Teresa Medeiros - Once An Angel

He had told Emily the truth. The Maori could do nothing without singing.

Not even say good-bye.

Chalmers's cool, questioning gaze touched his face, but Justin didn't even blink. He kept his gaze riveted on the slender figure standing on the shrinking bluff and let the salty breeze burn the tears from his eyes before they could fall.

* * *

It was twilight before Emily made her way down from the bluff. The last tawny rays of the sun bathed the beach. Her limbs, her eyelids, her throat, ached with a leaden heaviness like the weight of the watch against her breastbone, but her heart felt as drained as her eyes. She had watered her father's grave with her tears for the last time. The sand had absorbed them, sucking them away as if they had never fallen.

The packet of letters she had taken from the hut rustled against her skin. She had spent the past few hours poring over them. They were simple letters written to a child, filled with the warmth, wit, and charm she had come to expect from Justin. They were filled with the pleasures of his days, the beauty

of the island, his friendships with the Maori, and humorous anecdotes about her father. He had shared

all of himself in those letters, everything but the puzzling truth that had kept him from posting them.

Emily's steps faltered as she saw Trini sitting crosslegged in the sand. She didn't want to see him. She didn't want to see anyone. She just wanted to crawl back into the sea as she had come. She walked past him without a word.

He scrambled to his feet. "Where will you go?"

She forced back a groan. When Trini used words under five syllables, he was deadly serious. She turned to face him, "Away."

"What shall I tell the Pakeha when he returns?"

"He won't be back." The bitter words shot out before she could stop them.

"And if you are wrong?"

She squared her shoulders. "Then I'll be the one to leave this time."

A sad smile played around his lips. He drew a line in the sand with his toe. "Perhaps you are no wiser than we Maori. Seeking utu, your own personal revenge, for every slight."

"He slighted my whole life!" she cried.

Emily realized then that it wasn't about the gold. It never had been. She couldn't forgive him for breaking the heart of a child who had believed in him. And she couldn't afford to find out if he would do it again. Time had robbed her of her defenses. Her woman's heart wasn't as resilient as the child's had been. Another blow would surely shatter it. She felt the warning prick of tears behind her eyes. She blinked them away, not wanting Trini to see her cry. Not wanting anyone to ever see her cry again.

"It reminds me of something the Pakeha's mighty God once said-'Vengeance is mine.' "

"Not this time, Trini." She stabbed her chest with her finger, tapping the locket. "This time vengeance

is mine." His solemn brown eyes surveyed her with maddening wisdom. She turned away with a dismissive wave. "How can I expect you to understand?"

"Perhaps I understand better than you know . . . Claire."

Emily froze in mid-stride, flinching as the name sounded like a slap across her face. She turned slowly, remembering all the times she had seen him entranced by the shiny watch case. "How?"

Trini pointed. For the first time, Emily saw the children scattered among the dunes, their normal

jubilance muted to pensive quiet.

"Dani," he said. "She recognized you from the watch. She told me you were the Pakeha's lost angel

freed at last from a terrible spell."

Dani was wrong, Emily thought. She had only fallen under a more deadly spell. She opened the watch case with a trembling hand. The case was empty, the photograph gone. Once again Justin had taken

the best part of her with him.

She cast Trini a pleading glance. "How could he not have known?"

The native's lips quirked in an enigmatic smile. "The Pakeha sees only what he chooses to see. It is his way."

As Emily stared blindly into the locket, a low chant rose from the dunes. The children were repeating

one word over and over. Claire, They pelted out of the dunes, surrounding her. She sank to her knees, wrapping Dani's warm little body in her arms. She pressed her eyes shut, imagining how it would have

felt to hold the child she would never have. She could almost see him-his silky dark hair falling in his eyes as he bent over the piano.

She opened her eyes. Trini helped her to her feet, his tattooed brow furrowed in a frown. "How will

you go from here? You have no money, no means."

Her eyes burned with a fierce light. "Oh, yes, I do. Gold brought me here, and gold will take me away."

A yelp of dismay escaped him as she held the watch aloft and twisted, shattering the last chain that

bound her to Justin Connor.

London

Amelia Winters flinched as the thunderous crash of a door and shouting masculine voices shattered the quiet of her domain. Her fingers tightened into claws on the win-dowsill. Outside, sleet skittered from

the pewter sky, coating the tiny garden within the walled courtyard in a shiny layer of ice. Amelia stared absently at the dormant rosebushes. They needed to be pruned. She'd been forced to let the gardener

go with a tidy sum after he'd threatened to summon the constable when the Scarborough girl had stabbed his son.

The door behind her creaked open. Timid feet shuffled on the worn carpet. "His Grace, the Duke of Winthrop, to see you, ma'am."

"Show him in."

"Aye, mum."

Amelia smiled bitterly. Doreen always slipped back into cockney in moments of travail. It was a habit Amelia had bred out of herself after she had clawed her own way out of a rookery crib to found this school.

Heavy footsteps shuddered the floorboards. They might have been the footsteps of her executioner. London had been abuzz with the young duke's return for over a week, and now she knew her brief reprieve was done.

The door slammed into the wall. Cold air from the foyer buffeted her. Amelia steeled her spine and swung around, somewhat relieved to finally come face-to-face with her most dreaded nightmare.

Her relief was short-lived. A man stood in the doorway, tall, gaunt, but undeniably striking. Drops of melted sleet beaded the cape of his greatcoat. He was scandalously hatless, and his eyes burned like

twin flames beneath a sweeping fall of dark hair. His clenched jaw was shaded not with a proper beard, but by the stubble of a savage. She had heard rumors that he'd been living with cannibals for the past seven years. He looked more than eager to devour her frail bones.

His sheer masculine presence dwarfed the shabby parlor. The room seemed suddenly full of people. Doreen hovered at the door, her homely face more pinched and pale than usual. Barney stood behind their callers, eyeing them with ill-disguised hostility. The slender stranger at the duke's elbow tipped his bowler to her, his face a bland, affable mask that did not fool Amelia for an instant.

The duke moved toward her, his greatcoat swirling around his boots. She realized that despite the silver threads at his temples and the sun-etched lines around his eyes, Justin Connor was younger than she had expected. Much younger. And far more dangerous. She clutched at the high collar of her blouse.

"I have come for my ward," he announced, giving her a bow so brief as to be an insult. A volatile muscle twitched in his cheek. "Your Miss Dobbins has tried to tell me that she is not in residence at this school."

A sharp cough failed to unravel the knot in Amelia's throat. She was terrified his knowing eyes would burn away the layers of her deceit, exposing the ugly truth for him to see. "I fear she is correct."

"Then I demand an explanation. My partner David Scarborough left his only child, Claire, in your care seven years ago. I have written record of it."

"As do I. But as my staff tried to tell you, she is no longer here."

Justin raked a hand through his hair, thankful for Bentley Chalmers's unruffled presence at his elbow. This woman's cryptic explanations were maddening him to distraction. He had wasted a week working

up the courage to come to this place. A week in which his old insomnia had returned with a vengeance.

A week of driving past the school in his luxurious carriage, wondering which of the lighted windows

might be Claire's. He had risked everything to come here. Even Emily.