Always,

Amanda

Love letters, she thought dully. To her father. Written, she saw, staring at the date, when she was an infant.

Her hands chilled. How was a woman, a grown woman of twenty-eight years, supposed to react when she learned her father had loved a woman other than his wife? Her father, with his quick laugh, his useless schemes. These were words written for no one’s eyes but his. And yet, how could she not read them?

With her heart pounding thickly in her chest, Brianna unfolded the next.

My darling Tommy,

I have read and read your letter until I can see every word in my head. My heart breaks to think of you so unhappy. I, too, often look out to sea and picture you gazing across the water toward me. There is so much I wish to tell you, but I’m afraid it will only add to your heartache. If there is no love with your wife, there must be duty. There is no need for me to tell you that your children are your first concern. I know, have known all along, that they are first in your heart, and in your thoughts. God bless you, Tommy, for thinking also of me. And for the gift you gave me. I thought my life would be empty, now it will never be anything but full and rich. I love you now even more than I did when we parted. Don’t grieve when you think of me. But think of me.

Always,

Amanda

Love, Brianna thought as her eyes welled with tears. There was such love here, though so little had been said. Who had she been, this Amanda? How had they met? And how often had her father thought of this woman? How often had he wished for her?

Dashing a tear away, Brianna opened the last letter.

My darling,

I have prayed and prayed before writing this. I’ve asked the Holy Mother to help me know what is right. What is fair to you, I can’t be sure. I can only hope that what I tell you will give you joy, not grief.

I remember the hours we spent together in my little room at the inn overlooking the Shannon. How sweet and gentle you were, how blinded we both were by the love that swept through us. I have never known, nor will I know again, that deep, abiding love. So am I grateful that though we can never be together, I will have something precious to remind me that I was loved. I’m carrying your child, Tommy. Please be happy for me. I’m not alone, and I’m not afraid. Perhaps I should be ashamed. Unmarried, pregnant by another woman’s husband. Perhaps the shame will come, but for now, I am only full of joy.

I have known for weeks, but could not find the courage to tell you. I find it now, feeling the first quickening of the life we made inside me. Do I have to tell you how much this child will be loved? I have already imagined holding our baby in my arms. Please, my darling, for the sake of our child, let there be no grief or guilt in your heart. And, for the sake of our child, I am going away. Though I will think of you every day, every night, I will not write again. I will love you all of my life, and whenever I look at the life we created in those magic hours near the Shannon, I will love you more.

Give whatever you feel for me to your children. And be happy.

Always,

Amanda

A child. As her eyes swam with tears, Brianna covered her mouth with her hand. A sister. A brother. Dear God. Somewhere, there was a man or woman bound to her by blood. They would be close in age. Perhaps share the same coloring, the same features.

What could she do? What could her father have done, all those years ago? Had he searched for the woman and his baby? Had he tried to forget?

No. Gently Brianna smoothed the letters. He hadn’t tried to forget. He’d kept her letters always. She closed her eyes, sitting in the dimly lit attic. And, she thought, he had loved his Amanda. Always.

She needed to think before she told Maggie what she’d found. Brianna thought best when she was busy. She could no longer face the attic, but there were other things that could be done. She scrubbed and polished and baked. The simple hominess of chores, the pleasure of the scents they created, lightened her spirits. She added turf to the fires, brewed tea, and settled down to sketch out ideas for her greenhouse.

The solution would come, in time, she told herself. After more than twenty-five years, a few days of thought would hurt no one. If a part of the delay was cowardice, a weak need to avoid the whip of her sister’s emotions, she recognized it.

Brianna never claimed to be a brave woman.

In her practical way, she composed a polite, businesslike letter to Triquarter Mining in Wales and set it aside to be posted the next day.

She had a list of chores for the morning, rain or shine. By the time she’d banked the fires for the night, she was grateful Maggie had been too busy to drop by. Another day, perhaps two, Brianna told herself, and she would show her sister the letters.

But tonight she would relax, let her mind empty. An indulgence was what she needed, Brianna decided. In truth her back was aching just a bit from overdoing her scrubbing. A long bath with some of the bubbles Maggie had brought her from Paris, a cup of tea, a book. She would use the big tub upstairs and treat herself like a guest. Rather than her narrow bed in the room off the kitchen, she would sleep in splendor in what she thought of as the bridal suite.

“We’re kings tonight, Con,” she told the dog as she poured bubbles lavishly under the stream of water. “A supper tray in bed, a book written by our soon-to-be guest. A very important Yank, remember,” she added as Con thumped his tail on the floor.

She slipped out of her clothes and into the hot, fragrant water. The sigh rose up from her toes. A love story might be more appropriate to the moment, she thought, than a thriller with the title of The Bloodstone Legacy. But Brianna settled back in the tub and eased into the story of a woman haunted by her past and threatened by her present.

It caught her. So much so that when her water had chilled, she held the book in one hand, reading, as she dried off with the other. Shivering, she tugged on a long flannel nightgown, unpinned her hair. Only ingrained habit had her setting the book aside long enough to tidy the bath. But she didn’t bother with the supper tray. Instead, she snuggled into bed, pulling the quilt up close.

She barely heard the wind kick at the windows, the rain slash at them. Courtesy of Grayson Thane’s book, Brianna was in the sultry summer of the southern United States, hunted by a murderer.

It was past midnight when fatigue defeated her. She fell asleep with the book still in her hands, the dog snoring at the foot of the bed and the wind howling like a frightened woman.

She dreamed, of course, of terror.

Grayson Thane was a man of impulses. Because he recognized it, he generally took the disasters that grew from them as philosophically as the triumphs. At the moment he was forced to admit that the impulse to drive from Dublin to Clare, in the dead of winter, in the face of one of the most bad-tempered storms he’d ever experienced, had probably been a mistake.