Shannon blinked rapidly as she stepped out of the Century’s hold and quickly turned her face from the sun’s beckoning warmth. The peculiar fragrance of fresh air, the harsh energy of raised voices, the snapping of canvas above her head were working against her, compelling her to confront life. Shannon Kilmartin wanted none of it. Someone nudged her in the small of her back and she moved forward docilely to let the next person on deck.
Unbidden, the questions she had asked so often during the voyage came to her mind. Would the earl have insisted she accept transport if he had known what she would encounter? Had he given any thought to the dark and airless hold, the wormy, meager rations that were fouler than anything she had eaten at Newgate?
Following a roughly issued command, Shannon shuffled along the deck, stumbling slightly as she attempted to work muscles that had atrophied from disuse. Until she stepped out of the hold and felt an alien sun prickle her skin, she thought she was dead to all feeling. She was profoundly unhappy to find she had been wrong.
A sudden stirring in the crowd waiting on the wharf caused Shannon to lift her head sharply. She steeled herself, not wanting to view the men who waited below as they prepared to purchase the bondage papers of felons such as she. Her vacant gaze grasped the throng as a whole but was blind to individual faces. She sensed curiosity and impatience, attitudes of men anxious to get on with the business that lay before them. She wondered about this raw, demanding land that had an insatiable appetite for laborers. Hands were hands, she thought absently. The land had no conscience. It cared not one whit if the hands that worked it had committed atrocities. The men who stood on the wharf were responding to the call of their land, burying their natural distaste and employing England’s refuse to appease it.
Shannon dropped her gaze and stared at her own hands. How would they look without the iron bracelets? She had become so accustomed to their weight, to the restricted movement, that the idea of being without them seemed remotely foreign.
“Mama!”
Shannon heard the cry, but it hardly impinged upon her consciousness. The childish voice screamed again, and this time she joined her companions in searching out its source.
There was a titter of laughter as a child squeezed beneath the legs of an impeccably turned out planter. There was a strident shout to stop the girl, but she was like a bead of mercury, eluding the hands that reached out to capture her. The planter was knocked to the ground as two men leaped from the crowd to catch the child.
“Mama!”
Shannon realized with some horror that the girl was heading toward the ship. Everyone on the gangway was jostled as the child scrambled up the sloping board. Poor infant, Shannon thought. What was she running from? She held her breath as the girl faltered, lost her balance, then regained it only moments before she would have tumbled over the edge of the board and into the water. Just when Shannon thought the danger was past, the child’s bonnet was knocked askew by an unkind wind and lifted into the air.
Shannon stood rooted to her spot on the crowded gangway, her throat closed against the tiniest sound of protest as the girl made a leap toward her. There were more shouts when the child attached herself to Shannon’s side. Small hands gripped her soiled skirt, and Shannon’s weary legs buckled at the force of the assault.
“Mama! Help me!”
It was the only thing Shannon heard before she followed the tumbling child into the water. She flailed about to push the child to the surface and stopped only when she saw a pair of hands reach for the girl and pull her to safety. That was all right then. She could rest now. Shannon opened her mouth and let the blessed water rush in. She would have welcomed death if not for the strong hands gripping her skirt and dragging her to the surface.
Brandon Fleming gulped large drafts of air, catching his breath as he looked clearly at the woman he had rescued for the first time. Only the white line about his mouth revealed his resentment.
Damn her! Damn her to hell! Everyone was watching him; he knew it without raising his head. But only one pair of eyes mattered to him. He searched for his daughter. He took in her pale face, the orange tendrils of hair matted to her small head. Beneath lids that were puffy from crying, a pair of blue eyes begged eloquently for her cause. He looked again at the still figure at his side. You don’t deserve your daughter, you bitch.
Then he set about saving her life.
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