Blast the man, he was an enigma. If only he were not as mesmerizing as he was incomprehensible. If only he hadn't reached out to her so fleetingly with those aching eyes, that strange vulnerability clinging to lips that would have been far easier to dismiss had they remained only blatantly sensual, filled with mockery.
If she had not been able to picture all too clearly what it would be like to brush his mouth with hers—not in the courtesan's kiss he had treated her to in the castle ruins but, rather, a healing kiss, one that would take away his pain.
Norah felt a lump rise in her throat and burn there, born of her own regret as she pictured Cassandra Kane, likely sobbing out her misery into her pillow. Aidan Kane's bond with his daughter was obviously shaken. "Why did it have to turn out this way?" Norah breathed the words aloud. "It hurts so badly."
A cry of regret rose in Norah's breast, but before it could find voice, it was echoed by a sound of such anguish it rocked her to the marrow of her bones.
She stilled, as that muted sound rippled forth beneath the oaken doorway, the restless noises that had drawn her attention before more disturbing than ever.
She took a tentative step toward the tightly closed door, then stopped to listen. She stiffened as she heard a guttural groan, then the shuffling noises of someone tossing and turning.
Sir Aidan? Norah pressed her fingertips against her lips. Who else could it possibly be?
She listened a moment longer, expecting Sir Aidan's valet or one of the other servants to hear him and come to help him, but there was no sound except Sir Aidan's muffled groans.
Norah's lips compressed in a white line. What if he were really ill? She could hardly leave the man to suffer in the next room. Yet could she charge into this man's bedchamber demanding to know what was amiss?
Excuse me for the impropriety, Sir Aidan, but I heard you moaning just a moment ago.
Her cheeks flamed. Surely he would summon up his servants if he needed help. Wouldn't he? She had all but resolved to stalk to her bed and pull the pillow over her head to drown out the sounds when another groan rent the quiet of the night. In that instant, she made the decision.
Resolutely, Norah rummaged her wrapper from the still-open trunk. Flinging it about her, she paced back to the door.
Her fist trembled, but she gritted her teeth and rapped on the panel. "Sir Aidan?" Norah called through the doorway.
A spate of tortured curses singed her ears, mingled with the thrashing sounds of hard male flesh against bedclothes, a thud of feet against the floor.
"Leave me... the hell... alone." That deep voice that had once taunted her rasped miserably. "Can't... goddamn man die... in peace?"
Before she could think, Norah had turned the doorknob, pushing experimentally against it. She was surprised to feel the panel give way.
The room was huge, with heavy, dark furniture generations old. A Jacobean bedstead stood in ornate glory, hangings of forest-green velvet flowing from its carved posts. A branch of candles in a silver holder blazed on a stand beside the bed, illuminating it in waves of flickering orange and red shadows, casting the white sheets and tumbled coverlets into stark relief. But Sir Aidan was not among them. He stood before the wide-flung windows, and moonlight turned the sweat-limned sinews of his bare back. Stripped to nothing but his breeches, he leaned out into the night, his dark hair clinging to his neck, the corded muscles of his body standing out alarmingly, like whipcords so tight they were about to snap.
"Sir Aidan?" Norah queried softly, a flutter of panic bubbling in her throat at her own boldness.
"Go away!" Kane bellowed. Norah might have fled if he hadn't gripped his stomach with white-knuckled fingers. "Ah, sonofabitch!"
Sweat beaded his brow, his glazed features contorted.
"What is it?" Norah demanded, rushing to his side. "What's wrong?"
"Insides on fire." Agony vibrated deep in his voice. "And didn't even... have the pleasure of drinking myself into... oblivion to start the flame."
"Where is your valet? We need to summon help."
"Tried. Probably off drinking the champagne... supposed to be polishing... Hessians with."
She put her arm around him, attempting to brace his weight. Ever so carefully, she struggled to ease him back toward his bed, but the distance seemed interminable, her alarm fueled by the deep trembling in his rigid muscles, the strange, clammy chill to the skin pressed so close to her own. He stumbled, groping for something to steady himself, his large fist knotting in the front of her dressing gown, tearing the loosely tied knot free. The silk of the wrapper fell away, and he buried his face against the swell of Norah's breast, his ragged breath singeing her through the meager shield of her nightgown, his lips taut, twisted, dampening the place where they had fallen.
If the man had not been in such a hideous state, Norah would have been mortified. As it was, she tightened her own grip about him, praying she could make it the dozen steps to the bed.
She banged into a table, something breakable shattering on the floor.
Sir Aidan swore again. "Crazy. Whole house... going to hear—"
"I hope to God they will. You've got to get help."
"No! Can't—find you in here."
She was stunned at the realization that this self-proclaimed villain, supposedly jaded beyond redemption, was trying to shield her honor, despite the fact that he was in such horrible condition.
"Be... all right," he gasped. "Just give... a minute." But at that instant, his lean body was gripped by another shuddering wave of pain that shook Norah to her core.
"Help!" she shouted. "Somebody!" She heard footsteps racing toward the suite of chambers, heard them stop at the door that led from the main corridor into the Blue Room. An urgent knock sounded and a male voice called out.
"Miss Linton? Is there aught amiss?"
"Help! In here!"
She heard the distant door swing open, bang against the wall, heard the heavy tread of what could only be one of the male servants racing into the other bedchamber.
"Miss?" She could hear the man slam to a halt, and she called out again.
"In Sir Aidan's bedchamber! Help me!" At that instant, Aidan's long legs tangled with hers. Norah gave a helpless cry as they crashed to the ground, Aidan wrenching to one side in an effort to spare her his weight. But he didn't release the nightgown, and the flimsy fabric tore with a sickening sound. The chill air teased a generous scoop of her breast as she and Aidan slammed to the floor in a wild tumble.
A heartbeat later, a blinding flash of livery filled the doorway, the footman slamming to a halt bare inches into the room. Calvy Sipes's jaw dropped open, the youth's gaze flooding with horror as it locked on the scene before him. A horror matched by Norah's own. Sir Aidan, all but naked, sprawled over her scandalously clad body, his fist still clenched in the nightgown he'd ripped from one shoulder, his face pillowed against her half-bared breast. She wanted to cry out and explain, but the fall had knocked the breath from her lungs, and all she could manage was a frenzied croak.
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" the footman cried out, indecision warring with alarming ferocity in his honest features for a frozen moment. Then his youthful face hardened, the pugnacious jut of his chin belied by the cracking of his voice. "Sir, I can't—I mean, you can't be... be doin' that to— Me mam didn't raise me to sit by an' twiddle me nose while you... She'd beat me, certain sure if I let you. Not that I could face the priest hisself in confession if I ever turned away."
"Hell with... your priest an' your infernal... mother!" Aidan growled.
Norah made another effort to choke something out, but the impossible man had buried his elbow in the soft swell of her stomach and was trying to lever himself up. "Stop!" she managed to beg. "You're hurting me!"
At that instant the fire of pure Irish temper lit the young footman's eyes. Norah shrieked as he grabbed his master by one arm, wrenching Aidan around, one fist connecting solidly with Sir Aidan Kane's aristocratic chin.
The kni
ght flew backward, the back of his head slamming into the overturned table, an animal cry tearing from his bare chest. Glazed green eyes rolled back beneath trembling lids.
"My God! You've killed him!" Norah railed, scrambling toward him on her hands and knees. "Aidan? Aidan, say something!" she pleaded, dragging his inert form into her lap. His head lolled back against her, his face ice-white.
"Deserves to be flayed, so he does, even if he does be master here," the youth insisted. "Beggin' me pardon fer sayin' so, but you should take a few whacks at the villain yourself, miss! Even if I did stop the bastard afore he finished his wicked deed."
"Wicked deed?" Norah demanded. "What in the world?"
Hot color surged into the boy's cheeks. "Ravishing you, milady. He's ruined you, sure as you're born, the devil take him! Heard all the stories whispered 'bout his dealin's with the ladies, but never thought he'd bring his debauched ways here, with Miss Cassandra about!"
Shock jolted Norah, and she gaped at the footman, suddenly excruciatingly aware of what her encounter with the notorious knight must have looked like when the youth came charging in. As if that weren't bad enough, a ripple of a breeze from the window whipped in to chill bare flesh no other man had ever seen before, while from the corridor beyond, the alarm had obviously been raised throughout Rathcannon. Norah could hear with heart-sinking clarity the sound of others racing toward the scene of the scuffle.
She tussled desperately to drag her wrapper up around her, without dropping Sir Aidan's bruised head unceremoniously on the Axeminister rug, but the garment was pinned beneath her. "N—No!" she protested. "It's not what it appears!"
How it "appeared" was much too evident as a bevy of wide-eyed servants poured in, followed by Mrs. Brindle. Norah thought it couldn't possibly be any worse, until suddenly a slender, golden-curled figure plunged through the door.
Cassandra Kane stared at them with horror-filled eyes.
"Oh, no!" the girl cried out. "It wasn't supposed to work that fast! I didn't think it would—would make him— Oh, Papa! Miss Linton, I'm so—so dreadfully sorry!"
"Sir Aidan is sick," Norah explained with a firmness she wished would steady the erratic beat of her own heart. "Sick."
"No, Miss Linton! I'm certain he would've behaved with the utmost propriety if I hadn't—hadn't fed him the... It's not his fault! Oh, Papa!" The distraught girl fell to her knees, grabbing up one long limp hand.
"I wanted you to fall in love, Papa. Not—not fly at Miss Linton like this!"
Norah shook her head, trying to decipher the girl's garbled babble. "Cassandra, stop talking madness! Your father did not fly at me. He needs a doctor."
"A doctor?" Mrs. Brindle echoed, shaking away the last vestiges of confusion.
"Yes, as quickly as one can be summoned! It's as if Sir Aidan has been... I don't know, stricken with some strange illness. We have to get him into bed."
Mrs. Brindle bustled off in search of cool cloths. The sound of footmen racing to do her bidding was drowned out by Cassandra's heartbroken wail. "But I didn't mean to hurt him. It wasn't supposed to hurt him."
Sir Aidan expelled a ragged groan as he was lifted off of Norah and borne over to the bed. "Poison." Aidan grasped Norah's hand with bone-cracking force as they rolled his long frame onto the unkempt coverlets. "Help me. Poison..."
"Don't be absurd," Norah said softly. "You're just ill. We're fetching the doctor. You'll be better in a trice."
"Don't understand." The effort the words cost him terrified Norah. "Feels like... last time."
The last time? Norah's mind whirled. What in heaven's name could the man mean by that? That he'd been poisoned before? No. He must only be talking about the hideous nausea ripping through him. That he felt as if he'd been poisoned.
Cassandra was sobbing with a wildness that raked Norah's nerves, the girl clutching at her father. "Papa, please don't die! I can't have killed you!"
Heartbroken, Norah wheeled on the girl, grasping her by the arms. She shook her, just enough to jar the glassy expression from Cassandra's eyes. "Stop this! You can't help your father by—"
"I did this to him! I did! With the sauce—the raspberry sauce."
"Cassandra, don't be ridiculous! Of course you didn't. Your father was only teasing when he made jest of your cooking."
"You don't understand! I put love potions in—in the sauce."
"Love potions?" Norah echoed, a sudden stark suspicion taking hold of her.
"I bought them after you two left the fair. The gypsies couldn't make up their mind which was the most powerful, so I got all three. Then I stirred them into the raspberry sauce."
Norah remembered Cassandra's protest when she'd refused her portion. She wrenched her gaze back to the masculine figure writhing in the bed, his sweat-soaked hair almost black, a frightening contrast to his ice-white skin.
Oh, God. Fear lunged in Norah's breast. Was it possible that Cassandra had inadvertently poisoned her beloved father in her quest to see him marry? What deadly ingredients might have been in the potions she had bought with such innocence and optimism? Once those ingredients had been combined with two other mysterious mixtures, the most horrendous of outcomes were all too possible.
"Cassandra, what were in those potions? Surely the gypsies must have told you?"
"It was a secret! They said if they revealed the magic they'd be stricken by the evil eye."
Norah flung a frightened glance at the cluster of terrified servants. "Someone has to go to the gypsy camp, find the women who sold Cassandra the potions, and bring them back here. There must be some kind of antidote, some way to help him. We have to know what he's taken."
"But the evil eye—the young missy said—"
"It's the only way to help your master! Now go!" Norah ordered.
"I'll go!" the boy who had dared strike Sir Aidan volunteered as he barreled out of the room.
Norah turned back to the man who lay on the bed, writhing with pain.
"Poison," he squeezed the word between parched lips. "She... she's dead... how could she..." That deep voice that had been laden with such sensuality, such arrogance, shattered on a groan. Sir Aidan clawed at Norah, and she caught his hand in her own.
"Help her..." he rasped. "My baby... don't let her take—"
Norah held his hand tightly, her worried gaze skating from Sir Aidan Kane's tortured face to that of his daughter, so terrified, so young. Stricken with guilt far too harsh for such a fairy child to endure.
With trembling hands, she stroked back a lock of sweat-dampened hair from Sir Aidan Kane's brow.
"Don't leave her..." he rasped, in a final, shuddering breath. "Promise you won't leave her... alone."
"I won't," Norah said, her heart breaking for this man suffering so deeply, tormented by fear for his child. "I'll help you both." But as she stared at his anguished face, she prayed that Sir Aidan wouldn't be the one leaving his daughter, starting on that deathly journey to a place Cassandra could not follow.
CHAPTER 11
"Miss Linton, I must object to a lady remaining in Sir Aidan's quarters when he is... en dishabille," the dour-faced valet insisted. "I am certain he would be appalled at the prospect."
Norah gritted her teeth, trying to restrain herself from insisting the valet tally up the number of "ladies" who had likely seen Aidan Kane in such a state of undress—to the man's indubitable delight.
"You must depart with the rest of them." The valet gestured to the door through which the other members of Rathcannon's staff had been banished—a frightened Mrs. Brindle, a teary-eyed Cassandra, and the bevy of other servants who had been gaping, horrified, at Aidan's condition.
"Much as I hate t' agree with this pompous windbag, ye shouldn't be stayin' in here with the master all undone," Cadagon said, bustling over with a carefully pressed nightshirt. "A lady the likes o' you shouldn't be exposed to a gentleman in this condition, miss. 'Tis most improper. I'm certain the doctor will be here soon enough."
"And I will be here
when he arrives," Norah said firmly. "Sir Aidan asked me to look out for things while he was ill, and I intend to do so."
The valet choked in horror, his gaze flicking to his master's half-naked state. For an instant, Norah feared the fool would fling himself across Aidan to shield him from her maidenly eyes.
"I'm hardly going to ogle Sir Aidan's unmentionables when he's at death's door!" Norah snapped. "We must make him as comfortable as we can."
"We?" The valet went red as a fresh-baked brick. "Oh no, miss. You don't understand. It just isn't fitting for you to—"
"Stop arguing and help your master, or stand aside." Norah exploded, her patience frayed beyond a thread. "I vow I'll get him out of those breeches myself if I have to!"
Cadagon went scarlet, and the valet uttered dire predictions about the fate that awaited interfering women. But to Norah's abject relief, they did as they'd been ordered.
She rushed about, gathering whatever she might need: a mound of fresh cloths, a cool basin of water from the pitcher on a stand in the corner. She only caught glimpses of a hard, masculine chest limned with a smattering of dark curling hair as the two other men fought to strip Aidan of his clothing on the huge bed. Long muscular legs lashed out and Cadagon grunted as a knee caught him in the stomach.
In a dozen secret fantasies Norah had pictured Sir Aidan without the gilding of elegant clothing. But she had never imagined she would catch her first glimpses of him this way, tossing and turning in an agony not only of the body but of the soul.
It was horrible, shattering, to watch him fight against the poison, not knowing if it was a battle that he could win. The valet attempted to wrestle Aidan into a nightshirt, but those white-knuckled fingers fought to tear it away, as if it were some sort of hellish snare of thorns trying to entrap him.
The idea of tending a man who was stark naked beneath the coverlets set discomfort blazing inside Norah. Yet she couldn't bear the thought of Aidan suffering any more than he was already.