Violet Fire

by Jo Goodman

  “Ill? I did not know.” Shannon’s concern caused her to face the earl fully. She realized her mistake when she heard his soft gasp. She immediately dropped her head again.

  Eric cursed under his breath for giving way to his shock. Shannon’s left eye was swollen shut by a livid, puffy bruise. At his side his hand clenched and he itched to deliver a blow to Shannon’s assailant. “Mother is recovered,” he said tersely. “She has severely dressed down every person on staff who knew of your situation and protected her from it. She claims she was not so ill that she couldn’t be informed of your arrest.”

  “Oh! She should not have blamed them! They did what was proper. I would not have wanted her further distressed on my account.”

  The earl had expected Shannon’s protest and ignored it. “Who has laid a hand on you, Shannon?”

  She recoiled from the rough question. “No one,” she said. “That is, it was an accident. I slipped in my cell and hit the wall.”

  “You are lying.”

  Add it to my sins, she thought bitterly. “No.”

  “You are still lying.”

  “It is of no import. Please, let it rest. What can it matter?”

  “It matters because I will not permit you to be abused while you are in this hellhole.”

  Shannon lifted her chin sharply and stared at the earl through her one good eye. “You must know that I will hang in five days. Do you think I care for the condition of my face when I am taken to Tyburn tree? It is more fitting this way. I am as ugly on the outside as I am in my soul. It will be a good lesson for the children who come to see the hanging.”

  “Do not speak so of yourself!” Eric said tightly. He took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself. “I’m sorry, Shannon. I only want to spare you further pain.”

  “Then you will forget you came here and saw me thusly. You will tell your mother that I am well cared for and that I go to my death with dignity. That will spare me much anguish.”

  The earl shook his head. “I cannot forget, and Mother will never believe you are cared for here. As for facing Tyburn with dignity, we know it is something you would do, but it is unnecessary.”

  “Surely you would not have me wailing and sobbing as I am carted through the streets?”

  “I did not mean that dignity was unnecessary,” Eric said. “I meant that hanging was. Before I came here I spoke to the barrister who defended you. He is of the opinion that your stepfather’s death was an accident, self-defense at the very worst.”

  “He is entitled to his opinion.”

  Eric went on as if Shannon had not interrupted. His gray eyes were hooded, hiding his innermost thoughts, the foremost being guilt. “Yet, when given the opportunity to defend yourself, you stated unequivocally that it was your desire to kill Stewart. What possessed you to say such a thing?”

  Shannon hugged herself against the cold seeping through the walls and into her flesh. Thunder rolled ominously in the background, and she wondered if it would rain the day she died. She hoped so. She wanted to feel heaven’s tears on her face one last time. “Because it was the truth. I desired my stepfather dead. Would it shock you to know that I prayed for it nightly? I wished it with all my being. I murdered him time after time in my heart, so why shouldn’t I admit to the fact? The sin is the same.”

  Eric swore that if Thomas Stewart were in front of him now, he would kill the man with his bare hands. Even in death he had a stranglehold on his stepdaughter’s thoughts. “I disagree,” he said. “There is a difference between wanting someone dead and actually committing the deed.”

  “Mayhap there is a legal difference,” she conceded quietly. “But morally the two are not so dissimilar.” She waved her hand indifferently. “It no longer has any bearing on my case. I am guilty, was found guilty, and will hang for it. That is as it should be.”

  The conviction in Shannon’s voice tested the earl’s patience. He had to remind himself that Stewart had finally succeeded in crushing her. “Tell me what happened the night Thomas died, Shannon. Not the story you told your barrister, please. Credit me with more sense than to accept such a tale from you.” He saw her hesitation and added, “I swear I will stay here, all day and night if need be, until you relate the truth to me.”

  Shannon’s good eye widened as she took the measure of Eric Redmond’s words. He meant it, she realized. She would have no peace and he would not leave this horrid place until he knew the truth. Reluctantly, because she could not bear his presence much longer, she offered the details of a night six weeks earlier….

  * * *

  Shannon looked up from her mending as Thomas Stewart entered the parlor. He ignored her presence, as he so often did when he had nothing critical to say to her, and poked idly at the fire before seating himself in the chair opposite Shannon. He propped his walking stick against the arm of his chair and picked up his notes for the sermon he planned to deliver on the morrow. While he studied his papers his hand returned again and again to his bad leg, rubbing the knee absently.

  “Is your leg troubling you, Father?” Shannon asked. It had been bitterly cold of late, a condition that sorely tried Stewart’s arthritic joint. His limp was gradually becoming more pronounced, and that the arthritis was spreading was evident in the swollen and gnarled knuckles of his hands.

  “Save your concern, Shannon,” he said scornfully. “I know you would enjoy seeing me a cripple.”

  Shannon’s mouth opened to deny his words but snapped shut as she thought better of it. He would, as he always had, believe what he wished. She bent her head, concentrating on the stockings she was darning.

  “So meek of a sudden,” he chastised mockingly.

  Shannon sighed quietly, her shoulders slumping a little as she withdrew into herself. Thomas refused to admit that it had been years since she had objected to anything he had said or done. No matter what foul business he accused her of, she agreed she was at fault. It was inevitable that eventually she came to believe the worst of herself. Though she had come to accept punishment as her due, Shannon knew Thomas was skeptical of her docility. He was convinced she was merely manipulating him, trying to make him believe she was subject to his will while at heart she remained stubbornly defiant. He did not accept that he had effectively destroyed her spirit before her seventeenth year.

  “William Danvers came to see me today,” he said, dropping his notes back on the polished surface of the end table.

  Shannon’s stomach roiled. This was the conversation she was dreading. She had a suspicion that William would seek out her father, and it could not bode well for her. “Oh?” she said, feigning ignorance.

  Stewart’s eyes narrowed sharply. “He offered for you.”

  Her heart sunk. There was no doubt of her stepfather’s answer. William would have been summarily dismissed just as Henry Garret and Timothy Andrews were before him. Shannon told herself she should be happy that Thomas had dismissed the suitors because she loved none of them. How could she? She had never been permitted to know them. Courting was out of the question, and Thomas forbade her to see any eligible men except in church.

  Of the three men who had asked for her hand, she liked William the best. He was not unhandsome, being somewhat sturdily built with a thick neck and strong hands. His eyes were gentle, though, and that is what Shannon remembered most. She had seen him watching her in church, his heart in his eyes, and she knew that he liked her. Shannon had never given him the least encouragement nor allowed herself to hope, knowing too well how it would end. She was surprised to find that William was made of sterner stuff than his gentle eyes indicated. He had braved her stepfather’s wrath by making an offer. It could not have been easy for him because he had to have known that Henry and Tim had been unsuccessful. Glen Eden was too small a community for word not to have spread.

  Perhaps William’s suit had been prompted by the earl’s own wedding earlier in the week. That happy occasion would have stirred the heart of a confirmed rake. Or mayhap he thought he had more t
o offer the vicar’s daughter than those who had pressed their suits first. He was, after all, the head groom at the manor. It was a position of great responsibility and carried a good wage. He could have given her a comfortable life, and Shannon told herself she would have made him a good and generous partner. Perhaps love would have grown on her part. Certainly she would have been grateful that he had removed her from her stepfather’s house.

  Shannon admitted it was selfishness that caused most of her disappointment. Marriage would have meant escape, and she would have grasped it greedily if the choice had been hers.

  “I told him no, of course,” Thomas said when Shannon made no reply.

  “Of course,” she said dully. “My place is here. I would not make a fit wife. I could not be satisfactory.” She repeated the statements he had used to turn the others away. She would rob him of the pleasure of saying them now.

  “I am happy you understand, though I must say it surprises me. I thought you might have imagined yourself in love with young Danvers.”

  “No, I did not love him.”

  “Oh.”

  Shannon bit back a smile. He was disappointed. He had wanted his refusal to hurt her. She stuffed the stockings in her sewing basket and stood. “I am going to retire. Excuse me, please.” She started to cross the room but Thomas held out a hand, catching her by the arm. Her skin crawled as the back of his thumb traced the webbing of blue veins on the underside of her wrist. Her pulse leaped erratically at his touch, but she doubted she could convince him it was because she loathed the contact.

  “Have you allowed him liberties?” Thomas asked sharply.

  “No.” No man, save her stepfather, had ever taken a liberty. “I hardly knew William. There was little conversation between us. Certainly nothing else.”

  “Then why did he offer for you? You must have encouraged him. I saw the way he looked at you in church, right under my very nose. Did you think I hadn’t noticed he was panting after you, the bulge in his breeches as big as a stallion’s?”

  Shannon’s eyes closed briefly at Stewart’s crudity. “May I leave, please?”

  “Did you think about him, Shannon? Did you think about being his wife, enjoying the marriage bed, taunting William with your body as you do me?” He yanked on her wrist, his gnarled fingers biting into her flesh with surprising strength. “Tell me the truth. I’ll know if you’re lying!”

  What could she say? She had thought about being William’s wife. She had not wondered about the marriage bed. She knew she would have to tolerate that intimacy, but enjoy it? Never! As for taunting William, she was uncertain how it was accomplished. Her stepfather’s repeated accusations failed to bring Shannon any closer to understanding. Though she tried, she could never comprehend how she was supposed to have taunted Stewart. “I did think of him,” she finally answered, hoping this admission would make him release her wrist. She realized she had miscalculated immediately when Stewart pulled her arm hard, causing her to lose her sewing basket and her balance. Her hip brushed his forearm. Shannon gritted her teeth and tautened her buttocks in anticipation of Stewart’s intimate touch.

  Thomas released Shannon’s arm, but before she could pull away, he ran his palm over the curve of her hip and derriere. “Go to your room,” he said tightly. “I will join you shortly. We will pray.”

  Tears gathered in Shannon’s eyes. She wanted to beg to be left alone, but fear kept her silent. Experience had taught her that her stepfather would do as he wanted, regardless of her protests. She even suspected he would find a perverse sort of pleasure in hearing her beg. Putting a hand to her mouth to stifle a sob, Shannon ran from the parlor and hurried up the stairs to her room.

  Defiance never occurred to Shannon. She had been under Thomas Stewart’s thumb too long to offer anything but compliance to his dictates. Distress marred the smooth line of her forehead as she dropped to her knees at the foot of her bed. Shannon rested her chin on her folded hands, eyes closed, and murmured the prayers that would deliver her from her stepfather’s care.

  Shannon’s shoulders slumped when she heard Stewart’s uneven tread upon the stairs. By the time he entered her bedchamber, she was having difficulty breathing.

  “Why do you continue to tempt me, Shannon?” Thomas asked quietly when he had come up behind her.

  “I cannot help myself,” she answered dutifully, choosing the words that were least likely to incite him. Silently she wondered for the thousandth time: What is it I do that makes him want me?

  “Neither could your mother. It is unfortunate that you have inherited her wantonness. I suppose it is bred in the bone.”

  Shannon nodded as she knew was expected, but her action was not entirely to impress Stewart. She was more than halfway to believing what was said of her. “I’ve been praying that it will not happen again.”

  Stewart sat on the edge of the bed. The stiffness in his leg no longer permitted him to kneel at Shannon’s side. His expression was carefully blank as he studied Shannon’s thick fall of hair bound tightly in a girlish braid. His icy eyes dropped to the thrust of her breasts pressing against the bodice of her gown. Beads of moisture appeared on his upper lip. One of his hands slipped behind her neck and wrapped itself around Shannon’s braid. With a less than gentle tug he pulled on her plait and forced her face upward.

  Shannon’s heavy eyelashes fluttered a shade fearfully when she saw Stewart’s smile lacked any warmth. Held as she was, she could not recoil from the expression that devoured her, but her wish to do just that must have shown plainly on her face.

  Stewart’s upper lip curled derisively. “You cannot flutter your lashes at me one moment, then profess to want your freedom in the next,” he said, putting his own construction on her silent actions.

  There was no use insisting that she had not meant to be provocative. According to her stepfather, it seemed she could not help herself.

  “Sit beside me,” he ordered gruffly.

  Shannon did as she was told. Her complexion took on an ashen cast as Stewart began rubbing her spine with the heel of his hand. She shuddered.

  Again Thomas Stewart believed what he wished to believe. “You’re trembling, Shannon. The devil’s passion is within you.”

  Shannon made no reply, merely suffered his words and the touch of his hand. Biting her lower lip, she forced herself to remain unmoving while Stewart’s fingers fumbled with the hook fasteners at the back of her gown. His hand slipped beneath her chemise and rested against her bare flesh. Shannon felt cold all over, then numb.

  Stewart leaned toward her. “No one must know,” he whispered near her ear. “I would not shame you by letting anyone know how I must drive the devil from you.” Taking her hand in his, Stewart laid it on his thigh so she could feel his arousal through his breeches. “You and your whorish ways have caused this, Shannon. I will not let you tease me this time. I will show you the consequence of your actions.”

  Oh, please, Shannon thought. Not again! Had he forgotten his fondling could have no end but one? It would be as it had been before, as it had always been. He would command her to strip to her chemise, force her back on the bed, and lay his body over hers. He would push up her chemise, grope painfully at her breasts, release the hardness from his trousers. And then…nothing.

  The moment he attempted to complete the act, his body would fail him. He would lie against her until his breathing returned to normal, then he would rear back, righting himself, all the while reviling Shannon for being the harlot that she was. He would cover his humiliation by calling her a temptress and saying again that he had proved he was stronger than she, that he had no need to enter her body to drive out Satan. A beating would do that.

  Shannon was made to feel, in a perverse way, that she had failed him. His humiliation became hers and she rarely resisted the blows that came from Stewart’s walking stick, thinking them her due. She merely hunched at the head of the bed, covering her face and hands as best she could, and let his anger run its course.

 
; Shannon wished now that he would simply strike her. It was easier to bear than the pawing of his sweaty palms.

  “Take off your gown, Shannon.”

  Shannon stood obediently and began to remove her gown. Tears dripped from beneath her closed lids. She prayed for Stewart’s death…or her own. It didn’t matter. Either would serve. He was tapping the cane impatiently against the floor. “Please,” she begged softly. “I will accept my punishment. Do not do this other thing to me. I promise…” She fell silent, unable to give voice to her promise. Should she say she would never talk to another man? Should she apologize for William’s offer? If she vowed she would not tempt her stepfather again, could she keep it when she hadn’t the least idea of what she had done?

  Getting to his feet, Stewart raised the cane and struck Shannon across the back. The suddenness of the blow sent Shannon reeling forward. She stumbled on the hem of her gown and fell against the small table where she did her writing. The table tottered, and before Shannon could right it, she was struck again. This time the table fell on its side as Shannon’s knees buckled. Cowering between the table’s legs, she realized she was trapped. In an effort to see the next blow and protect herself, Shannon half turned toward her stepfather. She was as surprised as he when the cane whistled through the air and connected with the hand she had flung out to ward off the blow. Without thinking, Shannon clutched the stick in her stinging palm and yanked it from Stewart’s grip. She stared at it stupidly for a moment, then in a red haze of rage that she did not know she could experience, Shannon broke the cane over her knee. An awful silence followed the snapping of the walking stick, and Shannon trembled from the enormity of what she had done.

  “You dare!” The words were forced out between Stewart’s clenched jaw and tight lips. He limped forward and raised a hand to strike her.

  But without the cane, Shannon thought her stepfather did not seem so threatening. From somewhere deep inside her she felt her courage stir. When his hand came down Shannon ducked and thrust her hands forward to push Stewart away….