by Jo Goodman
From her place by the door, Clara bit her lip and watched Shannon warily. “Are you crying?” At Shannon’s tiny negative shake, which was clearly for show, Clara’s bottom lip quivered sympathetically. Abandoning caution, she flew across the room and flung her arms about Shannon’s knees.
The sudden display of comfort and affection took Shannon by surprise. Tentatively she placed her hand on the cap of fiery curls, and when this overture was not shaken off, Shannon stroked Clara’s hair lightly. “Poor baby,” she crooned softly. “Don’t cry for me.” She lifted Clara onto her lap and hugged her. The hug was reciprocated immediately as Clara’s arms fastened themselves about Shannon’s neck. The generous, unconditional warmth of the response tugged at Shannon’s heart. Rocking gently, she teased a wet smile from Clara and wiped the child’s tears with the hem of her gown. “All better?”
Clara nodded. She stared at Shannon gravely. “You have wet on your face, too.”
Shannon’s lips quirked. “So I do.” She used the back of her hand to smooth away tear tracks. “We are a fine pair, poppet.”
Clara’s brow puckered in puzzlement. Cody and her father often called her poppet. Her mother never had. She decided she liked it, and the frown instantly vanished. “Are you better now, Mama? Papa says I shouldn’t bother you.”
Shannon could not respond for a moment. She had forgotten the child’s visit was prompted by her confusion. “You are not bothering me,” said Shannon. That, at least, was the truth. How was she to explain to Brandon’s daughter that she was not her mother?
The answer was sufficient for Clara. “Would you like to see my kite? Unca Cody made it for me.” She waved her hands expansively. “It goes up, up, up.”
Shannon hesitated, uncertain if she should encourage the girl. Then she noticed the uncertainty mirrored in Clara’s large blue eyes, and she realized the child wasn’t at all confident that her friendly overture would be accepted. Shannon made her decision. “I’d like that, but I must return to bed.” She did not want to alarm Clara, but she admitted to herself that she was feeling weak. “Will you bring it here?”
Clara nodded happily, sliding off Shannon’s lap, and scampered out of the room. Minutes later she returned, dragging the kite under one arm and carrying a doll in the crook of the other.
Shannon smiled as Clara struggled to close the door. “Leave it open,” she said from her place on the bed. “Come. Show me what you have there.” She assisted Clara’s climb onto the large four-poster and made a place for her among the thick pillows. “This is very nice,” she said admiringly, picking up the kite. Colorful textured fabric, finer than anything Shannon had ever had in her own wardrobe, had been fastened to a light wooden frame. She understood the child’s pride in this possession. “Who did you say made it for you?”
“Cody.” Clara corrected herself quickly. “Unca Cody.”
“Uncle Cody,” Shannon mused, wondering who this person was. “Well, he did splendidly. It’s lovely. Do you fly it often?”
Clara’s tiny face clouded and her lower lip thrust outward. “No. Papa and Cody are planting. Papa says I shall have a guvness.”
Evidently these events were linked in Clara’s mind, but Shannon could not make the connection. “I see,” she said slowly. She plucked at the kite’s tail. “I think it’s been tangled a bit. Shall we see if we can put it to rights again?”
“Would you?”
“Of course.” Shannon began to unravel the tail, tightening the loose rags that gave it stability when airborne. She glanced at the cornhusk doll in Clara’s arms. “Who is your friend?”
“This is Emily.” She held up the doll so Shannon could better see the painted face. “Don’t you ’member her?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Shannon said carefully. “Have you had her long?”
“Forever. Papa gave her to me. I can take her everywhere. Not like Charlotte and Amanda. I have to keep them in my room.” Her tone conveyed this was clearly not to her liking.
“Oh? Why is that?”
Clara frowned. “You said so. I musn’t muddy them. Don’t you ’member that?”
Shannon’s fingers paused in their work. This conversation was becoming difficult. She must speak to Clara’s father soon. She plucked at the kite tail for a few minutes longer, studiously avoiding Clara’s expectant face as well as her question. “There, it’s all done.” She put the kite aside. “You will have to be careful when you take it back to your room.”
“I will,” Clara agreed solemnly.
Shannon smiled. She patted a place closer to her, and while Clara scooted into the curve of her arm, Shannon leaned back against the headboard and shut her eyes. “Tell me about Emily. What do you and she do all day?”
Brandon stood in the doorway, his expression inscrutable as his daughter recited her daily activities in a pleasant singsong voice. Clara’s face was animated as she recounted her adventures. Rory looked tired, he noted, but when had she looked lovelier? It was not the dark lashes fanning her cheeks, the jet tendrils of hair framing her face, nor the lissome shape of her body beneath the coverlet that caused Brandon to feel as if his insides were being twisted. It was the sweet curve of her mouth that had Brandon’s gut lurching uncomfortably. So innocent. So demure. And, he reminded himself, so patently false.
He stepped into the chamber thinking his wife’s mendacity was exceeded only by her infidelity. “Martha has sugar cookies for you in the kitchen, Clara,” he said easily. “Why don’t you get some? I think your mother needs to rest now.”
Shannon’s eyes opened wide. She was unable to control the flinch that had her shying away like a startled fawn. Brandon’s presence seemed to fill the room, threatening her in a manner she could not properly identify. He hadn’t spoken harshly. On the contrary, the cadence of his speech was soothing. But there was a sense of something bitterly savage just below the surface of his lazy drawl that caused Shannon’s skin to prickle.
On this occasion Clara was oblivious to the tension. “Mama is better,” she announced confidently. “She said so.” Brandon said nothing, but one eyebrow arched, and Clara knew that expression. She took her doll from Shannon and slid off the bed.
“Your kite,” Brandon said, and lifted it from the bed.
Clara placed it carefully under her arm, glancing back at Shannon to show that she was not going to tangle the tail again. She was encouraged in her efforts by Shannon’s smile. “May I come at bedtime, Mama? To say goodnight?” Shannon nodded. Clara grinned impishly at her father as she swept past him. At the door she paused. In an aside to Brandon, she said, “Mama’s better, but she doesn’t ’member good and she talks funny.”
Brandon laughed as Clara disappeared in the hallway, and Shannon was astonished by the change in his demeanor. For a moment he looked exactly like the young man she had met in the woods of Glen Eden. The threads of disappointment and hurt were banished from the corners of his dark eyes, and his beautiful mouth was curved in a happy smile.
Still under Clara’s spell, he shook his head rather absentmindedly. “She’s an urchin, but a delightful one. We had one fine moment together, Rory.”
Flames of embarrassment licked at Shannon’s cheeks when she understood his meaning. “We had nothing together.”
Brandon paled beneath his tan, and his expression became remote. “I should have expected you would throw that in my face, Aurora. I stand corrected. Nevertheless, Clara is my daughter in spirit if not in blood. I will not brook interference from you. Is that clear?”
“You don’t understand. I wasn’t—that is, I didn’t mean—oh, I cannot think when you look that way. Please go! Go away!”
But Brandon did not go away. His jaw slackened and his brow furrowed as the clipped rhythm of his wife’s speech finally registered. Belatedly he understood what Clara had meant when she said her mother was talking funny. Rory had never assimilated the easy drawl of a southerner. Her voice always had a lilting quality to it, an influence from her French parents. Thi
s woman’s voice was something else again, but he refused to believe what his ears were telling him. “What game are you playing now?” he demanded. She was up to every trick, he told himself. He would put nothing past her.
In defense Shannon pulled the coverlet up to her shoulders. Her mouth opened to answer but no words would come out. She shook her head mutely.
Brandon thrust his hands in his pockets to keep from throttling her. “Say something, dammit. Your voice worked well enough a moment ago. And don’t cry,” he added when he saw threatening tears. “Don’t you dare cry!”
“I w-won’t. Only s-stop glowering.”
Brandon took a deep, calming breath and his fingers threaded through his silky hair, “I do not glower.”
It was an odd thing to say, and so untrue that Shannon had an urge to laugh. He sounded affronted. She struggled to tamp down a smile, and the corners of her mouth twitched. “You do, you know. Not when you look at—Clara—that’s your daughter’s name, isn’t it?” Brandon nodded in bewilderment. “You only glower at me. And I don’t know why. Didn’t you receive the earl’s letter? Or did you, and you don’t want anything to do with me?” She knew she was babbling, but she could not help herself. She was so frightened by the strength of the man in front of her that she thought she had better explain herself quickly. “I can understand that, you know. I said as much to his lordship. I told him I wouldn’t do as a governess. It isn’t fitting, but then, you must know that.”
Brandon lowered himself slowly into the bedside chair, his head reeling. “I think this is a very poor joke,” he said finally. “Who put you up to it? Was it Parker?”
“I don’t know anyone named Parker.”
“It must have been Aurora.”
Shannon looked at him hopefully. “Then you realize I’m not Aurora? I’m not your w-wife?”
Brandon’s eyes closed briefly. “I realize it…now. Why did you say nothing before? You knew who I thought you were. Or was it part of the joke?”
“I couldn’t speak before,” she reminded him. “Then you did not come around, and there was no opportunity to explain myself. There is no joke. At least I don’t think there is. I’m as bewildered by what has occurred as you. I’ve never met your wife, Mr. Fleming.”
“But you know me. How is that?”
Shannon bit her lip. Obviously he did not remember her. Worse, he had not received the earl’s correspondence. It was merely happenstance that she was in his home. That, and the astonishing fact that she resembled his wife. “We met once before. At Glen Eden. You fished me from a brook on that occasion.”
Brandon looked at her blankly. “No. It could not be.” He spoke to himself rather than to Shannon. “I knew there was a similarity, but this? No. It isn’t true.”
Shannon did not understand what he meant. “It is true,” she said, commenting on the only thing she thought was clear. “You were with the earl, and I was--”
“Asleep in a patch of wild strawberries,” he finished slowly. He recalled everything about his early morning ride with Eric Redmond: the winsome charm of a certain young woman; her unfeigned shyness at a simple flirtation; the innocence of expression in a face of startling beauty. The clarity of the memory astonished him, but he leashed the unexpected surge of pleasure that shot through him. “I remember.”
She brushed back a strand of hair and fiddled with the end of her braid. The coverlet slid lower due to her inattention. “Then why did you say it wasn’t true?”
“I was speaking of something else.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t,” he said softly, again as if to himself. “Not really. And that is the way I prefer it.”
“All right,” she agreed.
“No argument?” He relaxed slightly. “I think I like that.”
“I don’t like to fight,” she offered quietly with intense conviction.
Brandon’s thoughts suddenly flashed on the moment four years earlier when he had ridden up to the vicar’s cottage with Shannon Kilmartin in the saddle in front of him. The iciness in Thomas Stewart’s eyes was not something he was likely to forget, nor was the punishment he had surely meted out to his daughter. “No, you wouldn’t, would you?” He visibly shook himself out of his reverie by leaning forward in his chair and placing his elbows on his knees. He folded his large hands and made a steeple with his thumbs. “I think you have some explaining to do, Shannon Kilmartin.” He paused. “It is still Kilmartin, isn’t it? You never married?”
She felt a familiar ache in her throat and forced an answer past it. “No. I never married.”
He nodded thoughtfully, as if the answer did not surprise him. “What were you doing on board the Century?”
“Must I speak of it? The earl will explain all in his letter.”
“Eric? I’ve heard nothing from him since he wrote that he was getting shackled.”
Shannon flinched at this tasteless reference to marriage. Brandon Fleming knew nothing of leg shackling. She spoke with quiet dignity. “He promised he would write.”
He resolutely repressed a flicker of guilt at the pain he had inflicted with his thoughtless remark. He was not going to be taken in by another pair of soft violet eyes. “Then he will.” Shannon entertained the brief hope that he would not press her for an explanation, but he continued in his carefully modulated voice, “However, I require something in your own words. Tell me about the Century.”
“It is a prison ship,” she said inadequately.
“Yes, I know.”
“I was a prisoner.”
“I know that, too. But why?”
“His lordship arranged it.”
Brandon misunderstood, and experience made him quick to condemn. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “Eric would never do such a thing. I know him too well to believe it.”
“But it’s true.”
Brandon’s laugh held no humor. He stood. “I sincerely doubt that you have more than a nodding acquaintance with the truth,” he said. Even as the words were out, he knew they were directed less at Shannon and more at the image of his absent wife, yet he refused to call them back.
“You don’t understand,” said Shannon. But she was talking to an empty chamber. Brandon’s hard steps were already retreating in the corridor. Shannon turned on her side and hugged a pillow for comfort. Belowstairs she heard a door slam and closed her eyes. At least he had not hit her, she thought. In less than a minute she was deeply asleep.
Brandon sat in a chair facing the library window. He was still, and his hair glinted in the sunshine. His profile was formidable, his posture unapproachable. No one disturbed him. He stared unseeing at the land stretching endlessly before him while his thoughts centered on the young woman in his wife’s bedchamber. God, what a mess! Clara would have to be told. And Cody. And Martha. He would not countenance Shannon Kilmartin in his home. If it had been Aurora who had stepped off the Century, he would have had to tolerate her presence, but he did not have to tolerate her mirror image. It was unthinkable.
But what was he to do with her? Possibilities turned over in his mind, and none of them seemed satisfactory. His conscience smote him as he considered settling some coin on Shannon and sending her far away from the Tidewater. Hadn’t she tried to save Clara’s life even though she couldn’t swim a stroke? A faint smile touched his lips. Foolish chit! He must owe her some consideration for the attempt.
For the remainder of the day the problem of Shannon Kilmartin continued to plague Brandon. He was unfailingly polite to his staff as he tended to the running of the folly, but also so preoccupied as to be unaware of the currents of concern drifting through his household. It was the general consensus among the servants that Brandon should escort his wife to the banks of the James and push her in. No one, certainly not the master, deserved to be made so unhappy. Martha remained silent on the subject, refusing to lend her voice to the rampant speculation. She had never mentioned the locket to anyone, and the omission weighed heavily on her sturdy shoulde
rs. Now the locket had disappeared, and though she combed her pockets and the bedchamber for it, the search had been futile. She stood alone among the staff, feeling a twinge of sympathy for Brandon’s wife that would have made her the subject of raised eyebrows if she had announced her thoughts.
Cody did not try to breach the wall of reserve Brandon had erected and announced after dinner that he was going to Williamsburg. Brandon did not even seem to understand that Cody’s intention was to escape the oppressive air of the folly. Martha kept Clara under her wing, so the child never suspected how troubled her father was. When Brandon retired to his own room for the night, he was no closer to a solution and realized belatedly that he had not shared his discovery with anyone. He was too weary to examine the why of it.
Small fists thumping on Brandon’s chest woke him in the middle of the night. He pushed them aside, turned on his stomach, and prayed he was merely dreaming. Much to his disgust, the thumping continued on his back.
“Papa! Wake up!” Clara grasped her father’s shoulder and rocked it back and forth. “Wake up! She’s gone! Mama’s gone!”
Brandon sat up, fully awake. Without a word he grasped Clara in his arms and carried her through the connecting door to the adjoining room. His eyes had adjusted well enough to the darkness that he could see at a glance that Clara was correct. Shannon was gone.
He put Clara on the empty bed and lighted a candle. Shannon’s nightclothes were lying neatly over the high back of the bedside chair. It registered in one part of Brandon’s mind that she had even made the bed before she had taken off. Doubts that he had not realized he was still entertaining vanished. The carefully made bed was hardly the sort of thing Aurora would have done before making her escape.
“Please find her, Papa!” Clara whimpered. She hugged one of the pillows to her chest. Tears trickled down her flushed cheeks. “I like my new mama.”