Tea For Two by Cheri Chesley Read Free Book Online Page A

died.”
    “He didn’t love her,” Shannah said. “He used
her.”
    This time it was his turn to look surprised.
“I can’t believe that, not after what he told me.”
    “Then maybe you should hear what Garnette
told me.”

CHAPTER 11
     
    “My sister loved your brother,” Shannah
began, moving out of his arms and back to her chair, “but she never
forgot their differences. Garnette knew their union was doomed from
the start.”
    “Then why pursue it?” he asked, sitting in
the chair across from her.
    “She couldn’t deny her heart. Every time she
fought against her love for him, she was miserable. And I have to
say she was miserable to be around.” Shannah gave a small smile. “I
didn’t understand it at the time for I was so young, but now I can
recall her horrible melancholy and know she was fighting her
attraction to him.”
    “Chris said he wanted to marry her.”
    “Garnette told me that his parents—your
parents—objected to the idea most strenuously,” she said. “She
tried to give him up then, one last time. She couldn’t bear the
idea of tearing him from his family, even if it meant her
happiness.”
    “She sounds like a rare woman,” he
observed.
    “My sister was the best of women, as was my
mother. She trusted your brother’s declarations of love, perhaps
more than she should have, and believed he’d return to her nearly
up to the end.”
    “Nearly?”
    “He was sent away to school and Garnette
waited every day for a letter from him, but she never received one.
Not one, my lord. Does that sound like the action of a man in
love?”
    “He said he wrote to her,” Brendan argued.
“She never received one of his letters?”
    Shannah shook her head. “I was there, every
day, watching her pine for him and grow thin and pale. Mother
became concerned when Garnette began to refuse food. Up to that
point she had written him faithfully, even though she never
received a reply. Around that same time, Mother and I realized she
was increasing.”
    “Did she never write Chris about the
baby?”
    “My father did,” she said. “At first he was
furious, but he quickly realized his anger did little to help the
situation. He and my mother spoke about going to your parents to
see if they would consent to a marriage, but I don’t know if they
ever did. The one time they mentioned it in front of Garnette, she
flew into a rage. To me she seemed more terrified than angry, but
she insisted they not tell your parents.”
    “Why?” Brendan asked. “I’m sure they would
have consented to a marriage.”
    “She never explained her reasons, and we were
all so concerned for her health that we didn’t want to upset her.”
Shannah sighed. “She was still so frail, it was as though every
nourishment she took went straight to the baby instead of her. I
think her heart was broken, and only your brother’s return would
heal her.”
    “But I know he wrote to her,” he insisted.
“And if she wrote to him, why did he never receive her
letters?”
    “It’s possible, my lord, that your brother
wasn’t as noble as he’d like you to believe,” she said softly,
without any hint of malice. “They were both so young, and they made
mistakes. Or maybe he chooses to remember it differently.”
    Lord Brendan frowned. “The same could be said
about your sister.”
    “You forget that I was there, too. I watched
helplessly while my sister died inside, long before the fever took
her, because your brother abandoned her. When the illness came, the
stress of our parents dying and the toll the fever took on
Garnette’s body forced her into labor.” She shuddered, her mind
lost in memories. “I helped her birth Royce, and when she saw he
was a son, she was overcome with panic. She made me swear that your
brother never find out about him. She said I had to protect
him.”
    “But from what?”
    “She died before she could say,” Shannah told
him. “I can only assume she meant that I had to protect him from
your