The Fragrance of Her Name (22 page)

“
Felicity and John, Mrs. Kensington. Please,” Uncle Johnny chuckled.

Georgia shrugged delightedly. “And Georgia to y’all!” Nana greeted the elderly couple next while Lauryn’s mother gasped at the sight of Brant. “Why, look at you!” Georgia exclaimed. “Oh, Brant! We’re so happy to have you back.” She hugged him and Lauryn felt awkward, being the only female in the room that hadn’t received a hug. She thought of how different these few moments with Brant had been compared to the last time she stood in the entry way with him. She felt her face go crimson as Brant looked to her then as if he, too, was remembering the last moments he’d spent at Connemara.

“
If y’all will excuse me a moment,” Lauryn stammered. “I need to change out of this skirt.”

“
Lauryn?” Georgia asked.

“
Well, apparently she had a little incident with a tree just before we arrived,” Aunt Felicity explained. “But I’ve told her that I really do think we can mend it.”

“
Oh, don’t you worry about it, Lauryn,” Uncle Johnny chuckled. “Brant and I think it’s just fine the way it is!” His teasing wink was that of a playful imp.

“
Now, you behave, Jonathan.” Felicity scolded.

Brant grinned and winked at Lauryn just before she turned from him, her cheeks beet-red, and rushed up the stairs.

Once inside her room, Lauryn couldn’t decide whether to burst into tears of humiliation or explode with pure delight. He was fabulous! Brant was more than that. He was magnificent! And he’d come back! But why? What was his reason? For a moment, Lauryn let herself dream that maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with her. But she knew better than that. He’d come for Lauralynn. He was sighted once more and ready to help Lauryn search. That was all.

And yet, her heart raced with hope. Suddenly, thoughts were leaping about in her mind. What if they did succeed in finding Lauralynn? Maybe then Brant would be ready to see beyond his torment to…no. One shouldn’t hope for such things. But still, it was there; the secret hope that Brant had come back for more than just to solve the mystery of Laura.

“
I told you he’d be back,” the Captain said as he suddenly appeared in Lauryn’s bedroom.

Lauryn couldn’t help her excited squeal as she threw her arms around his neck. “He did! He did! And I don’t even care that it’s not for me that he came back. As long as he’s back.” Then she realized the selfishness of her reaction. “And he’ll help us, Captain. He will! We’ll find her for you.”

“
I know, angel,” the Captain chuckled. “And he’s a fine figure of a man.”

“
He is!” Lauryn clutched her hands to her bosom. “I nearly fainted when I first saw him! Isn’t he so handsome? Even more so with his eyes showin’. And his hair trimmed short…” Then she paused, as her heart began to pound with nervous anxiety. “I can’t…I have to remember why he’s here.”

“
Let your heart tell you why he’s here, Lauryn.” The Captain seemed sincere, his smile warm and loving. But it was too dangerous to imagine that there was any other reason Brant had returned, than for Laura’s sake.

“
I’ll be fine. And I’ll find her for you,” she promised.

“
Find her for you, Lauryn,” the Captain said, and he kissed her cheek and vanished. “Find everything for you,” came the final echo of his voice.

That evening at supper, Lauryn tried to concentrate on the conversation among the others. But, every time her gaze wandered to Brant sitting across from her, he was looking at her with that familiar amused grin. That was more unnerving than anything. Lauryn realized that, if he hadn’t been blind, if he had been able to look at her when he was at Connemara before the way he looked at her now, she never would have felt comfortable enough to talk with him the way she had. His gaze was piercing as if he knew what she was thinking and feeling each time he looked at her.

“
I do remember you, Felicity.” Lauryn’s attention was drawn back to the conversation as her Nana spoke. “I was young…and even though you had married Johnny before I was in Knoxville…I remember when we buried dear Brand. You were here. I remember how beautiful I thought you were.”

Aunt Felicity smiled and dramatically placed a hand to her bosom. “Oh, youth? Where art thou, beauty?” Everyone chuckled at her humor as she folded her napkin before going on. “My dear brother, Brandon. How I adored him. How I adored Laura.” Everyone was silent.

“
I was at home…healing when they buried him here,” Uncle Johnny interjected. “He was a good man.”

“
After supper, Nana and I will take you out there to visit his restin’ place, Felicity,” Georgia offered. “No doubt, it’ll do him good to hear from you.”

“
Will he hear me?” Felicity asked Lauryn.

Lauryn was uncomfortable. She wasn’t comfortable when people who knew about the Captain asked her too many questions about him. Surely this was different. This was a member of his family. His own sister.

“
Yes,” Lauryn answered.

“
I wish I had a ghost,” Patrick sighed.

“
Maybe you do, my boy,” Uncle Johnny suggested.

“
Really?” Patrick brightened.

“
Heaven forbid!” Georgia mumbled.

“
Well, everyone has angels about them, boy. Guarding them. Especially little boys with pocketknives hidden in their shoes.” Uncle Johnny chuckled and tousled the boy’s hair.

“
Patrick Kensington!” Georgia scolded. “What’re you doin’ with a knife hidin’ in your shoe?”

“
Ah, Mama,” Patrick said.

“
Tell you what, boy,” Uncle Johnny suggested. “If it’s all right with your Mama…after supper I’ll take you out on that front porch and teach you how to put that knife to good use on a whittling stick. What do you say?”

“
Mama? It would be good for me to learn,” Patrick begged.

Georgia sighed and shook her head. “Very well. But y’all be careful. I knew a boy once that lost a finger a whittlin’ a pencil down.”

Lauryn looked across the table to see Brant smiling at her little brother. He seemed pleased enough to be back with them. Surely he wouldn’t have come back if he’d expected to be otherwise.

After dinner, Nana and Georgia took Felicity to the cemetery. Uncle Johnny and Patrick were sitting on the front porch steps cutting things up with pocketknives, and Brant sat in the parlor in the big chair near the hearth, staring across the room at Lauryn.

Lauryn squirmed in her seat on the sofa, uncomfortable under his gaze, until finally he said, “I can hear her now.”

“
What?” Lauryn asked. Surely she hadn’t heard him say what she thought she did.

“
I can hear her.”

Chapter Eight

“
I can hear her…Laura. Not very well and only some things,” he explained in a whisper. “But I can hear her.”

Lauryn was amazed. His first letter had implied as much, but she had been certain she had misinterpreted.

“
Why now and never before?” Lauryn asked.

Brant shrugged. “I think…I think I listened differently when I couldn’t see. It’s so quiet…her voice. Like a breeze…when you think you’re hearing something but you’re really not. Only…I do.”

“
What has she said to you?” Lauryn’s curiosity was fast overcoming her discomfort in Brant’s handsome presence. “Tell me.”

Brant leaned forward and kept his voice very low. “Well, she keeps saying
‘my sister’
…especially when I ask her about the tea cup she doesn’t have anymore.”

“
Nana?” Lauryn asked.

Brant ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “That’s all she’ll say. I ask, ‘
Virginia gave you the cup?’
and she asks,
‘My sister?’
And that’s it. Then I tell her Virginia is fine and happy and she smiles…seems satisfied.”

“
What else?” Lauryn pressed, her hopes and excitement rising.

Brant shrugged. “She’s says your name. Points to me and says,
‘Lauryn.’
And she holds her skirt and says,
‘there’s blood here.’
I don’t know.” Brant shook his head in discouragement. “I thought maybe…”

“
You thought I’d know what she was tryin’ to say right off,” Lauryn finished for him.

“
And I looked through the Captain’s trunk again,” he added. Lauryn sat up straight.

“
What do you mean?” she asked him.

“
The Captain’s trunk. The one in our attic. I spent a whole afternoon rummaging through that smelly old thing again.”

“
You never told me he had a trunk at your house!” Lauryn was a bit irritated. It seemed, somehow, to be important.

“
I’m sorry. I…we’re looking for Laura and I never thought…besides,” he began to admit. “I had only looked through it once before and it upset Laura so badly that I thought maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do.”

Instantly Lauryn was humbled. Brant obviously had a respect for the Captain’s personal belongings that she had maybe been lacking where Lauralynn’s were concerned.

“
I’ve gone through Laura’s trunk over and over,” Lauryn confessed.

“
Maybe we need to go through it together,” Brant suggested.

“
It wouldn’t bother you?” Lauryn ventured.

“
No. Not now. The clock is ticking Lauryn. Life has to go on. This life and the next.” He seemed angry and somewhat resentful for a moment, but appeared to force himself to brighten and asked in a very friendly manner, “So, how’s your friend Penny?”

“
Penny?” Lauryn repeated. Why should Brant be interested in Penny, or how she was doing?

“
Yes,” he chuckled. “You remember that I met her when I was here. She’s your friend still isn’t’ she?”

“
Well, of course,” Lauryn said. But why should he concern himself? It bothered her. The odd sort of jealousy that she felt in her heart when Brant spoke of Laura so lovingly, now rose in her bosom when he asked about Penny. “She’s fine.”

“
And Sean and Mindy and the baby?”

“
They’re all just dandy,” Lauryn told him realizing he was just making polite conversation.

“
That’s good to hear,” he sighed, leaning back in his chair.

“
Did you come back to stay?” Lauryn blurted out. Then realizing how revealing her question had been she added, “To stay and help me find her?”

He paused, not answering right away. His eyes narrowed as he looked at her, almost suspiciously. “I came back to help you look for her, yes.” It was an answer that rather avoided answering. In other words, he wasn’t staying, but he had come back for Laura. No one else.

Trying to seem unhurt, Lauryn said, “Good. So…where do we start?” She’d asked herself that same question many times. She’d asked the Captain. And now, asked again. There was nowhere to search that she hadn’t already. Or so she thought.

“
Where do you always start?” he asked.

Lauryn smiled, stood and went to the small table behind the sofa. “The family bible, of course!”

“
Of course!” Brant chuckled. Lauryn lovingly lifted the bible and returned to her seat on the sofa.

“
Scooch over,” Brant ordered as he rose and walked toward her. He sat down next to her and curiously looked at the bible. “Why do you start here?”

Lauryn shrugged, tingling violently at his being so near to her. “It all started here, didn’t it?” He chuckled at her wisdom as she opened the bible to reveal the handwritten record of the O’Halleran family.

“
We begin with my great-grandfather O’Halleran,” Lauryn sighed. “He and my great-grandmother O’Halleran had eight children. Two died at birth, one died as a baby. The others…I’ll just read it to you, all right?” And lovingly tracing the ancient inked handwriting with her finger, she read aloud.

The children of Kiel and Shayla O’Halleran:

Ethan Ian O’Halleran born October 11, 1836 died in battle April 5, 1863

Erynn Eva O’Halleran born September 25, 1840 died September 30, 1840

William McCrea O’Halleran born July 10, 1842 died March 9, 1910

Sean Keenan O’Halleran born November 23, 1844 died November 24, 1912

Carissa O’Halleran born June 20, 1847-died

Virginia Anne O’Halleran born August 19, 1855.”

“
So,” Brant sighed. “Everyone has died…except your Nana.”

“
Yes. And she was so young…the age Patrick is now,” Lauryn reminded him.

“
Do you suppose when Patrick is an old man, he’ll remember being a boy and humiliating his sister one day when company came?” Brant smiled and winked. Lauryn felt warm, delighted and alive.