Nobody's Angel (19 page)

"I'm coming," Susannah replied, and turned to do so.

"Susannah." Harried, she glanced back to discover a faint, disturbing gleam in her bound man's eyes as they rested on her face. "I like the way my name sounds when you say it in your pretty voice. Nobody's ever called me Ian quite the way you do."

To Susannah's confusion, the gleam intensified, and the teasing nature of his grin changed into something entirely sensual. His expression conjured up images of hot, sweaty bodies and carnal love. Horrified, Susannah immediately banished such thoughts. Flushing to the roots of her hair, as much at her own wicked imagination as at his words, Susannah turned her back on the teasing devil and hurried to old Mrs. Greer's side.

The morning church service lasted till noon, the afternoon service till six. Not everyone stayed for both sessions, but the Redmon family had no choice. By the time they arrived home, it was dusk. Susannah was hoarse from singing and her fingers were sore from playing the clavichord, but she felt cleansed, as she always did after a day spent in the house of the Lord.

Ian, beside her, was silent, and she thought that so much unaccustomed praying might have tired him out. Her sisters were quiet too, each in her own way. Sarah Jane looked uplifted, Emily bored, and Mandy out of sorts. Susannah sighed inwardly as the buggy rocked to a halt, and she glanced around to get a glimpse of Mandy's pouty face. Trouble lay ahead from that quarter, Susannah feared.

Tired or not, Ian was quicker at descending than the girls. He handed out Susannah first—she had decided that it was best just to accept the courtesy and thus not afford him the opportunity for any more embarrassing displays—then Sarah Jane, Mandy, and Em. Mandy didn't even smile at him this time, but hurried on into the house. Susannah, following her sisters, braced herself for a confrontation or, alternatively, an evening spent enduring Mandy in a fit of the sulks. But Mandy, pleading a headache, took herself up to her room immediately after she entered the house, leaving the dishing up of supper and the other evening chores to her sisters. Susannah, for one, did the extra work willingly. Mandy in a temper was a complication that she would just as soon not have to deal with that evening.

It was long after supper when the knock on the door came. The girls were already abovestairs, and her father, exhausted by a long day of preaching, was asleep. Susannah was just setting aside the dough to rise for the morning's bread before going up herself. But she knew what the knock presaged, and she was already resigning herself to the inevitable when she opened the door.

This time it was Seamus O'Brien who stood there, hat in hand. He was the father of Ben's sweetheart Maria, and there was a hangdog quality about him as he stood there shuffling from foot to foot that made Susannah's heart go out to him, tired though she was.

"What can I do for you, Mr. O'Brien?" she asked quietly.

" Tis Mary." Mary was his wife. "Her stomach's paining her something fierce. Can you come?"

Mary O'Brien had been suffering from severe stomach cramps for more than a year. Seamus had even gone so far as to get a doctor to her, but the doctor had found nothing wrong with her and gone away. As money was tight, he had not been sent for again. Instead, Susannah would go, perhaps once a month, though it seemed to be more frequently of late, to sit with Mary and do what she could to ease her until, once again, the pains went away.

The source of the pain was a mystery, though Susannah had begun to suspect that Mary was seriously ill. But there was little she could do but offer comfort to the woman and her family. Such things as life and death were in the hands of the Lord.

"I'll get my case," Susannah said, glad she had not undressed. Seamus was waiting for her when she emerged moments later, a shawl thrown over her head. Together they hitched Darcy to the buggy and headed down the road toward his house.

When she arrived, she shooed Maria, who was a very nice girl for all she made Ben forget whether he was on his head or his heels, and the rest of the children off to bed. Seamus went on about his late evening chores, then sat in a chair before the fire, reading the Bible aloud to his wife. Susannah, meanwhile, eased Mary as best she could with herbs and hot moist towels and comforting pats, until at last the woman fell asleep. From experience, Susannah knew that that meant the worst of the pain was over for a few weeks. She was free to seek out her own bed and get what sleep she could.

Which would be, at most, perhaps four hours, Susannah estimated as she wearily refused a squawking chicken pressed on her by a volubly grateful Seamus as payment and climbed up into the buggy. Darcy, used to such midnight outings, was very patient and had occupied the time since she had left him hitched in front of the house by cropping all the grass he could reach. Now, knowing that they headed for his bam, he shook his head so that the harness rattled and set off for home at a brisk trot.

It was perhaps one o'clock in the morning. All the world seemed to sleep under the mantle of darkness. Only the singing of crickets and the occasional hoarse cry of a lonesome bullfrog marred the quiet. Susannah, wanting to hurry along home, clucked to Darcy as he slowed a bit, pricking up his ears at something along the roadside that she could not see. Probably a raccoon, or even a bit of blowing bush, though Darcy was not ordinarily skittish. Still, just being out and about in the dark seemed to spook horses as well as humans. As often as she was out alone in the middle of the night, she never quite got used to the isolation of it. She was a grown woman, and one moreover who prided herself on being as practical and level-headed as they came. Certainly she didn't believe in haunts or piskies or evil spirits that arose to flit about the world by moonlight. But still, with the moon floating like a pale ghost high overhead and the tips of the pines that lined the road swaying in homage to the wind that blew gray wisps of clouds across the sky, it was easy to imagine any number of things. For example, that she was not alone. . . .

A bullfrog erupted with its characteristic bellowing "jug o' rum!" nearly under Darcy's hooves. The horse, who ordinarily would have ignored such a familiar disturbance, danced a little. Susannah, her own nerves tightening, pulled steadyingly on the reins.

"What the devil was that sound?"

The gravelly voice, coming as it did seemingly out of nowhere, startled Susannah so much that she screamed and nearly lost her hold on the reins.

18

Darcy, upset at the commotion, nickered and broke into a canter. Fortunately Susannah recovered both her wits and her reins in time to pull him in before he got completely out of control. As the horse dropped back down to a trot and she got her breathing under control, Susannah slanted a furious glance into the back seat at Ian. She had recognized his voice almost at once, though the sheer unexpectedness of hearing it under such circumstances had thrown her off for a vital, scary instant.

"You scared the living daylights out of me! What do you think you're doing, hiding away in the back of my buggy in the middle of the night? How did you get there, anyway?"

"I wasn't hiding. I stretched out on the back seat while I was waiting for you, and I must have fallen asleep. As to how I got here, I heard you set out from the barn and followed you. On foot, I might add. 'Twas a goodly walk, and I don't appreciate having to make it. I told you this morning that I'd be driving you wherever you needed to g°"

"That's ridiculous!"

"You've got no business driving around by yourself, particularly at night. I can't believe nothing's happened to you yet."

Susannah snorted. "What in the world do you suppose could happen to me around here? The worst would be if Darcy threw a shoe and I had to walk home."

"The worst would be if some piece of slime like Jed Likens decided to catch you alone and teach you a lesson. Or any man, coming upon a woman out by herself in the middle of the night, might decide to take advantage of the opportunity. You're setting yourself up to be raped, if not murdered."

"Jed Likens is all talk. He's not going to hurt me! He wouldn't dare, for one thing. Nobody around here would do something like that. Why, I've been driving around by myself for years and never had a bit of trouble."

"You've been lucky, is all. As long as I'm around, I'll drive you. Particularly at night. There's no use even arguing about it, because I mean what I say."

Hampered by having to conduct the conversation over her shoulder while she drove, she found it difficult to express the true degree of her indignation at his highhandedness. Susannah pulled Darcy up, tied the reins, and slewed around to glare at him. The moonlight washed over the front seat, illuminating her as clearly as if it had been day. But the buggy's leather top blocked most of the light from reaching the back seat. Ian's face was in deep shadow, though she had no trouble making out the sheer bulk of the man or the gleam of his eyes.

"You forget yourself, Connelly." She called him that quite deliberately and with just a shade of unnecessary emphasis. "I am the mistress here. You are the servant. You do as I say, not the other way around."

There was a brief, pregnant silence. He folded both arms along the top of her seat and leaned toward her. The action was almost menacing, and it was all Susannah could do to stop herself from drawing instinctively away. She stayed where she was through sheer force of will, chin up, eyes defiant, though it meant that his face was only a few inches from hers when he spoke at last.

"I'm tired because it's real late and I haven't been to bed yet. My feet hurt from following you for miles over a damned bad road in shoes that I haven't had a chance to break in. My knees hurt too, from kneeling in your church most of the day. I'm hungry, and I'm not feeling any too cheerful as a result of all that. So if you mean to argue with me tonight, be warned that you do it at your peril."

"I am not arguing with you," she said coldly, turning her back on him and reaching to untie the reins. "I am stating a fact. One that you would do well to remember. Now, if you will kindly sit back and close your mouth, I'll take us home."

"Susannah," he said, "I'll drive."

"No," she said, "I will. And it's
Miss
Susannah, as you know very well."

He said nothing but stepped down from the buggy. Obviously he meant to settle the discussion by physically taking possession of the reins. He looked very tall and leanly muscular, standing beside her in the road with one hand on the curved frontispiece, ready to haul himself back aboard, only this time in her seat. His black felt hat was pushed to the back of his head, and his coat had apparently been left at home. The dull gold of his waistcoat shimmered in the moonlight. So did the icy gray of his eyes in that devilishly handsome face.

He put one foot on the step and started to heave himself up. Susannah, reins in hand, snapped them smartly against the horse's back.

Unaccustomed to such treatment, Darcy shot forward. The buggy jolted, Susannah's head snapped back, and Ian fell from the buggy to land with an audible thud on his rump in the road.

Served him right! Gloating, Susannah glanced back at him, grinned, and waved, then kept Darcy at a smart pace as she headed for home.

As soon as she reached the barn, she roused Ben from the loft to put Darcy and the buggy away. She headed for the house as fast as her feet would take her. Her one fear was that Ian would reach home before she was safely inside. He would be in a rage, she knew, and, brave as she was feeling, she still wasn't quite foolish enough to want to face him until he had had a few hours to cool down.

But of course, from where he had exited the buggy it was quite a long walk home.

Grinning at the thought of him trudging along on his supposedly tender feet, proud of herself for having gotten the better of him and no longer very sleepy at all, Susannah went up to bed.

Half an hour later, just as her lids were beginning to droop, a scraping noise and then a soft thump roused her to full consciousness. Startled, she sat bolt upright in her bed. A series of small stealthy creaks set her heart pounding. Something, or someone, was moving across the roof of the rear porch toward her window.

Her window was open, as it always was in hot weather. The simple muslin curtains billowed on the breeze. The inky sky beyond the window was bright with stars, alive with scuttling clouds—and then, so abruptly that she had to blink to make sure she wasn't imagining things, a tall, dark shadow blocked her view of the night.

The porch roof, only one story high, ran beneath her window. Someone was using it to gain access to her bedchamber.

Ian! Susannah knew who it was even before he threw one long leg over the sill and slid inside.

"What are you doing in here? Get out of my room!" she whispered fiercely, clutching the bedcoverings around her neck and glaring at him as he stalked toward her.

"Oh, no," he said, his voice vibrating with fury for all its menacing hush. "Not just yet."

He reached down, yanked the bedclothes out of her grasp, and threw them aside. Though it was dark in the room, it was not so dark as to hide her deshabille from his gaze. Pale moonlight mottled the bed, lending Susannah's prim white nightgown a translucence she was sure it had not possessed earlier. Glancing down at herself in horror as his eyes ran assessingly over her from her high, frilled neckline to the tips of her small bare toes, Susannah felt as exposed as if she had been naked. With a soft cry of mingled anger and protest, she scrambled to draw her legs beneath her. Crouching in the center of the feather mattress, her arms clamped over her breasts, she turned her face up to his. The long rope of her hair, braided for sleeping, spilled down over one shoulder. Tawny, curling tendrils formed a halo around her face. Her wide mouth was clamped into a straight, angry line. Her eyes blazed a bright green-gold.

"If you dare . . ." she began furiously.

"Oh, I dare," he said, reaching out to catch her by the elbows and haul her up and over until she was kneeling on the edge of the mattress and he was looming threateningly above her, his face just inches from her own. "Make no mistake about that, Susannah. I dare."