Violet Fire Page 23

  Michaeline seemed to find nothing strange about Shannon’s reply. It was in her nature to find excuses for her daughter. “I did not mean overheard precisely,” she explained rather quickly. “I know you would not intentionally eavesdrop, but when I opened the door to leave our bedchamber and saw you fleeing down the corridor, well, I’m afraid I gathered that you had been about to enter our room and stopped when you heard us arguing. It would have been natural for you to listen since we were discussing you.” She came to a breathless halt and finally sighed. “I would have liked to have spoken of it then, but you neatly avoided the conversation, just as you did as a child when you were faced with some unpleasantness.”

  “I think you have mistaken the matter,” Shannon said. “And worried yourself over a trifle. I was standing outside your door while you and Papa were arguing, but I could hear nothing of any import. I fled because I never could abide it when you disagreed over something I had done.” She remembered a detail that Brandon told her and put it to use now. “Do you remember how we argued when I wanted to marry Brandon? You wanted me to wait, and Papa, if he had his way, would have had me marry his partner’s son.” She laughed lightly. “Really, Mama, can you wonder why I did not want to be party to another argument of that nature?”

  Michaeline was completely disarmed. “I hadn’t realized,” she said slowly, trying to gather her wits. “You were so distant when we left that I thought…And then you rarely wrote…. How was I to know? You should have said something, Aurora.”

  Shannon patted Michaeline’s arm. “I can see it’s troubled you, and for that I’m sorry. If I was a trifle distant, it was because I regretted your leaving. And as for writing”—here Shannon made a little face that clearly demonstrated her distaste—“you know how much I dislike it.”

  Michaeline nodded. “I suppose I should have listened to your father and never brought it up,” she said uneasily.

  “That is hardly fair. You’ve aroused my curiosity. What was it that you and Papa said to one another that you thought would upset me so terribly? Would it upset me now?” Shannon only asked because she thought it was the surest way to end the conversation, feeling certain Michaeline would avoid the question. She nearly groaned aloud when she was answered thoughtfully.

  “As to the last, I cannot say. You are happy here now, aren’t you?”

  Shannon despised herself. It was so very wrong to deceive Michaeline that nothing, not even Brandon’s fears for his daughter, could justify it. Yes, she wanted to scream, I am happy here. But your daughter hates the things I love best. “Can you doubt it?” she asked.

  A frown creased Michaeline’s brow. “It would seem not, though if you had asked me before, I would not have been so certain.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You and Brandon, dear. Oh, you were in each other’s pockets often enough when we last were here, but I had the feeling, I don’t know, that you were trying to impress your father and me that you had not made a hasty choice.”

  Shannon considered scoffing at Michaeline’s perceptive comment, but she thought better of it. It would be a mistake to think that simply because Michaeline had difficulty confronting Aurora, she could be easily brushed aside. She was a shrewd observer, and she had a mother’s keen ability to gauge her daughter’s happiness. “I had not realized we were so transparent,” she said.

  “Then I did not imagine it. All was not as it seemed.”

  “No…there were problems.”

  Michaeline grimaced. “It was Parker. I knew it. He was bent on causing trouble.”

  Shannon had no idea the Marchands knew Parker. Brandon had never mentioned that he had been at the folly when they visited. Shannon was grateful Michaeline did not expect a reply and began expanding on her theme.

  “I always liked Cody well enough, though I know you can’t abide his teasing. But you have to admit there is no harm in anything Cody does. Parker is another matter altogether.”

  Shannon’s palms turned clammy as Michaeline continued to catalogue Parker’s faults. At least Shannon thought she was still complaining about Parker. Shannon could not follow a word of the rapid-fire French Michaeline used when she was excited. “Mama,” she implored. “Do not distress yourself so. Parker’s been gone an age. Brandon has nothing to do with him.”

  “Ça me fait plaisir,” Michaeline said firmly.

  Shannon merely nodded, hoping it was appropriate.

  Michaeline took a calming breath and switched to English. “It is good that Parker left. I did not like the way he looked at you. I did not like his eyes. They followed you everywhere.”

  “Mama!”

  “C’est vrai,” she defended, then repeated herself for emphasis. “It is true. He wanted to make trouble between you and your husband.”

  Shannon knew how well Parker had succeeded, but she could say nothing. “Let us not talk of Parker,” she urged gently.

  “At least you did not encourage him,” Michaeline added.

  Agitated now, Shannon stood. “Mama! Please! It is too lovely a day to dredge up the past.”

  Michaeline’s hazel eyes widened. “You didn’t encourage him, did you?”

  “I am going to find Clara,” Shannon said repressively. “If you care to join us for a walk on the grounds, you are welcome.” She swept out of the room in a flurry of skirts, her spine ramrod stiff.

  Chapter 9

  “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.”

  Brandon ground out his cheroot. “Of course, I was conceived. Father was faithful to neither his wife nor his mistress. He was incapable of fidelity in any fashion. Because of my mother’s ill health, I was actually delivered before Parker. Hannah’s hopes of having both Belletraine and the folly for her son vanished.”

  “What of Oliver Grant? Did he ever know that Parker was not his son?”

  “Never,” he said heavily. “Though it was later known to most of the Tidewater. When Parker was four, Oliver died of smallpox and left Belletraine to his wife and only son. It was after Oliver’s death that Hannah began to visit the folly openly again, this time with Parker in hand. She came several times a year and stayed for a month or more at a time. My mother simply took to her room, feigning illness until Hannah was gone.”

  “And what of you, Brandon?”

  He shrugged, refusing to be drawn out. “I survived,” he said simply, as if it were unimportant.

  Shannon knew differently. She imagined Brandon as a child, bewildered by his mother’s inaccessibility and his father’s indifference to it. Then her eyes were pulled to the man he had become. Perhaps survival was the correct word after all, she thought with sudden insight. He had emerged, if not unscathed, then with the ability to put his pain in perspective, as a thing not to be dwelled on. It did not rule his life. Shannon wondered if she might someday learn to say, “I survived.”

  Brandon leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs in front of him. “Hannah’s arrangement with my father lasted until I was fifteen.” He laughed to himself, shaking his head. “But ‘hell hath no fury,’” he quoted softly, glancing at Shannon. “And, in my father’s case, there were any number of women he used and later scorned. Mother’s health was failing rapidly by then, but before she died, she made certain that Hannah found out about the other women—and their children. That these women were, in Hannah’s view, far beneath her merely added to the insult.

  “Hannah’s revenge came out of the seeds she had sown years earlier when she first brought Parker to the folly. She encouraged him to believe that it was rightfully his. After she broke with my father she became even more insistent that Parker should not forget that William Fleming owed them something.

  When my father died, his will made it clear that the folly was mine. In order to manage it while I went to school in England, I enlisted the aid of his bastard offspring. That incensed Hannah. She thought I should have given sole responsibility to Parker instead of offering him a share, as I had done with the others.

  “Cody, for all intents, had become an orphan when his mother died in childbirth. I knew him better than Jake, who lived in Williamsburg, or Daniel and Steven, who grew up in Jamestown, and liked him infinitely better than Parker. He was born here, in the servants’ quarters, since his mother was a bondwoman, and was raised at the folly, although he was never acknowledged as anything but an errand boy. I brought him to live in the house proper along with the others. Hannah was predictably outraged.”

  Shannon nodded, her mind racing ahead to what had to have occurred once Brandon left for England. “She must have caused a great deal of trouble while you were away,” she said.

  “She did,” he agreed. “Or rather, she did it through Parker. None of that matters now. My other brothers kept everything together in spite of Parker’s deliberate attempts to mismanage the holding. He might have done real damage had he not had Belletraine to concern him. While I was gone he never spent more than a week here at a time. His visits
were carefully calculated to promote confusion and dissension among the others. It is a credit to their character that he never really succeeded.”

  “But when you returned, why did you allow Parker to continue to come here?”

  “Because I believed I owed him something. If he had been my legitimate brother, part of the folly would have been his. It was not his fault he was my father’s bastard. I did not understand clearly then that Parker could never be satisfied with only part of the whole. His mother saw to it that Belletraine would never be enough for him. For me to offer even a portion of the folly was an insult that neither of them could easily forgive.”

  “And Parker’s revenge was taking Aurora away.”

  “Yes,” he said dully. “That was how he chose to get back at me. Parker met her during a party I arranged to celebrate my marriage and introduce Aurora to my friends. He did not stay long on that occasion because Hannah was ill. She died a short time later, and affairs at Belletraine kept him away. In the meantime Aurora had managed to alienate my brothers. One by one they began to express a desire to leave the folly. I settled money on each of them except Cody, whom I convinced to stay. When Parker visited again, he realized that most of his competition for the folly had vanished, and set his cap for Aurora. In her defense, I don’t think she ever held a chance of resisting Parker, even if she had wanted to.”

  “Brandon! How can you say that? Surely it was her own choice.”

  “You’ve never met Parker,” he said, mocking her vehemence.

  “But surely—”

  “You’ve never met Parker,” he repeated. “Poor Cody has borne the stigma for years of being almost the exact image of our father, but it is known to only a few of us that it is Parker who thinks and acts most like him. Parker is as thorough a rake as our father ever was. He is ruthless, without scruples, and powerfully manipulative. Like a wolf in the wild, he calculates weakness and preys upon it. And like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, his striking looks have stood him in good stead. He simply captivates most people, especially if they are female.”