It was obvious she’d made her choice when she’d written the letter. Her family had threatened her with disinheritance, but it hadn’t mattered. She’d risked that, and everything she’d known, for a chance, and the child she carried.

“She told him she wasn’t alone.” Shannon’s voice trembled. “She lied to him. She was alone. She’d had to go north and find work because her family had cut her off from themselves and from her own money. She had nothing.”

“She had you,” Brianna corrected. “That’s what she wanted. That’s what she chose.”

“But she never asked him to come to her, or to let her come back to him. She never gave him a chance, just told him that she was pregnant and that she loved him and was going away.”

“She did give him a chance.” Maggie laid a hand on Shannon’s shoulder. “A chance to be a father to the children he already had, and to know he would have another who’d be well loved and cared for. Perhaps she took the decision out of his hands, one that would have split him in two either way he turned. I think she did it for him, and for you, and maybe even for herself.”

“She never stopped loving him.” Again she folded the letter. “Even loving my father as much as she did, she never stopped. He was on her mind when she died, just as she was in his. They both lost what some people never find.”

“We can’t say what might have been.” Tenderly Brianna tied the ribbon around the letters again. “Or change what was lost or was found. But don’t you think, Shannon, we’ve done our best for them? Being here. Making a family out of their families. Sisters out of their daughters.”

“I’d like to think that she knows I’m not angry. And that I’m coming to understand.” There was peace in that, Shannon realized. In understanding. “If he’d been alive when I came here, I would have tried to care for him.”

“Be sure of it.” Maggie gave her shoulder a squeeze.

“I am,” Shannon realized. “Right now it’s about the only thing I’m sure of.”

Fresh weariness dragged at her when she stood. Brianna stood with her and held out the letters. “These are yours. She’d want you to have them.”

“Thank you.” The paper felt so thin against her hand, so fragile. And so precious. “I’ll keep them, but they’re ours. I need to think.”

“Take your brandy.” Brianna picked up the glass and held it out. “And a hot bath. They’ll ease mind, body, and spirit.”

It was good advice, and she intended to take it. But when she walked into her room, Shannon set the snifter aside. The painting drew her now, so she turned on the lamps before crossing to it.

She studied the man on the white horse, the woman. The glint of copper and a sword. There was the swirl of a cape, the sweep of chestnut hair lifted by the wind.