Nobody's Angel Read Free Page B

delight. Sarah Jane, on Susannah's other side, looked distressed.
    "Please reconsider, Susannah. These men—they're criminals, remember, or they wouldn't be here. You might buy a thief, or even a murderer!"
    "A murderer!" Mandy's eyes brightened with obvious fascination at this prospect. Susannah felt another quiver of misgiving—until she thought of all the work that waited at home. She would not allow herself to be swayed from her chosen course by Sarah Jane's negativity.
    "Stuff!" she said stoutly. "If the men were dangerous, they wouldn't be offered at public auction, now would they? Over here!"
    She raised her hand and called out as the auctioneer took the bidding up to eighty pounds. Shay saw and acknowledged her bid, while Sarah Jane muttered what sounded like a plea to the Almighty to restore her sister's good sense.
    It occurred to Susannah, as the auctioneer called for more bids, that in her haste not to be dissuaded by Sarah Jane she hadn't spared more than a glance for the fellow she'd bid on. Accordingly, she stood on tiptoe and craned her neck and thus was able to get her first good look at the man on the block.
    He was tall, she thought, comparing his height to that of the auctioneer and the two burly guards who, armed with coiled whips and rifles, stood on either side of the platform. If the breadth of his shoulders was anything to judge by, he was also large-framed, but something, his current dire circumstances or perhaps a recent illness, had rendered him so thin that his clothes hung on him as though they'd been made for a far bigger man. His hair straggled about his shoulders and seemed to be very dark, but it was so matted and filthy that its precise color was impossible to determine. There was a gray cast to his skin, and a scruffy dark beard obscured the lower part of his face. His eyes—like his hair, their color was impossible to determine—appeared sunk into their sockets. As he stared out over the crowd, they seemed to glitter, and his lip curled into what looked like a snarl. His arms hung limply in front of him. The irons that linked his wrists appeared to be weighing them down. His fists were clenched, which Susannah took as another sign of belligerence. This is a bad one, Susannah thought with an inward shiver, and vowed to bid no more on him. Sarah Jane's warning no longer seemed quite so farfetched.
    "Who'll give me a hundred? Come on, now, a hundred! You, Miss Redmon? No? You over there?"
    Someone must have raised a hand, because Shay picked up the beat. "I have a hundred. I have a hundred! Will you let this big, strong fellow get away from you for so paltry a sum as that? I . . ."
    "Why's he still got the irons on, Hank Shay?" a male voice called out.
    "Gave you trouble, did he?" A guffaw accompanied this sally from a farmer at the edge of the crowd. From somewhere an object was let fly. It sailed past the convict's head, just missing him, to splatter against the far edge of the platform. An overripe tomato, judging from the mess it made when it landed, Susannah saw. The man didn't even duck, let alone flinch, but his eyes seemed to burn just that much brighter. The curl of his lip grew more pronounced. He emanated waves of hostility so intense they were almost palpable as his head turned in the direction from which the missile had come, and his gaze raked the crowd.
    "Enough of that now, you boys, or I'll be having you hauled up before the magistrate! I don't take kindly to having my sales disrupted, as you'd do well to remember!" Having dealt with the tomato-thrower and his friends, Shay's angry bawl moderated, and he addressed himself to the farmer and his confederate. "The irons are a precaution, no more. You can see for yourself that this one's big, and he's strong, too, I can vouch for that! He'll be a fine worker for the lucky bidder what gets him! Do I hear a hundred and ten?"
    The bidding continued, but Susannah paid little attention as she had no intention of joining in. The