Sarah’s eyes widened at this new information and she nodded quickly. “Mister Theodore, I meant you no discourtesy…”
“Nay,” he said quickly. “Your brother is too kind. And Striker is correct; your brother suffers from mental impairment.”
“Aye, it is well known,” Gaston said. “If his reasoning was not impaired, he would not love all of us as he does.” He grinned at me.
I snorted my amusement and addressed Sarah. “I do not feel I am so poor a judge of character. Where should we speak? I believe you have a tale to tell.”
“We cannot go in there,” she said with a rueful grimace and gestured at the door behind her. “And I feel… I would like some wine for the telling of it.”
“Do you wish to tell it before so many?” I asked, “or should we…”
“Nay, I feel I will be fine in the telling of it to others,” she said quickly. “It is the remembering of it I seek fortification for.”
I nodded, still not sure how concerned I should be. “Well, let us retire to our house. We can buy a barrel on the way.”
Sarah’s eyes shot wide and she muttered an unladylike thing under her breath. “I forgot Agnes. I must rescue her. Hold a moment.” She slipped inside.
She returned a moment later with a very relieved girl in tow.
“Mister Will, Mister Gaston, how wonderful it is to see you,” Agnes gushed. Then she quickly stepped very close to ask, “When you marry Miss Barclay, sir, will I have to serve her?”
“Nay,” I assured her quickly. “Do not trouble yourself.”
A great sigh of relief escaped the girl. I thought it likely my bride was an unholy terror.
As we began walking, Sarah muttered apologies for abandoning Agnes in the King’s House; and Agnes looked as if she would forgive my sister anything, including being left alone in a room of plantation wives. I sighed to myself. The poor girl was dooming herself to another disappointment of the heart.
As we continued to the house, Sarah asked Striker of our time on Cow Island. Truly, Sarah’s gaze did not leave him any more than Agnes’ gaze left her. I was glad we would be sailing soon, and I had not even met the damn bride yet. I was seeing enough trouble brewing with the women I liked.
While I bought wine, Striker told the tale of Gaston and me being charged by the bull. As always, he was the consummate storyteller, and this for an event he only witnessed in the aftermath. Sarah was a most attentive listener.
I watched Pete. Thankfully, the Golden One seemed far more concerned with determining the similarities between Sarah’s features and my own than about how her gaze traveled over his matelot. He would look at me, and then her, and then frown and look at me again, and mutter, “TheEyes, WrongColorThough,” and other such comparisons.
As we finished the last leg of our short journey through Port Royal, I pulled Gaston aside. “We must keep a modest distance between Sarah and Striker.”
He sighed. “I was hoping you had seen. Oui, before Pete sees it.”
“I will speak with her as soon as I can get her alone,” I said.
“It may do little good,” he said. “Even I, who have seldom witnessed courtship between men and women, can see they are enamored of one another.”
I sighed. “If Pete were not involved, I would be delighted.”
“You are mad,” Gaston teased.
“Non,” I said, “Striker is no longer the boy he once was. I feel he would do well by any woman he was to marry.”
“Oui, but Will, he is a commoner. Your father would never allow it.”
“Damn that,” I said. It had not occurred to me. “Well,” I added, “it may be that my father’s opinion upon the matter no longer has consequence or meaning.”
“Will,” Gaston said firmly, “your sister is a formidable opponent.”
“I suppose she is.” And I knew Pete’s opinion would carry great consequence.
We were soon all seated around the dining table in the front room, with cups of wine in hand, and young dogs running about our feet. I seated Sarah at the end of the table, with me on one side of her and Agnes on the other.
“Well, would you like the short version or the long version?” Sarah asked.
“I believe I would like the entirety of the tale,” I said, “but perhaps you could start with the most pertinent details. Have you been harmed in any way?”
“Nay, not as you might think,” she said quickly, and patted my arm in reassurance. “Though I would have been, if I had not taken to sleeping with a pistol. I shot him, Will. Yet he is not dead, or at least was not when I left England.”
The air was driven from my lungs without sound. It was simply gone; and I found myself taking a long breath to keep from becoming lightheaded. The implications were staggering.
“Where?” Gaston asked.
Her gaze shifted to him. “Here.” She pointed to her right shoulder. “He was as far from me as you are now. However, my pistol was a piece designed for a lady’s hand. It shoots a small ball, and I had been careful not to use too much powder, though perhaps I did not use enough. He was drunk, though, and it made him drop a lamp and a bottle, and in the resulting chaos I was able to escape him. So it served my purpose.” She looked to me again. “He is now burned as well, along with part of the new London house.”
“We’re talking about this cousin of yours, correct?” Striker asked.
I found my voice. “Aye, our second cousin, Shane.”
Remorse settled over me. I told Sarah, “I should not have left you. I should have killed him. I should…”
A strong arm came around my shoulders and familiar fingers were on my lips. I turned and found myself trapped by intense green eyes.
“Stop,” Gaston whispered in French. “She is here. You are here. And it is selfish of me, but if you had killed him, we would never have met. Thus I am very pleased that you did not.”
His words tore the thickening mantle of melancholy asunder, and I felt caressed by a reassuring breeze. I kissed his fingertips and gently pulled them away. “Thank you.”
“He is correct,” Sarah said in French. “There is no need to have regret over what cannot be changed.”
Gaston stiffened as he realized –as I did – that she spoke French.
“I know,” I said in English. “Yet I fear that one day we will truly rue that he did not die at one of our hands. If he is now wounded and scarred, he is an angry boar and the future a dense thicket we may not see him charge out of until damage is done. What relief will his death bring then, if yet another has fallen to his tusks before he is brought down?”
“That is why he must not know that I am here,” she said. “Father swore he would not tell him…”
“Father swore he would protect you,” I said.
“Aye, I know it,” she sighed. “Sometimes, Will, I fear they are a beast with two heads: what one knows, the other does shortly.”
“What was our father’s response to your having to shoot Shane?” I asked.
She considered the table and toyed with a grease smudge with shaking fingers. “His response was the reason I decided to flee.”
I captured her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “You might as well tell it all now.”
She nodded and smiled weakly before taking another gulp of wine and composing herself again. When she spoke, it was directly to me, and I felt she had rehearsed her tale often during her voyage.
“I believe I mentioned in my letter that Shane was none too pleased,” she began. “I do not know what was said betwixt Father and him, but Father decided it was best if Shane remained in London and oversaw the rebuilding of the house there. Father spent a good deal of his time there as well, and all was as it had been in many ways, until Elizabeth’s wedding in June. In the chaos involved in that event, Shane asked to speak with me, alone. I took my friend Mary and my maid, and we went for a walk with him in the garden. Shane was accompanied by an acquaintance of his and his manservant. In due course, Shane maneuvered to get
me alone, and the women I was with were too silly to realize they should intervene.”
I frowned.
She shook her head. “Do not regard me so. I was carrying a dagger. So we talked, or rather he did. He pledged his love to me and said Father had abused his intent. He said he was confused and hurt by my lack of faith in him. In return, I told him nothing of my conversations with you. I did not attempt to justify my change of heart in any manner. This frustrated him no small amount. I flatly stated that it was not meant to be and that it would be best if we went on with our lives as friends. At which point, he grabbed my shoulders and attempted to shake me. I put the knife to his ribs and called for Mary and my maid. The knife brought so much hatred to his eyes it verged on madness, and I felt terror to my very core.”
“I know,” I said quietly.
“Aye, you alone do. I related the event to Father and he…” She sighed and looked distant. When she spoke again her words snapped with anger. “He interpreted Shane’s actions as lending veracity to Shane’s claims that he had truly loved me. He did not think harshly of Shane at all for the matter and, to my horror, I believe it mended things between them.”
I swore. “How can he be such a fool?”
Some of the tension left her, to be replaced by resignation. “I thought long on that on the voyage here. I have come to believe that Shane represents something to Father. It is not Shane himself, it is some promise or perhaps memory that Shane holds.”
I nodded. “I have always thought that Shane is the son I was to be.”
She shook her head. “I feel that perhaps Shane reminds Father of Shane’s father. They were quite close by all accounts. I have wondered if they were quite close indeed?”
Her eyes flicked to Gaston and then Striker and Pete. Almost as one we caught her meaning.
The idea surprised me. It had never crossed my mind that my father and Shane’s father might have been lovers: it was completely foreign to me. There was much to consider if it were true.
“I need time to mull that over,” I said.
“I have mulled it over,” she said. “At one point in my ruminations I wondered if Shane were indeed our father’s son, but that idea…”
I was suddenly overcome with nausea, and the room swam for a moment. “Nay,” I said. “Nay, Father knew about…”
Gaston’s arm steadied me, and Sarah shook her head quickly.
“Nay!” she said. “I do not believe it true, I am merely saying I wondered at it; but Father’s behavior during the time you had trouble with Shane belies that. He obviously allowed it, and I cannot believe he would allow such as that.”
I was acutely aware of four sets of eyes upon us. I did not wish to meet them, but I forced myself to gaze upon their concerned faces. I resolved I could tell them if I could tell anyone.
“Shane and I were lovers in our youth,” I said before I could change my mind. “He became… abusive toward me in later years, and that is the reason I fled my father’s home. My father knew of it. He told me he allowed it because he thought it might put me off men.”
Gaston kissed my cheek.
“Oh good Lord,” Theodore sighed and downed his cup. He refilled it as he said, “That does indeed lend a great deal of perspective to the matter, and all matters related to it.”
Agnes appeared confused.
Striker met my gaze and nodded with silent understanding.
Pete asked the question I had always dreaded from others if the matter were exposed. “YaDidnaKill’Im?”
I shook my head sadly. “Nay, I loved him, and I hoped he would change. I had not yet killed a man when I left. I have rued that Shane was not my first every day since then. Out of all the men I have killed, he is by far the most deserving.”
“SometimesYaCanna KillTheOnesThat DeserveItMost,” he said sadly.
“Nay, we cannot,” I sighed. “Even now. Though, apparently my sister has nearly done it for me.”
She shook her head with a small smile. “These last weeks I have wished that I aimed better or used a larger piece, but…” She shook her head again and went on with her tale:
“After the incident at the wedding, and Father’s reaction, I no longer felt any would protect me. I was very careful when Shane arrived for Mother’s funeral a month later. I took to carrying a pistol in my handbag and sleeping with it near my pillow. I also took to blocking the door with a chair as you had done. I was quite careful not to allow him to catch me alone for the fortnight he was in residence. I took perverse pleasure in shadowing Father about and not leaving the two of them alone, as I knew Shane would dare not do anything in Father’s presence. But, whenever Father’s back was turned, Shane would look at me as if I were a mouse and he the cat. I saw lust and hatred and little else in his eyes. Our aunt even remarked upon it and suggested I stay with them for a time. So I did. Father returned to London with Shane and the house sat empty. I suppose the servants either rejoiced or mourned.
“So I stayed with our aunt for a month, and then returned home when I was sure Shane was safely in London. It was… strange. With mother gone, and Elizabeth, and their servants, I was expected to be the mistress of the house and it was… most uncomfortable. But that is another matter. Your letter arrived at the house in the middle of October, along with the letters to Father and Rucker. As I was bored, and could no longer stand the house, and your letter spurred me to seek adventure in some small way, I decided to take the barouche to deliver the letters myself.
“So I delivered Master Rucker’s letter to him, and we spent a delightful evening discussing your tales and descriptions. To my maid’s utter dismay, I even spent the night there at his sister’s home.
“Then I took Father’s letter to him at the new house in London. It was there that I learned of his arrangement with the Earl of Whitlock and your proposed marriage.”
She paused and met my gaze with a wry smile. “I do not know how you will perceive the matter: hopefully with amusement. Miss Barclay was due to sail in December. There were concerns regarding her relationship with her former suitor. Rumor of impropriety had surfaced, and well, Father was livid. I feel he would have stopped the entire affair if events had not taken place with Shane as they did. And for that, Will, I am truly sorry. Not that Father’s next choice might have been any better.”
“Wonderful,” I sighed. “How did…?”
“Shane was at the London house,” she sighed. “He wished to know why I was there. I said nothing. I do not know what Father might have told him, but my maid complained of spending the night at Rucker’s to the other servants, and this of course got all around the house to Shane, along with the knowledge that I had delivered letters from you. And thus Shane was apprised for the first time of my friendship with you. He leapt to a number of accurate conclusions as to the reason I had put him off, and he confronted Father and me over the matter at dinner. Father suggested I let them talk, and I retired.”
She took a deep breath. “There was no chair that could be easily moved to the door. So I sat with the pistol in my lap and waited for the house to quiet. I dozed. I woke to find Shane standing by the bed, reeking of wine.”
I gasped, as I knew that image well. Gaston took my hand. I squeezed his in return, grateful again for his presence. Then I took Sarah’s again, as I could see she was lost in what had occurred.
She looked up at me and smiled sadly. “So I shot him. I did not think. I did not wait for him to speak. His eyes said all that needed to be said. I will never forget how he looked at me in that moment. It will haunt me.”
“I hit him in the shoulder, as I said,” she continued with renewed calm. “He had a lamp in one hand and bottle in the other, and he dropped both and dove for me. I threw myself onto the floor. I was tangled in the sheets. By the time I freed myself and escaped out the door, the room was in flames and he was screaming.
“All was chaos for a time, as the fire was put out and a surgeon summoned and the like. My room was gutted. They had put Shane in Fa
ther’s room. He was not burned as badly as I had thought from what I had seen as I ran. He will be scarred, though, if he still lives. Despite the bullet wound and the burns, the physician had high hopes. I realized that, as you have noted, if he had been mean before, he will be rabid now.
“Father was very distraught. When he at last caught sight of me, he grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me until I thought my neck would break, all the while yelling, “Why?” over and over again. When I was finally able to speak, I told him I had thought Shane would harm me. Father said that was a foolish notion that you had placed in my head. He was… not himself, or perhaps he was truly himself and this is the side of him I had not chosen to see.”
She was weeping. I slid my chair closer and held her until the quiet sobs subsided.
Over her head, Gaston met my gaze with a grim smile of reassurance. Theodore was downing another cup of wine. Pete was frowning at Sarah, and Striker was studying the table with concern. Agnes was weeping in sympathy.
I released Sarah when her weeping stopped. She composed herself and pawed tears from her eyes before awarding us all a sad smile.
“That is the part of it that… hurt the most,” she said.
I nodded. “The night I left, as I stood watching Goliath’s body burn, I realized that if burning a horse in the yard beyond his study did not get his attention, nothing would. I knew then I would never be loved in that house. I think I always held out hope before. But all hope died for me that night. I realized Shane would not change, and Father would never care, and Mother never had.”
“I thought Father loved me,” she said. “But he does not. Of all of us, Shane is the only one he has ever cared for: thus my ruminations on the cause of that.”
She shook her head again and squared her shoulders. “I fled from him, and knowing not where else to go, I went to our uncle’s, as it was closer than our aunt’s. Uncle Cedric was quite distraught over events, in the proper fashion, as in he was very alarmed that I had been in danger. He went to speak with Father. They quarreled, apparently, and Uncle Cedric returned with a blackened eye and the news that he was going to see me off to safety. I told him I wished to come here and he readily agreed. And since there had been talk of arranging a proper escort for Miss Barclay, it was decided that all of us should travel together. I extended an invitation to Mister Rucker, and he accepted.
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