Nobody's Angel (9 page)

"Pa, I bought us an indentured servant today. A man." Her words were abrupt.

For a moment she was not sure he heard or understood, but then his eyes dropped from their contemplation of God's wonders to fasten on her face.

"You did what, daughter?"

"I bought us a bound man."

"A
bound man?"
The Reverend Redmon sounded as if he had never heard of such.

Susannah persevered, though she felt her stomach clench at the thought of how she must displease him. "Yes, a bound man. Craddock is a drunk, and Ben is no more than a boy. Sarah Jane will be married in September, and there is too much work for the rest of us to do. Anyway, much that needs doing is heavy work, man's work. So I bought us a bound man to do it."

There was a moment of profound silence. Then the Reverend Redmon shook his head sadly.

"Have all my teachings on the evils of slavery fallen on deaf ears? Moses was a slave, and . . ."

"I know all about Moses, Pa, and I feel just as you do about slavery. But this man is not a slave. He is an indentured servant, bound to work for us for seven years to atone for his sins. He was duly sentenced by a court of law." Susannah's hands were cold, and she twisted them in the material of her skirt to warm them. She hated to set herself up in opposition to her father, not because of any scolding's or punishment she might suffer—he was not the man to dispense either—but because he was so sorrowful when one of his children distressed him. She felt guilty for having done something she had known from the outset he would dislike, and angry at herself for feeling guilty when, after careful deliberation, she had concluded that a bound man was truly necessary to the running of the farm. Someone had to be concerned with clothing and feeding them and keeping a roof over their heads, and by default the job had fallen to her. Her father was as blind as a mole to the wretched practicalities of life. But all the justifications in the world still didn't make her feel any better. His reproachful gaze made her want to cringe.

"Doesn't the Scripture say that the punishment of the wicked is righteous work?" In the face of his silence, Susannah fumbled for an argument that might persuade him that her deed had not been so truly dreadful after all. The quote popped into her head, and she used it thankfully. The Reverend Redmon latched on to it as if it were a lifeline, nodding his head and frowning as he considered. He hated to be at odds with her or her sisters, Susannah knew. It distressed him, disturbed the comfortable tenor of his life. Long ago she had realized that, if she really wanted something, she had only to stand her ground against him. Hers was the stronger will, the more determined personality. It shamed her sometimes to realize how easily she could bend him to her way of thinking. Yet, for all her headstrong ways, he, who was surely the saintliest of men, continued to think her the best of daughters. Only she knew how very far she fell short of his image of her.

The Reverend Redmon's brow cleared. "Well, yes," he said. "I suppose you're right."

"He's been whipped and mistreated. We can restore him to health as well as godliness."

"Indeed we can." He smiled at her then, clearly happy to have the sticky issue so neatly resolved, and just as they reached home, too. "You've done the best thing, I've no doubt. 'Tis quite likely that your rescue of the unfortunate creature was divinely inspired."

Divinely inspired. Of course he would think so. Susannah smiled a little sourly as she went to relieve Ben, whom she had left sitting with Connelly. The parlor was dark except for a single candle near the bed that was guttering in its own tallow. Connelly lay sprawled on his stomach on the bed, her father's nightshirt, which she had instructed Ben to wrestle him into, straining across the breadth of his shoulders. Had he not been so emaciated, and had the nightshirt not been loosely cut for comfort, the garment would not have come near to fitting him. As it was, though the nightshirt was far too short and too snug, it at least rendered Connelly minimally decent.

"Is't mornin' already, Miss Susannah?" Ben yawned, rousing from a near doze. He had been slumped in a rocker drawn up near the bed.

"No. It's the middle of the night. Has he wakened?"

Ben shook his head. "He ain't so much as sneezed since I been sittin' here. Didn't even move when I put that nightshirt on him, and that was a chore, let me tell you."

"I can imagine. You've done a good job, Ben. Go along to the barn now, and help Pa with Micah. Then you can go to bed."

"Yes'm." Ben rose, stretching. He looked down at the still figure in the bed. "What about him?"

"I'll sit with him for a while. Go on, now. And, Ben . . ."

"Yes'm?"

"Be sure you get your chores done in the morning before you go see Maria, you hear?"

Ben had the grace to look shamefaced.

"Yes'm. I'm right sorry about this mornin ."

"We'll forget about it, shall we? As long as it doesn't happen again."

"It won't, Miss Susannah. I promise."

Though the words were fervent, Susannah knew from experience that it wasn't likely to be longer than two days before the promise was forgotten. But she didn't say so, and Ben took himself off. Susannah bent over the bed, her hand reaching automatically to settle on her patient's forehead.

It was only slightly overwarm. Thankfully she reckoned that if he were going to contract a raging fever, he would likely have done so by now. Though the man must have the constitution of an ox not to have succumbed to one, given the poisons that had festered in the raw meat someone had made of his back.

"Is this the man?" Her father entered, his voice hushed as he frowned down at Connelly.

"Yes."

"Poor, wretched fellow. As you said, we will heal him in body as well as in spirit. The good Lord was with him, to guide him safely to our door."

"Yes." If there was a bright side to anything, her father could be trusted to find it. Susannah smiled at him affectionately. "You should go up to bed now. There's much that needs doing tomorrow."

"You're right, of course." He patted her arm. "And I am fatigued, I must admit. You'll be coming to bed soon yourself?"

"There are a few things I must do. But I'll be along presently."

"What would we all do without you, Susannah?" he asked, sighing. He left the room. Susannah, listening, heard his footsteps as he ascended the stairs. His tread was light, lighter even than Mandy's, although she weighed hardly more than a piece of thistledown, and the realization clutched at her heart. Over the last year or so her father had been losing flesh. Soon she feared that he would be scarcely more than a collection of skin-covered bones. She must see to it that he ate more and rested more. That was all he needed, she assured herself. Certainly there was nothing more wrong with him than that. To imagine anything else was to borrow trouble, and she had enough real problems to worry about without doing that.

With her father gone, the quiet was broken only by the harshness of Connelly's breathing. Automatically Susannah touched his cheek above his bristly beard, and it felt no warmer than had his forehead. Very likely, with the laudanum to aid him, he would pass what remained of the night in sound sleep. The temptation to do the same herself was great. She was so tired she could scarcely keep her eyes open, and the coming day already beckoned, filled to bursting with chores to be done. Did she lock the door between the parlor and the rest of the house, he could not wander even if he did awaken. His life was not in danger; there was no earthly reason to sit up all night with him. She craved just a few hours' sleep.

Conscience warred with fatigue, and fatigue won. She would be up soon after dawn, in any case, so he would not be left alone for long. Touching his forehead one last time to assure herself that a raging fever had not sprung up in the last minute or so—it had not—she surrendered, aided by a yawn so wide that it hurt her jaws. Did she not get some sleep, she would be of no use to anyone on the morrow.

First blowing out the bedside candle, then closing and locking the parlor door, Susannah went up to her room, where she changed into her nightdress and washed her face and teeth. She loosed her hair, brushing it until it crackled and stood out like a tawny cape around her shoulders. A faint sound from belowstairs made her pause, brush in hand, and cock her head to one side. What was that? It came again, a muffled scratching noise as if someone, locked in, was trying to get out.

Out of where? The only locked door in the house was the one to the parlor. Had Connelly awakened? Surely not—but what was that sound?

She put the brush down on her washstand. Gathering up her rose-colored quilt, she wrapped it around her shoulders, then started downstairs, a candle held high in her hand and her hair, which she customarily plaited before sleeping, floating behind her.

Belowstairs, the house was dark and still as a grave beyond her small pool of light. The parlor door was closed and locked, just as she had left it. The key still stood undisturbed in the keyhole. Had she imagined the sound? Surely not.

But even as she thought it the sound came again, so unexpectedly that Susannah jumped, causing the candle to flicker. Her eyes fastened on the door in time to see it move. The key jiggled in the lock—and then a faint meow from the other side of the panel solved the mystery.

"Clara!" Susannah scolded even as she unlocked the door and the cat sashayed out. "How did you get in there? You should be outside."

Clara purred loudly, weaving about Susannah's ankles. Susannah set her candle down on the stand at the base of the stairs and scooped the cat up, holding her under one arm and rubbing behind her ears as she headed toward the door. Clara was a calico, with orange and black spots competing for space on a ground of thick white fur. She was a big cat, nearly twenty pounds, and would have been beautiful had she not lost an eye and part of an ear in an unfortunate accident that had brought her, bleeding and near death, to the Redmons' barn. Susannah had found her and nursed her back to health and had been rewarded for her pains with Clara's undying devotion. The ear was still raggedy, but the eye had quite healed over and was not at all unsightly as the resulting sealed slit was located in a semicircle of black fur that gave rather the appearance of a pirate's patch.

"Go catch a mouse," Susannah murmured as she pulled the door open and set Clara on the porch. As if she understood, Clara meowed softly, then with a wave of her tail headed across the porch and down the steps to vanish in the darkness. Closing the door, Susannah retraced her steps to the parlor. For a moment she did no more than peer inside, wondering if Clara had disturbed her patient. She heard nothing, not the smallest rustle of bedclothes. Despite the candleglow that lit the hall, the nether end of the parlor where the bed stood was in deep shadow. She would just nip in and check on Connelly before she went abovestairs again.

The incandescence behind her provided just enough light to permit her to see that he had shifted position since she had left him last. His breathing was softer, and he seemed not so deeply asleep. Perhaps Clara had disturbed him. Frowning, Susannah bent over the bed. Her hand found his forehead, rested there—and then, so quickly that she was paralyzed with the shock of it—her wrist was imprisoned in a grip of iron. The quilt slid from her shoulders as one hard jerk brought her off balance. Her knees collided with the mattress, and with a shocked gasp she tumbled down onto the bed.

9

Susannah no sooner felt the softness of the mattress beneath her back than he was on top of her. The fall jarred her bruised shoulder, and she would have cried out had she had the chance. But the weight of his body crushed the air from her own. She tried to catch her breath, tried to speak, but the sheer size of him suffocated her. He was muttering something, his whisper hoarse and fierce in her ear, but she could not understand the words. Nor could she see his face. Her nose and mouth were pressed into the warm, hair-roughened skin left bare by the throat opening in the nightshirt he wore. The scent of the soap she herself had made and used on him just hours earlier filled her nose; the taste of it was in her mouth.

He shifted just a bit so that he was not completely on top of her, and she managed to turn her face to the side and suck in air, blessed air that expanded her lungs and restored her brain to full functioning again. The shock of being so brutally grabbed was subsiding. A burgeoning fear took its place. Did he mean to kill her—or what?

His mouth nuzzling her neck confirmed her second worst fear. She stiffened, afraid to move as the prickliness that was his beard rasped over the tender skin of her jaw and throat. His lips were warm and moist, and his mouth was open. She knew because she could feel his teeth nibbling on the tender cord that, with her head twisted to the side, stood out beneath her ear.

His tongue touched, then followed the swirls of her ear, dipped inside the shell-like hollow. Susannah lay frozen, afraid to move for fear of goading him into doing something even more dastardly.

His teeth found and nibbled on the delicate lobe. To her horror, Susannah realized that the sensation would have been quite tolerable had the circumstances been different. But she feared what he would do next. Though she had never personally experienced the kind of carnal love that men expected of their wives, she knew the basics of how it was done. It was clear that carnal love was what Connelly had on his mind. He was heading toward it faster than a pig on a greased slide.

She had to stop him. But how? With her right hand trapped beneath the weight of his body and her left hand imprisoned by his grip on her wrist, she was helpless. She could not even kick. His thigh lay over her legs, pinning them down. The sheer size of the man completely overwhelmed her.

His tongue traced the line of her jaw, rousing goose bumps in its wake. Then his mouth nuzzled the soft skin just beneath her chin. Susannah felt her body stir in response to the rasping heat of his mouth. The novel sensation startled her. She twisted her head away, struggling desperately to be free. Unheeding of her efforts, he trailed tiny, stinging kisses over the soft skin of her throat.