Shannon's Daughter (13 page)

Once
again he felt the man’s distrustful stare.
 
“I suppose that would be acceptable.
 
But please pay attention to which direction you ramble, Miss Peg.
 
Your father would much prefer you keep the
car close by, you know.”

“I
promise I’ll be careful, and I’ll have Kendall to protect me.”
 
She snapped open the box to reveal a necklace
of sapphires and diamonds which Kendall felt sure was worth several decades’
rent on his flat.
 

“Good
lord!
 
Are you sure we don’t need an
armed guard for that thing?”

“No,
silly.
 
Who’s going to know it’s in my purse,
anyway?”

Adamson
was still eyeing him warily, as though he would be considered a likely suspect
in the event the necklace went missing.
 
“When will you be ready for Simon, Miss?”

“Oh,
fifteen minutes.
 
Come on, Kendall.
 
If you insist on wearing a jacket, I suppose
I should grab a sweater, too.
 
I’ll meet
you back downstairs in a few.”
 
She
scurried away, leaving him alone beneath the butler’s steely gaze.

“Nice
to meet you, Mr. Adamson.
 
And I promise, I’ll watch out for her.”

“Thank
you, sir.”
 
His expression softened as he
stared at the spot Peg had just vacated.
 
Kendall had the impression he was talking to himself when he went on, “She
bears watching, I’m afraid.
 
She’s become
far too independent in the past few months.
 
I shudder to think what sort of chase she’ll lead us when she starts
college.”

Pondering
the butler’s remarks, he went upstairs long enough to brush his teeth and grab
a jacket from the closet where someone, Adamson he presumed, had hung it when
he’d discreetly unpacked his bags at some point yesterday.
 
He’d never known the luxury of servants
beyond a girl who’d come in to help his mother several mornings a week when the
budget allowed.
 
Peg, on the other hand,
had grown up beneath the watchful eyes of those in her father’s employ.
 
It was obvious they were both fond and
protective of her.
 
That was a comfort,
anyway.
 
When he was gone, back to his
real
life, at least he could picture
Mrs. Leary and Adamson fussing over her, much the way he would likely fantasize
about doing himself.
 

Back
downstairs, he looked around for Peg.
 
When he poked his head into Michael’s study, he was drawn in by the
towering bookcases and the striking portrait above the mantel.
 
A young woman, blonde with
blue eyes much like Peg’s, stared down on him, a flirtatious little smile on
her full lips.
 
Dressed in a
short, clinging gown of blue satin and draped in a silver fur, she might have
stepped off the page of a fashion magazine, albeit one of at least two decades
earlier.
 
He moved closer to admire the
graceful lines of her ultra-slim body, noting that her legs reminded him of the
pair he’d seen yesterday beneath that swinging tennis skirt.

“You’ve
met my mother, I see.”
 
He started at the
sound of Peg’s voice.

“She’s
very beautiful.”

“Was.
 
That was painted from a photograph taken just
before she and my father were married.
 
Mary Margaret ‘Molly’ O’Shea Shannon.
 
She was only twenty-six when she died.”

He was
struck by the absence of emotion in her voice, as though she had no
relationship with the woman in the painting.
 
But when he turned to her, he caught the fleeting grimace twisting her
face.

“You
have her eyes.”
 

“So
I’ve been told.
 
Are you ready?
 
We shouldn’t keep Simon waiting too
long.
 
He has a tendency to take his
impatience out on the other drivers.”
 
With a toss of her head, she started for the front door.
 
“Oh, and in case you didn’t notice, I also
have my mother’s legs.
 
They’re my best
feature, I think.”

He
followed her to the car with the daunting reminder that his thoughts were far
from his own with Peg in the vicinity.

Chapter Eleven

Simon
dropped them in front of the little dressmaker’s shop, assuring Peg that he
would be waiting where he could keep an eye on the front door.

“Is he
also your bodyguard?”
 
Kendall only half-joked
as he held the door for her.

“Not
technically, but Simon’s been driving me since before I started to school.
 
We’ve been through a lot together, I
guess.
 
He worries I’ll be kidnapped, or at
least have my purse stolen, so very often, when I’ve sent him home, he’ll still
be trailing me a block or so behind.
 
He
thinks I don’t know and I wouldn’t want him to think he’s a failure at undercover
surveillance.”
 
Eyes twinkling, smile
flashing, she passed him with a sideways glance that left him momentarily
breathless.
 
In the car, he’d had
difficulty maintaining a conversation due to the fact that she’d left very
little space for him on the seat and they’d sat hip to hip for at least twenty
blocks.
 
It would have been so natural to
slip an arm around her shoulders, but the impulse had been stayed by the burly chauffer’s
cautionary glances in the rearview mirror.
 

“Nice to
know he’s so devoted to you,” he muttered as she breezed into the shop.
 
And wise to remember he’d most likely murder
any man who laid so much as a finger on her.

The
dressmaker burst from her workroom at the rear of the shop, approaching Peg
with an eagerly effusive welcome.
 
He
wondered if she was accustomed to being fawned over wherever she took her
trade.
 
She certainly took it in stride,
allowing the woman to gush for a few minutes before turning the discussion
skillfully to the matter at hand.
 

“. .
.nothing
frilly, only solid colors and nothing too bright.
 
Most importantly, it has to set off this
piece of jewelry my father gave me for my birthday.”
 
She opened her purse and drew out the velvet
box.
 

At the
sight of its contents, the woman gasped dramatically.
 
“Exquisite!
 
Come with me and we’ll choose a style first, then a fabric.
 
Did I understand you to say this is to be
worn to the symphony’s opening concert?
 
Late September, correct?”
 
She steered Peg into an adjoining room where
a variety of garments hung along one wall.

“That’s
right.
 
I have a silver fur I’d like to
wear with the dress also.
 
It’s a little
bit old fashioned, but it belonged to my mother and my father wants me to wear
it.”
 
Passing the box to Kendall, she lowered
her eyes for an instant, but not before he saw them dull slightly.
 
“You saw it, Kendall, in the painting,
remember
?” she asked softly.
 
He was struck by the idea that the fur must represent something to
Michael, but Peg seemed unsure about wearing it.
 
He was also struck by his immediate desire to
console her, to assure her she needn’t do anything that brought such sadness to
her eyes.

The
woman was busily pulling gowns from the rack, and he noticed Peg eyeing them skeptically.
 
At the sight of a red velvet confection with
billowing sleeves and wide lace collar, she actually cringed, but remained
silent.
 

“Now,
we’ll put you in a fitting room.
 
Keep in
mind these are just to determine what style will suit you and your necklace
best.
 
Then we can talk about fabric and
color.”
 
Whisking Peg into a curtained
alcove, she turned to him with an inquisitive and somewhat forced smile.
 
“Will you be the lucky young man escorting
Miss Shannon to the symphony?”

“No.
 
I’m afraid not.
 
I’m merely a relative, visiting for a few
days.”

From
beyond the curtain, Peg called, “I’m sorry, Miss Devon, this is my cousin,
Kendall Gregg.
 
I asked him to come along
to give me his opinion.
 
I hope you don’t
mind?”

“Not
at all.
 
A gentleman can often pinpoint the most flattering
style from his masculine perspective.
 
Please, Mr. Gregg, do sit down by the mirrors over there.
 
We’ll have Miss Shannon come out to model for
us.
 
Are you ready to be zipped, my
dear?”
 
It appeared the fact that he was
a relative enhanced his standing with Miss Devon, who had initially, he’d felt
sure, been sizing up his jacket with disdain for its lowly off-the-rack
origins.

Peg
emerged wearing a gown of pale green with long tight sleeves and a full
skirt.
 
The neckline was cut low in a
sharp diagonal.
 
While he found it at
first glance stunning, he sensed Peg was uncomfortable.
 
When she stood in front of the triple
mirrors, she tugged at the neckline with a frown.
 
“I’m not sure.
 
How does the necklace look with it?”
 

He
joined her on the low platform, taking the necklace from its box.
 
“May I?”
 
Carefully placing it around her neck, he fastened the clasp with
trembling fingers.
 
“I’m sure I’ve never
held anything this valuable in my hands, other than my violin, perhaps.
 
I must admit, it makes me nervous.”
 
The momentary contact with her skin had more
likely been to blame.
 
Too late, he
questioned the wisdom of joining Peg in a small, enclosed space where she would
be repeatedly taking off her clothes.
 

“I
don’t know,” she was saying.
 
“It feels
too.
. .the lines are. . .too severe, I guess.
 
Let’s try something else.”
 
She stood still in front of him and he
realized she was waiting for him to remove the necklace.
 
He shot himself a stern glance in the mirror,
much the sort of thing Simon would have, had he been on hand.

The
process was repeated with three other dresses, none of which seemed to please
her.
 
“This is silly.”
 
She turned from side to side in a gown of
dark blue crepe which was even by his standards too revealing.
 
“I have several perfectly good dresses left
from all those deb balls, but Dad insists I have to have something new for
this.”
 
She shrugged her shoulders in
obvious frustration.
 
“One more and then
I think I’ll give up for today.
 
I’m
sorry to be so much trouble, but none of these are what I had in mind.”

“What
did
you have in mind?
 
Maybe you could describe it to her.”
 
Unclasping the necklace yet again, he leaned
close, out of earshot of the seamstress, who had been beckoned by one of her
assistants to the workroom door.
 

“Something
softer, I think.
 
And I don’t like the
sapphires with other colors.
 
I sort of
pictured white or maybe silver, not shiny, but something to pick up on the
diamonds and the white gold.”
 
She
shrugged again.
 
“Oh, I don’t know.”

On a
blind mission spurred by his desire to see her happy again, he went back to the
rack while she returned to the dressing room.
 
He had no knowledge of women’s fashion beyond what he admired when it
stood before him gracing the right sort of figure.
 
As he fingered the gowns, he thought of what
Peg had said and tried to apply it to each one.
 
She was right, the necklace would look best against a neutral, something
that would not detract from the creamy perfection of her skin.
 
The dress she’d worn last night set off her
hair and eyes, but was probably the wrong shade for the silver stole.
 
When his hand came to rest on a gown of pale blue-grey
crepe, he pulled it out for closer inspection.
 
The neckline was a soft sort of drape, possibly low enough to show off
the necklace.
 
Not at all sure how it
would look on a feminine form, he took it off the rack and carried it to the
dressing room.
 

“Have a
look at this, Peg.
 
Any closer to what
you had in mind?”
 
Her arm appeared
through the curtains and he draped the dress over it, forcing back the vision
of what lay beyond.

“Oh.”
 
He held his breath for her rejection.
 
“This is beautiful.
 
I love the color.
 
Hold on, I’ll be right out.”

When
she appeared, her face was lit with the kind of smile he hadn’t seen in the
past hour.
 
“Ah.
 
Lovely!”
 
It would be too much to expect him to hold
back at least that much.
 
Delicious,
delectable, even yummy, would better describe what she and the dress together
accomplished.
 

“I like
it.
 
Put the necklace on me again.”
 
The dress, filled with Peg, took on her
precise shape.
 
Without being overly provocative,
it seamlessly hugged each curve, falling in a graceful swirl at her feet.
 

She
turned from side to side, fingering the necklace and toying with the drape
which it turned out rested just off her shoulders.
 
When Miss Devon reappeared, she seemed
momentarily taken aback at the sight of Peg in a dress she had not selected for
her.
 

“I like
this one.
 
It’s a little big, but in the
right size, I think this will be perfect.”

“Perhaps
in another color?
 
That’s a very dull shade for a girl your
age.”

He felt
a swell of pride when Peg replied, “No.
 
I want this.
 
It’s just what I had
imagined.
 
Kendall, you like it don’t
you?”

“I’m
certainly no expert, but yes, if I saw you across a crowded room wearing that
dress, my first thought would be to fight my way through the throng of admiring
men for a closer look.”
 
Their eyes met
in the mirror and for a moment he thought he’d gone too far.
 
Peg blinked at him, as though doubting his
sincerity, and then grinned.
 

“Why, Kendall,
that’s a compliment, isn’t it?”
 
She
laughed, not
at
him, but with what
seemed to be real appreciation for his ridiculous spewing.
 

“You
wanted my unbiased opinion, didn’t you?”
 
He folded his arms over his chest and gave her reflection a long look up
and down.
 
“It’s hardly the thing for
climbing trees, but in the proper setting, you could certainly pass for a
swan.”