“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 theCentury.”
“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 theCentury,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 shoulders. 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.”
Brandon’s search of the wardrobe was abruptly halted. He turned on his heels to face his daughter. “Your new mama?” he asked carefully. “What do you mean, Clara?”
“She’s nice. And she let me sit in bed with her.”
Brandon was stunned. It had never occurred to him that Clara would have been aware of differences in the behavior of her mother and Shannon. Apparently she had decided she very much liked the changes. He was uncertain if Clara fully understood that the “nice” woman was not Rory.
Clara’s bottom lip trembled. “She fixed my kite. Where is she? Why did she go? Doesn’t she like me?”
Brandon lifted Clara off the bed. “I think she likes you just fine, poppet,” he said, carrying her back to her own room. He did not add that Shannon did not have the same regard for him. “I don’t know where she’s gone, but I promise I’ll find her.”
“And bring her back.”
Brandon hesitated before answering. “I don’t know if she’ll come, darling.”
Clara squeezed her father’s neck as she was lowered onto her bed. “Tell her I want her back,” she whispered against his ear. “I like her.”
