Nobody's Angel

by Karen Robards

  At that she opened her eyes. "I rinse my hair with it." She sluiced the juice over her head nearly every time she washed it, in a secret, silly hope it might lend a vestige of color to the thick mass of her hair. Though her hair could not be as nondescript as she had supposed if he could describe it as palomino gold—but of course his was the kind of tongue that had ended up ousting Adam and Eve from Eden.

  "Miss Susannah actually has a hidden vanity! I don't believe it! There's hope for you yet."

  He kissed her mouth again, more lingeringly, and her eyes fluttered shut. Susannah felt her reason slipping away again. She wanted nothing more from life than to be allowed to stay where she was forever, in his arms.

  "Susannah! Susannah, are you there?"

  Susannah jumped away from Ian like a scalded cat.

  "Mandy!" she whispered frantically, her hands flying to her hair.

  "Susannah!" The crunch of shells told Susannah that Mandy was entering the rose garden. Susannah hugged the shadowy center of the pavilion, glad that it was raised some few feet from the ground, not daring to look around lest Mandy should perceive her movement and catch her in such a state. Fortunately, trelliswork rose halfway up the structure on three sides, providing some cover.

  "Hold still. I'll do it." He stepped behind her, caught her hair in both hands and twisted it deftly into a long rope. Then he coiled the rope in a neat figure eight on the back of her head and secured it with precisely four pins. It usually took her at least three times that number.

  "How did you do that?"

  "Practice." He handed her the rest of the pins.

  "I'll just bet!" She stowed them in her pocket.

  "Mandy . . . Miss Mandy, please let me explain! I love you. . . ." The voice belonged to Hiram Greer, and it was clear from the sounds of his footsteps that he was following Mandy.

  "Go away! Don't you dare say such things to me! Susannah!"

  "What on earth . . . ?" Susannah glanced quickly down at herself. "Am I presentable? I must go to Mandy."

  "Miss Mandy, I meant no disrespect. Please believe that. . . ."

  "If you don't quit following me I shall scream! Susannah!" Mandy was getting shrill.

  "You look fine. Every bit the minister's prim daughter again." Something in Ian's voice made Susannah frown. Her eyes lifted to his.

  "Ian . . ."

  "Susannah!" It was a wail. "Oh! How dare you! Take your hands off me!"

  Then came brief sounds of a scuffle, a sharp rip that could only be tearing cloth, and a slap. Susannah and Ian exchanged brief, startled glances.

  "Mandy!" Susannah cried, breaking away and moving out into the bright moonlight. "Mandy, I'm right here!"

  Standing at the top of the shallow steps that led from the pavilion, she could see Mandy about twenty feet away on the sparkling path. She was struggling in Hiram Greer's arms.

  "Mandy! Mr. Greer, unhand her at once!"

  "Susannah! Oh, thank goodness!" Mandy glanced around, then tore herself out of Greer's surprise-slackened grasp.

  "Miss Susannah! Uh . . ." Greer stuttered to a halt as Susannah hurried toward her sister. "It's not what it looks like. Uh . . ."

  "They told me you'd gone to the rose garden, and when I came out to find you he insisted on coming with me, again. He's been following me about all night, though I didn't want him to, and—and he said I was a tease, and he —grabbed me!" Mandy broke off with a sob and ran to Susannah, who was approaching along the path toward her. To Susannah's dismay, real tears poured down Mandy's cheeks. Susannah saw that the bodice of Mandy's gown was torn, revealing the white lawn of her chemise.

  "Mr. Greer," she said in an awful voice, wrapping her sobbing sister in her arms and speaking past her bent head. "What have you done?"

  Greer looked shamefaced. To his credit, he did not try to run away but rather walked sheepishly toward the entwined pair. "She was being too free with some of those boys. I tried to tell her, but she walked away from me. I couldn't just let her go outside by herself, could I? Anything could have happened to her."

  "Keep him away from me!" Mandy sobbed.

  "I meant no disrespect," he said, and Susannah realized that his voice was faintly slurred. As he drew closer, it was clear from the general look of him and the smell of alcoholic spirits that hung about him that he'd imbibed rather freely. Suddenly Susannah realized why the party had grown so boisterous just before she had left it: the Haskinses had been serving strong drink to their guests. "I guess I—got carried away."

  "I guess you did!" Susannah said coldly, while Mandy turned around to glare at Greer.

  "He—he kissed me and—and pawed me and—and ripped my beautiful dress. Oh, Susannah, can we please go home?"

  "Indeed we can. Mr. Greer . . ."

  "I'll take care of this, Susannah." A quiet voice said behind her. Only then did Susannah realize that Ian had walked up behind her and now stood at her back.

  "Oh, Ian, what must you think of me!" Mandy burst into fresh tears and hid her face in Susannah's shoulder.

  "As I told you before, Mandy, when you kissed me, I think you're very young and very unaware of the dangers that men pose to innocent girls." Ian spoke quietly. Susannah was sure that his words did not carry even as far as Hiram Greer. "I still think that."

  "I'm so ashamed," Mandy whispered.

  "You've no reason to be ashamed, baby." Susannah— stunned at the revelation of the truth behind that kiss she had so reviled Ian for and overcome with her own guilt at her activities of the night—patted Mandy's back. If anyone had done something to be ashamed of, it was she, not Mandy. As Ian had said, Mandy was guilty of nothing worse than being very young and innocent.

  "He didn't—hurt you?" Ian's question was very gentle.

  "Not—really. But . . ." Mandy sobbed again.

  "You're very lucky," Ian said to Greer in a louder voice. "Because if you'd done more than just rip her dress, I'd have killed you. You're a grown man, and you know as well as I do that, for all her flirting, she's no more than a naive little girl."

  Susannah, occupied with comforting her weeping sister, barely noticed when Ian stepped around her and Mandy, who still clung to her. What occurred after that happened so quickly that by the time she guessed what Ian was about, it was all over: with a sickening thwackl his fist connected with Greer's jaw. The other man reeled backward, to collapse on a hapless rose bush, crushing it.

  "I hope you broke his jaw," Mandy said passionately, glancing around at the sound, but Ian shook his head and flexed his fingers at the same time.

  "I didn't," he said regretfully. "I didn't hit him hard enough. He'll have a bruise, but that's about all."

  The ride home was accomplished in comparative silence, though Mandy occasionally burst out with fierce animadversions on the character of men in general and Hiram Greer in particular. When they reached the house, Ian lifted both girls down. Mandy, her hand clutching her torn gown together at the neck, started up the steps toward the door as soon as her feet touched the ground.

  "I'm sorry for what I thought about you and Mandy. I should have known better," Susannah murmured as Ian's hands lingered on her waist. Her eyes met his and clung; her fingers curled around his hard biceps. For a moment, there in the shadow of the buggy, he pulled her close.

  "Yes, you should have," he whispered, dropping a lightning kiss on her mouth. "I told you that I wasn't interested in your sisters. Maybe, just once, you should try believing me."

  "I . . ." Susannah began, when Mandy interrupted, calling to her from the porch.

  "Susannah, are you coming? I think I'm going to be sick!"

  "I have to go." She pulled free, though he caught her hands and held them in both of his.

  "One of these days I'm going to get you alone, without your damned family anywhere around, and you won't have any excuse to be rid of me." His smile as he kept her hands a moment longer was wry, but it was still a smile, and the look in his eyes did strange things to her heart.

  "Ian, I
. . ." She almost did it. She almost confessed that she loved him there and then. But Mandy stomped her foot impatiently on the porch.

  "Susannah!"

  "I'm coming," she answered absently. Then, to Ian, she whispered almost shyly, "Tomorrow. We'll talk tomorrow."

  "Yes," he said. "We'll talk."

  His eyes never left her as she rounded the buggy. Susannah could feel them, warmly possessive, on her back. As she reached the porch and Mandy and slid a comforting arm around her sister's waist, there was the jingle of tack and the rumble of wheels, and the buggy moved off.

  31

  For the first time in his life, Ian thought he might be in love. The notion made him grimace with mingled humor and disgust. He was lying on the damned uncomfortable bed in the tiny cabin that was now, unbelievably, his home, his arms folded under his head, quite unable to sleep. Matchmaking mamas had been throwing their daughters at his head for years. He'd kept nearly a score of actresses and opera dancers under his protection, at separate times of course, in the decade since he'd come of age. His last mistress, Serena, had been as beautiful a woman as a man could hope to find anywhere, with glossy black hair, flashing dark eyes, skin the color of honey, and a figure that nearly rivaled Susannah's for ripeness. Serena had suited him perfectly, and he'd grown quite fond of her during the six months of their association. But never had she stirred anything in him that so much as approached what he felt for Miss Susannah Redmon.

  It amused him to think of her that way, calling to mind as it did the image of her as he had first seen her. Prim, plain, and bossy of nature, a dowdy colonial spinster with an air of command, she'd been something quite beyond his ken. She was still something quite beyond his ken, though he had good reason to know that the prim spinster was only a facade that hid a vibrant, loving woman whose soul was as beautiful as Serena's face. And he had lived long enough, and hard enough, to realize that a soul, unlike a face, was beautiful forever. If one meant to keep her, her soul was the part of a woman that mattered.

  Not that Susannah wasn't physically beautiful, too. She was, when he had her naked and hungry, with her skin flushed and her mouth soft and her eyes dreamy with passion, while her glorious hair cascaded down around her face and body like a curly lion's mane. Her body, with its full, ripe breasts and hips and tiny waist, was enough to stop his breath. Strip her of her dull clothes and proper exterior, and she was a different being entirely. Taught properly—and he had every intention of being very thorough with her lessons—she would be the best bed partner he'd ever had. Even now she was wild and hot and, once he got her past her curious notions of morality and sin, as eager for their lovemaking as he.

  He could almost picture himself being faithful to a woman like that. Quite probably, if he had her in his bed every night, he'd lack the energy, if not the will, to stray.

  Was he thinking of marriage? That he should even entertain the idea surprised him. But what other course was open to him with a woman like Susannah? However different she was from the ladies he was used to, she was, indubitably, a lady. In some ways, the ones that really mattered, she was a far greater lady than those who ruled the ton.

  He could not use her as his mistress. Some unsuspected delicacy of mind shrank from even thinking of her in such a context, though he had bedded her twice, and damned hotly, too. But if he slept with her, she had to fall into one of two categories: mistress or wife.

  Miss Susannah Redmon would never be happy as his mistress. Now that she'd given herself to him, not once but twice, she would be thinking in terms of persuading him to take her to wife. He knew how her mind worked as well as he knew his own.

  She had said they'd talk on the morrow. Did she mean to propose? Managing as she was, that seemed quite likely. He wondered how she'd go about it. Picturing various scenarios made him grin.

  Ian chuckled aloud as he wondered what she would reply when he told her he was really a marquis.

  The entertainment value of that thought was his undoing. He never heard the door open, never saw the man who crept across the floor until suddenly, without the slightest warning, a huge dark shadow loomed over his bed.

  His first, instantaneous thought was that Likens, the bastard, thought to exact some sort of revenge on him instead of Susannah, which suited him very well. His second was that Greer, the fool, still muddle-headed from drink, had followed them home and hoped to pay him back for that clout on the jaw.

  The one foe he didn't consider, while his mind ranged with lightning quickness over various possibilities even as his body tensed for violent response, was precisely the one that, instants later, his attacker was revealed to be.

  "This time you die, Derne," the specter growled, and a knife flashed as it hurtled down toward his chest.

  Impossible as it seemed, his enemies had found him again.

  32

  Susannah was singing as she shaped dough into loaves not long after dawn the next morning. The tune had run through her dreams all night long, and even now she couldn't seem to get it out of her head. She could almost see Ian's face bending close to hers, just as it had when she had sung for him the night before. She almost could see the tender light in his gray eyes and the teasing smile that curved his beautiful mouth.

  "Alas, my love, you do me wrong to cast me off so discourteously. . . ."

  Not even particularly caring whether or not she was alone, she pirouetted once or twice on her way to pop the bread into the bake oven. As Ian had said, sin, like beauty, was in the eye of the beholder. Maybe dancing wasn't such a very great sin. And maybe he truly found her beautiful.

  She was going to marry him. Susannah smiled giddily at the thought. She was going to take a chance on him, just as he had urged her to. She was going to do something daring, and dangerous, and probably foolish. She was going to grab life with both hands, while she had the chance. She was going to ask Ian to make her his wife.

  There would be a scandal, of course, and the neighbors would buzz, and a few of the adamant sticklers among the congregation would look down their noses at her for a while, but Susannah had discovered, somewhere during the course of the long night, that she simply didn't care.

  She wanted Ian, and she meant to have him. Take what you want, said God. Take what you want, and pay for it. Only this time, she wanted to be Ian's wife, and she was willing to pay the full price.

  Anything.

  What beautiful children they'd have, she thought dreamily as she added water to the kettle and hung it over the fire. Sturdy, black-haired little boys, girls with his perfectly carved features and gray eyes—or maybe they'd look like her. She would love them regardless, of course. But she hoped they would all look like Ian. How peculiar it would be, to find herself the mother of such a gorgeous brood!

  Maybe a child had already started to grow within her. This time the thought excited her rather than filling her with dread. How wonderful it would be to have a child of her own—and Ian's—to love!

  Pa would not object when she told him that she loved Ian and meant to marry him. She didn't even think he'd be too sorrowful, though she couldn't be absolutely positive about that. Ian was a bound man and a convict, after all. But Pa had never tried to keep her from doing anything she was determined to do, and he wouldn't— couldn't—stop her now. She hoped he wouldn't try. He liked Ian, after all, and she knew his primary concern was her happiness.

  Ian was what made her happy.

  Happy. Susannah realized that she'd forgotten what it felt like to be happy. Not since before her mother had died, when she'd lain in bed in the mornings and awakened to the smell of breakfast cooking and the sounds of her mother singing as she moved about the kitchen, had life seemed so full of possibilities. For a long time now her world had been leeched of joy. She'd done what she had to do, gotten through each day, picked up the standard that her mother had dropped. She had given unstintingly to those she loved. But she had not been happy.

  She'd been resigned, rather. Sometimes content. Certainly ready to
settle for the half-loaf that she had thought was to be her lot. To raise her sisters in lieu of children of her own. To keep her father's house rather than establish her own home. To watch as, one by one, her sisters found love, married, and had children. To be left, in the end, on the shelf and alone.

  But Ian had changed all that. He had exploded into her life like a cannonball, and nothing had been the same since. She had not been the same since. She much preferred the foolish, reckless, and even sinful woman she was with Ian to the dried-out spinster she'd been before.

  Maybe she would even let him teach her to dance.

  At the thought, Susannah giggled. She was still giggling like a girl when Ben walked into the kitchen. Biting her tongue to stop her laughter, looking across at him almost guiltily, Susannah saw that he had not brought in the sticks for the fire. Instead, his hands were empty, and his fingers clenched and unclenched nervously.

  "Somethin's amiss," he said without preamble, before she could question him. His thin young face wore an expression that Susannah had never before seen on it.

  "What is amiss?" she asked, leaving off pouring molasses into a crock for the table to stare at him. A cold fear began to fill her heart, though she couldn't say exactly why. It was just a feeling, a bad feeling. . . .

  "Connelly ain't nowhere around, and his cabin looks like a hurricane's been through it. I think he's gone, or been took, or somethin ."

  "What?"

  Susannah stared at him for the space of a heartbeat while a peculiar iciness spread throughout her body. She put down the molasses bucket almost too carefully and walked to the back door. Once there, she lifted her skirts clear of her feet and ran.

  Ian's cabin was indeed a shambles. The door hung on its hinges, the bed was turned on its side, and the mattress had been flung across the room and ripped so that its cornhusk stuffing covered everything. The rest of the furnishings looked as though they had been flung about by a madman, or by someone in a furious rage. The pitcher and bowl from the washstand lay shattered on the floor. Even the mirror that hung above the washstand was broken.