Teresa Medeiros (2 page)

The word fell flat in the still room. Claire went a shade paler. Her small fist convulsed around her father’s letter. She knew, Amelia thought. My God, she already knew.

Regretting her sharpness, Amelia blundered on. “Your father made no provisions for you, but you shall be welcome
to stay at Foxworth Seminary until satisfactory arrangements can be made.”

What was she saying? She could hardly tolerate the precocious little creature. All those shocking years of living unchaperoned with her father had given her a self-confidence bordering on arrogance. Hardly a proper demeanor for a Foxworth girl. She must pack her off to the orphanage without delay.

But caught in the web of the girl’s unnerving calm, Amelia droned on. “You will have to give up your sitting room, of course, as the paying students will—”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Amelia winced. The girl was interrupting again. Had her doting father taught her no manners?

“I shall have no need of your charity,” Claire continued, her manner as cool and regal as that of a recently deposed princess. “My father’s dear friend and partner in the gold mine will be coming for me very soon. Mr. Connor is heir to the present Duke of Winthrop and a rich and powerful man. My father promised he would take care of me should anything untoward happen to him.”

A hint of a sneer curled Amelia’s lips, showing Claire what she thought of her father’s extravagant promises. She, too, had been taken in by David Scarborough’s winning smile. She had been so confident that he would pay the tuition that she had made several purchases for both the school and herself credited only to his charm. Who would pay her debts now? His ghost?

He promised to come back for you as well, didn’t he, dear?

Amelia bit back the cruel words, forcing a smile. “We don’t feel you should harbor any childish hopes, Claire.”

“Don’t call me that!” Suddenly the girl was looming over the desk, her eyes seething with fierce emotion, her hands clenched into fists. “Don’t ever call me that again. Only my daddy called me Claire. My name is Emily.”

Amelia shrank back in her chair without realizing it. Her hand fluttered at her lace collar.

The girl fled for the door. She flung it open, almost tripping over the aproned child kneeling at the portal. By the time Miss Winters reached the door, she was gone. The pounding of her footsteps echoed through the listening silence. A flash of white dimity through a far door warned the headmistress that the maid had not been their only audience.

Amelia clung to the door frame, her breath coming in short, hard gasps. The maid straightened, weeping too hard to pretend she’d been doing anything but eavesdropping.

“Oh, mum, the poor dear,” she wailed. She swiped at her reddened nose with her apron, leaving a smudge of coal dust on its tip. “Only this mornin’ she gave me the sweetmeat off ’er plate to take to me consumptive brother Freddie.”

Amelia straightened, giving the girl a quelling look. “If I’d wanted your opinion on Miss Scarborough’s charitable activities, Tansy, I’d have asked for it.”

The maid snatched up her cloth and dabbed at the face of the hall clock as the headmistress jerked her jacket straight and marched back into the library. The slam of her door thundered through the school.

The little maid rolled her eyes heavenward, her hands clasped around the rag. “ ’Elp the dear child, Lord,” she whispered fervently. “If ever ya sent an angel to this earth, I knowed me sweet Emily Claire to be the one.”

“Damn it! Damn it to bloody hell!” Emily stamped her stockinged foot on the Aubusson rug.

A porcelain doll stared back at her from a lace-trimmed pillow, her round blue eyes glazed with apathy. A delicate thread of gold circled her tiny wrist. Emily shuddered. Only the allure of gold had been strong enough to drag her father away from her. Somewhere in New Zealand there was a mine full of gold. What good was it, though, when her daddy slept beneath the earth, bound by
its shining chains? Emily’s hand lashed out, knocking the doll across the elegant bedroom.

She dropped to her knees and stuffed the hem of the satin coverlet into her mouth so the whole school wouldn’t hear her scream. Tears scalded her cheeks. Her sobs had faded to choked whimpers before she dared to open her eyes to the lonely extravagance of the suite.

The doll lay in a pitiful heap before the window, her petticoats tossed over her face.

“Oh, Annabel,” Emily whispered. She crawled to the doll and turned her over.

A thin crack gashed her china temple. Emily hugged her, feeling the jagged fissure that ran from the doll’s hairline to her own shattered heart.

“I’m so very sorry, Annabel.” She smoothed the doll’s velvet skirt and gently kissed the crack. “We have to be very brave now, dear. Daddy said we must be very brave.” Her laugh came out as a feeble hiccup. “All we have to do is wait.”

She climbed into the window seat, clutching the doll to her breast. A lamplighter wound his solitary path down the cobbled street below, nursing the gaslights to flickering life. Their misty halos pierced the twilight with a greenish tint. Annabel’s reflection gazed back at her from the window, her rosy cheeks and blond ringlets a startling contrast to her own tousled, dark curls and wan face. She tucked the doll beneath her chin. A shiver wracked her slender body.

“We’ll wait like good girls, Annabel,” she whispered. “Daddy can’t come for us now, but Mr. Connor will. Daddy promised he would come.”

As she rocked back and forth in the gathering darkness, a tear splashed from her chin and trickled slowly down Annabel’s porcelain cheek.

Chapter 1
 

“I
f ever a brat needed a beatin’, it’s Emily Claire Scarborough!”

Barney’s snarled refrain almost made Emily smile. She turned, bracing her back against the prow of the small steamer. He glared at her, his pockmarked face twisted with hatred.

Flexing his wiry hands on the boat’s rail, he muttered, “And I’m just the lad to give it to ’er.”

Doreen grabbed her brother’s ear, twisting it with one of the pinches that had made her the terror of every classroom at Foxworth’s Seminary for Young Ladies.

“Ow, sis!” he howled. “Turn loose. I ’aven’t laid a fist on ’er. Not yet, anyway.”

“It’s more than a fist I’m thinkin’ you’d like to be layin’ on ’er. I saw yer eyes when we was stuffin’ ’er into that fancy frock.”

Emily did smile then, and Doreen twisted harder, her lapse into cockney enraging her further. They all knew it
was only her ability to mock the genteel speech of the upper classes that had earned her a position at the school. That and Miss Winters’s rapidly failing finances.

Barney knocked her hand away. “Between you two buggers, I’m like to be blind
and
deaf before we ever see New Zealand. Women!” he spat out, reluctantly including his sister in that scathing epithet.

Rabid ferrets, Emily mused.

She had been dragged halfway across the world by two rabid ferrets. They walked upright and wore bonnets and caps, but even draping them in silk and diamonds wouldn’t have cloaked their true … ferretness. She rubbed her arms. They were black and blue from Doreen’s pinches. She supposed the woman would bite her if she didn’t fear the captain would find it uncivilized. Or that Emily just might bite her back.

She sighed. The tiny mail packet chugged through the water, churning an aqua swath through the indigo sea.

Barney clawed at his collar. The wool suit Miss Winters had bought him before their departure would be well suited for the brisk autumn winds now whipping through London, but not for the balmy breezes of New Zealand. The suit had obviously been tailored for a man two sizes smaller than he.

He mopped sweat from his brow. “This country ain’t natural. It’s like bein’ in ’ell before me time.” He narrowed his one good eye at Emily. “And if this is ’ell, that wench is the devil’s own imp. Look at ’er. You’d think she owned the bloody steamer and the Tasman Sea with it.”

His sister glanced not at Emily, but back at the bridge. The elderly captain was slumped over the wheel, half dozing.

“She might own it after we dump her in the lap of her rich guardian,” Doreen said. “The highfalutin duke’s heir is to pay us all the money he owes poor Miss Winters for looking after the evil little bitch all these years. And a tenth of it’s ours to keep.”

“Ought to be ’alf,” Barney muttered, fingering the shiny bruise beneath his eye.

Emily was tempted to agree with him.

Monday she had smothered all of their rations with salt.

Tuesday she had poured out Barney’s whiskey and replaced it with the contents of his sister’s privy pot.

Wednesday she had tossed his only suit overboard. He had been forced to dive after it buck naked while Emily sliced her finger and cheerfully dripped blood into the sea in hopes of attracting sharks. It had taken both Doreen and the burly engine stoker to restrain him from throwing her overboard.

Only this morning she had blackened his eye with her flailing fist as he and Doreen had stripped off her simple pinafore and crammed her into a skirt and bustle.

“She ain’t even got the decency to wear a bonnet,” Barney growled.

While his face blistered and Doreen grew more sallow with each day of the journey, Emily had the sheer audacity to turn her face to the sun and brown like a little butternut.

“At least we finally got a proper frock on the boyish little fiend,” Doreen snapped.

Barney’s gaze roamed up and down Emily’s figure, making her shudder. Emily knew he found her less than boyish, much as he loathed to admit it. Her breasts still ached from the horrid press of his bony chest as he had held her down for Doreen to tie the bustle tapes. She edged as far down the rail from him as the deck would allow. Leering at her, he adjusted his trousers. Emily hoped he was strangulating.

Doreen boxed his ears. “Keep yer bloody hands where I can see ’em. We can’t muck this up now. We got this job only because Miss Amelia couldn’t afford to send another detective.”

Barney’s answering whine was interrupted by the captain’s drowsy cry: “Land ho!”

Emily’s pulse quickened.

The steamer slowed. A green flush appeared on the horizon. Doreen gripped the rail, her drawn features made almost pretty by anticipation. When they drew closer, Barney fumbled at the ropes on the small lifeboat that would carry him ashore. He was determined to find the elusive Mr. Connor himself before he risked Emily running away again on dry land. She had run away once in Sydney and twice in Melbourne. But Barney was as dogged as a bloodhound. He’d simply thrown her over his shoulder and carted her back.

Doreen sucked in an excited breath through her pinched nostrils. “Shall I go with you? Do you think you can find him alone?”

“If this bloke is as fine and uppity as Miss Winters said ’e was, I’ll march straight up to ’is fancy ’ouse and fetch ’im. Then we’ll be rid of the brat and rich to boot.”

Emily waited until Barney had hoisted the little boat into the bucking waves before leaning over the side and waving her handkerchief at him. “Do take care, Barney. One of Mr. Connor’s partners is dead. The other disappeared without a trace.” She smiled sweetly. “I should so hate for the same thing to happen to you.”

Barney’s complexion paled to green. Shooting her a nasty look, he steered around and began rowing for shore.

A gull circled the dingy steamer, then soared into the sky. Emily’s gaze followed its flight toward the silvery rim of the island.

“Never forget,” she whispered to herself. “Justin Connor is a very dangerous man.”

“The devil take that blasted Winters woman!”

As his soft-spoken master exploded in a burst of temper, Penfeld jumped, rattling the teacups on his tray. The
sea gull marching across the windowsill cocked his head in curious reproach.

Justin Connor threw down the crumpled letter and paced the hut, ruffling his dark hair into wild disarray. “Am I never to be left in peace?”

Penfeld set the tray on the stained tablecloth, fearing for his precious china with Justin’s long limbs at such odds with his gait. “It must have been the gum digger, sir. I told you the man was asking too many questions.”

Justin turned with a sweeping gesture that made Penfeld thankful he had eased his sturdy bulk in front of the tea service. “What makes you think the tenacious Miss Winters would require a mere mortal for her endeavors? She probably spotted me in her crystal ball.” He flapped his arms. “I’m only surprised she posted a letter instead of flying straight over on her broom to fetch me.”

Penfeld’s lips twitched, but he hid it behind a somber cough.