Shannon looked around for Brandon’s horse and saw its bulky shape against the lee side of the cabin. Hurrying toward it, she started to put Clara on the saddle and stopped when she found Brandon’s musket strapped there. She set Clara down, prying the child’s arms from around her neck and tucking the blankets around her.
“Listen to me,” she said urgently, cupping Clara’s tear-streaked face in her palms. “I must help your papa.” The door slammed shut again, cutting off the noises of the fight inside. “I want you to stay here. Don’t move, Clara. Do you understand? I’m coming back for you.”
Clara didn’t understand, but she nodded anyway.
“Good girl.” Shannon quickly led the stallion away from Clara and tethered him behind the cabin with the other animals. She unstrapped the musket, checked the priming pan with the tip of her finger, and finding it ready for firing, returned to the cabin door. Something had fallen against the door, and she had to shoulder it open. Neither man spared a glance in her direction as the table, which had been the object blocking her entrance, bumped awkwardly across the floor.
Brandon’s arm was cut from shoulder to elbow. Droplets of blood spattered the dirt floor. The musket, which he had wielded, lay uselessly on the hearth’s stone apron, smashed in two pieces. Brandon reared back as Parker slashed the air in front of his face with the knife. The tip caught his jaw, and crimson beads marked the scratch immediately.
Parker’s features now lacked the distinction of perfection. His nose was bloodied and his right eye was grossly swollen, but he held his weapon with a fierce tenacity that caused bile to rise in Shannon’s throat.
Showing no signs of weakening, Parker forced Brandon into a corner and lunged.
Shannon leaned against the door for support and raised the musket. One shot. A moving target this time. God help me, she thought. And then she fired.
She felt the stock of the musket slamming into her shoulder, smelled the burnt gunpowder, heard Parker’s terrible animal cry as his body lurched unevenly. He stilled, collapsed, was still again.
Brandon knelt beside his brother. The ball from Shannon’s musket had caught Parker in the shoulder. It was not the fatal wound. “He fell on his knife, Shannon,” he said quietly. “You didn’t kill him.”
Shannon nodded heavily, her eyes closing for a brief moment. When she spoke, her voice evoked only an utter sense of weariness. “I’ll be with Clara.” She placed the musket on the floor, limped outside, and retched in the snow.
Epilogue
March 1747
Shannon set aside her brush as Brandon entered their bedchamber. Her eyes lifted, reflecting anxiousness. “Is she sleeping now?”
“Yes.” He came to stand behind her at the mirror and began to plait her hair. “Clara’s fine.”
“It was another nightmare, wasn’t it?”
Brandon nodded. “They come less frequently, and she is able to sleep alone now. She’s so young, Shannon. I think in time she will forget.”
“I wish it could be the same for us,” she said softly as if speaking to herself.
“I know.”
Shannon reached over her shoulder, placing her hand on Brandon’s as his fingers idly stroked the nape of her neck. She had long since reconciled herself to the role she had played in Parker’s death. Given the same set of circumstances, with Brandon’s life in danger, she would act in no other way a second time. “Let’s go to bed,” she said. There was nothing to be said that they had not discussed before. Parker’s peculiar descent into complete madness would always remain a matter of speculation regardless of how often Brandon wondered what he could have done to prevent it. In some ways coming to terms with Parker’s death had been more difficult for Brandon than it had been for her. He turned to her for strength, and in giving it, Shannon had found her own.
Brandon straightened, taking her hand. “Yes, let’s.” He led Shannon to the bed, unbelted her dressing gown, and while she slid into bed and warmed a space for him, he shrugged out of his robe. When he joined Shannon, his hand slipped around her waist, rubbing the smooth roundness of her abdomen. Without any encouragement from him, she nestled in the cradle of his thighs. “When will you tell Clara about the baby?”
Shannon smiled, warmed by the caress of his hand. “Soon. I need a little more time to become accustomed to the idea myself.” She hesitated. “I worry how she will receive the news. Clara has had us to herself for a long time.”
“She’ll be as happy as I was. Well, perhaps not quite as happy,” he amended, remembering his own elation when Shannon shyly told him about her pregnancy.
“I doubt she will pick me up and swing me about the bedroom,” she said dryly. “Then treat me as if I were some hothouse flower in the next breath. You were absurd, Brandon.”
Brandon laughed, squeezing her. He buried his face in her hair and nuzzled her neck. “I’ve no mind to be gentle with you now. Are you prepared to be ravished?”
“Yes, please,” she said simply.
His hand slid along the length of her arm from wrist to shoulder. “Are you quite certain this won’t hurt the babe?”
Shannon turned on her other side so she was facing him. “You’re being absurd again,” she chastised, albeit with a certain fondness. She kissed the sheepish curve of his mouth and laid Brandon’s hand upon her breast.
Brandon felt her suck in her breath when his thumb made a light pass across her nipple. Her immediate responsiveness struck an answering chord in him. His mouth hovered over hers, touched her lips and then settled until her lips parted beneath his, inviting his tongue, his intimate caress.
Shannon helped him draw up her nightdress, breaking the kiss long enough to discard the filmy shift over the side of the bed. Her knee insinuated itself between his hard-muscled thighs while her fingertips stroked the taut skin of his back.
