Aware of the earl’s scrutiny, Shannon shifted uncomfortably and attempted to smooth the wrinkles from her gown. “Why have you come?” she repeated. There was a shade of defiance in her tone, a natural defense to keep the tears clogging her throat and eyes at bay.
Eric took two steps toward Shannon, halting abruptly when he saw her flinch. “You should not ask why I’ve come, but rather why I’ve come so late,” he told her gently. “I would not have had you go through this alone for all the world.”
Shannon cursed his kindness, for she knew it would be her undoing. She managed a careless shrug to show that his wishes were unimportant. “You were with your bride,” she said stiffly, remembering the earl’s marriage was the last rite her stepfather had performed. She had sung at the wedding, rejoicing in the earl’s happiness. It seemed a lifetime ago. “I did not expect you to return from your tour of the Continent to interfere in my affairs.”
The earl watched Shannon gather the threads of her pride. Knowing it would be unwelcome, Eric kept a tight rein on the pity he felt for her. “I know you did not expect it. It is not your way to expect anything of others. However, it remains that if I had received word of your plight sooner, I would have returned to Glen Eden immediately.” He paused, recalling the anger he had felt when the correspondence from his man of affairs finally caught up with him in Venice. If only he had received the letter earlier, he might have been able to prevent Shannon from going to trial. “Mother sends her deepest regrets, Shannon. She was ill when you were arrested and—”
“Ill? I did not know.” Shannon’s concern caused her to face the earl fully. She realized her mistake when she heard his soft gasp. She immediately dropped her head again.
Eric cursed under his breath for giving way to his shock. Shannon’s left eye was swollen shut by a livid, puffy bruise. At his side his hand clenched and he itched to deliver a blow to Shannon’s assailant. “Mother is recovered,” he said tersely. “She has severely dressed down every person on staff who knew of your situation and protected her from it. She claims she was not so ill that she couldn’t be informed of your arrest.”
“Oh! She should not have blamed them! They did what was proper. I would not have wanted her further distressed on my account.”
The earl had expected Shannon’s protest and ignored it. “Who has laid a hand on you, Shannon?”
She recoiled from the rough question. “No one,” she said. “That is, it was an accident. I slipped in my cell and hit the wall.”
“You are lying.”
Add it to my sins, she thought bitterly. “No.”
“You are still lying.”
“It is of no import. Please, let it rest. What can it matter?”
“It matters because I will not permit you to be abused while you are in this hellhole.”
Shannon lifted her chin sharply and stared at the earl through her one good eye. “You must know that I will hang in five days. Do you think I care for the condition of my face when I am taken to Tyburn tree? It is more fitting this way. I am as ugly on the outside as I am in my soul. It will be a good lesson for the children who come to see the hanging.”
“Do not speak so of yourself!” Eric said tightly. He took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself. “I’m sorry, Shannon. I only want to spare you further pain.”
“Then you will forget you came here and saw me thusly. You will tell your mother that I am well cared for and that I go to my death with dignity. That will spare me much anguish.”
The earl shook his head. “I cannot forget, and Mother will never believe you are cared for here. As for facing Tyburn with dignity, we know it is something you would do, but it is unnecessary.”
“Surely you would not have me wailing and sobbing as I am carted through the streets?”
“I did not mean that dignity was unnecessary,” Eric said. “I meant that hanging was. Before I came here I spoke to the barrister who defended you. He is of the opinion that your stepfather’s death was an accident, self-defense at the very worst.”
“He is entitled to his opinion.”
Eric went on as if Shannon had not interrupted. His gray eyes were hooded, hiding his innermost thoughts, the foremost being guilt. “Yet, when given the opportunity to defend yourself, you stated unequivocally that it was your desire to kill Stewart. What possessed you to say such a thing?”
Shannon hugged herself against the cold seeping through the walls and into her flesh. Thunder rolled ominously in the background, and she wondered if it would rain the day she died. She hoped so. She wanted to feel heaven’s tears on her face one last time. “Because it was the truth. I desired my stepfather dead. Would it shock you to know that I prayed for it nightly? I wished it with all my being. I murdered him time after time in my heart, so why shouldn’t I admit to the fact? The sin is the same.”
Eric swore that if Thomas Stewart were in front of him now, he would kill the man with his bare hands. Even in death he had a stranglehold on his stepdaughter’s thoughts. “I disagree,” he said. “There is a difference between wanting someone dead and actually committing the deed.”
“Mayhap there is a legal difference,” she conceded quietly. “But morally the two are not so dissimilar.” She waved her hand indifferently. “It no longer has any bearing on my case. I am guilty, was found guilty, and will hang for it. That is as it should be.”
The conviction in Shannon’s voice tested the earl’s patience. He had to remind himself that Stewart had finally succeeded in crushing her. “Tell me what happened the night Thomas died, Shannon. Not the story you told your barrister, please. Credit me with more sense than to accept such a tale from you.” He saw her hesitation and added, “I swear I will stay here, all day and night if need be, until you relate the truth to me.”
Shannon’s good eye widened as she took the measure of Eric Redmond’s words. He meant it, she realized. She would have no peace and he would not leave this horrid place until he knew the truth. Reluctantly, because she could not bear his presence much longer, she offered the details of a night six weeks earlier….
Shannon lookedup from her mending as Thomas Stewart entered the parlor. He ignored her presence, as he so often did when he had nothing critical to say to her, and poked idly at the fire before seating himself in the chair opposite Shannon. He propped his walking stick against the arm of his chair and picked up his notes for the sermon he planned to deliver on the morrow. While he studied his papers his hand returned again and again to his bad leg, rubbing the knee absently.
“Is your leg troubling you, Father?” Shannon asked. It had been bitterly cold of late, a condition that sorely tried Stewart’s arthritic joint. His limp was gradually becoming more pronounced, and that the arthritis was spreading was evident in the swollen and gnarled knuckles of his hands.
“Save your concern, Shannon,” he said scornfully. “I know you would enjoy seeing me a cripple.”
