Shannon lifted her chin and gave her partner the full force of her winsome smile, dark lashes fluttering demurely as she listened to his pretty compliments. “Fie on you, sir,” she said breathlessly as she was spun in a series of circles. “You will turn my head with your flowery nonsense.” She spun faster and faster, humming a tune in her soft, melodic voice, until her fantasy was ended by a wave of dizziness. The room tilted alarmingly when Shannon stumbled to a halt, and she laughed giddily as her partner, the king, and all the courtiers disappeared from her mind’s eye. Her legs buckled drunkenly beneath her and she collapsed on the hardwood floor, the heavy folds of her red velvet gown easing the force of her fall.
“I don’t think I have the way of it yet,” she said, smiling ruefully as she caught her reflection in the mirror across the room. Several thick strands of her heavy hair had come loose from the pins and fell haphazardly about her bare shoulders. The hem of the gown had ridden upward, revealing the ruffled border of her chemise and an immodest length of her coltish legs. Her cheeks were flushed with color, and the laughter that lurked on the generous curves of her mouth animated her entire face. She turned away from the glass hurriedly, disconcerted by what she saw. For a moment she vainly imagined herself to be of passable prettiness, and she could not bear to think of the trouble that lay in that direction.
She could not help but regret the impulse that had prompted her to dress in such a fashion. Nothing good would come of it if her stepfather or the housekeeper surprised her. That she was in her own room was no guarantee of privacy. Glancing at the mirror again, Shannon was rather dismayed to discover the tight lacing of the gown revealed more flesh than it bound.
She stumbled to her feet, eager to be out of the gown now that she saw how the out of the bodice immodestly displayed the high curves of her breasts. Minutes ago, when she had been standing in the palace before her king, the gown had given her confidence. For the duration of her fantasy she forgot she was merely a country mouse in the company of her betters. Now, standing in her stark room with only two tallow candles sputtering their light from the mantelpiece, she saw the foolishness of attempting to be what she was not.
She turned her back on the looking glass, fingers fumbling with the bodice laces, and cursed gently when she tangled the ribbons. She was so attentive to her problem that she did not hear the door to her bedchamber open. Shannon gave a little gasp, her features paling as a throat cleared itself.
Thomas Stewart paused in the open doorway, leaning on his ebony walking stick. As he took in the picture of his stepdaughter, her hands frozen in protectiveness across her bosom, the austere planes of his face tightened and became even grimmer. His frosty blue eyes narrowed as they swept over Shannon’s attire, and a muscle in his cheek jumped as he worked his jaw in anger. “Strumpet,” he said, spitting out the single word with the same force he used to call up fire and brimstone from the pulpit. “What are you doing in that gown?”
Shannon’s hand fluttered nervously to her throat. Thomas Stewart had the ability to make Shannon feel as if she were still a child rather than the sixteen years she truly was. Her violet eyes dropped from Thomas’s flinty stare and settled with a certain wariness on the bloodless fist gripping the knob of the walking stick. “I was playing,” she told him quietly, cursing the slight tremor in her voice. “I found the gown in a trunk in the attic. It was Mama’s.”
“Your mother never wore such a gown. It’s a whore’s dress! Fit for the devil’s handmaiden!” He took a few steps into the room, favoring his left leg and leaning heavily upon the cane. “Where did you get it?”
Shannon lifted her chin and hardened her resolve. “I told you. I found it in—”
“Liar!”
“I’m not!”
“Liar!” His gaze dropped to the blood-red bodice of the gown where Shannon had knotted the lacing. The ivory curves of her breasts rose and fell with each shaky breath she took, threatening to come out of the bodice completely. The sight of her seemed to mesmerize him as much as it infuriated him. “My wife would have never dressed as you are now!”
Shannon took a deep breath. “My mother was not always your wife.” It was a true measure of Shannon’s anger that she did not for one moment wish she could call the words back. It wounded Thomas’s considerable pride that his wife had once loved another man. Shannon’s presence in his household was all the reminder he needed. She steadied herself for the blow she knew would come and prayed she would not shame herself by begging.
“Harlot!” Thomas Stewart lashed out with the cane. It whistled in the air as he swung it sideways and upward, cracking sharply against Shannon’s bare shoulder.
Shannon staggered backward, biting her lip to keep her silence. Her eyes closed briefly against the pain and she failed to see the cane slashing toward her again. With no time to prepare, she was knocked against the bedpost, injuring her other shoulder.
“How dare you give me the cutting edge of your tongue!” Thomas said between clenched teeth.
“How dare you call me a liar!”
Thomas ignored her heated words as his eyes were drawn once more to Shannon’s bodice. There were spots of high color on his cheeks, which had the effect of making his eyes appear more sunken than was their normal state. A ruddy flush mottled his thin neck above the collar of his stark black coat. “Take off that gown! I forbid you to dress in such a shameless manner in my home!”
Shannon held her tongue as she turned away from her stepfather, working the knot in the laces with fingers that trembled. When she had undone the knot, she held the bodice together and stared at the floor. Her shoulders burned from the welts he had inflicted, and her eyes stung with tears she was too proud to release.
“You will give me that gown now,” rasped Thomas. “Then we will pray together. I shall loose Satan’s hold on you.”
Shannon was not sure she had heard correctly. Did he expect her to disrobe in front of him? She swallowed her pride. “May I have a moment’s privacy?”
Thomas became even more inflamed. The hand that was not clutching the walking stick made a fist in Shannon’s hair and pulled hard. “Do you think I could be tempted by the wiles of a Jezebel? You will remove that gown now!”
Tears spilled from Shannon’s eyes as she released her tight hold on the bodice. She tugged on the tightly fitted sleeves of the gown, baring her arms, then pushed the gown past her waist until she could step out of it. She kept her back to her stepfather, trembling from the chill of fear that swept her limbs. The muslin chemise that doubled as her nightgown was not adequate covering, and she was tortured further by imagining Thomas’s gaze resting on her back and buttocks. There was a heavy pause before his hand released her hair and he stooped to pick up the gown. He walked around her, thrusting the gown into her shaking hands, and ordered her to toss it in the fireplace.
Shannon could not meet her stepfather’s eyes. Her vision blurred while studying the rich crimson fabric as she walked toward the hearth. She fed the gown to the greedy flames until it was consumed in a rush of heat and light. Turning away from the mantel, Shannon shuddered anew at Thomas’s cold, encompassing gaze.
“Come here,” he commanded tightly. “We will kneel by the bed and pray for your soul.” Using the cane for support, Thomas slowly got to his knees. He tapped the cane on the spot next to him, motioning for Shannon to join him.
Shannon wanted to tell him there was nothing wrong with her soul, she was not a wanton, but she knew her defense would have been useless. In Thomas Stewart’s eyes she would always be the bastard child of Mary Kilmartin, and therefore she carried the sin of her mother. Though Thomas wed young Mary knowing she was pregnant, he refused to give her child his name. Shannon often thought that if she had looked more like her mother, Thomas might have come to accept her. The fact that she possessed none of her mother’s delicacy and fair coloring was a constant reminder that she was another man’s issue. It further enraged Thomas that for years Mary only gave him stillborn sons and daughters while the bastard child grew healthy and strong, possessed of a certain beauty that owed nothing to his seed.
Shannon could forgive her stepfather the lifetime of mere tolerance he had shown her. She could even forgive him the beatings he administered when he found her behavior not to his liking. But she could not forgive him for killing her mother. The thin walls of the cottage could not protect Shannon from hearing what should have been a private matter between Mary and Thomas. There had been many nights when she had heard her mother sobbing in the aftermath of her husband’s attentions. Exactly what those attentions were bewildered Shannon until her tenth year, when she chanced to see two stray dogs rutting. It was when the bitch delivered her pups that Shannon finally made the connection between the act and the result. She never mentioned her discovery to anyone because it sickened her. Though she loved her mother, she found herself despising what she could only understand as Mary’s weakness in allowing Thomas to lie with her.
Thomas Stewart demanded a son, and Mary had died trying to accommodate him. It did not matter the midwife had warned that Mary would probably not survive another birthing. Shannon was not yet twelve when her mother died laboring over the birth of one more stillborn son. Thomas’s curses and Mary’s screams still rang in Shannon’s head. When she heard them, as she did now, she hated Thomas Stewart enough to wish him dead.
As she knelt beside her stepfather and bowed her head, it was to ask forgiveness for the sickness in her soul. She must be a most grievous sinner to wish another person harm.
Taking her posture for compliance, never suspecting that her thoughts were running a decidedly different course, Thomas began praying aloud for Shannon’s release from the devil’s hold.
