Nobody's Angel

by Karen Robards

  "If you are hoping to charm me for some nefarious purpose of your own, you are wasting your time," she said jerkily. Turning about, she marched along the path that led to the house. Her back was ramrod straight, her gait steady, and only she knew how much effort it cost her to keep them that way. Her muscles were as weak as warm mush, and her knees had a most regrettable tendency to tremble.

  "Susannah."

  Her shoulders stiffened. There was laughter in his voice. She should turn and berate him for the familiarity. But if she did, if she looked up into his too-handsome face to find him smiling down at her in that teasing way that was probably totally calculated but was almost impossible for her to resist, she would be in danger of falling completely under his spell. That complication to her life she didn't need. What the rogue could hope to gain from charming her she couldn't imagine, but that he had some purpose in mind she was quite sure. She wasn't stupid, after all. Why else would a man who looked like Connelly be expending so much effort on a plain spinster like herself?

  "Have you never had a suitor?"

  The question flicked her on a raw spot she hadn't known she possessed. It was one thing to acknowledge the truth to herself and quite another to admit to Connelly that no man had ever found her attractive enough to pursue.

  Ignoring him, she strode on, head high. Time enough to remind him of his place when she had regained control of both her body and her emotions. To confront him now would be an act of pure folly.

  "Damn it, Susannah! Wait a minute." He caught her arm, throwing her offstride. Even as she tried to jerk free of his grasp, he turned her to face him. He held her about the elbow, his grip not hurting her but as unbreakable as a shackle. The fowling piece that he had carried tucked under one arm he very carefully set aside. His newly- freed hand slid around her other elbow, and she was well and truly caught.

  Held fast, Susannah disdained to struggle. He was very close, so close that the hem of her skirt overlay his toes. She had forgotten that he wore no shoes but only her father's gray stockings, now wet and muddied almost to the knee. The knowledge that he had come after her in stocking feet might have softened her had she allowed it to. But she was thoroughly on guard against his rogue's tricks now. When her eyes lifted to his, they were as stony as the ground beneath her feet. Brought to bay, she was left with no weapon but words.

  "You will address me as Miss Susannah, and you will take your hands off me, at once," she said in a positive fashion. He smiled at her. That whimsical twist of his lips made him appear almost impossibly handsome. She sought to cow him with the most intimidating look she could muster. It was difficult when the object of that look- was more than a foot taller than herself.

  He laughed. Her lips tightened, and sparks of anger brightened her eyes.

  "Does everyone do as you tell them?" he asked, grinning.

  "If they're wise." She spoke through her teeth.

  His grin widened. He made no move to release her. His eyes sparkled with amusement as they slid over her face.

  "I never was very wise," he said, as if making an admission.

  "Quite obviously not."

  "I like shrewish women. Shutting their mouths can be so entertaining, especially if one goes about it in the right way."

  "Connelly . . ." It was a warning.

  "Ian," he said. "Say Ian, Susannah."

  Had she not been on guard against his blandishments, it would have been all too easy to succumb to his coaxing rogue's tongue. As it was, she stiffened her spine and glared at him.

  "I will do no such thing," she said.

  "You will." He sounded disconcertingly positive.

  "I won't."

  "Will."

  "You're being childish as well as foolish, and I demand that you let me go at once." She tried to pull free, only to confirm what she already knew—she was trapped until he chose to release her.

  "Taming you is going to be a delight."

  "Taming me?" She could scarcely believe her ears.

  "Gentling you, rather. Breaking you to bridle."

  "I," said Susannah with a great effort at self-control, "am not a horse. And you are about to get yourself in a great deal of trouble, sirrah! I can sell you, you know."

  "But you won't. Think how someone else might mistreat me. You wouldn't like to see me hurt, would you?"

  "At the moment I can think of nothing I would like better." She gritted her teeth. "If you do not let me go . . ."

  "Call me Ian, and say please, and I'll consider it."

  He was laughing again, the devil. Susannah, dander up, lifted her half-booted foot and slammed her heel down hard on his stockinged toes.

  "Ow!"

  Taken by surprise, he yelped, jumping back. Suddenly freed, Susannah whirled, snatching up her skirts. Dignity or no, she ran for the house. She had outfoxed the fox, but only for the moment. What payment he might demand for her victory, should he catch her, she trembled to imagine.

  He did not catch her. She was fleet of foot, but she suspected he did not seriously give chase. She arrived at the back steps, flushed and winded, to find her sisters in the kitchen and a hideous smell permeating the house.

  "Where have you been?" They all three turned to stare at Susannah as she stepped through the door.

  "At the Likenses'—I'll tell you the whole story in a minute. What is that smell?"

  "The turnips burned dry. When they stunk up the whole house was the first we knew that you'd gone off somewhere." Em sounded accusing.

  "I went ahead and made a corn pudding, Susannah. 'Twas the best I could think to do." Sarah Jane turned from the fire, wiping the back of her hand over her sweat- beaded forehead.

  "That will be fine, with the ham hocks. They didn't burn, too?"

  "No."

  Connelly stepped onto the back porch just then. Though Susannah couldn't see him, she was as aware of his presence as if he stood directly beside her. There was the slightest pause, and then he appeared in the back door, barefoot, with the fowling piece in hand.

  Three pairs of eyes went from Connelly to Susannah.

  "Did he go with you?" Mandy sounded put out.

  Susannah sighed. "Let's get the meal on the table, and I'll tell you the whole story," she said with a mendacity that her father wouldn't have approved. Because of course she meant the whole story of what had happened at the Likenses'. What had occurred later, in the wood, she would keep to herself.

  Over the course of the next week, Susannah worked hard to keep herself and her sisters out of Connelly's way. Her efforts were aided by the fact that she no longer considered it necessary to have him sleep in the house. Obviously, the man required only minimal nursing care. On Tuesday next, a fortnight from the time she had applied her special healing salve to his back, she would reapply the medicine and change the bandage. Other than that, all he seemed to need was feeding up.

  He ate all the time, in enormous amounts, as though there were not enough food in the world to fill him up.

  Though she hated to admit that the thought of his being hungry disturbed her, Susannah took to cooking huge quantities of foods she thought he might like. He seemed especially partial to chicken and dumplings and devoured so much of her bread that she started baking an extra two loaves a day. One of her guiltiest secrets was the amount of pleasure it gave her to watch him eat food she had cooked.

  "Is it my imagination, daughter, or are you providing us with a great deal more sustenance than we are used to?" the Reverend Redmon asked at the breakfast table one morning. He surveyed the plenty spread out before him with mild perplexity. Susannah had made hot water corn- bread and served it with fresh-churned butter and honey and thin slices of ham. In addition, there was the usual gruel and molasses, soft-boiled eggs to suit their bound man's preference, and a large rasher of bacon.

  Susannah was just setting the bacon on the table as her father spoke, and she could not help the quick color that stained her cheeks as she sent him a startled glance. As he was usually oblivious
of what was put before him, she had not expected him to notice.

  "My theory is that Susannah is trying to make us all as fat as Em," Mandy said with a saucy smile at Connelly, who sat across the table from her.

  "Mandy!" Susannah and Sarah Jane protested in shocked unison. Em, fortunately, had not yet come down.

  "I think, rather, that Miss Susannah is trying to fatten me up," Connelly said, with a comically rueful gesture at his high-piled plate. His intervention shifted attention to himself from Mandy, which, Susannah guessed, was his intention. Certainly it saved Mandy from a scolding. Susannah suspected that Mandy's remark had been designed to draw their bound man's attention to her own svelte shape. But with their father present, and Connelly himself as witness, now was hardly the time to say so. Mandy's callousness to her absent sister's sensitivities called for a reprimand. But for the moment Susannah was too preoccupied with Connelly's embarrassingly accurate assessment of her intentions to spare more than a rebuking glance for Mandy.

  "Is that so, daughter?" the Reverend Redmon asked with interest. Susannah, who was busy filling everyone's mug with fresh milk, felt more color heat her cheeks. Really, her father's obtuseness was sometimes as much a curse as a blessing!

  "Connelly needs a great deal more meat on his bones if he is to do heavy work," she said primly, hoping that none of those around the table would read more into her actions than practical self-interest. She set the milk jug down and took her own seat. Asking her father to please pass the cornbread, she sought to turn the conversation in a new direction, without success.

  "She has been feeding me up for years," the Reverend Redmon said to Ian in a confidential tone as he complied with Susannah's request. "For some reason, females seem to be born with a need to stuff their menfolk with food."

  "They do, don't they?" Ian agreed, and the two exchanged a purely masculine look of amusement. Susannah, sure that she must be scarlet by now, nearly choked on her cornbread. Whatever else he might be, Connelly was certainly not one of her "menfolk"!

  " 'Tis not to be wondered at, if Susannah is forever trying to tempt your appetite," Sarah Jane said to their father, unknowingly earning Susannah's gratitude by drawing all eyes to herself. "You eat no more than a mouse. You must think of the congregation, Pa, and how much they depend on you. To keep up your strength, you need to eat."

  "My daughters are forever trying to mother me, as you can see," the Reverend Redmon said to Ian. He smiled his luminous smile. "But they are good girls, nonetheless. I would not be without them."

  Before Ian could reply, Em entered with a complaint against Mandy for borrowing her new embroidered handkerchief, which Em assured everyone Mandy had not been given leave to do. By the time that dispute was settled, the conversation had taken a different turn entirely. To Susannah's relief, no further mention was made of the bounty that graced their table. For future meals, she took care to cook less lavishly. She still pandered to Connelly's enormous appetite, but not, she hoped, so that anyone, including the man himself, would notice.

  A previous owner of the farm had built half a dozen one-room cabins just beyond the barn. Intended to house slaves, they had been largely empty in the twenty years since the Reverend Redmon had acquired the property. Now Craddock occupied one, and Susannah put Connelly in another. Swept and scrubbed, furnished with a rope bed, a thick corn-husk mattress, a washstand, a table, and chairs, it was more than adequate for his needs. Susannah slept much easier knowing that Connelly was out of the house.

  So as not to tax his slowly returning strength, and also because, with his lack of farming knowledge, he was pretty generally useless, she assigned him to tasks that required education rather than brute strength. For years she had had the job of keeping track of contributions to and disbursements from the church, and it had grown to be a considerable burden. Not without some misgivings, she set Connelly to work at it in her stead. He proved to be adept with figures, even discovering a mistake in addition that she herself had made. Since the books were kept at the church, the job also took him away from the house. Relieved to have at least one time-consuming chore lifted from her shoulders, she made up her mind to delegate it to Connelly permanently, though it brought him in close contact with her father. But with Connelly's facility for changing his stripes to suit his audience, Susannah was confident that this posed no problem. Indeed, the Reverend Redmon seemed to enjoy their bound man's company and spent several mealtimes firing questions at him concerning the fine points of theology as practiced by the Church of England, of which Connelly had apparently been a member.

  Watching her father's eyes sparkle as Connelly capped a particularly spirited argument with a Latin quotation that, as the girls had not been schooled in that language, only the two men could understand, Susannah had to smile. The Reverend Redmon obviously relished such discussions even when Connelly got the better of him. It occurred to Susannah then that their bound servant might have been just what the Reverend Redmon had needed: another man, an educated man, who could serve as a counterpoint to their previously feminine household. Certainly her father seemed much less ethereal these days than he had before Connelly had joined them.

  Sunday morning came again, with its usual rush to get ready for church. The entire family attended, including Craddock and Ben and, for the first time as he had been deemed too weak the previous Sabbath, Connelly. Susannah thought Connelly might protest when informed of what was expected of him in the way of religious observance, but he did not.

  What he did was present himself, promptly at seven in the morning, to drive the ladies of the family to church.

  The Reverend Redmon had already gone ahead on Micah. Craddock and Ben would, as usual, follow in the buckboard. Susannah, Sarah Jane, Mandy, and Em always went by buggy, with Susannah driving. They liked to arrive early, so as to practice their music and because, as the minister's daughters, it was fitting that they should.

  When Susannah stepped out onto the front porch, expecting that Craddock would bring the buggy around as he always did on Sunday morning, she was surprised to find Connelly leaning against the porch rail, waiting for them. She was clad in her best black poplin, with a crisp white lawn fichu covering her shoulders and pinned by a silver brooch at her breast. The dress was cut loosely through the bodice, with a full bell of a skirt, and Susannah considered it most appropriate for a spinster of her age to wear to church. A head-fitting white lawn cap with a small upstanding frill framing her face was tied beneath her chin. Her short sleeves were turned back to reveal the white frills of her chemise. Her one frivolity, transparent black lace mittens, covered her arms from her elbows to the middle of her palms. Her fingers were bare. This was the costume she usually wore to church, and always before she had been quite content with it. Now, with Connelly's eyes running over her from head to toe, she wished, for the first time that she could remember, that her dress was just a little more becoming. Maybe a softer color . . .

  Connelly straightened away from the railing. All thoughts of her own attire vanished, quite eclipsed by her wonder at the splendor of his. Darcy, hitched to the buggy that waited before the porch, nickered a greeting when he set eyes on Susannah. Susannah's attention, however, was riveted on Connelly.

  He was dressed in black breeches—not his old, disreputable ones but an altogether better-looking pair. He wore his own waistcoat of gold brocade that she had washed and mended, a white linen shirt, and a frock coat of dark blue linsey-woolsey. A neckcloth, slightly limp but perfectly serviceable, was tied in an elegant knot beneath his chin. Gray wool stockings covered his calves, and flat- soled, black leather shoes with small silver buckles were on his feet. His hair had been brushed straight back from his forehead and caught up with a black ribbon at his nape. In one hand he held a three-cornered black felt hat.

  Except for the shoes, which had been made for Sunday best by the town cobbler and sent out along with a stout pair of work boots, his clothes were not new, Susannah knew, nor even his own. But as he put his hat on
his head and came toward her, he looked so much the fine gentleman that she was momentarily shocked speechless.

  "My goodness," she said when she could speak. "Where did you get all that?"

  "Your father very obligingly made me free of your church's poor-box. A few things were a reasonable fit."

  "My goodness," she said again, blinking. As her sisters spilled out onto the porch behind her, she firmly marshaled her wits, which, for a dreadful moment, seemed to have gone abegging.

  "Why, Connelly, you look quite swooningly handsome!" This was said by Mandy, of course, as she brushed by Susannah to greet their bound man with a bewitching smile. Mandy had kept to the letter if not the spirit of their bargain, though she flirted with Connelly every time she laid eyes on him. But then, flirting to Mandy was as natural as breathing, and Susannah had seen to it that she had had no opportunity to be alone with the silver- tongued rogue. Now, with her auburn curls artfully framed by the upstanding poke of her straw bonnet and her gown of lavender and pink striped silk cut to show her slender figure to best advantage, Mandy was a vision. For a dreadful, shocking moment, as she watched Mandy smiling up at their bound man, Susannah suffered the first pang of jealousy she had ever felt in her life. So unprecedented was the emotion that it took her a moment to discern exactly what it was that made her stomach churn. Then it hit her—she was jealous, fiercely, greenly jealous, of her own dearly beloved little sister and their bound man!

  "Why, thank you, Miss Mandy. And you look as beautiful as always. Tell me, do you ever get tired of men telling you that?" He was quite as bad about flirting as Mandy, as Susannah had discovered to her cost.

  "Oh, no, never!" Mandy breathed, not one whit abashed by the scoundrel's blatant flattery. Susannah, fixing Connelly with a warning glare, caught Mandy's arm and turned her in the direction of the carriage.