Stealing Heaven

  "Leave it off." Norah bit out the command, averting her eyes. "It is only upsetting him even more."

  Aghast, the valet sputtered in protest, but Cadagon waved him to silence.

  "Miss Linton is right, 'tis only makin' him wilder. Always did when he was sick, from the time he was a wee boy. 'Sides, the doctor'll want to be having a look at him anyway. Jest draw up the covers an'—"

  "I'll not be party to this... this improper—"

  "Then get the divil out, ye crack-brained fool!" Cadagon roared.

  Norah couldn't have said it better herself.

  The groom caught Aidan's fist just as it thrashed out, narrowly missing Cadagon's chin, that gravely old voice gentling as the valet rushed from the chamber.

  "Easy there, Aidan boy. 'Tis all right, me fine little man." Norah paused to watch the groom tend his master as if Sir Aidan were his own son, so far gone in suffering. Her throat closed at that gruff tenderness as the older man drew the tumbled coverlets over Aidan's restless form.

  "There ye be, missy. He's all tucked up, an..." Were there tears in the old man's eyes as he turned away? She never knew for certain, because the groom swept up an armful of Aidan's cast-aside clothing. "That flea-bitten city fool won't be pestering you further," he said as he exited the room. "Ye have Gibbon Cadagon's word on it."

  With that he shut the door. Norah turned back to the bed, now alone with Sir Aidan, this man so desperately sick. This man who unnerved her, entranced her, infuriated her, and inspired her with secret dreams far too dangerous, too ephemeral to admit, even to herself. She looked down into his rugged features.

  The white sheets were a startling contrast to the broad expanse of his bare chest, his dark hair tossed against the pillow. Pain had robbed his handsome face of all cynicism, stripping it away until his very soul seemed torn open, exposed in his sweat-limned face.

  Saints above, what was she supposed to do with him? Norah thought with a quiver of alarm. She didn't have the slightest idea how to tend someone who had ingested poison. She didn't know what to say to calm him the way old Cadagon had done. If she had a lick of sense she'd leave this chamber and put Aidan in the capable care of his servants. She wouldn't bow to a promise dragged from her by a man half out of his mind with pain.

  Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she approached the bed warily, a bowl of water in her hands, a fresh cloth floating in the cooling liquid.

  She set it on the table beside him, then reached out tentative fingers to touch his fevered face. He stilled for a heartbeat, turning toward that feminine touch, as if he knew... knew that she had stayed, as she had promised.

  Gently, she stroked back his hair.

  "De—Delia," he choked out the name, shuddering violently. "De—Delia, please, God..."

  He was calling out for his wife? The wife he swore he didn't love? Had never loved? The realization twisted inside Norah's heart like a knife.

  "Oh, God... Delia, don't... don't do this!"

  Agony. It vibrated through the broken words, laying bare wounds in Sir Aidan Kane's soul.

  Norah took Aidan's hand and lifted it to her lips. "I won't do anything you don't want me to," she whispered, knowing he was hearing another woman's voice, another woman's promise.

  "Don't kill... my baby..."

  "I won't." Norah comforted him, but her mind reeled. What was he saying? What was he pleading for? Had there been other children born to his wife? Or had Cassandra been in some kind of peril? What in God's name could it mean?

  "Delia... bitch! Hate... won't let... hurt. Kill—"

  The sound of the door opening startled Norah, tearing a tiny cry from her throat. She looked up to see Cassandra.

  Tear-stained cheeks flushed with regret, red-rimmed eyes brimming with guilt, Cassandra clutched a blanket tightly against the front of her pale cambric gown. She looked like a child, a child who was desperately hurting. A child who, Norah was certain, would hurt even more terribly if she were to catch any of her father's tortured whispers, his rasped, agonized cries.

  "Miss Linton, I—I came down to sit with Papa," she said, fighting the tears brimming on thick lashes. "He always sits with me when I'm sick, even while I'm sleeping. He holds my hand and—and tells me stories, and I feel better just knowing he's there. He'll feel better too, if I'm with him."

  Norah regarded the fifteen-year-old, her heart aching with the image of the accustomed myriad of childhood illnesses that must have trooped through Rathcannon, dulling Cassandra's eyes, making her fretful, restless.

  It was all too easy to picture Aidan standing sentry beside her sickbed, plying her with tales and pretty toys, tenderness and treats, until the bloom returned to her cheeks. His daughter's earnest desire to stay with him now was silent testimony to the special relationship the two of them shared. One Norah envied. One whose rarity she understood enough to treasure.

  But the thought of this innocent, impressionable girl remaining here while his fever raged was unthinkable. The thought of Cassandra overhearing the incoherent cries Norah had just listened to was appalling.

  Norah was certain that would be the last thing Aidan Kane would want. And, Norah thought with a painful tug, sparing Cassandra his anguish might be the only gift she could give this man who lay even now fighting for his life.

  "Cassandra, I know that your father loves you with all his heart," Norah began, groping for some logical reason she could bar the girl from the bedchamber. Something beside the torment that was tearing broken words from her father's fevered lips, words that could cripple this sheltered, headstrong girl as deeply as they had her father. With fierce gratitude toward the quarrelsome valet, Norah latched on to another excuse. "Your father would be the first to tell you that a gentleman's sickroom isn't a proper place for a young lady."

  "Not proper?" The fair brow creased. "Don't be silly. Papa and I have always... I mean, he's my papa, and he's sick, and—"

  "I know how difficult this is for you, sweeting. But try to understand. You need to be quite grown up and do as your father would wish you to. What he needs you to do."

  Resentment simmered in the girl's blue eyes. "He needs me here! He needs me beside him!"

  "No, he needs to be able to work through this—this illness without sensing that you are hovering over him, all white-faced and half sick yourself."

  Norah saw the girl gape at her, hurt and a fierce stubbornness firing in her eyes. "How do you know what he needs? You're barely acquainted. You don't even like each other."

  "Cassandra—"

  "You're supposed to be leaving Rathcannon altogether, Papa said. So don't trouble yourself to tarry here. Papa and I have been getting along on our own ever since my mother died. We will work through this... this disaster as well."

  The proprietary tone left no doubt that young Cassandra Kane was setting up boundaries, building some enchanted circle around parent and child, banishing Norah from that special place.

  Cassandra tipped her chin up in regal dismissal. "I am quite certain you're anxious to be on your way."

  Norah realized, with a tug in her chest, that it was now Cassandra who was eager to see her leave. But Norah remembered all too clearly Sir Aidan's broken pleas, his desperate need to know she would not leave his daughter alone. "I intend to stay here until your father is well again," she said, gently but firmly.

  "Well, I'm staying too."

  A groan tore from Aidan's chest, muttered words falling from his taut lips. Words barely intelligible, for now. Words that could become brutally clear in a heartbeat, rending Cassandra even more savagely than they had Norah minutes before.

  "Cassandra, you have to leave. Now," Norah said as Cadagon returned through the doorway.

  "No! You can't make me leave!" the girl cried, outraged. Her piercing voice drove Aidan to claw at the coverlets with increasing restlessness.

  "Mr. Cadagon! Tell her she's not in charge here! Make her leave!"

  "You're the one who needs to be leavin', sweeting," the old gro
om said quietly. "Come along with ol' Gibbon here, an' I'll take you down to the cottage where you can play wi' the little ones."

  "The cottage? You can't mean you'd take her side!" Betrayal. It filled the girl's tear-reddened eyes and paled her cheeks.

  "Miss Norah is goin' t' take care o' things, just as your da asked her to. Now don't get yourself all blathered, sweetheart, just come along, an' 'twill all come right in the end."

  "No! You can't make me leave him!" A sob broke from Cassandra, and she bolted over to her father's side, clambering onto the bed as if she were small. She clutched at Aidan's restless hand. "Papa, wake up! Tell them not to make me leave you! Papa!"

  "Hurts..." Aidan groaned, groping for something he couldn't see. "Delia... for the love of God... don't—"

  The child's face was stricken and pale. "Mama? Why is he—he talking to Mama?"

  "Mr. Cadagon, we have to get her out of here now," Norah insisted. But Aidan's garbled words had been enough to galvanize Cadagon into action. He grasped Cassandra by the shoulders, pulling her into his arms despite the girl's struggles.

  "Don't! Please, you can't do this!"

  "Come along, girl," the old groom crooned, as Cassandra broke into shuddering sobs.

  "When my papa awakes, you'll be sorry for this," the girl cried, casting Norah a glare filled with loathing and searing hurt. "He—he'll make you sorry!"

  Fighting back her own tears, Norah smoothed her hands across Aidan's brow in a desperate effort to soothe him, to quiet him.

  At the doorway, Cassandra almost broke free. She clung for a heartbeat to the wooden frame. "The blanket!" she choked out. "It's the one he always uses in my room, when he comes to sit."

  "I'll lay it over him." Norah took up the blanket, battling to keep her own voice steady. "I'm certain it will comfort him."

  "More than I could?" the girl demanded, tears brimming over her lashes and running free.

  Norah was certain she'd never forget the look on Cassandra Kane's face as Cadagon shut the door, barring the girl from her beloved father.

  * * * * *

  Darkness clawed at Aidan as he desperately clung to his horse's mane, plunging deeper into a nightmarish world of wind and rain and the sinister laughter of death.

  Death. He held his old enemy at bay with a wild resolve as the demons peeled the skin from his body, a knife's width at a time, flaying away sanity, hope, leaving him stripped bare of everything save the pulsing need to reach her, to save her.

  Cassandra.

  His child. His baby. She was somewhere in this hell, lost without him.

  Aidan roared out his rage, tearing at the wild trees that seemed alive, in league with the witch who had stolen

  Cassandra away. With every beat of his horse's hooves, every searing breath Aidan sucked into the torturous cavities that were his lungs, he felt his strength fading, felt his life ebbing away.

  Let go! the demons whispered in his ears. You can't go on!

  But Aidan dashed them away, saying her name again and again, in a litany of love and guilt and madness.

  Cassandra...

  Oh, God, why hadn't he seen? Why hadn't he realized what was afoot? She must be terrified—terrified—unless in her innocence his angel had no idea she was stumbling closer, ever closer to the abyss.

  No, he would find her, had to find her. And when he did, he'd kill the one who had tried to hurt her. Crush that lying throat with his bare hands.

  Flames were licking his skin, hellish laughter like shattered crystal ground into his night-blinded eyes. His hand reached out, brushed the cool silk of Cassandra's hair, his senses filled with the scent of sweet milk and innocence that was his daughter.

  Papa! Cassandra's scream of terror rent his vitals as the demons snatched her away. Papa, help me! Frightened! I'm frightened!

  An animal cry tore from Aidan's throat, and he flung himself into the darkness where he had touched her so briefly, hurtling through emptiness, eternal emptiness.

  Cass! Sweet God, where are you?

  His cries were lost in that hideous jeering laugh.

  Take me! he raged at the demons. Take me instead of her!

  But the laughter went on and on, crushing his soul, shattering his heart.

  I'll see her dead before I leave her to you, the voice sneered, gloating over his anguish. She's mine... mine... forever!

  Aidan struggled after that voice, his daughter's fading screams, even as he felt the demons snap white-hot manacles about his wrists and his ankles, chaining him forever to the gates of hell.

  He battled with the last strength inside him, felt it sucked away and drained. But as he sobbed out his rage, his terror, his love for the child he had lost, he suddenly felt coolness touch his torture-seared brow, heard another voice, soft and gentle, reaching through the madness of his pain.

  Don't be afraid.

  Tenderness? In this prison of eternal pain? No, it must be a dream, the insane delusion of a man driven into the very depths of hell.

  Then why did he feel the velvety touch on his face, why did the slightest wisp of peace find its way into his battered soul, as if one of the fairy folk Cassandra so loved to dream of had suddenly reached out for him with one ethereal hand?

  I'll take care of her, that magical voice whispered in the accents of England. English fairies? Aidan puzzled as the worst of his torment drained away.

  She'll take care of her. Aidan clung to that certainty, surrendering himself to oblivion.

  * * * * *

  He was resting at last. Whether out of sheer exhaustion or because God had granted him some sliver of peace, Norah could not guess.

  She whispered a prayer of thanks, stroking a cool cloth over features so pale, so tormented, it didn't seem possible they belonged to the same man who had kissed her in the ruins of Caislean Alainn. For five days she had kept her vigil by Sir Aidan's bedside, knowing that the only way she could help his daughter was to make certain this man would not die—a quest even the doctor had doubted would be successful.

  The gypsy women had vanished into the Irish mists from whence they'd come, and the purgatives the doctor had forced down Sir Aidan's throat had done nothing to assuage the madness that held the knight in its brutal grasp.

  In desperation, the physician had begun administering remedy after remedy, trying to guess at what the potions might have contained, until Norah began to believe that if the gypsy possets didn't kill Sir Aidan, the doctor's cures most definitely would.

  In the end, the medical man had merely shaken his head and said that Sir Aidan's fate was in God's hands. That he could only hope the Creator would not decide to take his vengeance now for the Irish knight's myriad sins.

  The words had infuriated Norah, and she'd raged at the doctor, saying that if his God could be so cruel as to destroy such a wonderful father, to shatter an innocent girl with guilt over his death, then his God could go straight to blazes! She'd save Sir Aidan herself.

  Channeling her own fury, her own terror for this man and his child, she had never left Sir Aidan's bedside. She had slept in the chair beside him, let him crush her fingers in his desperate grip when the pain came, listened to his wild ramblings, his tortured cries, until her tears mingled with his own.

  She had been racked with regret but had resolutely tightened the silk cords that bound his wrists and ankles, tying him to the bed in an effort to keep him from hurting himself during the worst of his torment. And when he'd finally slipped into unconsciousness, exhausted from fighting enemies that seemed to cluster about him like malevolent phantoms, Norah had loosed the bindings, smoothing healing salves upon the raw marks he'd torn in his own skin, stunning herself by raising those limp fingers to her lips.

  Oh God, what was making him suffer so horribly? The barely intelligible words torn from his throat hinted at unspeakable acts and nightmares Norah feared had once been all too real. Threats of murder, whisperings of poison, and always his desperate struggle to find the little girl who was now almost a wo
man.

  The woebegone waif who had sobbed herself sick. The girl who had raged at Norah, hated her when Norah had given the order that Cassandra be barred from her father's room unless she had express permission to be there. Mrs. Brindle, her wise eyes holding the same fright as Norah's own, had seen to it that the order was obeyed.

  Yet Norah saw the consequences of her actions every time Cassandra was allowed to come to her father's side. She heard the confusion, the pain in the girl's voice, as she told her father again and again, Papa, she won't let me stay. She makes me leave you, or I would never, never go. Papa, I'm so sorry I ever brought her here.

  As Norah watched Cassandra, her heart ached for the girl. And as she washed the sweat of agony from Sir Aidan's muscled body, and stroked his tumbled hair, she wished she could have found a way to spare both father and daughter their pain. And to spare herself the pain of knowing that, whatever the outcome of Sir Aidan's ordeal, she would still have to leave Rathcannon.

  It had been inevitable from the first, and yet, with each passing day, the knowledge weighed more heavily within her. With each moonlit night, it was more difficult to deny the truth. That in the hidden depths of her soul, she didn't want to leave anymore. She wanted to reach into the vulnerable places Sir Aidan had betrayed during this grueling siege. She wanted to heal those gaping wounds she'd heard in his half-crazed cries, his broken pleas, his wild, desperate rages.

  She wanted to discover the truth about what had battered his spirit so deeply, to solve the enigma of how he could seem to be two men so different from each other. To find out which was the real Aidan Kane.

  Exhausted, Norah stroked that harsh, pale face, assuring herself that he was resting, for however brief a time. With gentle fingers, she tugged the sleeves of his nightshirt down to conceal the bruises on his wrists from the times she'd had to bind him to keep him from hurting himself as he thrashed in the grip of the fever.

  Then she dragged herself wearily to her feet, smoothing her rumpled skirts with her palms. At the doorway, she found Calvy Sipes, the young footman who had risen to her defense what seemed an eternity before. The loyal youth was stationed there, always at her disposal.