by Jo Goodman
Davey pretended to shudder. He pointed to the musket strapped to his back. “Course I’ll join you.”
* * *
Parker paused in his tracking. He did not want to get too close to his brothers, but he knew they were not more than a hundred yards to the north. From his vantage point he could see Aurora and Shannon approaching on horseback. They wove in and out of the trees, but Aurora’s scarlet plume caught his eye and held his attention. Parker’s gaze narrowed and sharpened on his quarry. Once again he was struck by the resemblance that had proved so crucial to his plans. At his present distance only Aurora’s clever little hat distinguished the sisters. He waited, camouflaged by the underbrush, forcing calm while telling himself it would not be much longer before his greatest wish was realized.
* * *
“Let’s circle around,” Brandon suggested, elbowing Cody in the ribs. “We owe Davey a debt. He’s chased the game back to the folly.”
Davey glanced over his shoulder as he lumbered forward in the direction Brandon indicated. “I figure it’s the only way you boys are going to get anything.” His voice dropped to a husky whisper. “C’mon. I think I spotted a buck through them trees.”
Cody and Brandon followed, beginning a good-natured squabble with Davey as to which one of them would claim the buck. They stopped on a small rise when they saw Davey hadn’t been joking, and held their breath as the buck bent his head to drink from the brook. Very slowly, so as not to alarm the deer, Cody slid his rifle from his shoulder and took aim.
Musket fire rocked Cody back on his heels.
Startled, the buck lifted his head. In the span of a moment he was gone, tearing through the woods for safety.
Cody turned to Brandon and Davey, but his question was never voiced. A woman’s scream sliced the still air. “Sweet Jesus! That sounds like—” He didn’t finish. Brandon had already pushed Davey aside and was running toward the origin of the scream. Cody slung his rifle back in place and gave the bewildered Davey a shove. “Move, man! Follow Brandon!”
Brandon raced through the woods, unaware that Cody and Davey were close on his heels. In his mind there was no room for anything but the echo of that first scream. Spindle-like branches and thorns tore at his clothing, and he did not feel any of it. The ten-pound musket on his back might as well have been a feather. He made a dive for safety as Anthem barreled through the underbrush, wild with fear. Rolling to his feet again, he pressed on, his mouth set grimly as he realized the implications of the riderless horse.
“Damn you! Get away from her, bitch!” he shouted when he saw Aurora beneath a massive oak, bending over Shannon’s still body. He watched the scarlet feather in Aurora’s hat bob as she lifted her face to him. Brandon’s hands curled into tight fists and he had to check his terrible anger before he slapped her and wiped what he saw as a parody of grief and anguish from her pinched features. He pushed Aurora aside so hard that she fell against the oak, bruising her shoulder. He knelt beside Shannon and cradled her head in his lap. With one hand he quickly undid the buttons of her coat.
“She’s dead, Brandon. The shot…She died in my arms.”
“Damn you! Damn your—” He stopped as his fingers touched the blossom of blood on the scarlet waistcoat while he sought a pulse in her neck with his other hand. Through a thin veil of tears he tried to make sense of what he was seeing and of what he had just heard. He raised his eyes to the woman slumped against the tree trunk. She had removed her hat and was turning it over in her hands, studying it as the planes of her face paled, first with some revelation, then with repulsion. She threw the hat away from her, clearly revolted, and buried her face in her hands just as Cody and Davey French came through the trees, holding a skittish Anthem between them.
“My God,” Cody whispered hoarsely, his eyes darting from one person to another in the tableau before him. “Is she—”
Brandon nodded. “The shot we heard,” he said. No other explanation was required.
Cody’s glanced dropped to Aurora’s hat. He released Anthem and stepped menacingly toward the oak tree. “I should have killed you years ago, whore! You don’t deserve to live for what you’ve done to her.”
“Cody! No! She’s Shannon!” The warning came too late. Cody had already gripped Shannon by the shoulders and flung her to the ground. Brandon released Aurora and tackled his brother. “No! I made the same mistake! It’s Rory who’s dead!”
Cody ceased his struggle, staring blankly at his brother. “Rory’s dead?” he repeated. He tilted back his head to look at Shannon. “You?” he asked incredulously. “All this time it’s been you?”
Shannon scrambled to her feet, horrified by the accusation. Anger blinded her as she backed away in disbelief. “No! How could you think it?”
Brandon gave Cody a hard shake before he released him in disgust. “He’s not thinking at all, Shannon. We heard the shot come from the west.”
Cody got to his feet, brushing himself off. “I’m sorry, Shannon. Bran’s right. I wasn’t thinking.”
Davey French tethered Anthem. “Will someone tell me what the hell’s going on? If this ain’t your wife, Bran, then who is she? And if she is your wife, then who is that?”
Brandon stood, ignoring Davey’s questions. He took a tentative step toward Shannon just as she was turning her back on him. He reached for her, touching her shoulder. When she didn’t spurn him, Brandon drew her close, sheltering her in his embrace. As soon as he felt her give over to her grief, he crushed her to him, his mouth against the dark softness of her tangled hair. “I was so afraid,” he whispered. “Afraid this time it would be you.”
She stiffened, acknowledging the truth she had learned minutes earlier. “I think it was meant to be.” Shannon clutched Brandon’s arms as she raised pained eyes to his. Her mouth trembled. “It was the hat, Brandon. She gave me her hat.” She shook her head, closing her eyes briefly. “Why did it happen? Why?”
“Shh.” He rocked her gently. “We’ll sort it out later.” Brandon shifted position so Shannon would not have to see Aurora’s lifeless body again. He lifted his chin in Cody’s direction and pointed to Pilgrim, who was cautiously approaching her fallen mistress. “Put her on Pilgrim. I’ll take Shannon back to the folly on Anthem. Davey?”
He held up his hand before Brandon could finish, knowing full well what was required of him. He had heard rumors that there was trouble at the folly, and he didn’t need to be struck over the head to realize he had stumbled into the middle of it. He didn’t understand anything but that Brandon Fleming needed his help. It was all he needed to know. “I’m on my way,” he nodded grimly. “If whoever fired that shot is still out there, I’ll find him.”
“I’ll hold you to that. It might help you to know that you’re probably looking for Parker.”
Davey swore softly, and then he was gone.
Shannon frowned, uncertain she had heard correctly. “Parker?”
“I don’t know,” Brandon said, running his palm along her spine. “It would make a terrible kind of sense.” He held her head. “Don’t look. Cody’s seeing to Aurora. We’ll follow after he’s gone.”
Cody hurried through his distasteful task, finding that while he could not pretend grief he did not feel, relief was not part of any of his emotions. Shannon had been right about him. As much as he wanted Aurora gone from the folly, he had never wanted her dead. He finished tying Aurora to Pilgrim and led the horse past Brandon and Shannon. Pausing briefly, he offered Shannon another apology. “I never meant what I said as an accusation,” he told her, clearing his throat. “Please forgive me.”
Shannon nodded, brushing Brandon’s chest with her forehead. She remembered the disbelief in Cody’s voice when he asked her if she had been responsible for Aurora’s death. “There is nothing to forgive.”
Cody’s shoulders straightened as if a weight were lifted from him. “I’m going to edge down toward the river, Bran, where the trail’s easier to follow. You can take Shannon through the woods.” He glan
ced around. “Be careful, Rory’s murderer is still somewhere about.”
Brandon didn’t release Shannon until Cody disappeared. “Are you able to ride?”
“Yes.” She wiped her wet face with the back of her hand. “I want to go home, Brandon. Please take me home.”
Brandon placed a light kiss on Shannon’s cheek, brushing aside the damp hair at her temples. One fingertip fluttered across her dewy lashes. “Wait here. I’ll get Anthem.” He went through the motions of untying Anthem and getting rid of the lady’s saddle without taking his eyes from Shannon for more than a few seconds. She was trembling badly by the time he had her mounted in front of him. Brandon slipped one arm around her waist. “Lean on me, Shannon. It’s all right. I’m taking you home now.”
Upon arriving at the folly, Brandon immediately took Shannon upstairs. She slipped her arms around his neck, clinging to Brandon’s shoulders. “My room,” she said when Brandon opened the door to his chamber, “is down the hall.”
“No, I don’t want you there. You belong here, where I know you’re safe. Please don’t argue with me.”
“I won’t,” she said quietly.
Brandon released a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He laid Shannon on his bed and helped her out of her jacket. “I’ll have Emily come to stay with you, bring you some tea. There are matters I must attend to, but I’ll return soon, and then we’ll speak of what happened if you wish.”
Shannon reached for his hand. “There were secrets, weren’t there? Things you suspected that you kept from me.”
“Yes,” he said gravely. “There were secrets. But no longer. You shall know the whole of it.” He bent and kissed her brow, withdrawing his hand from hers. “Later. For now I think you should rest.” He exited the room quietly.
Brandon called the house servants together in the drawing room to tell them what happened. His announcement was met with silence, no one daring to meet his eyes. Even though Aurora had rarely shown a kindness, Brandon realized his servants were embarrassed by their inability to display any sadness at her passing. Since he felt only a peculiar numbness himself, he well understood their feelings. He sent Jemmy to town for Sir James Harrity, and Emily to his chamber to attend Shannon. It was unnecessary to tell Martha what her duties were. She had prepared bodies for burial before, and she slipped from the room without any word from Brandon to await Cody’s arrival. After dismissing the servants, Brandon went to the nursery to face the one task he could not delegate to anyone.
Clara was sitting on the bed, her dolls arranged in a semicircle in front of her, while she pretended to read from her allybet book. Brandon’s mouth curved in a brief smile as he listened to his daughter earnestly describe the pictures and construct a fanciful story. She never noticed he was in the room until he asked Addie to leave and find Martha.
“Papa!” Clara clapped her hands in delight.
Brandon kissed her cheek and felt her arms go around his neck. The allybet book slid to the floor. He sat down on the bed and lifted Clara onto his lap. She felt so tiny, so vulnerable in the circle of his arms that it seemed to Brandon that his heart turned over. It was all he could do not to crush her in an embrace that was both desperate and despairing.
Clara tried to squeeze out of his arms. “You hug too tight, Papa.”
Brandon relaxed his hold. “Sorry.” He tickled the back of her neck, wondering what he should say to her, how he should say it. Somehow he worked the words past the tightness in his throat, stumbling occasionally as he searched for an explanation that Clara would understand.
Clara’s smooth brow wrinkled as she concentrated on what her father was saying. “Is my mama with angels?” she asked gravely.
“Yes.”
She thought about that for a moment. “In heaven?”
“Yes. Do you know about heaven?”
Clara’s head bobbed quickly. “Mishannon told me. She says my other grandmama is there. She says it’s beautiful.” She raised her head, uncertainty in her eyes, wanting to hear the truth from the person she loved best in the world. “Is it?”
“I expect so. It must be.”
“You’re not going to heaven, are you?” Clara’s bottom lip trembled and her chin dimpled as she tried to hold back tears.
“Not today,” he assured her. The pressure of his arms increased, and this time Clara didn’t make any attempt to get away. “And not tomorrow.”
“And Mishannon?”
“Mishannon will be here.” Brandon bent his head, pressing his cheek against Clara’s hair as she began to cry. “Papa’s here,” he murmured as he rocked her. The words took on the gentle cadence of a lullaby, and Brandon held his daughter long after she fell asleep in his arms.
When Brandon was able to return downstairs, he found Davey French waiting for him in the library. He had only to glance at the twist of Davey’s mouth and the heavy set of his shoulders to know his friend’s pursuit had been unsuccessful.
“Sorry, Bran,” Davey said, unconsciously crushing one corner of his hat. “I lost the trail. If it was Parker I was chasing, then you know why. He’s a damn fine tracker in his own right.” He accepted the drink Brandon offered him and knocked it back in a long swallow. “What’s going on, Bran? Why do you think it was that young pup Parker who shot Rory?”
“I know you deserve an explanation, Davey, but I would ask that you not press for it now. Sir James Harrity will be here and—”
“That bloody-minded son of a—”
Brandon held up his hand. “I know you have had disagreements with Sir James in the past. So have I. But he has been helpful to me, and I would like you to speak to him.” He drew a deep breath. “Davey, if Cody and I had not met you today, one of us would have been accused of killing Aurora. I cannot help but believe that was the intent—or part of the intent.”
“Hell, Bran.” Davey shifted his bulky weight from one foot to the other. “You know I’ll help you any way I can.”
“And I thank you for that.” Brandon took Davey’s hand in both of his and shook it briefly. “I’ll ring for Jemmy and see if we can’t get you settled.”
After Davey was shown to a chamber, Brandon went to his own room to speak with Shannon. She was no longer there. “I thought you agreed to stay where I put you,” he said when he found her in the chamber adjoining Clara’s. “Emily, you can go,” he told the servant. “I can see you have no control over her either.”
Shannon sat up in her small bed, propping a pillow between the small of her back and the headboard.
“Don’t blame Emily,” she said after the young girl skittered away. “I said I wouldn’t argue with you, and I haven’t. I couldn’t stay in your room. Surely you must see that. I came here when I heard you go downstairs. I want to be close to Clara.”
Brandon lowered his voice at the reminder of his sleeping daughter in the next room. “Very well,” he said reluctantly. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Have you rested at all?”
“A little. Aurora…is she…”
“Martha is preparing Aurora’s body.” He reached for Shannon’s hand when he saw her shiver. “The burial will be tomorrow.”
“It doesn’t seem possible she’s dead.” Shannon closed her eyes a moment, shaking her head in denial. “I still don’t understand what happened, Brandon. We were talking…and then…” Her voice trailed off and she looked at Brandon, a question in her eyes.
“How is it that you came to be riding with her?”
“She invited me. I didn’t want to go, not really, but she was so insistent, and she promised to stay close. It seemed better to go with her than to allow her to go with one of the grooms.”
“And why that particular trail? Why not the road?”
“I asked her that. Aurora said she was afraid Anthem would bolt if we were in the open.”
Brandon’s mouth was firm. Faint white lines cut the corners. “She knew where Cody and I were hunting.”
“No, she didn’t. I asked her.”
“Then she lied,” he said tersely. “I told her we were going toward French’s property.”
“Why did you never tell me?”
“It wouldn’t have meant anything to you. You aren’t familiar enough with the land around the folly. But Aurora knew. She deliberately led you to where we would be, fully aware of the danger of her actions. It is not unheard of for a hunter’s bullet to stray.”
“But the shot did not come from you or Cody or even Mr. French.”
Brandon rubbed his brow with his thumb and forefinger, massaging away the tense lines in his forehead. “I know. But Cody and I have Davey to thank for the proof of that statement. If we hadn’t met him, well, you can see how it would have appeared to everyone. Cody would have been a poor alibi for me, and I for him. The weight of suspicion would have been on one of us.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it,” she said fiercely.
A whisper of a smile crossed Brandon’s mouth. “Thank God for that. But I would have hardly blamed you if you had. You were intended to be suspicious.” His smile vanished and his expression became bleak. “Or you were intended to be dead.” He stood abruptly and walked to the window. Bracing one shoulder against the wall, he stared at the river through a break in the trees. “I cannot mourn for my wife,” he said quietly. “I should be the veriest hypocrite if I pretended a grief I do not feel. It is all too clear to me what she wanted to do, and I can’t forgive her for that.” Sensing Shannon was about to protest, he faced her again. “You know it also. I saw how you looked at Rory’s hat. You knew then that it had saved your life.”
“If it’s true that I was the hunter’s target, then Aurora saved my life,” Shannon pointed out gently. “She gave me the hat.” She drew the coverlet up to her shoulders as a chill swept her. “But we can’t be sure who was meant to be killed, can we? Not without finding the person who murdered Aurora.”
“I can be sure,” Brandon said emphatically. “Sir James suspected as much after Aurora’s riding accident. It was reasonable to assume that Aurora’s insistence that someone was trying to murder her had an alternative purpose. Sir James is not a man given to idle speculation, yet he considered even then that Aurora had planned her own accident. If that were true, then there was only one conclusion that made sense. Eventually there would be another accident, and you would be the victim. I would stand accused of inadvertently murdering you, while it would appear that it was Aurora I meant to kill.”