He realized he had become so accustomed to the island's code of suspicion that he hadn't even offered this small, bedraggled young woman his name. She hardly looked the sort of spy the efficient Miss Winters or his rigid father would dispatch.
"You may call me Justin. Justin Connor." He closed the door behind him, never seeing the bitter, triumphant twist of Emily's lips.
Justin couldn't seem to put enough distance between himself and the hut. He strode through the
cornfield, his long strides eating up the turf. Penfeld trotted along behind him.
"Hell and damnation!" he finally exploded. "A girl simply shouldn't go around looking at a man like that."
Penfeld plucked at his suspenders, more worried about being outdoors without a coat than about his master's consternation. "Like what, sir? I hadn't noticed anything unusual about her looks. A bit on the boyish side, perhaps."
Justin spun around, his voice rising on a note of disbelief. "Boyish? Compared to whom-Helen of Troy? Cleopatra? Besides, I wasn't referring to her looks in particular. I was referring to the way she looks at me. That ridiculous sparkle in her eyes. That clever little trick she does with her bottom lip."
Justin tugged on his lip to illustrate, but Penfeld only blinked at him dumbly. A trickle of sweat snaked between Justin's shoulder blades at the mere thought of it. As the sun beat down on his bare head, he realized he'd forgotten his hat.
"Blast her anyway! She had no way of knowing what sort of men we were. What if she had given that look to some of those whalers or timbermen in Auckland? They'd have slapped her in a whorehouse so fast, it would have made her curly little head spin."
The valet paled. He became as nervous as a rabbit when anyone mentioned Auckland. Justin had found him in the teeming harbor town four years earlier, wandering the streets in a daze, his handsome suit in rags, a shattered teacup his only possession.
Justin plucked a corn silk from Penfeld's thinning hair. "Now you're doing it. Don't stick out your lip
and go all quivery on me, because Auckland's exactly where I'm taking her. She must think I'm a blithering idiot to have fallen for that old twisted-ankle ploy."
"I've never known you to blither without cause, sir." Penfeld looked as downcast as if his master had announced he was taking the girl to Sodom with a side picnic to Gomorrah.
Snorting with determination, Justin spun on his heel. "I'm going to march right back to that hut, make
her gather her things-"
"She has no things."
Penfeld's quiet words halted him at the edge of the field. A hill studded with tussock grasses rolled
down to the beach. The warm breeze teased the golden clumps into waving fingers.
Penfeld was right, he realized. The girl had nothing. Not even the coat on her back. She had come into
his world as bare and unfettered as on the day she had come into God's.
He was a grown man. Surely he could temper his lust with common decency for a few days. If she refused to leave by the end of the week, he would ignore Penfeld's sulks and insist on escorting her to Auckland. Until then he would spend the long days working in the fields so he could collapse on his
pallet at night, too exhausted to even dream of-
He drove his fingers through his hair. It was hardly her fault that every time he looked at her he saw
her as she had been in the moonlight, that each time he touched her he wanted to bury his fingers in
her silky curls. All of them. Justin groaned.
His agonized musings were interrupted by a joyous cry. "Pakeha! Pakeha!"
A line of naked honey-skinned children streamed up the hill with Trini in tow. Justin squatted and a
wiry little boy barreled into him with the force of a muscular cannonball.
He faked a stagger. "Ho, there, Kawiri! You're too strong for an old chap like me."
The children swarmed around him, chattering in Maori. A little girl with almond-shaped eyes crawled between Kawiri's legs and held Justin's hand. His face relaxed in a smile as their musical tones soothed
his troubled spirit.
"You can come out, Penfeld," he called over his shoulder. "They won't eat you."
Penfeld crept out from behind a cornstalk and gave the children a shy bow. Trini beamed proudly as several of the children bowed back. Justin knew his unflappable valet wasn't afraid of cannibals, but children terrified him.
I have no family.
Emily's words came back to haunt Justin without warning, echoing what he had said to Penfeld only yesterday. He hadn't been completely truthful. The Maori were his family now. They had adopted him
as their beloved Pakeha, sharing with him both their land and their trust, giving him the right and power
to negotiate even the most delicate trade with other natives and whites. Justin ruffled Kawiri's black hair. Perhaps they were all orphans beneath the stark blue bowl of God's sky.
The little girl tapped the watch case resting against his chest, muttering beneath her breath in Maori.
"English, Dani," he commanded. If he could teach more of the children English, perhaps someday they would have no need of a stranger such as he living in their midst.
She popped her thumb in her mouth, then uncorked it and bellowed, "Claire!"
Justin winced.
Dancing around him, the other children took up the chant. "Claire! Claire! Claire!"
"Oh, dear," Penfeld murmured.
Justin leveled a lethal gaze at Trini. "Have you been letting them play with my watch again?"
The native lifted his palms in a universal gesture of apology, choosing in his chagrin simple English
words rather than the longer ones he delighted in. "They'd never seen a white little girl before. They believe her to be a lost angel whose spirit is trapped in time."
Justin dropped his head in defeat. Was he to be haunted by orphans today? In his preoccupation with
the girl, he had almost forgotten that other child. He made no protest when the tiny Dani reached up
and slipped the chain over his head.
Kawiri brushed the gold with reverent fingers, letting out a soft "Oooooh."
Justin knew he didn't have to worry about the safety of his watch. Dani cupped it in her plump hands
as if it were the most holy of relics.
As the children trailed after her, he stood, absently flattening his palm against his chest. If Claire Scarborough was his cross to bear, why did he feel so naked without her image resting next to his heart?
That night Emily kicked restlessly at her blankets. The island breeze had turned cool, but an icy fire burned in her veins, stoked by both disdain and fury. Her guardian lay on a pallet a few feet away. She pillowed her chin on folded arms and studied his sleeping features with hungry fascination.
He was nothing as she had imagined him. Somehow she had always expected him to be blond with a neatly clipped beard and side-whiskers. A cap of shining gold hair complemented a suit of armor, did it not? Self-contempt at her own naivete flooded her.