Page 160 of Once an Angel
Their lips met in a melting caress, making promises and vows they would gladly spend their lifetimes keeping. As the natives danced around them, Justin stroked her hair and pressed his lips to her ear, whispering the words she'd once thought never to hear again except on the distant wings of the wind—
"Stay with me always, my sweet, my love . . . my Claire."
Chapter 1
My darling daughter,
I pray this letter finds you well...
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 blindanddeaf 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."
