Teresa Medeiros - Once An Angel

Penfeld stared at the floor. Justin folded the letter in a neat square, scrawled a new address on the envelope, and held it out. Penfeld took it.

He paused at the door, glancing back to find Justin still slumped on the barrel, his hand cupped around

the gold watch he wore on a chain around his neck. In their years together, Penfeld had rarely seen him without it. As Justin snapped open the cover, a distant mist haunted his amber eyes.

Sighing with regret, Penfeld turned away and plodded toward the native village.

He caressed the worn envelope between his fingers, fearing it was not the poor little girl who needed

his master, but his poor master who needed the girl.

* * *

Emily shifted her bustle with both hands, watching with amused interest the battle taking place at the

stern of the steamer. Three hours had passed with no sign of Barney's boat. Doreen alternated between searching the horizon with a rusty spyglass and threatening the half-deaf, and, Emily suspected, half-daft steamer captain into drifting for one more hour. The captain's little mail packet ran only once a month from Melbourne to Auckland, and he was determined to sail.

While Doreen squawked and the captain bellowed, Emily turned back to the water, preferring the soothing lap of the waves against the hull. The balmy wind tore at her curls. The sun drifted like a

golden feather into the sea. How ironic that after all those years of waiting, she had spent her last ounce of energy trying to abort this trip. They would never have gotten her aboard the ship from England if

they hadn't laced her coffee with a dose of belladonna that had almost killed her.

They were determined to deliver her to the one man in the world she loathed more than them-Justin Connor.

The roar of the steamer's engines shook the deck. Emily clutched the rail, feeling the pistons throb to

life like her hatred for her guardian.

Rumors had flown through London society when the only son of the wealthy duke had failed to return from his New Zealand expedition. Girls Emily had once called friends brought her the murmured tales from their parents' drawing rooms, their malice masked by well-meaning sighs of pity and pointed

glances at her shabby frocks and scuffed boots.

In the best London circles Justin Connor's very name came to embody danger and romance. At the school it was whispered in tones of naughty reverence. Emily wasn't the only girl who drifted into sleep with his image swashbuckling through her dreams.

Most believed him a dashing adventurer, a speculator who had made his fortune gambling in land and

gold and human lives. They swore he had cast aside his own family and had scoffed at their written

pleas to come home and take his rightful place as heir to the Winthrop shipping fortune.

Emily narrowed her eyes. She could well imagine him ensconced on the fertile New Zealand coast,

living in the handsome Victorian mansion he had built with her father's gold… and her father's blood. Perhaps he had his own daughter by now-a golden-haired little doll-child swathed in love and lace. In seven years he had sent her not one personal note, not one word of kindness. Miss Winters had taken great pains to show her the stilted messages, the pathetic handfuls of pound notes and shillings.

After a few weeks of such obvious neglect, they had given her spacious sitting room to Cecille du Pardieu, a china-faced brat who was rumored to be the illegitimate daughter of an Austrian prince. It

was only Miss Winters's fear of Emily's mysterious guardian that stopped her from casting her into the streets. It was decided she would earn her bread by teaching the younger girls who had once been her adoring equals.

In her tiny attic box-room, Emily had crawled beneath the gables and rubbed a clean spot on the sooty glass with her sleeve. She had gazed for hours across the grimy ocean of roofs and chimneys and waited for Mr. Connor to come and take her away.

Groaning, the steamer jolted into motion. Doreen screeched a protest. As the island melted into the horizon, Emily's nails dug into the rail.

"We won't meet today, Mr. Connor," she whispered. "Not today. Not ever." He would never have the chance to laugh in her face for daring to believe he might want her in his life.

But as the steamer chugged into its tidy rhythm, Doreen's moan of despair careened into a whoop of joy. Emily's gaze followed the stretch of her outflung arm.

Barney's tiny boat cut through the waves. Emily's breath caught in her throat. She took two dazed steps toward the rail and watched as Doreen and Barney struggled to hoist the boat up the side.

Before Barney could climb out, Doreen was poking him in the ribs. "What did he say? Didn't you bring him back with you?" She craned her scrawny neck to peer into the boat as if her brother might be hiding someone under the narrow seat. "Is he coming? Is he sending a fancy boat for us?"

Barney slowly raised his head, his eyes flat peridots in his sallow face. "He ain't there. Ain't no one

there but a pack o' bleedin' savages and some old 'ermit named Pooka livin' in a hut. There ain't no

fancy 'ouse and there ain't no fancy gentleman either."

"It can't be. He has to be there. Our Miss Amelia said so.

Barney's gaze came to rest on Emily with pure malevolence. "You 'eard me. 'E ain't there."

Doreen's shoulders slumped. "Miss Amelia was afraid of this. She didn't even tell him we were bringing the brat in the letter she sent."

"Then 'e must o' found out some other way and moved on. Wouldn't you?"

A bolt of raw pain shot through Emily, shocking her with its intensity. She hated Doreen. She hated Barney. She hated the whole world. But most of all she hated the tiny corner of her heart that had

dared to hope.

Tears sheened her vision. She threw back her head and burst into laughter, speaking for the first time in that long, sullen afternoon. "I'm sure Miss Winters will be receiving an explanation very soon. 'Dear Miss Winters, I regret to inform you my present situation is not suited for the care of a child. Enclosed within

is my generous offering of three pounds and five shillings for the continuance of her education, her board, her dowry, and an extra halfpenny to buy her a sweetmeat.' "

Barney and Doreen gaped at her; their pointed jaws dropped to their throats.

"Christ, the two of you are so pathetic! You trot halfway around the world at the bidding of some grasping, senile old woman on an idiot's mission. You with your hideous bonnet and you with your

short, ugly suit. You're both clowns! We're all clowns in Miss Amelia Winters's bloody traveling circus!"

Emily spun around. She was gulping back tears now and she would be damned to eternal hell before those two leeches would see her cry.

She heard them whispering behind her and wondered if she had gone too far. She doubted if any of

Miss Winters's genteel pupils had ever dared address the prickly Miss Dobbins in such a manner.

The creak of a plank warned Emily. She turned around. Barney and Doreen slunk toward her, shoulders hunched like two alley cats. Emily cast a frantic glance at the bridge. The captain was draped over the wheel, snoring with his eyes open.

"You were poor Miss Amelia's last hope," Doreen said, her voice as oddly flat as her eyes.

"Ungrateful little witch," Barney muttered.

Emily pressed herself to the rail. The rough wood dug into her back. "Stay away from me. I'm warning you."

"Why?" Doreen taunted. "Is the great and mighty Mr. Connor going to swoop down from the sky to

save you? He don't want you. Nobody does."

The words should have lost their power to sting. But Emily discovered they hadn't. Silently cursing the weight of her heavy skirts, she gauged her chances of dashing past them on the narrow deck.

Barney cocked his head. "What was it Miss Amelia said about bringin' 'er back?"

Doreen lapsed into pure cockney. "Said she was a disgrace to the school. Drivin' 'er finest pupils away. Said if I brought 'er back, I'd be lookin' fer a new position meself."

Barney nodded smugly. The twilight wind blew cooler as brother and sister gazed at each other in a moment of silent accord. With a resourcefulness born of surviving a motherless childhood in the East

End of London, they rushed her.

Barney caught one leg, Doreen the other. Emily balled up her fist and smashed it into Barney's face. Blood spewed, and she knew she had broken his nose. She enjoyed a fierce second of triumph. Then

the sky and water swapped places as they heaved her up and over the rail of the steamer into the darkening sea.

Emily sank like a stone. The narrow double skirts twined around her legs in serpentine cords, cutting

off her feeble kicks. The weight of the whalebone bustle dragged her down, deep into the murky depths until the shimmer of the sunset on the water faded to black.

God? Her voice was shy and hesitant, as it had been when her father was alive before she learned that swearing and stomping got more attention than tugging politely on someone's skirt.

No answer.

God? Are you there? Louder this time, more strident. The crushing pressure in her chest worsened.

I know I haven't been very nice the past few yean. Miss Winters says I'm quite a naughty girl,

especially after that sordid incident with the gardener's son.

Her skirt wrapped around her face in choking folds. Perhaps this was an inopportune moment to be reminding God of her sins.

She clawed the skirt from her face. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd be very grateful if you

would let me live. Not really for myself sir. Just to spite Barney and Doreen. And Justin Connor,

that dirty, no-good, thieving wretch who stole my daddy's gold mine.

The familiar litany was a prayer all its own. She had breathed it, dreamed it, and feasted on its bitterness for seven years. Her legs pummeled the water with new ferocity. She tore at the buttons of her bodice, wrenched the bustle's tape from its mooring. Her head pounded. Tiny dots of light danced before her eyes. Still she clawed at the heavy garments, shedding each layer like musty skins. Finally, she was able to shoot toward the surface, strong and lithe in the simple cotton chemise issued each of the girls at the seminary.

Her hands pressed on with a life of their own, ripping the chemise as if they could somehow tear

asunder not only the garment, but all the drab, lonely, soot-stained years since she had sat in Miss Winters's library and been told her daddy was never coming back.

The buoyant water bore her upward. Her head split the surface with a splash. She sucked in a

shuddering breath. Life and air tingled through her blood all the way to the tips of her toes. The brilliant orb of the sun lay flat on the water, and for a dazzling instant Emily couldn't tell where the exploding rainbow of the sunset ended and she began. She dove beneath the waves and turned an exultant flip.

She emerged from the water, shaking sun-gilded drops from her hair. "Thank you, God," she whispered fiercely. "I shall try to be nicer. I swear I will."

At that moment she saw the steamer chugging toward the far horizon. A faint cry floated on the wind. Barney waved his arms and Emily knew he had spotted her.

Noble intentions forgotten, Emily thumbed her nose and wiggled her fingers at him in a gesture seldom practiced at the seminary. Blowing him a final taunting kiss she kicked herself around, rolling and