by Jo Goodman
He nodded. “I don’t feel toward her as I do toward you.”
“That’s because she hurt you.”
“No.” Brandon dropped the sheet and took her face in his hands. His thumbs brushed the corners of her mouth. “No. It is because she never was you.”
She continued to stare at him gravely. “I don’t understand.”
“I met you first, Shannon,” he answered quietly. “I chanced upon a lovely young woman sleeping in a field of strawberries. I shall never forget your face as it was then, as it is now in moments when you don’t think I’m looking. There was a tranquility about you, a serene sort of confidence that everything would be as you wished when you woke.”
“I wanted it to be that way. It never was.”
“I know. But I fell in love with the woman who dreamed it could be.”
“Then? You loved me then?”
His hands dropped away from her face. His faint smile mocked himself. “I only wish I had understood it then. I realized it too late. Much too late. I had already married Aurora.” He wrapped the sheet around his waist and leaned back against the headboard. Shannon went willingly into the circle of his arm. His fingers sifted idly through her hair. “I didn’t have the courage to approach you again while I was at Glen Eden. I could not forget the way you looked at me in church. You loathed me then, but probably no more than I loathed myself. I had arrogantly disregarded your wishes the previous day and escorted you to the vicarage. And you were the one who suffered.” His fingers stopped their movement. “Stewart beat you, didn’t he?”
Shannon nodded. She would not say it was the first time her stepfather had tried to rape her. Brandon would blame himself as she had done at first. It was senseless to burden him with that. Not when the fault lay with Thomas Stewart. She was beginning to understand that now.
His fingers resumed their threading, and after a long silence, he spoke again. “When I met Aurora I believed that fate had intervened to offer me that which I had desired most and foolishly lost. It was an accident that I had arrived in Philadelphia anyway, the result of a mid-Atlantic storm that played hell with the captain’s schedule. She was coming from her father’s shipping office as I was leaving the ship. I followed her shamelessly and manufactured an excuse to speak to her. The rest you know.”
She knew. Every detail of his courtship with Aurora had been engraved in her mind when she agreed to pose as his wife. Things she did not wish to know, she would never be able to forget. Yet, as he continued, she realized there were motives behind his actions that she could never have suspected.
“I knew she wasn’t you, of course, but that didn’t stop me from convincing myself that she possessed your same qualities. She was too young to marry, younger than you in many ways. I ignored it. She set her cap for me. I allowed myself to be flattered. By the time the scales were lifted from my eyes and I became acquainted with the Aurora everyone else at the folly knew, the point of making amends had passed. She was carrying Clara then, and I could not bring myself to divorce her no matter how she provoked me. We agreed to each go our own way and merely keep up appearances. The arrangement satisfied her for a while. It was pride that made me chafe at her for fleeing with Parker. But the truth is she was never happy at the folly, and I had married her for all the wrong reasons.”
“Because you thought she was like me,” Shannon said slowly, a trace of sadness in her voice.
“Yes. And when fate intervened again in the form of your arrival, I made all the same mistakes in reverse. Even when I realized you were not Aurora, I warned myself that you were like her. I was cruel to you. It was the only form of protection I had left.”
“You were never cruel.”
“I frightened you.”
“Yes, but not in the way you think. You made me fear myself.”
“And yet you came to me tonight.” His fingers tightened in her hair.
“I struggled with the decision for what seemed like hours. In the end I couldn’t stay away.”
Brandon turned her face toward him, and his kiss was gently thorough and thoroughly gentle. “You’ve made me very happy.” He grinned when he saw that he hadn’t quite erased the mark on her jaw. “Tell me, when you are struggling with a decision, do you always set about cleaning the hearth?”
“I wasn’t cleaning anything,” she told him indignantly. “I was searching for the key to unlock the door.”
“Of course,” he teased. “It’s perfectly reasonable to keep the key in the fireplace.”
Shannon nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. “I didn’t keep it there. That’s where I threw it. I thought it would stop me from coming here.”
“But it didn’t.”
She raised her hands, examining both sides of them, and sighed. “No, you can see what happened.”
“It wasn’t weakness that brought you here, Shannon. It was your strength.” He let her think on that a moment before he scrambled out of bed, trailing a sheet behind him. It was hitched low over his hips, and he smiled to himself at the way Shannon’s eyes narrowed on his hasty fastening, as if she expected it to fall apart at any second—and secretly desired it should do so.
Shannon watched Brandon disappear behind a dressing screen and return a little later with a basin and pitcher, a towel flung over his shoulder, and a distinctive expression of mischief on his face. He set the basin on the bedside table, poured some water in it, and lighted several more candles. Wringing out the cloth he had put in the basin, he sat on the edge of the bed. Shannon fully expected him to wash himself, so she was startled when he began applying the damp cloth to her face first.
“I can do that,” she said.
“Of course you can,” he agreed solemnly. “And you’ll get your chance when I’m finished.” His eyes were dancing as his fingers tugged at the counterpane that modestly covered her breast. “As I recall, you have a bit of soot here as well.”
Shannon knew she did. She had clutched the key to her breast in an agony of indecision when she had finally retrieved it. Still, it seemed to her that Brandon was cleaning an area wider than was warranted by the mark. The cloth separated his hand from her skin, but it might as well have not been there. She felt only his palm against her breast and an aching fullness in the wake of his touch.
“Do you remember the evening I walked in while you were taking a bath?” he asked idly.
Shannon swallowed hard then nodded. She continued to watch the path of his hand.
“I wanted to do this then. You looked perfectly adorable. Especially when you sat up in the tub. I could see your breasts. They were damp, like they are now, and I remember thinking that I wanted to touch them.” Brandon felt Shannon tremble as his movements slowed to a tender massage. He tossed the cloth back into the basin and began drying her with the towel. “But that was before you screamed,” he added, grinning cheekily as he wiped the last droplet of water away. He feigned injury when Shannon yanked the towel from his unresisting hands and flicked him with it.
“Wretch! I think you delight in teasing me.”
Brandon agreed happily. “Hold out your hands. I think they are begging for my attention.” He shifted the basin to his lap and spent several minutes wiping the grime from her palms. When he was finished he emptied the bowl in a chamber pot and refilled it with fresh water. Setting it beside Shannon, he scrambled to the other side of her and gave her the cloth. “Now you shall have your chance,” he announced. “And you may tease me all you wish. I am not so mean-spirited that I would take offense.”
Shannon looked dumbly at the cloth in her hand, then at the trail of her fingers across Brandon’s body. Gathering the threads of her dignity and determined to make something of this that he was not likely to forget, Shannon dipped the cloth in the water and began scrubbing Brandon’s shoulder. She pretended not to notice that he winced at her less than gentle treatment, and carefully maintained a grave expression when she really wanted to burst out laughing.
Shannon was not certain whe
n her humor changed, and along with it, her intent. Perhaps it was when she watched water trickle from his shoulder, down his chest, and be absorbed by the sheet at his waist. The droplets of water that clung to the fine mat of hair on his chest trapped the candlelight. She could scarcely take her eyes away from the tiny beads of fire. She leaned forward and touched one of the beads to the tip of her tongue. She heard Brandon catch his breath. She touched another. Raising her face to his, she kissed him, letting him feel the sweet dampness on her lips.
Brandon was of the opinion that the kiss was too fleeting, more of a promise than a thing of reality. When he tried to make it deeper, Shannon pulled back from him, insisting he give her his back.
“It’s begging for my attention,” she said primly.
Brandon considered that perhaps he was mean-spirited after all. Her teasing was sheer torture. He turned his back to her anyway and closed his eyes as she squeezed water from the cloth onto his shoulders. Her hand trailed along the length of his spine. She rubbed off each of her prints with the gentleness she would give to a baby’s skin or a fine piece of velvet. Then, imitating his own actions, she kissed each mark and branded him anew.
“You can turn around,” she said. When he complied she loosed the sheet and lowered it over his hip.
Brandon watched the color rise in her cheeks but made no comment. He studied her bent head as she applied herself to the task of removing the last of the soot. His hand went to the nape of her neck and then tightened in her hair when she lowered her mouth to kiss him there also.
He turned her on her back and trailed kisses across her collarbone. The sheet and the counterpane were discarded as their legs and arms sought the press of flesh to flesh. There were few words between them, but words were unnecessary as their bodies communicated hunger and need and, at last, the driving force of their passion.
They laughed once, both of them startled when the basin slid over the edge of the bed and banged on the floor, spilling its contents across the polished wood. Neither of them considered leaving the bed to clean it up, and their laughter was silenced by the much more important matter of exchanging kisses.
Brandon’s mouth adored the inside of Shannon’s wrist, tracing the delicate blue veins with the edge of his tongue. He teased the flat of her belly with his fingertips. His legs shifted between her slender ones and he felt her move, winding around him, rubbing against him as a cat would. She very nearly purred when his palm slid across her hip and brought her in closer contact with him. She smiled as the evidence of his desire was pressed against her.
Shannon’s hand brushed his chest, the tips of her fingers tracing the path of hair between his rib cage, down the center of his abdomen to the point where it tapered at his groin. There was the slightest hesitation before she reached for him, closing her hand around him and guiding him into her. She could not remove her eyes from the point of their joining. “Look at us,” she whispered.
Brandon did. Then, because he could not restrain himself, and did not believe she wanted him to, he lifted her hips and drove into her hard.
The rhythm that caught them was fiercely loving, a clash of bodies caught in mutual desire. There was violence and there was tenderness. Shannon’s fingers were pressed whitely to the bronze of Brandon’s flesh.
His kisses scored her senses.
In the aftermath there was only the sound of their breathing.
Brandon pulled the abandoned counterpane over their bodies while Shannon slipped an arm about his waist and nestled her head in the curve of his shoulder. He thought she had fallen asleep and was about to do the same when she spoke.
“How much longer will the Marchands be staying?” she asked.
“I’m not certain. Why do you ask?” When she did not answer immediately, Brandon frowned, putting his own meaning to their silence. “Shannon, when the Marchands leave, it will, not be the end to us. Don’t imagine that it will be so.”
Shannon glanced up at his stern profile in surprise. She pushed back a lock of corn silk hair that had fallen across his forehead. “I wasn’t thinking any such thing. I was wondering how long I might have the convenience of sharing the room next to yours.”
Brandon grinned crookedly, relieved that she was not entertaining notions of leaving him. “There’s no reason for you to move into another bedchamber after Paul and Michaeline go.”
“There’s every reason,” she informed him quietly. “I must take the room next to the nursery, else everyone will suspect.”
“None of the servants would dare say anything.”
“Perhaps not, but they will treat me differently. It’s taken me too long to overcome the handicap of my appearance to lose their respect now. And there is the matter of Cody and Clara.”
“If you think Cody would make any objection, you are certainly in the wrong of it. He’s done everything but unlock that damn door himself. As for Clara, she’s too young for this to be of any consequence.”
Shannon shook her head. “You may know your brother, but you have much to learn about your daughter. She and I were in your room one day, looking for her allybet book. She pointed to this bed and told me she once slept with her mama and papa here. Then she asked me very seriously who I slept with.” She paused while Brandon chuckled. “She sees much more than any one of us give her credit for.”
“I don’t care for the image of you creeping into my room at night.”
“I don’t care for it either,” she admitted. “Which is why I wondered how long the Marchands would be staying.”
Brandon didn’t answer her, caught in a bind of his own making. It was too dangerous for Paul and his wife to spend more than a few weeks with them, yet he wanted Shannon to remain at his side with the openness she was permitted in her guise as Aurora. He leaned across her and snuffed out the candles, lying awake in the dark long after Shannon had fallen asleep.
It was late morning before Shannon stirred again. She was in her own bedchamber, and the door to Brandon’s room was closed. She had a faint memory of Brandon carrying her to bed just as dawn was lighting the sky. He had kissed her forehead and touched her mouth with his fingertip. He was gone before she could reach for him.
Shannon sat up, stretching. The key to the connecting door was lying on the top of her dresser. She smiled as a narrow ray of sunlight touched the key and it gleamed. Obviously Brandon had polished it. Dear, sweet man.
Laughing for no reason that she could think of except that she was very, very happy, Shannon bounded out of bed. Brandon would be in the fields now, and she went to the window to see if she could catch sight of him. The workers were out in force now, cutting down the plants that had been topped off more than a month ago. The long leaves lay where they were struck down. Later, after they had wilted to limpness, all the hands, women and children included, would carry them to the open sheds, where they would be hung to cure. The harvesting had already progressed to acres of land beyond her vision. Somewhere out there was Brandon, and it was enough for now to know that.
Shannon joined Michaeline in the small family dining room, where breakfast was usually served. It was the first time she had shared a meal alone with either of the Marchands. Usually she ate much earlier with Brandon, Cody, and Paul. Clara still took her breakfast in the nursery with Addie, while Michaeline rarely rose before ten. She schooled her features carefully, not wanting to show her disappointment that she was not able to relax her guard.
“Good morning, Mama,” Shannon said brightly, lifting the covers of several dishes on the sideboard.
Michaeline replied in kind. “I thought you were having a lie-in when Martha told me you were not up yet.”
“No, nothing like that, I was merely tired. Are the hotcakes good?”
“Delicious.” Her eyes danced as she observed Shannon filling her plate. “You do not often eat so much, do you?”
Shannon stared at her heavy plate in dismay, and because she knew the reason for her appetite, she blushed, having the sinking feeling th
at it was not something Aurora would do.
“You should, you know,” Michaeline went on. “You’re far too thin. Your father thinks so, too.”
“I’ll do better, Mama.” She kissed Michaeline’s raised cheek before she sat down next to her. “I promise.” Shannon’s first bite of eggs stuck in her throat when Michaeline looked at her oddly.
“You’ve changed, Aurora,” she said thoughtfully.
Shannon swallowed and attempted to smile. “Everyone changes, Mama. I suppose you see it more clearly because we’ve been apart so long.” She touched the gauzy cuff of Michaeline’s blue linen dress. “We shouldn’t let it happen again.”
Michaeline looked down at Shannon’s hand resting on her arm. “No, we shouldn’t,” she agreed absently.
Shannon’s attempt at eating after that exchange was merely for form. Nothing went down her throat without difficulty. After a while she gave up and pushed her plate away. “I wasn’t so hungry after all,” she explained when Michaeline observed her action. Her confidence sagged even further when she realized Michaeline had done little justice to her own meal, appearing to have merely rearranged its contents on her plate. Shannon felt she had no choice but to rush her fences. “Is something wrong, Mama? Don’t you feel well?”
The lace trim on Michaeline’s sheer white lawn mobcap fluttered a little when she suddenly turned to Shannon. Her face was set determinedly, as if she were mounting her courage.
Why, Shannon thought in amazement, she’s afraid of Aurora. She’s afraid of her own daughter. Her heart went out to Michaeline.
“We must discuss the last visit your father and I made to the folly,” she said firmly. “I was certain you would mention it, and I promised your father that I would say nothing until you did, but I can no longer go on wondering what you overheard Paul and me saying the day before we left.”
“What I overheard?” Shannon repeated in bewilderment. Her worst fear when she had agreed to help Brandon had been exactly this sort of conversation, one in which only Aurora herself could provide the appropriate responses.