Teresa Medeiros - Once An Angel

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 fat 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 giazed 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 haios 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.

New Zealand,

the North Star

1872

"If 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