickens, and fetching the water, and grooming the horses, and planting seeds and . . ."
"Whoa! I thought you said a few chores."
"Those are a few chores. I hope you're not lazy."
"I hope not, either. I guess we'll find out, won't we?" He turned his head to flash a glance that was almost teasing at her. Nearly a quarter of his face was cleared of brush, and he was starting to look different. Not quite so brutish.
"If you don't work around here, you don't eat," Susannah said, and turned back into the house. When she returned a few minutes later, she was carrying a pair of gray hose she had just finished knitting and one of her father's shirts. The shirt was sure to be hopelessly too small for him, but it was the best she could do for the moment. Certainly it was better than having him go around bare-chested. What was left of his own shirt was fit for nothing but the ragbag, once it was clean.
"When you've finished, you may put these on. I don't know how things are done in England, but around here we're careful of our modesty. I expect you to keep yourself decently covered in future."
"I've finished." Connelly turned away from the wash-stand, a towel to his face as he wiped away the soap. "And speaking of modesty, given the fact that you've already seen me in the altogether—it was you who bathed me, wasn't it?—I don't see that it matters."
"Caring for an unclothed sick man is a very different matter from being constantly confronted with an unclothed healthy one, especially in a household that consists mostly of young ladies. I've my sisters to think of."
"Ah, the three twittering birds from the auction. I remember." He finished with the towel as he spoke and tossed it in the general direction of the nightshirt. About to inform him that the pile of laundry waiting to be washed was the other way and that he might add towel and nightshirt to it, Susannah never got the words out. Her attention was distracted by his face. For a moment— she prayed it was no longer than that—she stood staring at him, as stunned as if she'd been pole-axed.
He was breathtakingly handsome. Never in her wildest flights of fancy would she have guessed the degree of masculine beauty that could be hidden by a well-grown beard. His cheekbones were high, his jaw chiseled, his chin square with the slightest suggestion of a cleft in its center. His nose was long and straight, his mouth perfectly carved. And he was young. Too young. Almost as young as herself. Susannah's shocked gaze turned to one of near-horror as she realized just what she had done.
This time she'd set the fox loose among the chickens and no mistake. Her sisters, or at least Mandy and Em, were going to go wild when they saw him.
The sound of a buggy pulling up in front of the house made her jump like a scalded cat.
"What ails you?" he asked, frowning.
"Put on that shirt," she hissed. Turning so fast her skirt swirled, she went to see if she could head Mandy off at the door. Though she could not forever keep her sister from getting a look at their bound man, at least she could prevent her from seeing him half-naked. But his face was the real problem. How long did it take a man to grow a beard?
Mandy was waving good-bye to Todd Haskins and his sister as their buggy rolled away. Susannah emerged onto the front porch, and managed a feeble wave herself in response to their shouted greetings. To think that only that morning she had been worried about Todd Haskins turning Mandy's head. A boy of twenty, with fine fair hair and a peach fuzz chin, Todd was handsome in a callow kind of way, but even with his family's wealth and position added in he was no match for the gray-eyed devil that she herself had brought right into their house.
Mandy would be dazzled. The thought almost made Susannah groan.
"Just think, Susannah, Mr. Haskins has told me that his mother means to give a grand party! There'll be music and dancing, and Miss Haskins said that she'll make sure I'm invited!" Mandy was almost at the porch, looking lovelier than ever as her cheeks glowed pink with excitement. Her dress of simple white calico sprigged with rosebuds showed off her figure to perfection. The straw bonnet that Susannah herself had decorated with ribbons to match was vastly becoming. Beaming with anticipated pleasure, Mandy looked as beautiful in that moment as she ever had in her life. Susannah saw her sister's attraction with the fresh eyes of fear and felt her heart sink.
She already had ample personal evidence of the kind of rogue Connelly was. If he could practice his wiles on herself, he would certainly not keep his hands off a beauty such as Mandy out of gentlemanly decency or out of respect for her youth and innocence. As for Mandy, Susannah shuddered to consider what a task it would be, keeping her sister away from Connelly once she set eyes on him.
"Baptists do not dance, dear," she murmured distractedly as Mandy picked up her skirts and stepped up onto the porch beside her.
"But surely just this once . . ." Mandy's voice broke off and her eyes widened as they looked beyond Susannah's shoulder. Susannah did not even need to glance around to know what had brought that arrested expression to her sister's face. The doorway was behind her, and Connelly was standing there. Susannah knew it as well as if she had turned around to see him herself.
"That cannot be the bound man," Mandy breathed.
Susannah did turn then, to see Connelly running his eyes over Mandy with open appreciation. The knave! Did he lay so much as a finger, or speak so much as an overwarm word, to her little sister, any of her little sisters,
Susannah would fill his hide full of birdshot! And so she meant to warn him before he was an hour older!
"You must be Miss Susannah's sister." His clipped English was nearly as captivating as his appearance, Susannah realized. The deep, gravelly voice was surprisingly attractive, now that it came from the throat of a heart- breaker rather than a lout. He should have looked ridiculous, standing there in his stocking feet and disreputable breeches, with their father's full-cut shirt strained to the point of ripping over his shoulders, but he did not. In fact, he looked spectacular, certainly far more spectacular than any male Mandy, or Susannah for that matter, had ever seen. The wrap-around shirt would not close over his chest, though he had thrust the ends of it into the waistband of his breeches as was proper.
A deep vee of masculine chest was exposed down the middle, revealing everything from the pulse in the hollow of his throat to much of the thick wedge of black hair that covered his chest to the swathe of white bandages that thankfully covered some part of what otherwise would have been on display.
"I'm Mandy."
"Miss Amanda," Susannah said, her eyes fixed meaningfully on Connelly. His gaze flicked from Mandy to Susannah, and suddenly an amused gleam appeared.
"Run along upstairs and change, dear. I need you to fetch me a few things from the garden." Susannah's voice was as steady as she could make it. Knowing Mandy as she did, she was aware that the least hint of opposition was all that was needed to set the seal on a situation that already promised to be vexatious enough.
"Oh—all right." Mandy glanced back over her shoulder at Susannah as if just then remembering that she was there. She must be dazzled by Connelly, Susannah thought grimly, to agree to picking vegetables without broaching so much as a single argument. Mandy hated anything to do with dirt.
"And I need you in the kitchen," Susannah added to Connelly as he stepped aside to allow Mandy to pass by him. He smiled at her sister, just faintly, but the effect was maddeningly sensual. Susannah felt the temperature of her own response to the slow lift of his lips and could have kicked both herself and Connelly.
"Yes, ma'am," he said, his eyes sliding to Susannah now that Mandy was past him. Susannah realized that he was laughing at her, though his face had sobered. Amusement lurked in the glinting gray eyes. Ignoring the teasing look, Amanda walked into the house.
"What was your name?" Mandy stopped at the base of the stairs to glance back at Connelly, who had entered behind Susannah. The look she gave him was flirtatious, but then Mandy would flirt with a doorpost, Susannah reminded herself as she tried not to succumb to utter dismay. "Campbell, Crane, something like that?"
"Connelly," the blackguard said. "Ian Connelly."
"Connelly." Mandy smiled blindingly at him. "How nice to have you join our household. I'm sure you'll be very happy here."
"I'm sure I will, Miss Mandy."
"The vegetables, Amanda," Susannah prodded with an edge to her voice.
"I'm going, Susannah dear."
The sweet-as-molasses reply—Susannah dear, really!— was followed by a truly inspiring demonstration of how to seductively climb a flight of stairs—skirt gathered so as to show off the curve of her neat little behind and a discreet bit of stocking at the ankle, hips swaying, back erect. The minx! Where had she learned to move like that?
Susannah vowed to have a long and pointed talk with Mandy in the near future.
"You need me in the kitchen?" Connelly's voice was bland as Mandy disappeared around the curve in the stairs. Susannah might have been taken in had not his eyes given him away. They gleamed at her, more amused than ever.
"If you dare . . ." she began in a fierce undertone, only to be interrupted by the sounds of Em laughing and footsteps crossing the front porch. Emily and then Sarah Jane walked through the doorway. For the moment it took their eyes to adjust from the full sun outside to the comparative darkness of the hall, they were unaware of Susannah's and Connelly's presence.
"Do you suppose Mrs. Likens really hit her eye on a door?" Em sounded uneasy.
Sarah Jane grimaced. " 'Tis possible, I suppose, but I would deem it more likely that the door was Jed Likens's fist."
"But surely he . . ." Emily suddenly became aware of the two figures standing silently at the foot of the steps. She broke off her words, blinking at them in surprise. As the full glory of Connelly's altered appearance sank in, she gaped, then blushed with confusion.
"Oh, my goodness!" she said, her hand flying to her mouth.
Sarah Jane, who had far more presence of mind than Emily, confined her reaction to no more than a single surprised glance at Connelly's face before her eyes slid to Susannah.
"This is Miss Sarah Jane, and Miss Emily," Susannah said tersely, nodding to each girl in turn. "As you can see, Connelly is much recovered. Did you remember the buttermilk?"
"I left it on the porch," Sarah Jane replied.
"Connelly, would you fetch it to the kitchen, please? You two had best change. There's a lot of work to be done."
"There's always work!" Emily groaned.
"There's always food, too, and clothing, and shelter, and so you should be thankful," Susannah said.
"Yes, indeed, that's true," Sarah Jane told Emily as she shepherded her younger sister up the stairs before her. "Besides, you know what the Scriptures say about idle hands. . . ."
"Oh, Sarah Jane, just for once would you hush? I am so sick of you forever prosing on!"
The two disappeared around the bend. Connelly appeared in the doorway, carrying the milk jug. Tight- lipped, Susannah turned and went into the kitchen. He followed her, setting the jug on the table. She moved to the flour bin, dumping the dough from the bowl and shaping it into loaves without even having to think about it. She had performed the task so many times she could have done it in her sleep.
"If I dare what?" he asked then, leaning a hip against the table and folding his arms over his chest as he watched her.
Susannah's hands stilled, her fingers sinking deep into the dough, ruining the shape of the loaf. Her eyes were angry as they lifted to his face.
"If you dare so much as glance sideways at Mandy, or Sarah Jane or Em for that matter, I'll take the fowling piece there and blow you so full of holes you'll look like a sieve!" she hissed.
13
"Saving me for yourself, are you?" the swine asked, apparently unmoved by her threat. Picking up an apple from the bowl in the center of the table, he bit into it with relish.
Susannah stared at him for a moment without speaking. The question was so plainly intended to provoke her to anger that she felt her temper subside a little. Carefully, she reshaped the loaf she had destroyed and put it and its fellow into pans for baking.
"I mean what I say, and so I warn you," she said, picking up the pans and moving across the kitchen to thrust them into the baking oven.
"Miss Mandy . . ."
"Miss Amanda!"
"Miss Amanda, then, is certainly lovely, but a trifle wet behind the ears for my taste. And your other sisters are not quite my style, so you may set your mind at rest. You have no need to be jealous."
"Jealous!" For a moment Susannah could manage no more than that. Then, as she glared at him, ready to annihilate him with any weapon that came to hand, the teasing glint in his eyes gave her pause. He was deliberately baiting her, for no other reason that she could think of than that he enjoyed watching her lose her temper. She would not give him the satisfaction. Instead she stooped, retrieving from the floor near the fireplace a basket of turnips that she had brought up from the root cellar earlier.
"You may peel these," she said, setting the basket down on the table with rather more force than was necessary and laying a knife down beside it. "That should not tax you overmuch."
"What the devil are they?" Thwarted in the teasing game he apparently derived so much amusement from, Connelly took another huge bite out of the apple and frowned down at the contents of the basket.
"You're swearing," Susannah pointed out, tight-lipped, as she crossed to the tall cupboard opposite.
" 'The devil' is swearing?"
"Yes, it is." Opening it, she began to search among the jars for the dried herbs she would need.
"And I thought I was being quite mild. See how I try to accommodate myself to your requirements? I'm even prepared to peel your strange vegetables."
"They're turnips."
"Ah." He finished his apple and set the core down on the table.
"You may put that in this bucket. I save scraps in it for the hogs." Susannah pointed to the bucket in question.
Connelly looked mildly revolted but picked up the core and lobbed it through the air. It landed with a dull thump, right on target. Susannah turned back to the cupboard. The jar she sought was on a shelf
right in front of her nose, and she was sure she would have seen it much sooner had she not been distracted by Connelly.
"I need the turnips shortly so that they may have time to cook." This pointed reminder made Connelly sit down at the table and pick up a turnip in one hand and the knife in the other.
"What do you want me to do?" He turned the turnip over in his hand, eyeing it with clear misgiving.
"Peel them, as I said. Then cut them in quarters, and put them in here." She banged an iron pot down on the table beside him.
"Yes, ma'am."
Though she hated to leave Connelly alone, lest Mandy or one of the others should change more quickly than was their habit and appear in the kitchen, she needed ham hocks from the smokehouse to cook with the turnips.
"I'll be right back," she said in a tone of grim warning, and hurried off on her errand so fast that she was near winded when she got back. Connelly was alone, she was relieved to see, seated at the table, his head bent over a turnip as he painstakingly wielded the knife on it. He was concentrating so hard that he barely glanced up as she entered.
Pausing just inside the back door to catch her breath, Susannah's eyes widened as she looked at the mound of cut-up turnips in the pot. It was minuscule, yet the basket was more than three-quarters empty.
Nobody's Angel Page 10
