Glorious Angel Read Free Page A

those things.
    Everything Hannah brought she stole from the Maitland household, swearing to the good Lordthat the goods would never be missed. Each month, Angela made her promise not to steal any more, but Hannah continued to break her promise every month.
    Angela had a special affection for Hannah, her only woman acquaintance. It didn’t matter that the color of their skin was different. They were just two women, a young girl and a plump woman three times as old who just sat and talked.
    Charissa Sherrington had run off a year after Angela was born. Her mother had tried to take her with her, but her father had found them and brought Angela back, perhaps hoping to force Charissa to return. But she hadn’t.
    Angela sometimes wondered what it would have been like if her father had not found them. And she often wondered where her mother was now. Her father had raised her by himself, which accounted for her unfeminine habits.
    So Angela confided to Hannah most of the girlish things she might have told a mother, things she wouldn’t dream of speaking to her father about. And one of those things was that she fancied herself in love with Bradford Maitland. But of course, that had been last year, before Hannah told her the terrible truth about Jacob Maitland’s oldest son.
    “That boy, he the only one to bother you?” Hannah was asking her now.
    “Billy’s the only one who’s ever come here, but he ain’t the only one who’s insulted me.”

    The whites of Hannah’s eyes grew rounder. “What you mean, child?”
    Angela had always been too embarrassed to mention to Hannah about the scraps she got into with boys. But after the shock today, embarrassment didn’t matter.
    “I’ve been defendin’ myself for a long time now against them young jackasses who want to grab me all the time.”
    “Lordy, Miss Angela!” Hannah cried. “Why ain’t you told me ’bout this sooner?”
    “It only happens when I go to the city. And so far I can still take care of myself. But I ain’t gonna do no fightin’ no more. I’m gonna use this!” Angela said hotly, holding up her father’s rifle.
    “Who them boys been botherin’ you?”
    “Just boys I’ve known since as far back as I can remember.”
    “But their names?” Hannah persisted.
    Angela’s brow creased in thought. “Judd Holt and Sammy Sumpter,” she said, then added, “and the Wilcox brothers and Bobo Deleron too. Those are the ones I’ve been obliged to whip occasionally.”
    Hannah shook her head. “And that one come here today? What’s his name, Missy?”
    “Billy Anderson. But why’re you askin’ me about all this?” Angela questioned, her temper ebbing now.
    “Just wonderin’,” Hannah said evasively.“Where’s your pa? Why weren’t he out here runnin’ that Billy Anderson off?”
    “He stayed in the city last night and hasn’t been home since.”
    “You mean he left you all alone?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “O’ Lordy!” Hannah exclaimed and hoisted herself to her feet. “I gots to go!”
    “Wait, Hannah! Did you by chance bring any matches?” Angela called after her.
    “Yessum, they’s in the basket on the porch,” Hannah replied, already hurrying back to Golden Oaks.
    Angela shook her head. What had got into Hannah? She seemed more upset about Billy’s coming here than Angela was.
     
    Billy Anderson tore into the gray mares with his short whip, taking his anger out on them all the way back to Mobile. He would never forgive Angela for making a fool of him. He couldn’t remember ever being this enraged before, except maybe last year when his father had locked him in his room to keep him from volunteering, and him seventeen years old then and wanting more than anything to get in on the fighting and be a hero.
    This was even worse. Angela had made him look like a coward. If she so much as breathed a word about running him off at riflepoint, he’d kill her. He should have taken that rifle away fromher and given her a good thrashing.