I do want a mother! Cassandra had cried. Someone to teach me so many things....
"Papa?"
For a heartbeat, Aidan thought that the soft query was just one more whisper of his own imagination. He angled a glance over his shoulder, to see Cassandra framed in the doorway. A cozy wrapper with tiny bluebirds wreathed about the collar flowed to the tops of her insteps. Her pale-gilt hair was tangled, and her eyes had that heavy look Aidan knew was the result of a bout of tears. Her fingers plucked at a ribbon tied about whatever she clutched in her hand.
She hovered in the doorway for long seconds, looking uncertain, more than a little lost, as if wondering what kind of reception he would give her.
A wiser man might have remembered his sense of caution and steeled himself against her. Instead, Aidan opened up his arms.
Cassandra ran and flung herself into them, and Aidan cuddled her close, as he had when she had been barely an armful of ruffles and hair ribbons.
"Papa, I'm sorry you didn't like the surprise. I truly thought that once you thought about it, you'd come to like her."
Aidan stroked the girl's hair. "I'm certain you had the best of intentions, sweeting. But you can't just go about arranging other people's lives to suit you."
Cassandra sniffed, and Aidan rummaged in his pocket for a handkerchief. Grasping her chin gently between two fingers, he turned her face up to his, dabbing at her cheeks as he had when she was small. A forlorn sob shuddered through her.
"I know, Papa. I know it sounds childish, but I wanted her for me. I kept thinking and thinking, and I couldn't get it out of my mind."
"Get what out of your mind, sweeting?"
"That the worst thing in the whole world was to be all alone."
"I'm not going to leave you alone." His own voice was unsteady, and he reached out a hand to cup her cheek.
"But what would happen to me if—if you died?" The tremulous question struck Aidan with the force of a Celtic broadsword.
"How did you get such a crazed notion in your head? There's nothing to concern yourself—"
"You could get sick, Papa. There could be an accident. I'd have no one."
"Despite my advanced age, I'm scarcely at death's door. I'm not planning to die for a very long time." He touched the tip of her nose with his finger. "The angels wouldn't have me, and the devil would be afraid I'd take over his domain."
"It's not funny, Papa. My mother didn't plan to die either. It just... happened."
Happened? No, Aidan thought with a flood of bitterness, it hadn't just happened. Delia Kane had put herself into danger on purpose, not giving a damn what the consequences would be as long as she could get revenge on the husband she hated. When the carriage had overturned, she'd had no one to blame but herself. She'd been reckless and foolhardy, courting disaster the way she had wooed countless lovers.
Aidan froze at the thought of revelations he didn't want to face. Truths about himself that were sobering.
Wasn't that what he did every time he rode away from Rathcannon? Dash himself into a hundred different situations where the mere flick of a sword blade, the blast of a pistol barrel, the wild charge of horse or curricle could send him catapulting into hell?
He'd made certain Cassandra would be cared for in the event of his death. His solicitors had enough money in trust to allow her to live in the luxury she was accustomed to. But as to who would protect her, shelter her... love her... he hadn't dealt with that. It was too painful. But it was obvious from the expression on Cassandra's face that she had thought about it enough for the both of them.
"Oh, Princess..." Aidan stroked her cheek, aching for her.
She was peering up at him through tear-spiked lashes, contrite, chastened, in a way that made Aidan suspect he'd do anything to see her smile.
"Papa, I'm sorry that I didn't warn you before Miss Linton arrived." A tiny crease appeared between soft blond brows. "I know it was... was probably a silly idea. But if you didn't want to marry anyone else, I guess I hoped you wouldn't mind very much if I asked you to marry her. Her letters were so wonderful. So..." She pulled the beribboned bundle from where it had been half hidden by the folds of her wrapper. "I brought them to you. I thought— thought you might want to read—" Her voice caught. "Never mind. I love you, Papa. I'm sorry I ruined your birthday."
With that she slipped from his arms and started toward the door, leaving the bundle of letters in his lap.
"Cass," Aidan called after her. She paused and looked over her shoulder, her lips trembling.
"You know, you could pull the whole castle down on my head, and I would still think you were the most wonderful creature ever born. I would do anything in my power to make you happy, Princess."
"Would you, Papa?" It was the softest of questions, the most moving of pleas.
Aidan turned toward the stone-carved fireplace and stared into the flames. He was dead certain he would walk through fire for his beloved daughter.
The question was, did he have the courage—no, the stark insanity—to risk a far more dangerous hell? To repeat to another woman the wedding vows he had exchanged with Delia so many years before? Vows that had sent them both upon their separate paths down to perdition?
Blast it, that was too much to ask of him. Too much even for Cassandra.
Papa, I don't want to be alone....
His daughter's words wisped back to him, curling deep into his soul where his own most painful secrets lay, shattering him more deeply than any other words could have.
They pulsed there inside him as the night wore on, tugging at him the way Cass's tiny fingers had when she was small, insistent, compelling, the only thing that could move Sir Aidan Kane's jaded heart.
Twice he nearly threw the bundle of letters into the fire. When he finally pulled the ribbon free, and the first pages fell into his hands, he cursed himself for a fool.
I understand the pain of searching for a kindred spirit, needing someone to banish the loneliness. I have often felt the same. Ghosts of the past can be a horrible burden, yet so can a future without children, a home, a husband. Perhaps, as you said, we can find a way to heal each other.
As he had said? Aidan's cheeks flamed, a sick churning in his stomach. Pain? Loneliness? Goddamn kindred spirits?
Sweet Jesus, what had Cassandra written to this woman, that Norah Linton would send such a reply? What ridiculous caricature had Cass painted of him? Some hero spun of her fairy stories? Some Galahad or noble knight-errant? Even more alarming, what had she told this Englishwoman about the past, and the ghosts that still stalked Rathcannon?
Aidan ran his fingers through his hair, fighting back a stab of panic. He was getting himself in a blather over nothing. The girl could not know of Aidan's secret hauntings. Cassandra had no way of discovering the truth of what had happened the night her mother died. He had made certain of that, because he'd suspected from the first that such knowledge would destroy her.
No. It was far more likely Cassandra had been overdramatizing matters in the letter, playing things out like some melodrama upon a stage, the way she had every trial she'd faced from the first blot on her copybook to a tumble from her horse.
And heaven knew, the girl had inherited her ancestors' gift of persuasion. The gift that had made enemies raise their portcullises in battle could hardly have faltered at such a simple task as luring some lonely woman to journey to Ireland.
Especially when the method of convincing the woman to take such an insane risk was by making her intended bridegroom sound like a wounded hero, tormented, despairing. What the devil was it with women that they should be obsessed from the cradle with healing such a man?
Aidan grimaced. He had long since quit trying to understand that suicidal feminine impulse and had merely enjoyed the benefits of such tender passions in the beds of the women who hoped to tame his demons. Demons he had joyfully embraced so many years before.
Never once had he gilded his own wicked nature, his dissolute ways. Never once had he been a
nything but honest about his lack of honor, of the noble impulses women seemed to set such ridiculous store by.
But it was obvious that Cassandra had had no such scruples when writing to the woman she'd chosen as his bride. If the Englishwoman's reply was a reflection of the kind of romantic rot Cassandra had penned in his name, it was no wonder the idiotic female had shown up on his doorstep all starry-eyed and hopeful.
Lord, what a shock he must have been to the damnable woman! No fairy-tale prince. No hero. No knight to kneel before her and offer up his heart.
Aidan flinched at the sense of feeling exposed, vulnerable in a way that infuriated him. He thrust the letters in his pocket, unable to read another word. Damn both of them!
His mouth compressed in a hard line, but in the end there was only one thing he could do. With an oath, he stalked to the table and drained his Madeira in one gulp. Hoping that the liquor would dash away what little common sense still reigned in his head, Aidan grabbed up a branch of candles and stormed out of the chamber. He stalked up the castle stairs toward the room where the woman lay sleeping.
CHAPTER 4
The fire was dying. The candles left about the chamber had long since flickered out, but still Norah couldn't bring herself to return to the tumbled coverlets of the four-poster bed. It seemed as if every time she stirred, she could feel the ghostly imprint of another woman's body in the feather ticking, imagine another woman's scent still filtering through the air.
A woman beautiful enough to have given Cassandra Kane the face of an angel, the hair of a fairy queen. A woman Norah could only pity because that woman had been wife to Aidan Kane.
What had she looked like? Cassandra's mother? How had Delia Kane's life ended? Had the tragic accident changed her loving husband into this rogue of a man? The letters Norah had received wreathed the woman's death in mystery. Cassandra Kane's knowledge of her mother's death was obviously vague, hidden by the mists of time and the lies adults told children in an attempt to soothe them. Had Aidan Kane broken his wife's heart?
He had the face of a man fashioned to lure women to their own destruction, sweeping them into his sensual spell.
Had he loved this mysterious woman? Loved her so deeply that her death had left him shattered? So shattered that his daughter had wanted to ease his pain with some misguided notion of providing another woman to love him?
Love: It was a word that seemed foreign when linked to Aidan Kane. It was all too easy to picture the man, his blood hot with a passion unbridled and dark, addictive and deadly sweet as opium. Yet to imagine Kane in love—supplicant, adoring, worshiping a woman with his eyes, with his fingers —was as futile a fantasy as smoothing a storm-tossed sea with the touch of a hand.
Norah struggled to imagine those hard, sensual features gentling into adoration, those hands—long fingered and strong—initiating a lover into rites of pleasure Norah couldn't even begin to understand, while his mouth seduced a woman to taste the recklessness in him, the passion. The promise.
Promise... of what? Norah wondered. Heartbreak? Pain?
Why should it even matter to her?
She'd be gone long before she could begin to unravel the enigma that was Aidan Kane. But even if she did stay in this castle forever, she was not the sort of woman who could manage to unlock whatever secrets Kane guarded beneath the relentless green fire in his eyes.
No, she could only pace the chamber of his first wife in an agony of sleeplessness, listening to the whisperings of Castle Rathcannon, wondering about the woman who had occupied this chamber years before and the man who had given her his child.
She might even have been tempted to satisfy her curiosity about the first Lady Kane by asking one of the numerous maids as they fluttered in and out of the chamber from time to time, except that the servants continued to regard her as if she were some strange creature brought back from a gypsy fair.
In any case, even if she'd been rash enough to question someone about Aidan Kane's first wife, it was too late to do so tonight.
The chatter of servants had long since died down to silence, and not a sound had come from the other side of the door she was certain led to Sir Aidan's bedchamber.
Norah pressed one hand to the window, wishing with all her heart that she could surrender forever to her own loneliness and hopelessness—a bleak existence that had seemed to be her destiny from the day her father died.
Her ineffectual efforts to change her fate had all been in vain. She had defied her stepfather, braved the sea to reach a man who didn't want her.
And so here she stood in the darkness, garbed in a lovely bridal nightgown, the blush of her skin shining through the fabric, whispering of wedding-night secrets that she would never come to know.
Her fingertips toyed with one primrose-hued ribbon, and she flushed with the knowledge that Richard was the one who'd ordered the gown for her. It touched her heart that her feckless brother would think to make her a wedding gift of the kind of gown any bride would dream of—one that would turn a bridegroom's eyes to hot pools of need, make his hands tremble as he reached out to trace the delicate latticework of blossoms that trailed across her breasts.
She would have given anything to be able to put on one of her old worn nightgowns—prim and plain as she was—a gown that didn't seem to have impossible fantasies woven into every thread.
But those garments were heaven only knew where, disposed of by Richard. Richard who had sent her off from England with such high hopes, such fierce determination that she should be happy.
Happy.
Poor Richard would be appalled if he knew what had befallen her.
Tears stung her eyelids as she pictured her stepbrother's face when he'd brought her the letter that had sent her on this crazed journey. He'd been ecstatic. Eager. So certain it was the right thing to do. And she had dared to believe it too, because she'd had nothing else left to believe in.
She dashed away the moisture on her lashes, then stiffened as she heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor— resolute masculine steps that reminded her of a soldier marching off to war.
A servant? No. She was certain it must be Kane himself. She could feel his presence even through walls of stone and the door's heavy-carved panel. She could feel the restless energy in him, like a pulse in the castle's floor.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, and she held her breath, waiting for him to pass—impatient, no doubt, to put an end to this hideous day.
Nothing prepared her for the crash of a fist on the oak door to her own chamber. She started to call out, to protest, but the panel was already being wrenched open, and light poured into the bedchamber from the branch of candles clutched in one of Sir Aidan Kane's hands.
Norah's first instinct was to dash for the coverlets, to find something—anything—with which to cover her, but her legs wouldn't obey her commands. Her mind was too overwhelmed by the image of the man framed in the doorway.
He was every woman's nightmare—or secret dark dream.
Broad shoulders strained against a white shirt, which was open at the throat to reveal a vee of sun-bronzed chest. Breeches of midnight blue clung like a second skin to powerful legs and lean hips. Ebony waves of hair, tousled as if by the fingers of a lover, tumbled above eyes fired with such savage resolution, Norah had to grasp the back of a gilt chair to keep her knees from buckling.
His mouth was set in the grim, determined line of a man who had decided what he wanted and would not be denied.
The Blue Room was my former wife's chamber, Kane had taunted her. The perfect place for you in case I am tempted to sample...
Norah's throat went dry and she groped for something she might defend herself with, but he was already striding into the room, shoving the door closed behind him. Her fingers curled about the base of a silver unicorn. "Wh— what are you doing here? I told you I'd blacken your other eye if you dared—"
"Dared what? Ravish you?" Kane raked his fingers distractedly through his dark hair. "If it was only
that goddamned simple. But no, I can't charge in here on a mission of pleasure. I have to make an absolute ass of myself, laying out ridiculous maxims, to untangle this impossible mess."
Norah stiffened her spine. "On the contrary, you're not required to come charging in here at all. As you can see, I'm hardly prepared to entertain visitors. You have no right—"
He slammed the candlestick down on a table, then turned to glare at her. "A man driven to the brink of insanity isn't particularly concerned with the rights of the woman who is responsible, Miss... whatever the devil your name is."
"Linton."
"Yes, that's it, God curse it. Well, you can leave off your maidenly protests, Miss Linton. I might have been tempted to plunder a lady's charms before, but I have no desire to do so to yours. Now, or ever. No offense, you understand. It's just that my taste in women runs to something a trifle more... ah..." His emerald gaze skated from the loose cascade of her dusky curls past the delicate embroidery upon her breasts to where her bare feet peeked out beneath the garment's hem. "... more ripe and rosy," he finished.
She should have been grateful for his dismissal, comforted that he posed no threat. Instead, Norah's skin burned beneath the thin shielding of fabric, Kane's words sizzling in a painful path to the very core of her. Her chin held high, she left the meager protection of the gilt chair and crossed with arctic dignity to where she had laid her silver satin wrapper upon the foot of the bed. With her back to Kane, she drew the garment on.
"Since you've no desire to plunder my charms, Sir Aidan, you can leave this chamber before you ruin my name."
"No, damn it to hell, I can't. There's no help for it. Might as well settle this now, get it over with as expediently as possible."
She turned to face him, outrage and hurt laced with confusion. "Get what over with?"
"Deciding what to do about this mess Cassandra has trussed us both up in."
"There is nothing to decide. I'm leaving tomorrow."