Nobody's Angel

by Karen Robards

  "No."

  With that blunt reply, Susannah turned and went back into the kitchen, where she busied herself with the thousand and one chores that awaited her. A full day's housework had to be crammed into the morning so that she might spend the afternoon at the church helping to prepare for Mrs. Cooper's funeral, which was scheduled for four that afternoon when the worst of the heat would have subsided.

  "Susannah!"

  Susannah stiffened. Surely Connelly would not be so bold as to call her by her given name.

  "Susannah!"

  He would. She took a deep breath and a firm hold on her temper and walked into the parlor.

  "I would have more."

  "You are to address me as Miss Susannah, and you know it," she said frigidly.

  "After the kisses we shared?" His teeth gleamed at her. He was teasing her, the dastard! Susannah saw red. A long-handled spoon was in her hand. She hurled it at his head as if the spoon were an axe and his head a chunk of wood and she would split the wood in two. He ducked, falling backward, then yelped as he landed on his back. The spoon thudded harmlessly into the wall a scant six inches above where his head had been, and then fell with a clatter to the floor. The tray, upset by Connelly's dive for safety, slid off the bed to land with a crash beside the spoon.

  "Let us get one thing perfectly clear," Susannah said, unmoved by both the upended tray and Connelly's obvious discomfort as he rolled gingerly to one side. "If you push me too far, I will sell you, no matter what black lies you're prepared to tell."

  So saying, she turned and stalked from the room. Her hand trembled as she added more water to the kettle over the fire. The gruel was bubbling ready, the bread taken from the oven, sliced for Connelly, and what was left waited cooling on the table. She must rouse her family— but first she had to get herself under control. It would not do to let her father or her sisters see that she was upset. They would inevitably question the cause.

  Turning, she nearly jumped out of her skin. Connelly stood in the kitchen doorway, the tray with bowl and cup and spoon on it in his hands, one shoulder braced against the jamb. He was watching her, his expression inscrutable. His black hair stood out wildly around his head. His beard made him look fearsome. He was tall and lean and, except for one small detail, looked every bit as menacing as he had the previous afternoon on the block. That detail was his attire. Her father's nightshirt did not even reach his knees and fit him so snugly that she could see the outline of the bandages she had wrapped around his chest. What else she might be able to see of him she refused to put to the test. After one comprehensive, shocked glance, she lifted her eyes to his face.

  "You cannot walk about the house like that!"

  "I brought you the tray." His tone was almost placating.

  "You should not be out of bed." Unwillingly, she put down the bucket she'd been using to fill the kettle and moved to take the tray from his hands. The bowl looked almost as if it had been licked clean, she saw as she dumped the tray and its contents into the pan by the back door for later washing. This evidence of his hunger would have touched her had she not been well beyond being touched by him.

  He was still standing in the doorway watching her when she turned around.

  "Are you still hungry?" The words came out grudgingly. She couldn't believe she'd said them. She didn't care if he was hungry! In fact, she liked the idea—but no, that wasn't quite the truth. The base, worldly part of her might be able to think of his hunger as a measure of revenge for her humiliation, but the part of her that was still her father's daughter must offer him food.

  "I could eat."

  Without another word Susannah heaped another bowl full of gruel and dribbled molasses on it, then slapped it down on the table.

  "Sit and eat, then," she said shortly, pouring tea into a mug and slapping that down, too.

  "You're a kind woman, Sus—Miss Susannah," he said, and to her fury the faintest suggestion of a grin seemed to lurk beneath the camouflage of his beard.

  "No," she said very clearly, stopping what she was doing to face him, her arms folding over her chest, "I am not. For you must know that at this very moment I am battling the most awful urge to clout you over the head with my fry pan."

  He paused in the act of shoveling gruel into his mouth to eye her with interest. "Are you, indeed?"

  "Yes."

  "Ah," he said. "A woman of spirit as well. I like that." And he commenced eating again.

  Susannah sizzled. Before she could erupt, Ben entered the kitchen through the back door.

  "I fed the chickens," he said, then stopped as he discovered Connelly. "You're up, then," he said to Connelly.

  "As you see."

  "I helped carry you in."

  "Ah," Connelly said, his eyes sliding back to Susannah. "I wondered how you managed that."

  "Connelly, this is Ben Travers. He'll be helping you about the farm." Susannah made the introduction in a frigid voice as she turned to lift the pot of gruel from the fire.

  "Good morning, all." Her father's voice as he walked into the kitchen from the hallway made her start, and hot gruel slopped over her hand. Wincing, she set the pot down on the trivet with a grimace, then wiped her hand on a towel. It was not a bad burn, the skin was barely red, but it would not have happened had she not jumped. She would not have jumped had she not felt so guilty about the night before and about being found by her father with Connelly now. She only hoped the reddening of her cheeks would be attributed by him to the heat of the fire.

  "Morning, Pa," she said gruffly, turning to find him taking his place at the head of the table. He was fully dressed, in black as befitted his calling. As she watched, he smiled his gentle smile at Connelly, quite undeterred by the bristly fierceness of the visage across the table.

  "You must be, umm . . ." The Reverend Redmon's voice trailed off as he obviously searched for the name.

  "Ian Connelly."

  "Welcome, Mr. Connelly. I am the Reverend John Redmon. I hope you will soon feel at home with us."

  Connelly's eyes narrowed for a moment, as if he suspected Susannah's father of mockery. But something, perhaps the old man's luminous hazel eyes, must have persuaded him that the Reverend Redmon was quite serious.

  "Thank you, sir," he answered with grave courtesy. Susannah would never have believed him capable of such a tone. It was all she could do to keep her mouth from falling open. But her father seemed pleased by the response, and suddenly Susannah realized that the rogue was cleverer than she had thought. He changed his manner to suit his audience.

  "Are the girls up?" she asked her father in a tight voice.

  "They were moving around when I came down."

  "I'll go hurry them along, then," she said, and escaped from the kitchen. When she returned, with her sisters' promise of no longer than two minutes more, she was both surprised and relieved to find her father breakfasting alone.

  Her swift glance around the room must have asked the question she couldn't quite put into words.

  "Ben went to fetch Craddock, and I sent our new bound man back to bed, though he assured me that he was ready to work. I feel it best to give him a few days to recover his strength, and so I told him. He seems like a good man, Susannah. You made the right decision, just as you always do."

  "I'm glad you think so," Susannah said, not knowing whether to be pleased or sorry that her father had been so taken in. But then Ben came in with Craddock, and Sarah Jane and Em trooped downstairs—Mandy had not quite finished with her hair, Em said, but would be down momentarily—and suddenly Susannah was so busy with the tasks of everyday life that she had no more time, for the moment, to worry about her bound man.

  11

  "On your way back from dropping off the basket at the Likenses', you might stop by the church and remind Pa that the Eichorns' baby was born yesterday and they are wanting it baptized. It's sickly, so he'd best plan to go over there this afternoon," Susannah said. She was standing in the kitchen over the flour bin, a rectangular,
tablelike contraption that held flour in one side and corn meal in the other. Emily and Sarah Jane, the latter with a filled basket over her arm, were moving toward the back door. It was late the following morning, and Susannah was not in the best of humors, though she was doing her utmost not to let it show.

  "Poor Eleanor! She wanted this baby so much! After losing the other two, it seems that God could let her keep this one."

  "It is not your place to question God, Em."

  "Would you stop being so sanctimonious, Sarah Jane? I declare, you've become as sober as a judge!"

  "That's enough, Emily!" Susannah intervened more sharply than was her wont. Both Emily and Sarah Jane looked at her, surprise at her tone plain on their faces. It was not like Susannah to be cross. "You might also stop by the spring and bring in the buttermilk as you come home," she added in a milder tone.

  "And just where is Mandy this morning, while we run all these errands?" Emily asked, aggrieved.

  "Mandy has gone for a ride in Todd Haskins's buggy. He and his sister came by less than a quarter hour ago to take her up with them." Susannah was once again making bread. She punched the unwieldy dough beneath her hands with rather more force than the activity called for. The Haskinses were a wealthy planting family, members of the well-established Episcopal Church whose towering spire had long been the tallest point in Beaufort's skyline. The aristocratic Episcopalian congregation tended to look down their collective noses at the upstart Baptists, but Todd Haskins's infatuation with Mandy was strong enough to cut through such minor social barriers. Nevertheless, Susannah saw no future in the acquaintance and did not wish to encourage it. It was not likely that young Mr. Haskins had marriage on his mind. But should the question ever arise, the difference in religion would prove a sticky issue with her father and doubtless with the Haskinses as well.

  "Should you have permitted that, do you think?" Sarah Jane asked, frowning. She was well aware of Susannah's concerns on that head.

  "And why should Susannah have been against it, if you please? Mr. Haskins is as handsome as a dream, and rich, too. I wish someone like that would show an interest in me, and I'll just wager you do, too," Emily said.

  "You forget that I am betrothed, Em."

  "No, I don't, but I wish you would! Honestly, Sarah Jane, you are the most . . ."

  "If you two do not hurry, it will be nightfall before you so much as set foot outside the back door!" Susannah said with a snap. She felt as though she could not bear another moment of their bickering. Emily promptly shut her mouth, looking hurt, while Sarah Jane shot Susannah a questioning glance. Susannah pummeled the dough as if it were her own ill humor. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Em and Sarah Jane exchange shrugs, and they quit the house without another word.

  Susannah breathed a sigh of relief as she was left alone at last. She loved the girls dearly, but of late they had been, each in her own way, something of a trial. Emily was experiencing the usual adolescent pangs, Amanda was attracting beaux by the score, and Sarah Jane was growing more prim with every day that passed. All three required tactful handling, but today diplomacy seemed to be beyond her.

  "Good morning." Deep in disgruntled thought, Susannah started, then looked around to see Connelly standing in the kitchen doorway looking at her. She had not seen him since yesterday's breakfast, quite deliberately. She had kept herself and her sisters out of the house as much as possible, first doing chores about the place and later enlisting them all to help her with Mrs. Cooper's funeral. They would ordinarily have attended the service, of course, as the minister's daughters, but Susannah had had them scrub the church from top to bottom and decorate it with flowers and then practice the Hymn to the Creator so that the four of them might sing it as a quartet. As a result of all this preparation, Mrs. Cooper had had an unusually fine funeral, and the family had been lavish with their thanks for Susannah's efforts. Only Susannah knew that much of the thanks should rightfully go to her bound man. Had she not been wishful of keeping herself and her sisters out of his way, she would not have done so much.

  And so she felt guiltier than ever.

  "Did Ben not bring your breakfast?" After that first quick glance, she looked back at her dough. But she did not need to look at Connelly to see him. His piratical image was permanently engraved on her mind's eye, as she had found to her dismay both yesterday and last night. Even while she was in church, his long, hard body and wolfish eyes would flash into her consciousness. As a result, she had spent a third nearly sleepless night.

  "Yes, he did, and all my meals save breakfast yesterday. I suppose I should be grateful that I was not left to starve."

  "Yes, I suppose you should. What are you doing from bed?"

  "Do you really need to know?" He walked across the kitchen and out the back door. Surprised, Susannah left the dough to rise and followed him. What was he up to now? She didn't trust him an inch! Though where he could go barefoot, clad only in her father's nightshirt, was a mystery. He had just stepped off the back porch when she reached the doorway.

  "Unless you want to get an eyeful, I suggest you go back inside," he said over his shoulder. "I'm in search of a water closet."

  "A water closet?"

  "Am I presuming too much to suppose you have one?"

  When his meaning hit her over the head with the force of a brick, Susannah turned bright red.

  "It—it's up the hill, behind the chicken coop." She popped back inside the house. Once again, he'd embarrassed her to her toes, and she was perfectly sure that he knew of her discomfiture and was enjoying it. Were she of a mind to think of it that way, she might consider that she would, in this particular instance, have the last laugh. In England, they might have such amenities as water closets, but in the Carolinas one made do with a wooden seat over a hole in the ground and considered oneself lucky.

  He was back so quickly that Susannah suspected that he had not made the trek up the hill after all.

  "Is it always this damned hot here?" He stood just inside the kitchen, wiping the sweat that already beaded his brow.

  "We do not use profanity." She scraped the scraps she had saved from breakfast into a pan for the hogs as she spoke.

  "Well, is it?"

  "It's been hotter than usual the last week or so."

  "Thank God for that! Else I'd melt in a month."

  "We do not use the Lord's name in vain, either. And I meant that it's hot for May. It does, however, get far hotter in August."

  "Christ!"

  "Connelly!" Susannah rounded on him. "My father is a man of God! You will not use the Lord's name in vain in this house! Nor will you use profanity! Am I making myself clear?"

  He leaned a shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest, eyeing her. He would have been the picture of arrogant masculinity had it not been for the ridiculousness of a man of his size wearing her delicately built father's nightshirt.

  "Perfectly, Miss Susannah." If there was a touch of mockery in the title he gave her, Susannah chose to ignore it.

  "Good."

  "What's that you're making there?" He nodded at the pan that rested on the scrubbed pine table at her elbow.

  "Slop for the hogs." She turned back to it.

  "Hogs!" He sounded as if he'd never heard of such creatures.

  "Yes, hogs." It gave Susannah quite a bit of satisfaction to add, "That's one of the reasons I bought you—to take care of them."

  "You want me to take care of hogs?"

  "Yes, I do." She turned from the table with the pan of food held in both hands before her. He took one look at the mixture and the scraps of food floating in the remains of last night's milk and quickly averted his gaze.

  Susannah stopped where she was, eyeing him. It was clear that he found her pig slop distasteful.

  "What did you do, before?" Real curiosity prompted her question. Though she had never been there, she was sure there must be pigs in Englapd. If he had never tended any, he must not have been a farmer. Shay had said he was an
educated man, and his manner of speech bore this out. Had he been a clerk, perhaps? Or was that too honest a profession for the likes of him? It occurred to her to wonder, with a renewed sense that buying him had been a dreadful mistake, exactly how much help he would be with the chores. Perhaps he was one of those who was afraid of hard work.

  "Oh, this and that. Nothing that would interest you, I assure you," he said, confirming her worst fear.

  "Well, around here you will work, and work hard," she promised him grimly, and, stepping around him, took herself and her pig slop out the door.

  12

  Susannah returned from slopping the hogs by way of the front door, having detoured to rescue an inattentive robin from Clara. On edge as she walked through to the back of the house, expecting to encounter Connelly with every step, she was surprised to discover that he was nowhere to be found. The parlor door stood open, and she saw at a glance that he was not there. He was not in the sitting room, either, or the kitchen. Blast the man, he'd caused her more aggravation in less than a day than the most troublesome of the parishioners had in their entire lives.

  Where was he?

  Perhaps he had stepped out to visit the "water closet" again. Susannah put water over the fire to boil—it would soon be time to begin preparing the noonday meal—and then, when Connelly still had not returned, decided to look abovestairs for him. Surely the man was not bold enough to venture into the family's private sleeping rooms —though she would not put much beyond him. But he was not abovestairs.

  Frowning, Susannah gathered up an armload of clothes that waited on the landing to be washed and retraced her steps to the kitchen. Where could he be? Dirty clothes in hand, she went to the back door. She would do the wash this afternoon and in the meanwhile would add her bundle to the pile already waiting on the back porch for her attention.

  When she found Connelly, he was so close at hand that she wondered that she had not heard him. He was running a comb through his hair on the rear porch, near the end where the kitchen, which extended from the house like the short end of an L, formed a solid wall. Washtubs and washboards hung from pegs on that wall, and the growing pile of laundry waited beneath them. The broom and various other utensils leaned into the corner. A wash- stand was kept on the porch for visitors, with soap, a comb, a razor and strop, and a small mirror hung above it. Connelly stood with his back to her before the washstand, lather covering the upper portion of his beard, stooped slightly as he peered into the mirror. He was wearing his filthy breeches—she'd had them on the porch waiting to be washed—and nothing else. Feet, calves, and upper torso were completely bare, except for the bandage that wound around his back and chest. Her father's nightshirt lay discarded in a crumpled ball near his feet.