Michaeline pressed her handkerchief to her lips. Tears dripped soundlessly over her ashen cheeks. Paul’s chin lowered and he stared at his hands without really seeing them. He spoke to the floor, his head too heavy to lift. “I spoke the truth when I said that Aurora was a wanted child. She was wanted so dearly that we paid for the right to make her our own.”
“What are you saying?” Shannon asked, her face clouded with the force of her dread.
Paul still did not look up. “Aurora is your sister…your twin.”
“No! I have no sister. My mother would have never sold one of her children.” She looked at Brandon, pleading with him to believe her. “She wouldn’t have done it.”
Brandon immediately moved to Shannon’s side, resting one hip against the arm of her chair and circling her shoulders with his arm. “I believe you,” he told her. “Paul, I think she has heard enough.”
Paul looked up sharply. “No, I have explained it badly. It was not the woman with whom I had the arrangement, but a man. Thomas Stewart is the one who responded to a query I had made. He told me he was the vicar of Glen Eden, that he knew a young woman who would soon be giving birth to a child out of wedlock. She was a gentle girl, he said, with no prospects of marriage. The village had shunned her and it was his Christian duty to assist her. Later he informed me that she had agreed to give us her child when it was born, that she wanted something better for it than to be raised as her bastard.”
“He told you one truth,” Brandon said. “Stewart was the vicar of Glen Eden.”
“Dear God, how did this thing come to pass? Am I to understand the man was married to Aurora’s mother?”
“My mother,” Shannon said. “Thomas Stewart was married to my mother. She was carrying her child when he wed her. He did it at the request of the Countess of Glen Eden, in exchange for her promise that he would have a secure living.”
“We did not know. How could we know?”
“You must be mistaken. My mother—” Shannon’s hands began to tremble as an image of her mother as an older woman was replaced by the face of her mother as a young girl. She saw Mary Kilmartin’s features as clearly as if she held her locket in front of her, and as she stared at the image in her mind’s eye, it was transposed onto the face of the child sleeping above stairs.
“Shannon? What is it?” asked Brandon, alarmed by the stillness that held her everywhere except her hands.
Very quietly, unwittingly causing the others to strain to catch her voice, Shannon explained about the lost locket. “Clara is the very image of my mother as a young girl,” she said, finishing her story. “It never made sense to me before, but now…now I see the truth of it.” Shannon shut her eyes and rested her head against Brandon’s arm. Pain was a colorless shield over the planes of her face. “She never once mentioned that she had borne another child. Perhaps my stepfather forbade her, or perhaps she did not want to dwell on what she had done. I do not think it would have been an easy thing for her to have given up her child.”
Brandon stroked her arm comfortingly. “We don’t know that she entered into it willingly. Thomas was not above forcing her. He was not above deciding that his arrangement with the countess only called for him supporting one child. He may have suspected Mary carried twins when he approached Paul.”
Shannon was not really listening. “I wonder how they decided,” she said dully, “who would remain with them and who would be sold? How does one make that choice?”
Brandon spoke to Paul and Michaeline. “I am going to take Shannon to her bedchamber,” he said. “If you would be kind enough to wait for me, I would still like to speak with you.” Ignoring Shannon’s halfhearted protest that she could stay and hear the things that were said, Brandon escorted her out of the room. After seeing to it that Martha was the one to care for her, Brandon returned to the Marchands.
Michaeline was sipping a glass of red wine, and Paul had his hands around a tumbler of whiskey. On the table beside the chair where Brandon had been sitting was another tumbler with three fingers of Scotch. He picked it up and walked to the fireplace, idly rearranging some coals that had spilled onto the apron with the toe of his boot.
Brandon finally spoke into the heavy silence by telling Paul and Michaeline how he had met Shannon. He managed to convey a sense of Shannon’s life at Glen Eden without betraying her confidences or what he knew to be her father’s most perverse cruelties. He spared himself nothing in the telling, making certain they understood that he had been at fault for entering into a marriage that had at its foundation his love for another woman. He had never been able to make Aurora happy, he said, and perhaps this had been the reason.
“Non,”Michaeline said, teary-eyed. “I would like to blame you, but I cannot. Paul and I tried to dissuade her from marrying. She was too young, too reckless. We surrendered to her wishes, not because she pleaded prettily or argued more loudly than we did, but because we realized we had no control over her decision. We believed, in the end, it was better to tender our blessing than to have her marry in defiance of us.”
“I would have waited if I had known of your reservations,” Brandon said seriously.
“I know,” she said sadly. “Mayhap if we had spoken, there would have been no marriage then, but we did not trust Aurora not to follow you to Virginia. She had threatened as much. She has always been single-minded in the pursuit of what she wanted, and at that time it was marriage to you that she desired above all else.”
Brandon nodded, understanding they had felt a need to protect Aurora from herself. “Does Aurora know you are not her natural parents?” he asked.
Michaeline looked guiltily at Paul. “We never told her about her birth because we thought we were honoring her mother’s wish that her daughter never know she was illegitimate. Monsieur Stewart led us to believe this was so.”
“Then she does not know,” Brandon said, trying to understand the look that had passed between Michaeline and her husband.
Michaeline shook her head. “I should have said we did notdeliberatelytell her the truth, but once, while we were here, Paul and I argued over the matter. Although we wanted to believe she was happy in her marriage, we perceived that all was not as it should be. Paul wanted to tell her then, to prove to her how much she was loved, how much she had been wanted by us. He thought it might make some difference if she knew the truth. I was opposed to saying anything.”
“And this is the argument that you thought Aurora may have overheard,” Brandon filled in. “The one you tried to describe to Shannon.”
“Exactement,”said Michaeline. “So you see, I cannot say if Aurora knows.”
Brandon stared at his glass of Scotch. “And I cannot say if it matters.” He took a deep swallow and let the liquor slide down his raw throat to the pit of his aching belly. “There is one more thing you must know.” He held their glance. “I intend to divorce Aurora. Shannon has made no promise to marry me, so I will not have you think she is the cause. I can no longer hold myself to the vows I spoke with your daughter. We ceased to have a marriage before Clara was born. I had planned to present you with a fait accompli, but I would have done so in person. If you desire to speak to Aurora in this matter, I will help you find her, but nothing she or you can say can change my mind.” He set the tumbler on the mantelpiece. “You are welcome to stay at the folly for as long as you like. I want you to know that I hold you both in great affection. After the trick I played you, I will understand if you do not choose to believe me.”
Paul stood and helped Michaeline to her feet. She leaned heavily against him. “It is as you said before,” he said gravely. “We love our daughter, but we cannot sanction her actions. Divorce is a terrible finality, an affront to God’s blessing at your marriage, but you are her husband and it is for you to decide what your future with Aurora will be. We’ll leave in the morning, as planned. If Aurora has need of us, she knows where her home will always be.”
Brandon was stunned. “I never thought…” He took a few steps toward the center of the room. “But you will return, won’t you?”
