Until You

6

Sheridan had been excited about meeting her only other living relative, but she'd felt out of place in Aunt Cornelia's small, stuffy house and terrified she was going to break one of the fragile knickknacks or soil the lacy handkerchief-looking things that seemed to be on every available surface. Despite all her precautions, Sherry had the awful feeling that her aunt did not like her very much at all and that she completely disapproved of everything Sherry said and did. That suspicion was confirmed by a mortifying conversation she overheard between her aunt and her father only two days after their arrival. Sherry had been sitting on the edge of a footstool, looking out at the city street, when muted voices in the next room made her turn in surprise and curiosity at the sound of her name.

She got up and wended her way around the furniture, then she pressed her ear to the door. Within moments, she realized that her suspicion was correct: Aunt Cornelia, who taught deportment at a school for young girls of wealthy families, was not at all pleased with Sheridan Bromleigh, and she was treating Patrick Bromleigh to a furious scold on that very subject: "You ought to be horsewhipped for the way you've reared that child," Aunt Cornelia ranted in a scornful, disrespectful tone that Sheridan's father would ordinarily never have tolerated from anyone, let alone endured in silence as he seemed to be doing. "She can't read, and she can't write, and when I asked her if she knew her prayers, she informed me she didn't 'hold with too much kneeling.' Then she informed me-and I quote-'The Good Lord probably doesn't like to listen to Bible-banging preachers any more than he likes harlots who lead men away from the path of goodness and righteousness.' "

"Now, Cornelia-" her father began, with a sound in his voice that almost sounded like stifled laughter. Cornelia Faraday obviously thought it sounded like laughter too, because she flew straight into what Rafe called a devil-rage.

"Don't you try to get around me with your false charm, you-you scoundrel. You lured my sister into marrying you and traipsing halfway round the world with your fancy talk about a new life in America, and I'll never forgive myself for not trying to stop her. Worse, I came along! But I will not stand by and keep silent this time, not when you've turned my sister's only daughter into a-a joke! That girl, who is nearly old enough to be married, doesn't act like a female; she doesn't even look like a female. I doubt she knows she is one! She's never worn anything but pants and boots, she's as tanned as a savage, and she curses like a heathen! Her manners are deplorable, she's outrageously outspoken, her hair is untamed, and she doesn't know the meaning of the word 'feminine.' She announced to me, as bold as brass, that she doesn't care to marry right now, but she 'fancies' someone named Raphael Benavente and she'll probably ask him to marry her someday. That young lady-and I use the term very loosely in Sheridan's case-honestly intends to propose matrimony herself-and furthermore, the man of her choice is apparently some Spanish vagabond who, she proudly informed me, knows everything important-including how to cheat at cards! Well," Aunt Cornelia finished in a rising tone of angry triumph, "I defy you to defend all that!"

Sherry held her breath and waited with some glee for her father to let loose an answering tirade in her defense at the hateful, sour-faced woman who'd wheedled her way into Sherry's confidence with her questions and was using her honest answers against her.

"Sherry does not swear!" her father retorted a little lamely, but at least he sounded as if his temper was beginning to reach the danger point.

Aunt Cornelia was not as intimidated as others were when Patrick Bromleigh finally lost his temper. "Oh, yes she does!" she flung back. "She bumped her elbow this morning, and she swore IN TWO LANGUAGES! I heard her myself!"

"Really," Patrick drawled nastily, "and how would you know what she was saying?"

"I know enough Latin to be able to translate 'Dios Mio'! into a blasphemy."

"That means 'My God,' " Patrick defended, but he sounded suddenly guilty and not very convincing as he added, "She was obviously having a go at some of that praying that you're so worked up about her not doing!" Sherry bent down and put her eye to the keyhole. Her father was flushed, either with embarrassment or anger, and his fists were clenched at his sides, but Aunt Cornelia was standing right in front of him, as cold and unmoved as stone.

"That shows what little you know of praying or of your daughter," Cornelia flung back contemptuously. "I shudder to think of the sorts of persons you've let her consort with, but I have a clear enough picture to know she's been exposed to gambling and cursing, and that you've allowed liquor-drinking card cheats, like that Mr. Raphael, to see her dressed indecently. God alone knows the sort of evil thoughts she's evoked in him and every other man who's seen her with that red hair of hers flying all about like a wanton. And I haven't even mentioned her other favorite companion-an Indian male who sleeps with dogs! A savage who-"

Sherry saw her father's jaw clench with fury a moment before Aunt Cornelia mentioned Dog Lies Sleeping, and for a split second Sherry was half afraid-and half hopeful-that he was about to poke Aunt Cornelia right in the eye for saying such vile things. Instead, he spoke in a voice laced with biting scorn: "You've become a foul-minded, spiteful spinster, Cornelia-the sort who pretends that all men are bestial, and that they lust after every woman they see, when the truth is that you're angry because no man ever lusted after you! And furthermore," he finished, his Irish brogue thickening as his control and reason momentarily deserted him, "Sherry may be almost fourteen, but she's as plain as a pikestaff and as flat-chested as you! In fact, Nelly, girl," he'd finished with triumph, "poor Sherry's showin' signs of becomin' the image of you. And there ain't enough liquor on God's earth to make a man lust after you, so I figure she's safe enough."

At the keyhole, Sheridan realized only that a fine insult had just been scored against the "foul-minded, spiteful spinster," and she clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle a cheer. Unfortunately, Aunt Cornelia wasn't as undone by her brother-in-law's insults as Sherry would have liked. She lifted her chin, looked him right in the eye, and retorted with icy disdain, "I think there was a time when you wouldn't have needed liquor, wasn't there, Patrick?"

Sherry didn't have the slightest notion what Aunt Cornelia meant. For a second, her father seemed blank too, and then furious, and then… strangely calm. "Well done, Cornelia," he said mildly. "Spoken just like Squire Faraday's haughty, oldest daughter. I'd almost forgotten that's who you used to be, but you haven't, have you?" The last traces of his anger drained away completely as he looked around at the drab little room, and he shook his head, smiling ruefully. "Never mind that you live in a house that's hardly bigger than a broom closet at Faraday manor, or that you eke out a living by teaching etiquette to other people's children, you're still Squire Faraday's daughter, proud and haughty as ever."

"Then perhaps you'll also remember," Aunt Cornelia said in a quieter, but unyielding, tone, "that Sheridan's mother was my only sister. And I tell you truly, Patrick, that were she alive to see the antidote… the laughingstock… that you've made of Sheridan, she would be horrified. No," Aunt Cornelia said with absolute finality, "she would be ashamed of her."

On the other side of the door, Sheridan went rigid with bewildered alarm. Ashamed of her? Surely, her mama wouldn't be ashamed of her, not of Sheridan; she'd loved Sheridan. Visions of her mother at the farm swirled through her mind… her mama putting dinner on the table and wearing a clean, starched apron, her hair wound into a neat coil at her neck… her mama brushing Sheridan's hair with long strokes until it crackled… her mama leaning closer to the light as she fashioned Sheridan a "special dress" from scraps of lace and cotton someone had traded them.

With a vision of her mother's starched apron and shiny hair still in her mind, Sheridan spread her arms wide and looked down at herself. She was wearing men's boots because she didn't like to bother with laces, and they were scuffed and dusty. Her buckskin pants were stained, not to mention worn thin at the seat; around her waist a braided belt that Dog Lies Sleeping had made for her was serving the dual purpose of holding her pants up and her jacket closed. Ashamed…

Involuntarily, she turned to the little looking glass on her aunt's washstand and moved closer to it to peer at her face and hair. The image in the mirror made her rear back in alarm; then she stopped and blinked her eyes and gave her head a shake to chase the vision away. For a moment she stood stock-still, completely at a loss as to what to do to fix matters, then she raised her hands to her head and tried to comb her fingers through the tangled mass of long, "wanton" red hair. Her fingers stopped, unable to penetrate more than a few inches into the snarls, so she tried to remedy things by putting her palms against the sides of her hair and pressing down hard. Then she warily approached the mirror again. Ever so cautiously she lifted her hands away. Her hair sprang back out. She didn't in the least look like her mother. She didn't actually resemble any female she'd ever seen-a fact that she'd been both aware of, and unconcerned with, until that moment.

Aunt Cornelia had said she looked like a… laughingstock, and now that Sheridan thought about it, people had been reacting to her a little oddly lately-especially men. They stared at her in a peculiar way. Lustfully? Her father obviously hadn't noticed it, but in the last year, Sheridan's chest had been swelling quite embarrassingly and sometimes it showed no matter how carefully she tried to keep her jacket closed.

Aunt Cornelia said she looked wanton. Wanton? Sheridan furrowed her brow, trying to recollect when and how she'd heard that word used. "Wanton" had some sort of connection to a harlot… a hussie… A "wanton" hussie! That was it! That was Sheridan?

An unfamiliar lump of tears swelled in her throat at the realization. Aunt Cornelia was probably right about that and everything else-and, worst of all, that Sheridan's mama would be ashamed of her now.

Ashamed.

Sheridan was so stricken that she simply stood there, immobilized. Minutes later she realized that her aunt was demanding that Sheridan be left with her so that Sheridan could have a decent home and upbringing, and that Sheridan's father was putting up only a feeble protest. When it finally sank in, she bolted forward, tripping over her aunt's silly footstool in her haste, and yanked the door open. "No, Papa, don't! Don't leave me here! Please!"

He looked haunted and torn, and Sheridan took advantage of his indecision, flinging herself into his arms. "Please, I'll wear ladies' boots and fix my wanton hair, and everything else, but don't leave me here."

"Don't, darlin'," was all he said, and she sensed that she was losing the battle.

"I want to go with you and Rafe and Dog Lies Sleeping! That's where I belong, no matter what she says!"

Sheridan was still saying that the next morning when he left. "I'll be back before you know it," he said firmly. "Rafe has some good ideas. We'll make ourselves a pile of money, and we'll all come back for you in a year-two at the most. You'll be all grown up by then. We'll go to Sherwyn's Glen, and I'll build us that grand house, just like I promised you, honey. You'll see."

"I don't want a grand house," Sheridan cried, looking first at Rafe, who was standing in the street, looking handsome and grim, and then at Dog Lies Sleeping, whose expression revealed nothing. "I just want you and Rafe and Dog Lies Sleeping!"

"I'll come back before you know I'm gone," he'd promised, ignoring her sobs and giving her his warm, Irish smile that ladies always found so appealing. In a stroke of inspired cajolery, he added, "Think how shocked Rafe will be when we come for you and you're a lovely young lady, wearing skirts and… and doing the things your aunt will teach you."

Before she could protest, he untangled her arms from around his neck, put his hat on, stepped back, and looked at Cornelia. "I'll send what money I can to help out."

Cornelia nodded as if accepting alms from a peasant and said nothing, but her manner didn't seem to disturb him in the least.

"Who knows," he said with a roguish grin, "maybe we'll even take you back to England with us. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Nelly-living right under Squire Faraday's nose, holding court in a house bigger than his? I seem to remember that the drawing room was always filled with your beaux." With a mocking smile, he added, "None of them were good enough for you, though, were they, Nelly? But then, maybe they've improved with age."

Sheridan, who was trying to breathe slowly so she wouldn't weep like a baby, watched him shrug his shoulders in utter indifference at her aunt's rigid silence, then he turned and gave Sheridan a quick, hard hug. "Write to me," she implored him.

"I will," he promised.

When he left, Sherry turned slowly to look at the expressionless face of the woman who had caused the complete destruction of her life and who was her only living female relative. Her gray eyes brimming with tears, Sherry said very softly and very clearly, "I… I wish we'd never come here. I wish I'd never set eyes on you! I hate you."

Instead of slapping her, which Sherry knew she was entitled to do, Aunt Cornelia looked her straight in the eye and said, "I'm sure you do, Sheridan. I daresay you'll hate me much more before this is over. I, however, do not in the least hate you. Now, shall we have a bit of tea before we begin your lessons?"

"I hate tea too," Sheridan informed her, lifting her chin to its haughtiest angle and returning her aunt's stony stare-a stance that was not only instinctive but identical to her aunt's. Her aunt noticed the similarity, even though Sheridan was unaware of it. "Do not try to stare me out of countenance with that expression, child. I perfected that very look long ago, and I'm quite immune to it. In England, it would have served you well, were you Squire Faraday's acknowledged granddaughter. However, this is America, and we are no longer the proud Squire's relations. Here we are shabby-genteel at best. Here, I teach deportment to the children of people whom I would have once regarded as my inferiors, and I am lucky to have the work. I thank my Maker that I'm able to have this cozy house for my very own, and I do not look back at the past. A Faraday does not lament. Remember that. And I am not completely regretful of my life's choices. For one thing, I am no one's puppet anymore. I no longer awaken wondering what sort of uproar will occur today. I lead an orderly, quiet, respectable life."

She stepped back as she finished that speech, and with something that might actually have been amusement, she surveyed her unmoving niece. "My dear, if you wish to carry off that look of stony hauteur to its best advantage, I recommend that you look down your nose at me just the tiniest bit-yes, just so. That's how I would have done it."

If Sheridan hadn't been so forlorn and so bitter, she would have laughed. In time, she learned to laugh again-just as she learned Latin and ladylike behavior. Her aunt was a relentless teacher, determined that Sheridan learn everything she herself knew, and yet Sheridan soon realized that beneath her aunt's formal rigidity, there was a deep concern and even affection for her wayward niece. Sheridan was a quick student, once she got over her resentment. Book learning, as she discovered, helped to relieve the tedium of a life that no longer involved wild rides on spotted horses or the humming of guitar strings or laughter under the stars. Exchanging even a nodding glance with a member of the opposite sex was evidence of easy virtue and, therefore, forbidden; striking up a conversation with a stranger verged on criminal behavior. Singing was done only in church, and never, ever, ever was one to accept payment in any form for it. In place of the exhilarating things she used to enjoy, there was the dubious challenge of learning to pour tea while holding the pot at just the right angle, of placing one's fork and knife in the correct place after dining-trivial things, to be sure, but as Aunt Cornelia said, "Knowing how to behave is your most valuable asset-your only one, in our circumstances."

Her reasoning became evident when Sheridan turned seventeen: Garbed in a simple brown gown with her hair tucked into a neat chignon, held in place by a cap she'd crocheted herself, Miss Sheridan Bromleigh was presented to Mrs. Adley Raeburn, the headmistress of the school where Aunt Cornelia taught. Mrs. Raeburn, who had come to the house at Aunt Cornelia's invitation, stared for a split second at Sheridan's hair and face-a peculiar reaction from city people that had become more pronounced of late. A few years ago, a younger, less well-bred and serene Sheridan Bromleigh would have self-consciously looked down at her boots or tugged her hat down over her face or else demanded to know what the stranger was gaping at.

But this was a new Sheridan, a young woman who was well aware that she had been a financial burden. Now she was determined to become a wage-earner, not only for her aunt's sake, or merely for the present, but for her own sake and for always. In the city, she had seen the face of widespread poverty and hunger-things that had seemed rare in the country. Sheridan was a city dweller now, and likely to remain so for the rest of her life. In the last two years, her father's letters, which had come frequently at first, had ceased altogether. He wouldn't simply forget her here, of that she was sure, and the possibility that he might be dead was so unbearable that she couldn't endure it. That left her no choice except to find a way to look after herself and to tell herself that it was only until he and Rafe came for her. She told herself that as Mrs. Raeburn said courteously, "I've heard some very good things about you from your aunt, Miss Bromleigh."

And Sheridan Bromleigh, who once would have shoved her hands into the waistband of her pants and replied with blunt shyness that she couldn't think what those good things might have been, stretched out her hand instead, and replied with equal courtesy, "and I of you, Mrs. Raeburn."

Now, as Sheridan stood below decks on the Morning Star, she suddenly realized there was a very good chance she would never see any of the people from her old life again; not Aunt Cornelia, or the little girls at school or the other teachers who'd become her friends and who gathered at the house every Saturday afternoon for tea and conversation. She might never again set eyes on their smiling faces. Or on Rafe… or her father.

Her mouth felt dry and at the same time wet tears stung her eyes as she thought of the father she might never see again. When he finally appeared at Aunt Cornelia's, anxious to see her and explain the reason for his long silence, she wasn't going to be there… She might never know what happened to him.

She closed her eyes and could almost see Rafe and Dog Lies Sleeping and her father standing in her aunt's parlor, waiting to see her. She'd brought all of this on herself by insisting on accompanying Charise on this voyage, and money hadn't been her only motive. No, indeed. She'd been daydreaming about England ever since she'd started reading those romantic novels. They had sparked her longing for adventure, ignited the streak of dreamy recklessness that she hadn't been able to completely conquer, despite her aunt's diligent efforts, and her own.

Well, she was certainly having an adventure! Instead of sitting in a classroom, surrounded by little faces listening with rapt attention as she read them a story or taught them to walk decorously, she'd landed herself in a strange, unfriendly country-trapped, defenseless, and completely devoid of the wit and courage on which she'd prided herself, preparing to face a nobleman who, according to Meg, would not be required by British law to govern his justifiable rage or delay his vengeance when she told him what had happened. What she, in her pride, had allowed to happen.

Fear, the weakness Sheridan despised above all others, spread through her, evading her efforts to subdue it, and she shivered uncontrollably at the thought of the misery she had caused everyone who trusted and loved her. After a lifetime of determined optimism and robust health, she suddenly felt weak, frantic, and alarmingly dizzy. The room began to revolve, and she clutched at the back of a chair for support; then she forced her eyes open, drew a deep breath, and smoothed her hair back into its stern chignon as she reached for her cloak and aimed a reassuring smile at the terrified maid.

Trying to sound flippant, she said, "It's time to meet the beastly baron and face my fate," then she sobered and ceased trying to pretend there was no need for alarm. "You stay here, out of sight. If I don't come back for you right away, wait for a few hours and then leave as quietly as you can. Better yet, stay aboard. With luck, no one will discover you until the ship is already under way in the morning. There's no point in both of us being arrested and hauled away, if that's what he decides to do."