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.”
