She put her book aside and watched Clara as she stirred in her sleep. “There is a lovely breeze blowing, poppet. I thought we might take out your kite.”
Clara sat up, her features still flushed with sleep. She rubbed her eyes and blinked owlishly at Shannon. A smile lighted her face. “Oh, you’re still here. I dreamed you was gone.”
Shannon did not bother with the ungrammatical. She leaned forward and touched Clara’s soft cheek with the tip of her finger. “I’m here,” she said gently. “See?” Though she put Clara’s fears to rest quickly, her own did not subside so easily. It was never far from her mind that she was merely the child’s governess, and therefore eminently expendable should someone more qualified be found for the position. It became the pattern of her evening that before she went to bed she would pray for one more day in which she might prove herself worthy.
“Mishannon?” Clara questioned impatiently.
Shannon came out of her reverie and laughed at the child’s run-on name for her. Clara had never been able to get her tongue around Miss Kilmartin. Shannon alone was too informal an address. She and Clara finally agreed on Miss Shannon, though when Clara said it, it sounded faintly proprietary, as if she were sayingmyShannon. “Sorry, poppet. I was thinking. Do you want to fly your kite?”
Clara nodded eagerly. Twenty minutes later they were outside in the fresh air and sunshine, and laughing uninhibitedly at their attempts to send the kite aloft. The tail tangled about Clara’s legs. Shannon picked her up and pretended to throw her into the wind.
“I’makite! I’makite!” she squealed until Shannon set her on the ground again and removed the tail from around her ankles. “You make it fly, Mishannon!”
“I can’t seem to run very well in these shoes,” Shannon said doubtfully, offering her best excuse for not being able to get the kite up.
“Take them off.”
Shannon was uncertain. It hardly seemed proper. “I don’t know,” she said uneasily. She looked around, glancing back at the house and then at the fields. For once she could find no one watching her. “All right.” She kicked off the shoes and removed her stockings. She wiggled her toes in the grass, sighing agreeably, then spied Clara’s look of longing. “You, too,” she said, laughing. “No need to take a pet over it. Give me your foot.” Deftly she removed Clara’s shoes and stockings and then stood up. “There, that’s lovely, isn’t it?”
“Lovely,” Clara agreed. “Now we’ll fly the kite.”
“I hope so,” Shannon said under her breath. She had never owned a kite and was not sure of the mechanics of flying one. She had watched others do it, and it seemed an easy enough thing until now. Clara offered suggestions, touting her Uncle Cody as the expert on kite flying, and finally, quite by accident, Shannon sent the thing soaring.
“Give it string!” Clara cried, hopping up and down excitedly. “More string!”
Shannon quickly loosed more twine from the spindle, and the kite went higher. “Would you like to hold it, Clara? Be careful; the breeze is strong.”
Clara took the spindle and felt the kite tug on the line, lifting her arms. “Oooh! I’m going to fly!”
Shannon laughed, her entire face beautifully animated as she felt Clara’s joy become a real thing inside her.
Cody stood at the study window. The noisy antics of Clara and Shannon had drawn him to the window, but Brandon’s arrested expression at his side kept him there. Brandon seemed oblivious to his presence. Cody considered it a good sign. “She’s quite something, isn’t she?” he asked after a moment. “I doubt she’s ever been more content.”
“It would appear Clara is good for her,” Brandon said quietly.
Cody tempered the grin that would have split his face if he had given it leave to do so. “I was speaking of Clara, Bran.”
“Oh.” With an effort he pulled his gaze away from Shannon’s lithe figure as she hovered about his daughter, making sure the kite did not escape the tiny hands. Clara laughed gleefully in that moment, and Brandon saw Shannon bend down and hug the child, both their faces radiating a deep happiness that somehow struck at the core of him. He turned away from the window and said a little brusquely, “Of course Clara’s content. Why shouldn’t she be? She has Miss Kilmartin’s undivided attention.” Oh Lord, he thought. Even to his own ears he sounded jealous. There was no telling what Cody would make of it.
Cody wisely chose to make nothing of it, though he was more than a little curious about Brandon’s response. Did Brandon want more of Clara’s time or Shannon’s? The possibility that it was the latter intrigued Cody. “I don’t think Shannon’s spoiling Clara.”
Shannon was it? Since she had become Clara’s companion, Brandon had been careful to address her to others as Miss Kilmartin, believing the more formal address would help distance him from her. Cody persisted in calling her Shannon, probably with her permission. “I don’t believe I said Clara was being spoiled, only that she hadMiss Kilmartin’sfull attention. Although of late I’ve noticed you spending a good deal of time in their company.” Dear God, hewasjealous.
Cody shrugged off Brandon’s bad humor. “I helped them count kittens in the stable the other day.”
“Let me guess. There were eleventeen of them.”
“So Clara told you.” He laughed and pointed to a scratch on the back of his hand. “One of the little darlings, number seven, I think, clawed me. Then Shannon made me play the patient while she showed Clara how to clean and bandage my not very mortal wound.”
Brandon scowled at the thought of Shannon’s tenderly ministering to his brother. “You’ve healed well enough, I see,” he said sarcastically.
“Right as rain,” Cody agreed easily. “She’s very easy to talk to, you know, if one takes the time to draw her out. She’s—I don’t know quite how to describe it—restful, I think. That’s it. Restful.” He did not mention he had never conversed with her without Clara nearby. “I can’t imagine why you avoid her. Except for the unfortunate accident of her appearance, she’s nothing like Aurora.”
“I never said she was. And Idon’tavoid her.” As if he needed to prove something to himself, he faced the window again. Shannon and Clara were lying in the grass, Shannon’s arms extended above her and stayed there, held in place by the tension in the kite string. He did not have to see her face to know that she was smiling. “And,” he added tightly, “the unfortunate accident is that Rory looks like her, not the other way around.”
Cody’s comment died in his throat as the erratic wind yanked the kite, line, and spindle from Shannon’s hands. Shannon and Clara leaped to their feet in unison and gave chase, but the kite veered sharply into a grove of trees before Shannon caught the line. “Now what are they going to do?” he asked. But he was speaking to an empty room.
Shannon stood at the base of the tree, hands on her hips, and stared mutinously at the greedy tree that had eaten their kite. Beside her, Clara mimicked her posture exactly. “I suppose this never happened to your Uncle Cody,” she said, sighing.
