Nobody's Angel

by Karen Robards

  CRITICS RAVE ABOUT

  KAREN ROBARDS

  "MS. ROBARDS SEEMS TO KNOW INSTINCTIVELY OUR MOST SECRET THOUGHTS AND THEN DREAMS UP THE PERFECT SCENARIO TO GIVE THEM FREE REIN . . . THE RESULT IS PURE MAGIC."

  —Romantic Times

  "ONE OF THOSE WRITERS I BUY WITHOUT NEEDING TO READ A REVIEW . . . THE HIGH TENSION [IS] SUSTAINED THROUGHOUT, KEEPING ME GLUED TO THE PAGES."

  —Johanna Lindsey

  TIGER'S EYE

  "A delightful tale." —Publishers Weekly

  NIGHT MAGIC

  "A sizzling spy thriller that will captivate and delight you! Night Magic manages to prick your sense of danger while tickling your funny bone. You've got to read it!"

  —Affaire de Coeur

  THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN

  ". . . funny, poignant . . . excellent in every way!"

  —Rendezvous

  To my nephew, Bradley Nicholas Johnson,

  born January 5, 1991.

  And, as always, with much love to Doug, Peter,

  and Christopher.

  1

  "Susannah, you cannot be serious! You cannot really mean to buy a man!" Sarah Jane Redmon's dark brown eyes grew wide with alarm as she took in her older sister's grim expression. There was no reasoning with Susannah when she looked like that, as her family knew from long and bitter experience.

  "Pa'll have a fit." That gleeful prediction was made by Emily, at fifteen the youngest of the quartet of Redmon sisters, as she stared over the smaller Susannah's shoulder at Craddock, the family hired man. Craddock was sprawled in a drunken stupor across the newly purchased provisions that filled half of the back of the wagon. Snores so loud as to be embarrassing on this unaccustomedly busy street in the center of Beaufort issued from his open mouth. He lay on his back, muddy boots protruding over the edge of the wagon, a nearly empty bottle tilted precariously in his hand. A silvery string of drool stretched from his slack lips down toward the sack of flour on which his head rested.

  "Pa never has a fit at anything Susannah decides. He always says she likely knows best, and so she does." Amanda, seventeen, was the family beauty, and she knew it. She was charming, gay, and much spoiled, though Susannah had tried her best to leaven with firm discipline the worst effects of too much indulgence of her whims on the part of nearly every male Mandy had ever met. But Susannah would be the first to admit that her efforts had resulted in only a tentative success. Men responded to Mandy's radiance as naturally as flowers turned their faces to the sun, and Mandy thrived on their attention. Even as she smiled affectionately at Susannah, her attention was distracted by a trio of fashionably dressed gentlemen passing by on the street. Mandy tossed her auburn curls for their delectation. One gentleman, responding to Mandy's flirtatious glance by slowing and tipping his hat, was seconds later frozen to the marrow of his bones by Miss Susannah Redmon's icy glare. He had no way of knowing that her daunting frown came from much practice and meant nothing personal at all. Thinking the dagger look dredged up for himself alone, the gentleman, much chastened, hurried to rejoin his friends. He would have been affronted had he realized Susannah was barely aware of him as an individual. Her reaction had been no more than a reflex, engendered by endless years of warding off her younger sisters' beaux. Acting as mother- dragon to them had become as natural to her as breathing in the dozen years since their mother's death.

  "At least the cursed man sold the sow and her piglets before he succumbed!" Susannah scowled once more at Craddock, then gave up the exercise as useless. He was as insensible to her displeasure as the wood on which he lay. Curbing the impulse to kick the iron wheel nearest her, she dropped her parcels on the floor of the wagon and crawled up beside them. Leaning forward, she thrust her hand into the bulging pocket of Craddock's coat, averting her nose from the smell of sour whiskey that hung around him like a noxious cloud. With a feeling of relief, she found what she sought, an oily doeskin bag well filled with silver coins. Closing her hand around the bag, she offered up a silent prayer of thanks that Craddock had not drunk away her money. She pulled the bag free and stuffed it into the reticule that dangled from her wrist.

  "Would you get down? If anyone should see what you're about, they'll likely think you lost to all shame! To actually put your hands on his—his person is beyond what is permissible—and your backside is up in the air!" Sarah Jane's eyes darted nervously over the people making their way along the street. She dreaded encountering someone who knew them, but only strangers were at hand, drawn to usually sleepy Beaufort by the spectacle that was at that moment taking place down by the waterfront. Convicts brought over from England were being sold for indentured servants at public auction, and the event had attracted scores of spectators. A festive atmosphere imbued the town.

  " 'Tis our money, goose, from the sale of the hogs we raised! Would you have me leave it where it was, to be spilled out when Craddock rolls over or stolen by some thieving passerby?" There was affectionate exasperation in the look Susannah sent her next sister as she clambered off the buckboard. Susannah loved the twenty-year-old dearly, but ever since Sarah Jane had betrothed herself to a young minister she had become such a pattern card of rectitude that she occasionally verged on being downright annoying.

  "Oh, stop being such a prig, Sarah Jane!" Emily was not as fond of Sarah Jane as Susannah was. "I think Susannah is right to want to buy a man! There's too much work for all of us as it is, and with you getting married there will soon be even more!"

  "I hadn't thought of that." Mandy sounded taken aback. One result of so much pampering was that the third Redmon sister was just a tad lazy. Mandy worked when there was no help for it, but anytime she could avoid a chore she found unpleasant, she did so.

  "But to actually purchase another human being! It goes against everything Pa has ever taught us!" Sarah Jane said. " 'Tis promoting slavery, and you know how Pa feels about that!"

  "If Pa dislikes it, then he'll just have to dislike it. It's all very well to spend all one's time ministering to the less fortunate as he does, but someone must do the chores. I grant that Pa showed fine Christian principles in employing the town drunk as a hired man, but it just has not worked out as he had hoped. Though he does not see it, of course." Susannah fought a disrespectful tendency to roll her eyes heavenward. She had long since decided that the unquenchable optimism of their father, the Reverend John Augustus Redmon, minister of the fledgling First Baptist Church on the outskirts of town, was a cross she had to bear. Hard-headed pragmatism about the mundane realities of life such as food and shelter was beyond him. The Lord would provide, the Reverend Redmon always maintained, even when faced with the direst circumstances. Then he would smile his sweet, vague smile and refuse to trouble his head with the difficulty a moment longer. The aggravating thing about it was, he was usually right. The Lord—with a little help from His handmaiden Susannah down below on earth—usually did.

  "Can't we go home and discuss this there? We're attracting attention." Sarah Jane cast another embarrassed look over her shoulder at the teeming street.

  Following her gaze, Susannah saw that Sarah Jane was right. Passersby, particularly the male ones, were ogling the sisters with interest. Nosy things, Susannah thought with a narrowing of her eyes, not realizing that the four of them, each so very different, made quite a picture as they stood arguing in the street. Closest to the sidewalk was Emily, with her carroty red hair cascading down her back from a simple ribbon at the crown of her head. She was clad in a daffodil yellow frock that flattered the youthful plumpness that she had not yet outgrown. A splattering of freckles covered her nose because, scold as Susannah might, Em could never be bothered to wear a sunbonnet. She was a pretty girl, though quite eclipsed by Mandy, who stood beside her. Mandy was reasonably tall—she a
nd Emily were much of a height—but willowy where Emily was plump. Her apple green dress had been chosen to set off her lissome figure, just as her lace-trimmed sunbonnet had been carefully selected to provide maximum flattery for her porcelain complexion and auburn curls. If she was not quite a world-class beauty—her nose was just a trifle too long and her chin too pointed—she was the closest thing to it that Beaufort possessed, and she was, in this, the year of Our Lord 1769, the belle of the county.

  Sarah Jane, who stood opposite Emily, was plainer, with a quiet kind of attractiveness that would stand her in good stead as a minister's wife. Her eyes were large and grave, her soft brown hair was never in disorder, and, though she was shorter than her younger sisters, her figure was trim. She wore a white dress sprigged with pink and a pink sunbonnet on her head. As always, she looked as fresh and good as a loaf of new-baked bread.

  Sandwiched between Sarah Jane and Emily, Susannah drew about as much notice as a squat brown titmouse might when flanked by a bright-colored pair of tropical birds. She was small of stature, smaller even than Sarah

  Jane, but sturdily built where the other girl's bones were fragile. Her dress was loose-fitting, designed for comfort and modesty rather than to show off a figure that she felt called instead for concealment. Fashioned with chores rather than high style in mind, the garment was made of tan calico chosen for its resistance to showing dirt. A peach-colored sunbonnet was perched on her head more to keep the bright May sunlight out of her eyes than to protect her fair skin, about which she rarely troubled herself. Its too-large brim, coupled with the rather limp bow with which it tied under her chin, had the unfortunate effect of seeming to overpower her small face, making it appear both plain and square. Her hair was a nondescript color midway between blond and brown. By dint of much effort, it was slicked severely back from her face and bundled into a cumbersome knot that stuck out awkwardly behind the sunbonnet. It was coarse as a horse's tail, so thick that she could barely drag a brush through it, and wildly curly to boot. The bane of her life when she was a girl, her hair was just one more thing she had learned to live with. Each morning she attacked it with water and a brush, tamed it into a style that was relatively tidy if nothing else, and forgot about it until it worked free of its pins or in some other way demanded her attention. She had a pair of large, well-shaped, thickly lashed eyes that were unfortunately of no more remarkable a color than hazel, a small pert nose, a wide, full-lipped mouth, and a jawline that was nearly as broad as her cheekbones. No beauty, she, and she knew it. She looked like what she was, a twenty-six-year-old woman who had been left on the shelf and had no interest in or hope of attracting men. Nearly all of the speculative glances directed toward the quartet of ladies passed right over Susannah's head to fasten on her sisters.

  "There is nothing more to discuss, though you're right, we are attracting attention. Pile your packages in the buckboard, my dears, and let us be on our way." Susannah looked around, acknowledged the justice of Sarah Jane's observation, and reached for her sister's parcels. Sarah Jane clutched them closer and took a step backward.

  "Susannah, you cannot be serious! How can you even think to do such a thing, when you know our father must strongly disapprove?"

  "Sitting up half the night at old Mrs. Cooper's bedside, then rising this morning to discover Ben gone with all his chores undone and none but us to do them, as well as the prospect of nursing Craddock through his latest binge and doing his chores, too, until he recovers, has doubtless addled my brain," was Susannah's tart reply, but she forbore to wrestle her sister for her packages. The "Ben" to whom she referred was another of the Reverend Redmon's charitable impulses. Left fatherless by a fever that had swept the community some years back, Ben was a gangly youth who found trouble as naturally as a compass needle finds north. He had been hired to save the girls such chores as chopping wood and building fires, and he had performed faithfully for nearly a year. Then, two months ago, he had fallen in love. As a result, he was now as unreliable as Craddock.

  "Having a dependable hired man would certainly make life simpler, but the fact remains that a bound servant is not the same thing as a hired man, and . . ."

  "Sarah Jane, you know Pa won't agree to pay a hired man properly, and that's why we can never keep one. I say that Susannah's had a splendid idea!" Mandy's sherry- brown eyes sparkled with excitement.

  "I cannot like . . ."

  "You cannot like anything, Sarah Jane, since you became betrothed to that goody-goody Peter Bridgewater!" Emily placed both fists on her hips, standing arms akimbo as she glared at her sister.

  "Don't you dare malign Peter!" Sarah Jane said, flushing. "He is a most estimable man, and . . ."

  "We know he is, Sarah Jane, and Emily was wrong to speak of him so. I've told you before that you must learn to guard your tongue, Em. Peter is Sarah Jane's choice, and in time I am sure we will all grow to love him like a brother." Susannah strove to keep the doubt she felt from being reflected in her voice. In her opinion, her sister's fiancé was a prim fool, but Sarah Jane was so in love that no words of caution could sway her. So she held her tongue and had warned her two youngest sisters to do the same if they wished to maintain warm contact with Sarah Jane once she was wed.

  It was obvious that Emily had, for the moment, forgotten Susannah's warning. She snorted. Sarah Jane bridled and opened her mouth to reply.

  "What has any of that to say to the purpose?" Mandy broke in, dismissing the incipient quarrel with a wave of her hand. She addressed Sarah Jane. "The point is, do you want to do Craddock's work? There are the provisions to be carried in, the horse to be rubbed down and fed, the hogs to be slopped, the cow milked, and all that as soon as we get home. And Ben's work, as well. And our own."

  "Pa . . ." Sarah Jane's voice trailed off as the force of this objection sank in. Her younger sisters, sensing her wavering, swooped upon her. Lacking Susannah's reluctance to assault their sister physically in the middle of a public thoroughfare, Emily and Amanda wrested Sarah Jane's purchases from her feebly resistant fingers and dropped them atop Susannah's packages, then added their own shopping to the pile.

  Most of the paper-wrapped parcels contained laces and ribbons and cloth that would be used in the fashioning of Sarah Jane's bridal clothes. But each girl had had pocket money of her own to spend as well and so had bought a few personal fripperies. These unaccustomed luxuries were placed in the buckboard with more care by their respective owners. Only the prospect of Sarah Jane's upcoming wedding had convinced their father to countenance such a large dispersal of funds in the name of female vanity, and the largess was not likely to be repeated anytime soon, as they all knew. The Reverend Redmon's custom was to donate ever}' coin not actually needed for his family's survival to better the lives of his congregation. But on this occasion Susannah had said, in her decided way, that Sarah Jane must have a trousseau, and when Susannah made up her mind about something their father invariably acquiesced. Amanda and Emily had begged to be included in the shopping expedition, and Susannah had agreed.

  That morning, after completing all their own chores and Ben's, too, they had set out for town. Craddock had accompanied them, along with a prime sow and her piglets, culled from the herd that Susannah painstakingly raised. The money from their sale she meant to use to purchase passage aboard a ship for Sarah Jane and her husband-to-be, so that when September came, bringing with it Sarah Jane's wedding, the newlyweds might travel in some comfort and style to Richmond, Virginia, where Peter Bridgewater had already gone to take up the ministry of a church. But September was some four months off, and the need for a hired man was immediate. The securing of a ship's berths could wait.

  Ever since she had first seen notices advertising the auction, Susannah had silently debated the advisability of acquiring a bound man. The physical labor required to work the farm was beyond her and her sisters' strength, and Craddock was prone to periods of alcohol-induced "illness" that made his help a chancy thing at best. There had been some thought lurkin
g around the edges of her mind that she might acquire the indentured servant when she had set this particular day as the one for their shopping expedition. During the course of the morning, her baser instincts had warred with what she knew to be her father's lofty code of morals. The Reverend Redmon's scruples had nearly won, despite the fact that trying to run the house and farm, fill the part of minister's lady to the congregation, raise three lively younger sisters, and at the same time keep her father from giving away every scrap of food in the larder were leeching away Susannah's reserves of patience, to say nothing of her strength. Crad- dock's latest fall from grace had been the last straw. Sometimes practicality had to outweigh principles, and the simple truth was that the Redmons sorely needed a man to do the heavy work that farming required.

  Her father might be appalled, but he would in the end accept her decision, Susannah knew, just as he always did. Over the last twelve years, he had occupied himself more and more with spiritual concerns, leaving more problematic earthly matters to her discretion.

  "You cannot—you haven't enough money!" There was triumph in Sarah Jane's voice as she thought of the most telling objection of all.

  Susannah patted the reticule that swung from her wrist. The silver clinked comfortingly. "Oh, yes, I do."

  "But that's the money for my wedding trip!" Sarah Jane said, then immediately looked guilty. "I—I didn't mean to sound so selfish, of course you must use the money as you see fit, but . . ."

  "You will get your trip, dear, don't worry. I'll sell one of the hogs I was saving to slaughter in the autumn. Pa would doubtless just give the meat to someone anyway, so it will be no real loss."

  "How greedy I must be, to wish you to do that! I cannot . . ." Sarah Jane looked and sounded stricken with guilt.