Nobody's Angel

by Karen Robards

  "Bound man?" Ben let out a whistle of surprise, his eyes shooting to Susannah. The look on her face must have been daunting, because he clamped his lips together and positioned himself between the convict's ankles without another word.

  "Lift, then, when I say." Craddock took charge as he saw that his helper was to be the boy whom Susannah well knew he bullied when he thought he could get away with it. Craddock gave the word, and between them he and Ben managed to lift the man from the wagon.

  "Dad-blum, he's heavy!" Having been sternly weaned from profanity in the year he had been with them, Ben had substituted a variety of colorful expressions for the swear words he had grown up with but was no longer permitted to utter.

  "He don't look like hardly more than a skeleton, neither," Craddock marveled as he, backing, struggled to negotiate the two smooth gray rocks that served as porch steps without dropping his burden. The convict's head rested against Craddock's thin chest. His bristly black beard and the unkempt, overlong tangle of his hair were largely responsible for the ferocious look of him, Susannah judged with a slight feeling of reassurance as she followed them onto the porch. A slanting ray of light from the late afternoon sun touched a lock of filthy hair as it straggled down over the bound man's forehead. Susannah saw that it was not just dark but jet black beneath the grime that caked it. She had no chance to notice anything more about him as she hurried around the trio to open the door.

  "Where do you want im, Miss Susannah?"

  "In the parlor." She led the way, untying her bonnet as she went. A row of pegs had been set into the wall at the base of the stairs. As she passed them, she hung the hat there, then ran both hands over her head in a gesture as automatic to her as breathing.

  There was a company bed in the parlor, pushed against the wall opposite the fireplace over which hung Grandma and Grandpa Durham's pictures. The portraits were huge and dark and would have been grim had not Susannah remembered her grandparents so warmly. They had died not long before Susannah's mother, their daughter, who had hung their pictures in the place of honor in the little used room reserved for important visitors. Two rocking chairs on either side of the fireplace, a wooden settee, and a pair of fine walnut bookcases filled to overflowing with books completed the room's furnishings. Susannah hurried to the iron bedstead and whisked back the intricately patterned quilt that she had spent many a winter night piecing some two years before. The linen, having been put on fresh after the bed was last used by a visiting minister six months previously, was clean. At her direction, Craddock and Ben lowered the convict to the bed.

  He looked filthier than ever against the snowy sheets.

  "He'll need to be bathed and put into some clean clothes," she decided. "Ben, you can help me. Craddock, you can carry in the shopping, and you girls can put it up and start supper. Pa should be home before long."

  "He was leaving with John Naisbitt when I got here," Ben said. "He tole me to tell you that Miz Cooper done died."

  "Oh, dear." Susannah, having spent a large part of the previous night at Mrs. Cooper's bedside, had suspected that the old woman would not long survive, but she had not expected her to pass from this life quite so soon as this. She would have to hurry over there and help the woman's daughters lay her out, then stay to comfort the grieving family. There was the funeral to think about— she played the church clavichord that had been shipped from England at great expense—and her father's best suit, which he would need to officiate at the service, to sponge and press.

  But first the bound man's needs must be seen to.

  "Start undressing him, Ben," she said, shooing her wide-eyed sisters out before her as she left the room. "Sarah Jane, you might get together some bread and molasses for me to take with me when I go over to the Coopers' tonight. The family will doubtless be too upset to want to think about cooking. Mandy, you and Em get supper started. There's a chicken plucked and ready to go in the pot, and you can fix dumplings and greens to go with it. I'll take some of that with me, too. Oh, and be sure and save the water the chicken's cooked in to make broth. We'll need it for him."

  Her head jerked in the direction of the parlor and left her sisters in no doubt of whom she referred to.

  "I thought the whole idea of getting a bound man was so that we'd have to do less work, not more," Mandy muttered as the girls disappeared into the kitchen. Craddock, his arms full of the day's purchases, shouldered his way through the front door. Susannah, prudently ignoring Mandy, who had a point, went up the narrow staircase that led from the sitting room—a large, less formal parlor where the family spent most of their time—to the second floor. There were four bedchambers abovestairs. The Reverend Redmon had the largest one, directly over the front parlor, while Amanda and Emily shared the next largest, located over the sitting room. Susannah and Sarah Jane each had a small room at the back of the house to herself. Susannah's room was above the rear porch and overlooked the family cemetery where her mother and grandparents lay, along with her four baby brothers who had not survived infancy. Susannah said her nightly prayers on her knees before the single long, narrow window that opened onto her room, instead of beside her bed as she had been taught. Sometimes her mother's and grandparents' faces got mixed up with her conception of God's and she quite forgot who she was talking to, but it was comforting, nonetheless.

  Her father's room was, as usual, untidy. Papers and books were strewn about, along with the clothing he had discarded when he had changed to go to the Coopers'. If she hadn't done the straightening up herself, she would never have believed that the chamber had been spotless just that morning. Her fingers itched to restore at least a modicum of order to the room as she crossed to the tall bureau that stood against one wall, but she resisted. There were too many chores awaiting her that were more urgent.

  Remembering Mandy's words, Susannah stifled a sigh. The bound man's collapse had made him just one more task to be dealt with, another problem rather than the solution she had bought him for. Last night she had not seen her bed until the wee hours of the morning. Tonight she would be lucky to lay her head down at all.

  She was tired, bone tired, but there was nothing to be done about that. If she just kept plugging away, putting one foot in front of the other and doing each task as it arose, eventually she would get everything that was needful done. She always did.

  The Lord never sent anyone more of a burden than he could bear. That bit of Scripture was the talisman that had kept her going for years. She repeated it aloud to ward off the exhaustion that, as she glanced toward the bed, momentarily threatened to overwhelm her.

  It worked. Almost at once she felt better. Extracting a linen nightshirt from the bureau, Susannah turned and hurried back down the stairs. The appetizing aroma of supper cooking wafted into her nostrils. From the kitchen, she could hear her sisters bickering good-naturedly about everything from the amount of greens to boil with the chicken to the eye color of the man Mandy had flirted with in town. Susannah rolled her own eyes heavenward as she made a quick foray through the battle zone to collect a pitcher of warm water, a bowl, a sliver of soap, and a towel. There was a trick to not allowing herself to be drawn into any of the sundry discussions that flew about the room, and that trick was selective deafness. Firmly rejecting Mandy's offer to help—she knew full well her sister considered caring for the bound man both more interesting and easier than her kitchen duties—Susannah finally made it to the parlor with her booty.

  Ben looked up as she entered. "Lookit this, Miss Susannah."

  The bound man—Connelly, she must remember to think of him as Connelly now that he was to be a member of the household—lay on his stomach. He was naked, or at least she presumed he was naked, though Ben had drawn the quilt up to his waist, so she could not be absolutely sure. Susannah's first thought was that his back was far darker that the rest of his coloring would have indicated. Then, as she came closer, she saw that the darkness was a combination of severe bruising and dried blood, and she drew in a shaip breath.
/>   "Looks like he's been beat bad."

  Without answering, Susannah set her provisions down on the small table that stood beside the iron bedstead. With hands that were carefully steady, she lit a pair of candles so that the parlor's perpetual gloom would not distort her judgment. Finally, as the candles' warm yellow glow spread to illuminate the area in question, she turned to look again at Connelly's back.

  As Ben had observed, the man had been badly beaten.

  There were dozens of wounds crisscrossed on top of one another, some half healed, some oozing pus, some raw and obviously fairly fresh. The abused flesh was swollen and painful-looking. The smell from it reminded Susannah of meat gone bad. She had nursed many people and animals through a huge variety of injuries and illnesses, but nothing had ever angered her so much as did the condition of her new bound man's back.

  "Fetch my medicine case," she said tightly.

  "Yes'm." Ben, with no more than a single look at her expression, was out the door with as much alacrity as if she had taken a lash to his legs. Susannah smiled sourly as she reflected that it was the fastest she had ever seen the boy move.

  Turning to the bedside table, she washed her hands and wet the towel. Taking the soap in her hands, she sat down on the edge of the bed to do what needed to be done.

  The first order of business was to give the bound man a quick, much needed bath.

  6

  The last bed bath she had given had been to Mrs. Cooper just the previous night. Washing Connelly was a whole different experience.

  Not that Susannah had never given a man a bath before. She had, on several occasions, in the course of her nursing duties. But it occurred to her, as she carefully soaped Connelly's left hand, rinsed it, and patted it dry, that every single man she had cared for so intimately in the past had been ancient and, if not on his deathbed, near it. Never had she had occasion to bathe a man who could be no more than a decade or so older than herself. The experience was almost unsettling.

  But to allow herself to be disturbed by such a mundane task was ridiculous. He needed care, and it was up to her to provide it. Perhaps lack of sleep was making her unaccustomedly skittish.

  He had beautiful hands, Susannah noticed as she soaped the long, strong fingers. The nails were ragged and caked with dirt, but the fingers themselves were straight, the fingertips elegantly rounded. His palms were broad, and the faintest sprinkling of black hair covered the backs of his hands. His wrists were bony but thick, as befitted a man of the size she judged that, under normal conditions, he was.

  With his hands clean, she saturated the towel and lathered soap into it. Somehow she could not feel quite comfortable about running her bare hands over his flesh, no matter how pure were her motives. Some small part of her, which she steadfastly determined to ignore, was very much aware that the sprawled body beneath her fingers belonged to a man. The tiny flicker of feminine awareness was like nothing she had ever experienced before, and she wondered at herself. She was long past such foolishness, not that she had ever indulged in it anyway.

  His arms were long and hard with muscle, despite their lack of excess flesh, and his forearms were dark with hair. Thick black tufts grew in his armpits. His shoulders were smooth-skinned and broad enough to cover half the bed. She noticed these attributes as she washed him simply because she could not help it. That she should find his person so very intriguing vexed her, but there was nothing she could do to keep her eyes from seeing and her brain from registering various masculine details. Almost against her will, as she washed down both sides of his rib cage, her eyes absorbed the powerful symmetry of his upper torso, from his wide shoulders to the intriguing hollow of his spine, where the quilt fortunately cut off her view. For all his leanness, his build was superb. Restored to health, she guessed, he would be a very strong man.

  Which was why she had bought him, of course. For his strength. There were plowing and planting and harvesting to be done, and fences to build and mend, and the roof of the barn to be repaired, and a new pond to be dug, and— and dozens of things about the place that needed doing that she could not at the moment call to mind. Connelly must perform all these tasks, and more. If the question of his strength interested her, then that was why. Certainly there was no other reason.

  "Here's your case, Miss Susannah."

  Susannah had quite forgotten Ben's errand. Startled by his return, she glanced around to find him right behind her, proffering her case. To her annoyance, she felt heat rise in her cheeks as she met his gaze. Which was ridiculous, she told herself sternly. She had done nothing, thought nothing, that should make her feel in the least guilty.

  Nevertheless, guilty was precisely how she felt.

  "Put it on the floor here beside me."

  If her words were short, it was simply because she was tired. Ben complied, then straightened. She smiled at him to lessen the impact of her tone. He looked relieved, and she felt guiltier than ever.

  What was the matter with her today?

  "Can I do anything else for you, Miss Susannah?" Ben's diffidence did not help matters. He sounded as if he were actually afraid of her. Was she really such an ogress? Perhaps she was. Most everybody seemed to be scared of her at one time or another. But someone had to keep them all in line, and by default the job had fallen to her. Not that she regretted the circumstances of her life, but still it would be nice to be as young and full of anticipation of life's possibilities as her sisters. Sometimes it seemed to Susannah that she had never been young.

  "I am going to need a big bucket of warm water, a couple more towels, another cake of soap, and a paring knife. Would you fetch those for me, please?" She smiled at him again, and this time he smiled back. Susannah felt a little better. Maybe she was not so terrifying, after all. Maybe her view of the world was unaccustomedly black at the moment because she badly needed a decent night s sleep.

  "Yes'm." Ben took himself off, and Susannah applied herself once more to the task at hand. Before she medicated and bandaged Connelly's back, she wanted him to be as clean as she could render him under such constrained circumstances. Cleanliness was all important to the recovery of health, as she had seen demonstrated over and over again.

  His arms, the uninjured portions of his back, his shoulders and neck were clean. Susannah moved down to stand at the foot of the bed. Folding back the quilt so that his legs were bared to the knees, she proceeded to wash his feet.

  Like his hands, they were long and strong-looking and beautifully made. There was a large, horn-thick callus at the base of his big toe. Susannah remembered the hole in his shoe. He would not be wearing those brogues again. She made a mental note to have Ben carry them to the cobbler in town. The cobbler could use the shoes for a size gauge as he fashioned Connelly some sturdy work boots, two sizes bigger.

  "Do you need help, Susannah?" Mandy popped up in the doorway, her eyes bright with curiosity as she took in the sight of her oldest sister running a soapy cloth along the bound man's calves. Connelly was covered only from the small of his back to just above his knees, and Mandy's eyes widened at so much masculine nudity on view. Susannah frowned at her and moved instinctively so that her body was between her sister and the bed, blocking much of Mandy's view. But before she could send the girl away, Ben returned, lugging a steaming bucket in one hand and carrying the other items she had sent him for in the other. Mandy had perforce to step into the room so that Ben could pass. With Susannah distracted by Ben's arrival, Mandy approached the bed. Susannah did not become aware of what her sister was about until Mandy stood beside her, gaping down at the nearly naked man lying prone on the white sheet.

  "Ben can render all the assistance I need in here, thank you very much. As you have so much excess energy, you may go upstairs and tidy Pa's room."

  "But, Susannah . . ."

  "Go do it, Mandy. And when you have done, go back to the kitchen and help Sarah Jane and Em. Your presence is not required here."

  "But what happened to his back?"

&nbs
p; "That is not your concern, is it?" Instinctively Susannah sensed that Connelly would not relish having the world at large know of the punishment he had endured. She had already seen that he was a fiercely proud man and not one to easily accept public humiliation. Just why she felt compelled to spare him from further embarrassment she could not say. But she would, and did, reflexively shelter as best she could any living creature battered by life's blows. She supposed the urge to protect Connelly sprang from the same source.

  "It looks dreadful!"

  "Amanda, go on now. Shoo!" The firmness in Susannah's voice brought a momentary pout to Mandy's face. Mandy glanced swiftly from her sister to Ben, who was in the act of setting the bucket down on the floor and placing the other items on the bedside table.

  "Oh, very well," Mandy said. Turning, she left the room. Susannah felt some of the tension leave her shoulders. Mandy could still act like a spoiled little girl, and she was perfectly capable of throwing a tantrum if she failed to get her own way. Susannah guessed she owed her sister's restraint to Ben's presence. Perhaps Mandy's dedication to attracting male approval had some vestige of a silver lining, after all. On that comforting thought, she picked up the paring knife and proceeded to trim and clean Connelly's nails.

  "Ben, I want you to help me scoot him so that his head hangs over the side of the bed. I can't stand the idea of leaving his hair so dirty," she said when she was done.

  "Yes'm."

  Between the two of them they managed to get Connelly positioned. He stirred during this procedure, grunting, but then lapsed back into what Susannah believed was nothing more serious than a profound sleep. His skin was hot to the touch, indicating the presence of fever, but not so hot as to cause her a great deal of anxiety. It was obvious to her that, whatever ailed her bound man, he would recover if provided abundant food, water, rest, and nursing care. Then he could begin to help about the farm, and perhaps she would cease fearing that she had made a dreadful mistake in purchasing him.