If only he truly believed such love was possible at all.
He gave a bitter laugh. Considering the way he'd hurt her in those raw minutes before he'd stormed from her chamber, he'd be lucky if his bride didn't loathe him.
"Papa!"
Cassandra's voice startled him, and he turned to peer down into his daughter's face, the mere sight of her tonight inflicting yet another blow to his already battered heart.
Cassandra—his little scrape-kneed princess—had somehow been magically transformed into a beautiful young woman, the living image of the willful girl Aidan himself had fallen in love with in that far-away ballroom in London so many years before.
But the facial likeness was the only thing that whispered of Delia in the daughter they had created together. Instead of eyes that begged a man to come hither, Cassandra's eyes were bright and eager, her mouth sweet instead of seductive, without a thousand pretty lies at the tip of her tongue. Had Aidan suffered seeing Cass thus transfigured a month ago— her gown that of a lady, her hair a woman's shining coronet—the mere sight of her would have shattered Aidan's heart. But tonight, even his cherished daughter could not seem to break the invisible chains that had been forged between him and the woman now gliding across the castle ballroom's floor in the arms of Philip Montgomery.
"Papa, you are being the biggest blockhead in all Ireland!" Cassandra accused. "Standing here as if you were hiding, when the whole assembly is fairly perishing to talk to you."
"Don't you mean pry into the strange broth that is my marriage, Cassandra?" he said with a tinge of bitterness. "God knows, even here they've given me no peace, hounding me for any scrap of scandal they can carry back to share with some other gossiping fiend. Perhaps I should stop the orchestra for a moment and make an announcement to the blasted bunch of them. I'm sure you are all most astonished at my precipitous marriage, but you see, my daughter found me a bride and gave her to me for my birthday. And since Miss Linton had no other more attractive prospects for her future, she deigned to wed me," he mocked. "I can just imagine what a delightful time these old dragons would have with that tidbit of information."
Cassandra's hurt glance made him feel like a bastard, but at that moment he saw Montgomery draw Norah a whisper closer to his body, Aidan's bride tipping her head, as if eager to capture something his lordship had said.
"Papa, even if you detest everyone else here, you could at least pay some attention to Norah."
"It seems she's doing quite fine without me." Aidan's jaw clenched, his eyes seething beneath half-closed lids.
Montgomery had whisked Norah to the far edge of the dance floor, and Aidan saw Norah lean close to him, whisper something in Montgomery's ear. A fist seemed to slam into Aidan's gut as he watched the Englishman move out of the bevy of dancers and tuck Norah's hand possessively in the crook of his elbow. With a hasty glance to make certain they were unseen, Philip Montgomery led Aidan's wife out the doors that led down to Rathcannon's gardens.
How many times had Aidan watched the same scene unfolding? Delia and her lovers stealing away for thirty minutes, an hour or longer, while Aidan and every other guest in attendance pictured all too clearly the lusty exchange that was going on behind the yew hedge or a bank of roses. Delia not caring if she were discovered—actually delighting in it—then returning, licking those passion-ripe lips like a cat who had sampled forbidden cream.
Yet never, in all his years with Delia, had the pain been this brutal, this consuming.
"Oh, Papa," Cassandra said, as if realization had just dawned on her. "You are upset because she has danced with his lordship? If you ask me, you are the one who owes her an apology."
"Owe her?"
"I don't see why you should act like the maligned hero of some melodrama since you didn't offer to dance with her yourself! You could hardly expect her to stand by the wall with the buck-toothed Misses Baldrey, could you?"
"Cassandra, I—" Aidan stopped, grimaced. She was right. He was sulking in the corner with all the finesse of the confused, hurting, betrayed youth he'd been when Delia held his heart. He was acting for all the world like a lovesick fool. The knowledge enraged him, terrified him, spurring him to straighten, to draw away from the pillar upon which he'd been leaning. He had watched his first wife parade countless lovers before his face, but Norah... No, he'd not allow any man—especially a pompous ass like Philip Montgomery—to touch so much as the hem of her gown.
"Just a blasted minute," he said, pausing to scowl down at his daughter in confusion. "Why this sudden concern on Norah's behalf when you had decided to hate her?"
Cassandra squirmed, flushed. "I suppose I saw the sadness in her eyes. The loneliness—as if... as if she were pressed up against the window of a shop filled with wonderful treasures but no one had ever invited her inside."
The insight wrenched at Aidan's gut.
"In her letters and when she first arrived, she was so kind and funny and so—so good. Angry as I was at the way she acted while you were sick, well, I just couldn't believe she could be the lady in the letters and a tyrant at the same time. I don't know why I acted the way I did."
"Blast, you're a confusing little baggage. I think you females conspire to drive men mad."
"I don't want you to be mad, Papa. I want you to go find Norah. Dance with her."
"I'll find her."
With that, he stalked away, winding through the assemblage, ignoring greetings and queries, ignoring everything except the wild clamoring in his veins, the throbbing in his temples, the hot, aching hole that had once been his heart.
The garden was lit with paper lanterns that glowed in pinks and lavenders and greens. Stone benches gleamed, silvery in the moonlight, while statues born of myth and legend reared up in the uncertain light, as if enchanted by some strange magic that had made them shiver to life.
Aidan swallowed hard, the echoing of his bootheels upon the path seeming like cannon fire, his fists clenched at his sides, as if their grasp on nothingness could somehow contain the emotions tearing through him with such excruciating power.
When he heard the soft murmur of voices in a tiny arbor, hidden from the eyes of any who would stray down the pathways, he was tempted to call out. But to what purpose? To warn Norah so she could spring out of her lover's arms? Aidan grimaced, disgusted with himself. Norah was not Delia. They were as different as the silvery moon from the most dazzling sunlight, as different as a dove from a peregrine with a thirst for blood.
Trying to get the jealousy tormenting him under control, Aidan strode around the corner. What he saw all but drove him to his knees.
A lithe feminine figure was clasped in a man's embrace, her rosy arms twined about his neck in ecstasy. Laughter, silvery, ethereal, echoed from lips that Aidan had kissed the night before.
"Philip! Oh, Philip, you are the most wonderful man in the world! I knew I could depend upon you to help me! How can I ever, ever thank you?"
"Shall I tell you, Norah? Shall I show you?" That noble head lowered, capturing her mouth in a kiss.
"Philip!" she gasped, a vision of maidenly protest— exactly the kind men could never resist. Montgomery tangled his hands in her hair.
"You cannot love that beast you call a husband!" he grated. "No one could blame you for seeking comfort from a better man. Norah, let me love you."
The words coiled whip cords of madness around Aidan's throat, blinding him with a red haze of fury and betrayal.
"Philip, I—I don't know what to say." Shaken, she sounded so shaken. Hadn't he heard such tones a dozen times before? Women tempting their suitors to greater lengths, more grandiose vows of adoration. "I am wed to Sir Aidan."
Aidan strode into the pool of light, his voice steel sheathed in ice. "Oh, please, don't let such minuscule concerns as wedding vows interfere in your pleasure, madam."
Norah gave a tiny cry as she wrenched out of Montgomery's embrace.
"Kane, you sneaking bastard!" the nobleman snarled. "I should have known you'd be
skulking in the bushes, following us."
"On the contrary, I was merely coming to claim my bride for a dance. I had not fulfilled my husbandly duty to do so, as my daughter none too gently pointed out. As for any attempt to... skulk, you are mistaken. I made a great deal of noise when I approached, my lord, but I doubt either of you would have heard the blast of a cannon if it were fired from this hedge. You were... otherwise occupied."
Norah pressed one hand to her chest, those delicate, gloved fingers silhouetted against the breasts Aidan had lavished with kisses the night before. He was fired with the need to drag her into his arms, force her down into the hidden bower of the arbor, and take her again, hard and fast and furious, until Philip Montgomery's kiss was nothing but a crumbling ash of memory in the wake of Aidan's own onslaught of passion.
"Aidan, please." Her voice trembled, so soft and musical, so uncertain. Aidan clenched his jaw against its dangerous persuasion. "This is not what it appears."
"You forget I have had some experience in such matters. It has always been a Kane family tradition to dismiss wedding vows as soon as they become inconvenient. However, I must say, I cannot recall any bride doing so quite this soon—a mere day after her wedding."
"You are the one who said our vows were meaningless. I never—"
"Don't bother scrambling to explain," he said, cutting her off with a wave of his hand. "You were the picture of maidenly protestations, my sweet. I suppose that you flung your arms about this man's neck because—what? He'd taken a troublesome speck of dust out of your eye? I'm quite certain that would qualify him as—how did you say it? The most wonderful man in the world."
Bitter, biting, he echoed her words of moments before, amazed at the jagged hole they tore in his chest. He expected her to wince, to flush, readily trapped in a snare of her own words. But instead of growing teary eyed, or letting that wounded-doe expression of hurt fill her eyes, the dark depths filled with outrage.
"Why don't you be honest for once, Aidan?" she said. "Say, Don't bother to explain because I don't want to hear the truth. I'd much rather leap to brainless conclusions about things I don't understand."
"A man with his hands all over you, begging you to let him love you, doesn't need much translation, in my experience."
"Why should it bother you if she did let me love her?" Montgomery raged. "Before a sennight, you'll be in some other woman's bed. Or will you have a pair of them, Kane? A brace of pretty harlots playing bed games with you? From what I hear, you have carnal appetites that could scarce be fulfilled by a decent woman. Or do you plan to debase Norah by teaching her your lecherous tricks?"
Aidan felt the blood drain from his face, fury and pain and betrayal clawing inside him. Scenes flashed before his eyes: the bed littered with playing cards, the wildly sensual wagers that had fired his blood driving him to heights of desire he'd never reached before. He could see Norah, her lips glossy, parted in a breathy gasp, as he unfastened her nightgown one button at a time, daring to touch her, taste her, tease her.
Lecherous tricks...
There were those who would claim it was so—the game he had played with her in their bridal bed. But it had shifted into something so stunningly powerful, so wrenchingly beautiful, it still awed him, terrified him.
The idea that Norah might have confided such happenings to Montgomery poured acid on nerve endings already sizzling with tension.
His hard gaze flashed to Norah's face. "Did you follow through on your threat, my lady?" he asked in silky menace. "Did you tell your hero what transpired between us on our bridal night?"
"No! Of course I—I did not!"
"You didn't tell him about our diverting little game of wagers, then?"
"Aidan, please—"
"Montgomery, this I can tell you: You are wrong in your judgment of my bride. Norah may appear the gentle virgin, the quintessential lady, but I assure you, last night she was most—ahem—eager to place herself in my jaded hands."
"You bastard!" Montgomery raged. "I will do everything I can to rescue her from your clutches!"
"Philip, stop! I—"
"Montgomery." Aidan's voice was deadly steel. "If you ever come near my wife again, I vow you will regret it."
"Brave words, Kane. You didn't turn a hair the entire time your first wife was whoring her way through half the king's regiments! You think it will be long before Norah rejects you just as the Lady Delia did?"
Years of rage, beaten down by force of will, suddenly burst their dam, roaring through Aidan like wildfire. His lips curled in a feral snarl, Aidan drove his fist into Philip Montgomery's patrician face. Fire shot through Aidan's right hand at the impact, but he barely felt it, the sensation lost in the surging satisfaction of Montgomery roaring in pain.
The nobleman staggered backward with the force of the blow. One hand covered his face as a crimson stain spread beneath his impeccable glove.
"Stop this! Both of you!" Norah glared at them. The face Aidan had seen wreathed in wonder was now sick with horror.
"Norah, you see what he's capable of!" Montgomery warned. "Violence. Lechery! Surely you cannot want to chain yourself to such an animal."
"She's already chained, Montgomery."
"Chained?" Norah blustered. "What do you plan to do? Keep me locked in a tower like you have Cassandra?"
"You're mine, Norah." He snarled an icy warning.
Norah wheeled on him. "I'm not your property, you stubborn, brainless fool! Was that what this madness was about? Jealousy?"
"The bastard had his hands all over you!"
"And you just assumed I was welcoming his advances."
His fury stumbled in the wake of her outrage. "You were embracing him."
"I embraced him because he'd agreed to petition his grandmother, the duchess of Ware, to ease Cassandra's way into society."
"But he wanted you to run away with him. I heard him!"
"But you didn't wait to see if I would go, did you? No, you were so certain I'd betray you. Why do you think I wed you?"
"You had nowhere else to go."
"I wouldn't sell myself so cheaply!"
"Norah!" Montgomery cut in. "You don't owe this bastard any explanation."
She paid no notice to the nobleman. "Aidan, there is a whole wide world out there beyond the Irish coast! I'm certain I could find a corner of it for myself if I desire to. I wed you for one reason." Her chin tipped upward. "One reason only."
"What the devil is that?" Aidan demanded, hands planted on lean hips, as if daring her... daring her to what? Tell him things that could never be?
"I married you because I—" She stopped as her eyes shimmered with unshed tears, her whole body trembling. "No. Only a fool would cast out her heart to be trampled over yet again!"
He stood frozen as she spun away and ran down the path, away from Montgomery, away from the arbor, away from the ballroom. But most certainly of all, away from him.
"Norah..." He breathed her name, his head reeling with memories of how she'd offered herself to him last night, her eyes huge and wanting, her voice breathless with little cries, shy and innocent, and yet eager, generous, opening herself to his lovemaking with a tender ferocity that had astonished him.
What could it possibly mean?
Only a fool would cast her heart out to be trampled over again. Her heart... her heart...
Was it possible that Norah had given him a treasure more precious than mere vows within the old stone church?
That she...
Aidan couldn't even form the thought, couldn't fathom anything so astonishing, so terrifyingly wonderful.
Too stunned to follow as Norah melted into the darkness, Aidan stared after his bride, wary and disbelieving, bewildered and more shaken than he'd ever been in his life.
CHAPTER 17
Mists swirled around Norah as she stumbled blindly through the maze of hillocks and gorse, guided by the intrepid rays of moonlight that managed to pierce the haze.
She wasn't certain where
she was going, she only knew she had to escape the ballroom filled with gawking gossip mongers, Philip Montgomery's pleas, and most of all Sir Aidan Kane's fallen-angel eyes, eyes still haunted with anger and betrayal, worlds away from love—the emotion Norah would have sold her soul to see flickering in their emerald depths.
She had almost told him she loved him.
The knowledge lanced through her, making her cheeks burn, her eyes sting. She had flung out words in fury and hurt and pain, and had all but bared her heart to him, there in Rathcannon's garden, with Philip, bleeding from the blow from Aidan's fist, and the harsh words of Aidan's jealous rage still reverberating in her ears.
But she had caught herself just in time, cut off the admission that would have made her completely vulnerable to this man who had already won far too much of her soul. He had stared at her as if she had run mad, her unfinished sentence pulsing between them, her pain and frustration doubtless branded in her face.
Madness... Hadn't she been possessed by it since she'd first set foot on Irish shores? Since she'd nursed Aidan's fever, let him slip his wedding ring upon her finger? Since she'd taken up playing cards upon her bridal bed, and let him seduce her with a sensuality, a wild, pulsing passion that had branded the magic of his lovemaking forever in her heart?
He had taken not only her virginity in that tumbled, passion-hot bed. He had taken her very soul. And then he had shown her exactly how little the night meant to him by making a bitter jest of what had happened between them.
He had warned her, the night she had arrived at his castle by the sea, that he had no heart to give any woman. No love to give anyone save his daughter. And she had seen the truth in his eyes. Yet, even knowing that, even knowing his trust had been so shattered by the heartless Delia, Norah had not been able to keep from making the most costly mistake of her life.
She'd been a fool. A romantic, dreamy-eyed fool when it came to Sir Aidan Kane, weaving fantasies, reaching for the most impossible hopes, believing—actually believing— they were almost within her reach.