Violet Fire Read online

  “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 whe
n 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.

  Shannon was deaf to her stepfather’s pious entreaties, but she was not immune to the hand that lay heavily on her shoulder. Thomas’s long fingers squeezed her flesh as he worked himself into a frenzy, vividly describing the ways in which Shannon used her body to tempt lesser men than himself. When he spoke of the encouragement Shannon gave the young men in the parish, drawing their lustful glances even in church, his hand slid down her back until it rested at the base of her spine. Shannon shifted uncomfortably, biting her lower lip to keep from giving voice to her thoughts, but her small movement only brought the unwanted hand in contact with her buttocks. She squeezed her eyes shut when, after an infinitesimal pause, Thomas’s palm followed the rounded curve of her bottom.

  “Admit that you are as all women, Shannon Kilmartin,” Thomas said lowly, breathing heavily. “Admit before God that you are Eve, tempting men with the fruit of your body.”

  “I am Eve,” Shannon said, choking on the words, her stomach churning. Silently she begged for him to take his hands from her. “I am Eve,” she repeated when his hand moved to her leg, insinuating itself between the chemise and her bare skin.

  “And what do you do?”

  A tear dropped on her folded hands. “Nothing. I do nothing. I swear it!”

  “Liar!” His fingers pinched her thigh until he heard her sob brokenly from the pain. “Do you think I don’t know why you were wearing that harlot’s dress? Already you are leaning toward sluttish ways, baring your bosom, flaunting your naked shoulders, all the while knowing that I may come upon you. You would mistake me for the young bucks that pant after you, sniffing at your skirts as you pretend to go about the Lord’s work. Admit it! Admit that you wore the gown to entice me, to draw me into your spider’s web even as your mother drew me!”

  “I admit it!” she sobbed.

  “You enjoy the attentions of men. You like to have their eyes upon you.”

  “Yes!” She thought she would be sick. She would have answered in any manner necessary to have his touch removed from her flesh.

  Thomas’s grip relaxed and he withdrew his hand from Shannon’s thigh. Using the cane and the edge of the bed to lever him, Thomas struggled to his feet. “You will remain praying this hour,” he grunted as his stony gaze swept Shannon’s trembling form. So that she would not see his shaking hand if she looked up, he steadied it on the knob of the walking stick. Her first denials had not fooled him, he told himself again. He had been right to force her admission. She was as her mother was before he had purged Mary’s soul, driving out the wantonness that had led her to lie with another man without the benefit of vows. To himself he admitted the exorcism was a partial success at best. He was drawn to Mary time and time again. He remembered how Mary’s body had tempted him to her bed and how he had prayed with her afterward so that they might be cleansed of the sins of the flesh. He cleared his throat, erasing the memory of Mary’s struggles beneath him, and returned to the present. He swore he would see his stepdaughter’s beauty scarred before he would allow her to take the same path as her mother. “If you have obeyed me truly and are released of your sins, I will know it on the morrow.” He turned from her and limped to the door, shutting it behind him quietly.

  When Shannon was alone she crawled onto the bed, drawing a blanket around her and pressing her face into the pillow so no one would hear her crying. Though she wanted to bathe, wanted to remove the lingering feel of her stepfather’s hand from her skin, she was afraid to move lest Thomas come back to her room and accuse her of trying to further entice him. He would think she was worse than the devil’s spawn if he discovered she soaked naked in the wooden tub rather than wearing a bathing shift.

  Shannon reached for the small wooden box that rested on her bedside stand. Taking off the lid, she stared at the tarnished locket inside. She could not wear the locket, for its clasp had been broken even before her mother had given her the piece. She had never asked her stepfather to have it repaired, afraid he would learn what the locket meant to her and take it away. Thomas Stewart did not allow her to wear any jewelry, thinking it a sign of great vanity. Shannon opened the locket and looked at the gentle, delicate features of her mother. The miniature portrait of Mary Kilmartin had been painted when Mary was still a child, not more than five, yet Shannon found comfort in knowing there had been a happy, innocent time in her mother’s life.

  The candlewicks on the mantel sputtered in their own wax and the flames were extinguished, leaving Shannon in darkness except for the meager light from the hearth. She was too tired to stoke the logs, and a chill crept into her small room as the wind gathered force across the English countryside, rattling the panes of glass in the solitary window.

  Shannon fell into a restless sleep, waking often with a nervous glance toward the door. Thomas never returned to her room, and finally she was defeated by exhaustion, clutching her mother’s locket to her breast as she slept.

  It was sunlight touching the soft planes of her face that brought Shannon awake. She grazed her temples with the tips of her fingers, massaging them gently to ease the throbbing in her head. Cautiously she opened her swollen lids, wiping her sticky eyes with a corner of the blanket. Memories of the previous night flooded her, bringing a rush of heat to her cheeks. Shannon replaced the locket, which had fallen from her grasp sometime during the night, and slipped out of bed. She poured water from a pitcher on her dresser into the basin and then scrubbed her face, giving special attention to the places where Thomas had touched her. The bruise on her left shoulder was ugly, but it did not hurt overmuch. The two welts on her right side were another matter, sore, red, and tender to the touch. She grimaced when she saw them, knowing the marks would last for days.

  She dressed quickly, choosing a brown, coarsely woven bodice with tiny hooks down the front so she could fasten it herself. The skirt was of the same dull homespun material, and Shannon pinned a white apron to the bodice and secured the ties around her waist. Her stockings were white, carefully mended in several places, and her shoes were sturdy work clogs of stiff black leather with a square buckle as their only adornment. Shannon brushed her heavy hair with a few rough strokes before she scraped it back into a severe bun at the nape of her neck. Her crisply starched mobcap effectively hid the jet tendrils that were too short or just too ornery to stay in the confines of the coil.

  One glance in the looking glass assured her that Thomas could find nothing provocative about her mode of dress. As an additional precaution Shannon slipped on her fingerless knitted mittens, which covered her hands and forearms. Shannon’s last glimpse in the mirror satisfied her. Her face was drawn and pinched, her eyes still puffy from the bout of crying. No, she thought, there was nothing the least objectionable about her appearance.

  When Shannon left her room, she went immediately to the cottage’s kitchen. The housekeeper’s rounded figure was bent over her breadboard, where she was shaping loaves to be placed in the hearth’s oven.

  “There�
��s porridge in the kettle,” Bess said without looking up from her work.

  “I don’t want anything,” said Shannon, quite happy that Bess was ignoring her. Shannon’s relationship with the widowed housekeeper was tenuous at best. Thomas Stewart had employed Bess Henry to look after Shannon as well as do light housework and cooking since the time of his wife’s death. Looking back, Shannon supposed the conflict between her and Bess was inevitable. In Shannon’s eyes, Bess was an intruder, insinuating herself into their lives with all the finesse of a wild boar. Shannon had wanted to take over the reins of the household, and perhaps, at last, earn a smile of recognition or a word of small praise from her stepfather. But that had never happened. Bess had seen to that. While the housekeeper had an infinite store of patience for the parishioners who often visited the vicar’s cottage, she modeled her attitude toward Shannon after Thomas Stewart’s. Shannon found herself in the unenviable position of having two adults to please, and quickly learned that nothing she could do would satisfy either. Shannon took a seat at the table, her eyes darting nervously toward Bess. Had her stepfather told the housekeeper anything of last evening?

  Bess grunted. “Suit yourself. It’s no concern of mine if you’re all skin and bones.”

  Shannon pretended to be unaffected by the disparaging remark. “Is Father awake yet?”

  “He was up early, not like some slugabeds that come to mind. He took the carriage to the church, said you’re to go about your work and he’ll speak to you this afternoon.”

  Shannon’s stomach tightened. She did not want a reprieve. She wanted the confrontation now. “I thought I might pick berries this morning. I know of a patch not far from here.” She glanced at Bess uncertainly. “May I do that, Bess? I could make some preserves and take them to the Fosters and the Millers. They scarce have time for such things with their new babes.”