Nobody's Angel (15 page)

"Don't tell me," she said when she had herself under control, "you've never gathered eggs before?"

"No, I never have."

"Have you ever even been on a farm before?"

"Of course I've been on a farm."

"You have?"

"To collect the rent." The admission was somewhat sulky. Susannah lifted her eyebrows at him, and he shrugged. " 'Twas one of my jobs, once."

"You've never peeled vegetables, and you've never gathered eggs. Can you plow? No, of course you can't. What can you do, if you don't mind my asking?"

He narrowed his eyes at her. "I can ride with the best, drive to an inch, wench, dance, drink anyone you care to name under the table and never show it, play cards and win, and shoot the wick out of a candle at fifty yards, among other accomplishments that I cannot at the moment call to mind."

"Oh." Susannah heard this list with doubt written on her face. Then, in a more positive tone, she added, "Shay —the auctioneer—claimed that you can read and write."

"Oh, yes, I can read and write. How remiss of me not to mention that. Don't tell me that you cannot?"

"I can, and my sisters, because our father is a learned man and wanted us to be educated."

"How forward-thinking of him."

"You say you collected rents at one time. How else did you earn your living?"

Connelly hesitated a moment before replying. "I managed," he said curtly.

"Indeed? From your current circumstances, I cannot judge that you managed any too well."

"You know nothing of what brought me to this pass."

"I would be glad to listen, if you should care to tell me."

"I don't need a mother confessor, I assure you." Suddenly, he sounded almost hostile.

Susannah's lips compressed. "Everyone needs someone to tell their troubles to, I've discovered. Tis nothing to be ashamed of. Nor is being ignorant of farming, though when I bought you I'd certainly hoped . . . But 'tis too late to repine. Perhaps you can help me with the books, and Pa with his sermons. He cannot see any too well anymore and needs someone to write them out for him. And I will teach you farming."

"Do you have to?" There was a rueful note to his voice. Looking up at him—Susannah realized that the top of her head barely reached his shoulder and that she had to tilt her head back to a considerable degree to meet his eyes— she saw that he was smiling down at her. It was not the sensuous smile he had turned on Mandy, but a real grin. The humor of it reached his eyes, warming the gray depths to devastating effect. Susannah stared, startled as she realized anew just how very handsome he was. In her amusement, she had quite forgotten that he was the physical embodiment of a female's dream.

"Certainly I do," she said severely, flustered to realize that, like Mandy, she was in grave danger of falling under the spell of those reprehensible good looks. "We'll start right now. You may come with me, and I'll show you how to go about gathering eggs."

"I'd really rather not."

"You're not a coward, are you? Come, Elise and the others are still in the tree. There can't be more than a dozen left in the henhouse."

"How reassuring," he muttered, but he did follow her inside, ducking through the low door. Just over the threshold, Susannah stumbled over something and looked down to find one of her father's clogs. Her eyes widened, and she glanced back to discover her bound man in his stocking feet—only the stockings were well muddied now, and probably wet as well. Her lips twitched, and suddenly she was more at ease with him again.

"Here is one of your shoes," she pointed out. Spying its mate in a pile of straw, she added, "And there is the other."

"Thank you, but I prefer to be without them. Just in case we have to run for it."

"Don't be absurd!" The basket he had carried lay overturned near the second shoe, its bottom crushed. He had apparently stepped on it in his haste to escape the henhouse. It was ruined, of course. But Susannah was smiling as she retrieved the clogs and placed them in her basket. "If you will look in the empty nests, I'm sure you'll find some eggs."

"Yes, but will the guardians the others have left behind attack me?" He was eyeing the ten remaining hens with trepidation. They looked back at him unblinkingly, their little black eyes gleaming. Having collected eggs from the time she could walk—it was a task generally allocated to the younger members of a household—Susannah found his caution as ridiculous as it was endearing. She thrust her hand beneath a feathered breast, felt around, and came up with an egg. The hen—Ruth was her name— clucked, but she did not offer to peck.

"See?" she said, holding the egg up to demonstrate. "And you have the advantage over me. You are tall enough to be able to reach into all the nests, where I have to fetch a stool for the ones on the top row."

She turned up the end of her apron to receive the egg and its fellows, as her basket was filled with his clogs. She rooted beneath another hen, came up empty. His eyes never leaving Matilda and Mavis, the closest of the roosting hens, Connelly took a careful step, and then another, until he stood beside her. He had to stand quite close, because the henhouse, a shed-like structure with a tin roof and neat rows of straw-filled nest boxes, narrowed at its far end. His legs brushed her skirt, and Susannah was suddenly very aware of his nearness. All at once the confines of the henhouse seemed far too restricted.

"You may check the top nests. I cannot reach them." It was all she could do to keep her voice steady.

"That's easily remedied," he said.

Susannah felt his hands grip her waist from behind. Seconds later he was lifting her clear off her feet. In her shock, she forgot to hold on to the edge of the apron and the single egg they'd found dropped to the floor. It broke, but she was barely aware of its fate. Her hands flew to his, and instinctively she clutched his fingers for balance as he held her high.

"Now you may check the nests for yourself," he said, and she knew he was teasing her even though she could not see his face. Her hands tightened over his. The warmth of his fingers beneath hers, the strength of his hands clasping her waist, set her senses atremble.

"Put me down!" she said fiercely, struggling to be free.

"Not till you check the nests." His hands tightened. His fingers dug into her flesh. In the face of his strength she felt suddenly helpless, and the sensation was unnerving.

"I said put me down!" The ferocity in her voice was quite out of proportion to the situation, she knew. But the awful burning sensation that pulsed to life inside her frightened her.

Clenching her teeth, she dug her nails into his fingers. She must have had the good fortune to connect with his cut thumb, or perhaps with the place where Elise had pecked him, because he yelped and released his grip, dropping her onto her feet.

Out of breath and red-faced, Susannah scrambled quickly out of his reach.

"You are never to put your hands on me in such a way again, do you hear? And you may gather the rest of the eggs yourself. I have things to do in the house."

His eyes narrowed on her, but Susannah did not wait to hear what he might reply. Turning on her heel, she fled.

15

Speculation narrowed Ian's eyes. He watched Susannah retreat in disorder, well aware of what caused her flustered withdrawal—she wanted him. He had known too many women not to recognize the signs.

The dowdy little dab of a female who had bought him at auction was eager for him. Eager and resisting of the notion at once. The situation should have been laughable, but it was not.

Ridiculous as the admission undoubtedly was, he would not be averse to bedding Miss Susannah Redmon. The lady had unexpected depths.

To begin with, she was not nearly as plain as she appeared, The night he had awakened to find her in his bed, she'd been surprisingly alluring. In his dreams he'd been making love to Serena, and to find that the silken thighs he'd parted and soft breasts he'd caressed so enthusiastically belonged to Susannah instead had been quite a shock. What had been an even bigger shock was to discover, unless his mind was playing tricks on him, that Susannah's body was as enticing as her day-to-day appearance was not. Though he had not been quite himself on that never-to-be-forgotten night, his hands still burned with the shape of her. Hard as it was at first for him to believe, the prim minister's daughter seemed to have a figure that a courtesan would kill for. Her breasts were full and beautifully shaped, soft and rounded and womanly, crowned with nipples that had stiffened to instant attention as soon as he had touched them with the balls of his thumbs. Her hips were as lushly female as her breasts. And that was where the deception came in. Her gowns were cut almost straight from breasts to hips. He suspected that she deliberately disguised the asset that would have made her figure breathtaking—an unbelievably tiny waist.

Looking back on those few minutes when he'd had her beneath him in his bed, he'd thought that her waist had felt amazingly small and supple beneath his exploring fingers. Today, when he had lifted her, he'd had his suspicions confirmed—her waist was so small that he could span it with his two hands.

He burned to see her naked.

To think she worried about his seducing her pretty sister. The notion was almost funny. Little Miss Mandy was lovely, but he had known many lovely women. His own Serena was a diamond of the first water. Beside Serena, Mandy's beauty blazed about as brightly as a candle's light when compared with that of the sun. He didn't lust after Mandy.

He lusted after Susannah.

The contrast between what she was and what she appeared to be intrigued him. With her hair scraped so tightly back into that hideous knot that it seemed practically colorless, her square face pale and unsmiling, and her figure hidden by those truly atrocious gowns, she looked plain to the point of being homely. But he had seen her with her hair loose so that it tumbled past her fanny in a wild riot of gold-shot curls. He had seen her face flush with temper and her hazel eyes turn to bright green-gold with it. And he had discovered the luscious woman's body that she concealed beneath her gowns.

He had discovered something else, too—the lady was not quite as resigned to aging spinsterhood as she liked to appear. He didn't remember everything about that night, but he remembered how she had responded to him.

He remembered the smell of lemon that clung to her hair, and the clean taste of her skin, and the incredible softness of her.

And he was curious.

He hadn't felt this way about a woman in years.

There was no hurry about returning home, after all. His enemies would still be waiting, smug in the mistaken belief that they had rid themselves of him at last. He could take a few weeks to satisfy his curiosity about this most unexpected turn of events.

"Miss Redmon! Miss Redmon!"

The cry, with its clear note of distress, jerked him out of his introspection. Ian's head came up, and he strode to the door. A tow-haired boy burst from the woods that lay beyond the henhouse, racing right past Ian as he stood in the doorway to run pell-mell down the hill toward the house. The youth looked vaguely familiar, but before Ian could even attempt to cudgel his memory for a name, Susannah stepped off the back porch into a blaze of bright sunshine, her hands outstretched to catch the boy.

"Jeremy! Whatever is the matter?" Her hands closed over Jeremy Likens's thin shoulders. The child was shaking, his eyes bright with unshed tears, his chest heaving with some combination of emotion and exertion as he struggled to get the words out.

" "fis Pa! He's killin' Ma! He's hit her with the shovel, and she's bleedin' bad! You gotta come, Miss Redmon! You gotta come!"

"I'm coming, Jeremy." Susannah stepped back up on the porch and hurried into the kitchen. Seconds later she emerged with her father's old fowling piece in her hands. Jed Likens was no good, a violent, brawling man who frequently beat his wife and seven children. Annabeth Likens, Jeremy's mother, was a meek, colorless little woman who attended church when she could, with bunches of her children in tow. Susannah was often impatient with her quiet acceptance of the abuse that darkened her life, but Annabeth had no notion of how to end it. Susannah had dispensed advice and comfort and practical assistance to her many times over the years, and the whole family—with the exception of Jed—had come to regard her as a friend.

"He hit Cloris with the shovel, too. I think she's dead. You gotta hurry, Miss Redmon! You gotta hurry!" Jeremy was sobbing, dancing from one foot to the other as he waited for her. Cloris was his oldest sister. At thirteen, she was notorious around Beaufort for the way she made up to men, and Susannah guessed that it was just a matter of time until she had an illegitimate baby growing under her skirts. But for all her waywardness in that direction, she was good to her mother and tried to help with her brothers and sisters. There was not a mean bone in Cloris's body.

"Go on, then. I'll follow you."

Jeremy tore back up the hill. With her skirts caught up in one hand and the fowling piece tucked beneath her arm, Susannah followed at a run. She was panting by the time she reached the wood but did not slow her pace even when a stitch hit her side. For Jeremy, to whom familial violence was an everyday occurrence, to run for help, the situation must be desperate.

The Likens place was just on the other side of the hill, across Silver Creek, where Susannah and the girls waded in summer. The path crossed the stream at a narrow section, and Jeremy leaped it easily. Susannah, not quite as limber, splashed through the cold water, wetting her shoes and stockings and the hem of her dress. Even as she struggled up the bank, she could hear shouts and screams from Jeremy's family. Their rundown farm lay in a muddy field at the bottom of the hill.

Following Jeremy, Susannah emerged into cleared ground and bright sunlight. In the moment it took her to absorb the scene, she was nearly upon it. Cloris Likens, in a muddied white dress, her blond hair darkened around the forehead with blood, was screaming as she tried to crawl up the steps of the ramshackle house. Her father had not killed her, Susannah realized with relief. Annabeth Likens lay on the ground a short distance away. She was on her back, with her shouting husband astride her. Both his fists were in her hair, and he was pounding her head into the hard ground. Like Cloris, Annabeth was screaming. Two young children huddled together, crying loudly, while a third boy, Timmy, who was seven, pulled at his father's shirt, trying to get him off their mother. A vicious sweep of Jed Likens's arm sent Timmy flying. The boy's head hit a stump, and for a moment he lay stunned. Then he, too, started to cry and sat up. Jeremy rushed to take his little brother's place in defending their mother. Likens, looking around at his older son with a snarl, sent him reeling back with a vicious shove.