“Why didn’t you simply deny it?” Brandon asked Shannon with more sharpness than he intended. His regret was immediate but not apparent.
Shannon flinched, stricken that he could be so lacking in feeling. Throughout the day her thoughts had drifted to the moment when she would have to relate her conversation with Michaeline to Brandon. She knew he would be upset, but she did not anticipate he would be curt with her or suggest she should have done other than what she did. “It did not occur to me to deny the truth,” she said. Shannon reached for her embroidery hoop and began jabbing the needle through the linen with no part of her mind on the task. “I was given to understand that Aurora did encourage Parker.”
Clara had long since been put to bed, and the Marchands had retired early after winning only one of three games of whist in their match with Brandon and Cody. In one corner of the drawing room Cody was still snapping down cards with irritating regularity as he cheated at solitaire. Brandon had been reading, one leg hooked over the arm of his chair and looking extremely relaxed, when Shannon first spoke of her discussion with Michaeline. Now the book was hooked over the chair’s arm and both of his feet were on the floor. There was nothing casual about his posture.
Brandon passed one hand across his brow, brushing back a lock of hair in irritation. “Of course Aurora encouraged him, but she would have denied it to her mother, just as you should have done. You merely roused her suspicions.”
“No,” Shannon said firmly. “I didn’t. I may have confirmed them, but I did not rouse them. Michaeline is more astute than you would have had me believe. She appears to know her daughter better than you think. Anyway, I told you, I neither denied nor assented. I felt I had no choice but to walk away. She informed me herself that Aurora avoided unpleasant situations.”
Cody chuckled and snapped another card to the table. “True, but she loved to create them. As long as she had the upper hand, they were a source of pleasure.”
Brandon scowled at his brother. “Would you stop doing that!” he ground out when Cody flicked another card.
“Do you want me to leave?”
Brandon and Shannon answered at the same time but with different reasons for wanting him gone. Cody gathered his cards and stood, casting a look of sympathy in Shannon’s direction. “I’m sorry, dear heart, but you’ll have to face the dragon alone.” He looked significantly at Brandon. “And you, brother, if you have a modicum of sense, will see that she handled the situation perfectly. In addition, you will make certain Shannon is not left alone with either of Aurora’s parents again. For God’s sake, Bran, Michaeline was speaking French to her! She deserves something more than your criticism for being able to handle that.”
There was a tense silence after the door clicked behind Cody. Shannon gave a little start as Brandon began to laugh. “He always manages to get his piece in before he goes. Had you noticed?”
Shannon smiled faintly. “It would be hard not to.”
“He enjoys being your champion,” Brandon said. “He’ll make a fine lawyer.”
Shannon continued to work on her stitchery but without the angry staccato piercing of minutes before. “I suppose he would, if that’s what he wanted to do. He told me he wants to go to sea.”
Brandon leaned forward in his chair. “What?”
She repeated herself calmly. “He does not want to return to William and Mary.”
“How do you know this? Why hasn’t he said anything to me?”
“I know because he shared it with me some time ago. As for your second question, you only have to look in a mirror now and you would know the answer. You can be quite fierce upon occasion and make another person keenly feel your disappointment.”
Brandon knew she was speaking of his effect on her as well as Cody. His features lost some of their hard cast. “I hadn’t realized,” he said.
One of Shannon’s brows arched skeptically, but she withheld comment.
Brandon’s hands flew up in a gesture of surrender. “All right, I knew I could be intimidating, but I never meant to direct it toward Cody, and certainly not toward you.”
Shannon saw her opening and plunged in. “Then perhaps you would draw Cody out on the morrow and listen to what he has to say. His idea is not so foolish as it may appear at first. You must have noticed how much time he spends with Paul. Cody hangs on every word about the Marchand merchants.” She tore out a few ragged stitches while Brandon thought over what she said, then continued. “In the same vein, I hope you will not put me off again when I ask you to tell me about Parker. Both you and Cody are strangely closemouthed where he is concerned, and Michaeline raised issues I could not possibly comment on. I had no idea she even knew Parker.”
Brandon sighed, clearly of a mind not to discuss his brother. “What is it you want to know?” he asked finally.
Shannon set aside her embroidery again, folding her hands on her lap. She leaned forward in the love seat. “Everything, but the question uppermost in my mind is whether you think Parker is Clara’s father.”
“No. That is one thing of which I am relatively certain. Aurora would have taken great delight in telling me if Parker were the father. Since she never named the father, I tend to believe he is someone she considers beneath her station.”
“Or she was lying.”
“Or she was lying,” he agreed without real conviction. “I don’t think Parker and Aurora began their affair until after Clara’s birth; quite possibly it happened when the Marchands were here. It was the sort of risk Aurora would have found exciting.”
“Parker was staying here then?”
Brandon nodded. “Except for Cody, Parker has spent more time at the folly than my other brothers combined. But unlike Cody, Parker commanded special attention.” He took a cheroot from an intricately carved box on the table beside him and lit it, drawing deeply. Studying the whisper of smoke that rose in the air, he began to speak in low, carefully modulated tones that disguised most emotion save his contempt. “Parker’s mother was Hannah Rhoades, a friend of my mother’s who was either seduced by my father or engaged willingly in an affair with him during one memorable visit to the folly. It does not matter which version you accept. My mother told one, my father the other.
“Hannah conceived first, and when she told my father, he, in deference to her delicate sensibilities and the respectability of her family background, very nobly arranged a marriage for her to Oliver Grant. Grant was himself a landholder. Belletraine is north of here and perhaps one third the size of the folly. The distance between our plantations can be closed by river routes or by several days on horseback. It was not so difficult for Hannah and my father to continue to meet.”
Brandon’s mouth curled in derision. “You must understand that my father was one of nature’s cruelest ironies: a charming rake. He had the face of a young god and the moral code of a criminal. There were few things he would not do to secure his ends. At this juncture in his life he wanted Hannah and promised to make her child his heir if his wife did not conceive. Further seduced by his promise, Hannah kept coming to him in spite of conventions.”
