Nobody's Angel (35 page)

Hello, Susannah?
Hello, Susannah?
No phantom, surely, would greet the love he returned from the after- world to comfort in so prosaic a fashion. Susannah's eyes narrowed as they swept over him. No phantom, surely, would sit with booted legs crossed negligently at the ankle, his hands folded on his stomach, his eyes hooded as he watched her. No phantom, certainly, had the stubble of a day's growth of beard darkening his cheeks!

He was as real and solid as she was herself.
Hello, Susannah?
Was that all he had to say after more than two months of agonized separation? Was that all he had to say after she had grieved herself sick over him, mourning him with a painful intensity that put the sorrow she had felt for her blessed mother to shame?

"Hello, Susannah?" She echoed his greeting aloud, her tone disbelieving. Her eyes were wide with incredulity.

"I daresay you've been wondering where I disappeared to." He sounded faintly uneasy and even shifted from his negligent position to lean forward, his hands clasped between his spread knees.

"You daresay I've been wondering . . ." Still stunned when she began, Susannah snapped her teeth together in the middle of that sentence as the reality of the situation came home to her like a clap of thunder. He was not dead. He had never been dead! From the look of him, he had never even been hurt and had simply taken himself off when it had suited him to do so, the swine! And why not, pray? He'd even told her, once, that he meant to do so when it suited him. After all, he had gotten what he'd wanted, hadn't he? He'd tamed the minister's prim daughter, to use words he had employed himself. He had bedded her, not once but twice, and found her plenty hot, too. On that never-to-be-forgotten occasion when she had offered him his freedom, he had told her that he stayed because pursuing her amused him. But then he had caught his quarry, and, with the hunt over, he had apparently ceased being amused. So he'd moved on to greener pastures, without a thought for the woman he left behind.

"Yes, you might say I've been wondering where you had disappeared to," she managed in a tight voice before rage swamped her. Hot blood flooded her veins. Fire blazed from her eyes. She shot to her feet, her fists clenching and unclenching at her sides as her gaze swept the room for a weapon. He was not dead, yet; but, as God was her witness, he would be when she got through with him!

"Now, Susannah, if you'll just be calm I can explain. . . ."

That placating offer was a classic case of too little, too late. With a wordless cry of rage Susannah spied a poker leaning against the stove, grabbed it with a single lunge, then turned to annihilate the black-souled scoundrel who had stolen her heart and trampled it carelessly into the ground.

"You rascally knave! I thought you dead!" She rushed toward him, the poker lifted high overhead and held with both hands. When a pair of strides brought her within range, she brought it crashing down toward the glossy black crown that had haunted her days and nights for more than two months. She'd make a ghost of him yet!

"Wait a minute!" He threw up a hand and flung himself to the side. The poker caught his upper arm, drawing a pained yelp from him even as the chair tipped beneath his weight and pitched him to the floor. He yelped again as he landed hard, but he had no time to recover before she was upon him. She got in a few more good licks before, cursing, he grabbed the shaft of the poker and wrenched it from her hand. With a wordless cry of rage at being thus disarmed, Susannah whirled and sought a new weapon.

"Damn it, Susannah!" He surged to his feet with the quick grace of a cat, casting the poker aside.

"You lily-livered cad!" She found another oil lamp on the table—fortunately unlit—and hurled it at him even as he spoke. Jumping to one side, he just managed to get out of the way, and the lamp shattered against the wall.

"That's just about enough!" He was roaring now, and even as she discovered a pair of wick-scissors and flung them at him he lunged forward, caught her around the waist, and bore her, kicking and shrieking, to the floor. The hard wood moved beneath her back. The ceiling slanted over her head. A round metal cylinder freed by the shattering of the lamp rolled across the floor past her feet. But Susannah was barely aware of these things. She was kicking and scratching and biting at the silver- tongued cur who was scrabbling to pin her to the floor.

"Ouch!" he said, as her teeth sank into his shoulder. Grabbing her wrists, he pinned them beside her head and jerked his shoulder out of range. Shifting one hard thigh, he managed to pin her kicking legs to the floor. Holding her thus, poised a little bit above her so that she could not bite him, her hands and legs secured so that they could inflict no damage to his person, he had her fast. Susannah glared up at him, so furious she could have chewed nails —or his too-handsome nose!

"Get off me, you repellent oaf!"

"If you'll just listen. . . ." There was that placating tone again. What tale did he think to spin her this time, pray? Did he really imagine that she was such a fool that he could sweet-talk her out of her anger? Yes, he probably did, because she had given him every indication in the past that she was such a fool. But that was in the past!

"I'll never listen to another word you say! I cried over you, you stinking polecat! I couldn't sleep, or eat, or do anything but grieve! I worried my father! I worried my sisters! I quit taking care of the congregation! And all because of you, you varmint! You insect! You worm!"

"Now, Susannah . . ."

"Don't you 'Now, Susannah' me! You got what you wanted from me, and you left! That's the truth, so don't try to dress it up with pretty phrases! You're a no-good cur, and a . . ."

He shut her up by the simple expedient of transferring her wrists to one hand and clamping the other over her mouth. Furious, she made muffled sounds of outrage and tried to pull her face free, but it was useless.

"I realize you think that you have cause to be angry with me, but when you hear me out you'll see that I had no choice but to leave as I did. I was coming back, I swear I was. I just had some—business—to attend to first." He spoke rapidly, his gray eyes earnest as a saint's as he looked down into her face. As if she would fall for his tricks again! Susannah glared up at him, her body rigid under his, her expression furious beneath his silencing hand.

He frowned, as if searching for words that might sway her. Not likely, Susannah thought, and fixed him with a gimlet stare.

"You may have difficulty believing this—hell, I know you're going to have difficulty believing this, because you never have believed a word I've said—but I did not commit the crime with which I was charged. I did not, in fact, commit any crime at all. The information laid against me in England was false, my true identity concealed, and the court bribed to find me guilty. I was supposed to be murdered in Newgate, I think. But fortunately bribery works both ways. I traded my signet ring to a guard, and he put me in with a gang of convicts to be transported. Else I doubt I'd be alive today."

Susannah's gaze must have expressed her skepticism, because his frown deepened and his eyes took on an almost pleading look that might, at some previous time in their association, have moved her, though now it emphatically did not.

"Being on a convict ship was hell, but I was determined to survive. If I could stay alive, I thought, then I could return to England and exact vengeance on those who had so betrayed me and reclaim all that was mine. The piece of paper that said I was little better than a slave for seven years meant nothing to me; I had no intention of honoring it for longer than I had to. When you bought me at auction, I thought it would be easy. I would rest and regain my strength and then leave. But I didn't plan on falling in love with you, or on my enemies in England discovering that I had escaped their net and coming after me. The night I left, I was attacked by one of my enemies' minions who'd been sent to kill me. During the course of our battle, some things he said led me to the conclusion that he had come to your farm with instructions to rid the world of me once before, only to murder poor Craddock by mistake. If you recall, on the night Craddock disappeared I was not in my cabin."

Though he didn't say it, Susannah could not help but remember precisely where he had been the night Craddock disappeared—in her bed. If he thought the memory would aid his cause, then he was about as wrong as it was possible for a human being to be. As for his falling in love with her—hah! He must think she was a want-wit, to believe that after what he had done! Disappearing without a word was not something she would do to someone she loved! Something in her expression must have displayed how infelicitous she found his words, because after studying her face he continued almost wearily.

"Be that as it may, he came back for a second try at me, and I killed him instead. But I knew I had to leave, because if one came after me and failed, there would be more. Once it was known that I had survived the fate that they had planned for me, they would not stop until they succeeded and I was dead. They couldn't; there is too much at stake for them now. I had to leave you, Susannah. If I had not, I would have put you and your family in almost as much danger as I was in myself."

He searched her face again, as if looking for a sign. She snorted against his hand, and to her surprise he removed it.

"You must know that your explanation, while very affecting, is about as clear as mud. Who is after you, pray, and why?"

She raised her eyebrows at him as she asked the question. He hesitated, as if searching for words. Then he sighed.

"As I told you before, Susannah, though you chose not to believe me then either, I am—or was—a very rich man. I am the Marquis of Derne, to be exact, eldest son and heir to the Duke of Warrender. Only my mother prefers that my younger brother inherit in my stead, and she and my brother conspired together to rid the world of me. Having gone so far, they cannot now turn back. They will see me dead at any cost, unless I can put a crimp in their plans, which I hope my return will do."

For a moment, just a moment, Susannah weighed his words. That he was a marquis, a nobleman, she could almost believe. That would explain much about him, from his looks, to his arrogance, to the effortless elegance that seemed as much a part of him as breathing. And he had told her, as they had walked toward the rose garden on the night of the Haskinses' party, that his mother was not very motherly and that he was a thorn in her flesh. . . .

But then she caught herself and flushed a little at her own gullibility. He was on the verge of talking her around again! What she must fix in her mind, and keep fixed there, was the fact that, had she not by the merest coincidence happened to be on Charles Town's dock as he passed, she would never have seen him again!

"That is the purest drivel I have ever heard in my life! The Marquis of Derne indeed! Surely you do not think I am such a fool as to believe you?"

"But it is the truth, I swear. I . . ."

"Tell me," she interrupted ominously, as the floor tilted beneath her as it had been doing during the whole of their exchange, "am I correct in assuming we are aboard some sort of ship?"

At that he looked slightly apologetic. "You fainted, and the ship was ready to sail. I could not just leave you lying there on the dock. Besides, as soon as you recovered your senses I knew you would prate of seeing me to all and sundry, and I would just as soon not have the authorities waiting at quayside when we dock in England, ready to haul me off to gaol as a runaway indentured servant. I saw your broadsheets, you know."

The accusing look that accompanied this last passed right over Susannah's head.

"Are you telling me that we are on a ship bound for England?" she gasped.

"Yes."

That bald statement made her close her eyes. "Dear God!"

"You'll like England, I promise you. It's cool there, with none of your hellish heat. And . . ."

"If you do not get off me this very instant, you are going to be extremely sorry," she interrupted in an ominous tone, her eyes opening in her whitening face. "Because I am not a good sailor, I warn you, and I am about to be extremely sick!"

35

As the weather drove him from the deck for the sixth time in as many days, Ian thought ruefully that being confined to a cabin with Susannah was rather like being swung in a sack with a vixen. A very sick vixen. When she had said she was not a good sailor, she had dramatically understated the case. She had been violently ill for the entire three weeks the
Corinth
had been at sea.

He cautiously opened the door to their cabin and stepped inside. A lantern swayed from the ceiling to which it was affixed, its yellow glow permitting him to see at a glance just how much danger he was in. The vixen was propped up in her bunk being handed a bowl that appeared to contain rice gruel by Mistress Hawkins, whom for the price of a few shillings he had hired to care for Susannah. Mistress Hawkins, who was thin and rather bent and well past middle age, turned to stare suspiciously at Ian as he entered. Despite her title, which would seem to indicate the married state, she was traveling with another female and seemed to have a profound distrust of men.

" Tis glad I am you've come, me lord. I mun be gettin' on back to my cabin. Birdie—that's Mistress Tyler, my travelin' companion, to you—just sent me word that she's feelin' the motion herself and needs me to do for her."

"Will you be able to come tomorrow?" If he sounded anxious, Ian couldn't help it. The prospect of caring for Susannah, who was as sick and weak as she was furious with him, was daunting. It was quite possible that she would refuse to let him do anything at all for her.

"Depends on how Birdie does."

"Please try." She nodded, plumped the pillow behind Susannah's back with a vigor that nearly caused Susannah to spill her gruel, turned and crossed the room to where Ian stood just inside the doorway with the same air of unease as a cat on tacks. Wordlessly she held out a bony hand. Ian looked at it, then searched in his pocket and withdrew a coin from the small store that he had earned during the two months that he had been gone from the farm. It would have been ample for his needs had he not had to pay extra for his "wife's" passage once it was discovered that she was on board. The trifling amount that remained had to last them until they reached England and he could make contact with his bankers.