"I shift the rules to suit me, Miss Linton. I cheat. It's a family legacy. Bred in the bone."
Norah's throat felt parched, her lips suddenly tingling, as Aidan Kane's sensual gaze flicked across them. She expected him to leave, to close the door behind him. But instead, he turned and paced toward her, his eyes suddenly narrowed, his lips parted.
Norah took a step backward. "What is the matter?"
"The most damnable thing. It just occurred to me that I've never been betrothed before. Delia and I raced off in a fit of impulsive passion. It seems as if a man should kiss the woman he is bound to."
"But we're not bound! I mean, we probably won't be..." Her voice vanished, stolen away by the overwhelming aura of Aidan Kane. He was a whisper away from her, his eyes smoky, a sulky cast to his lips, as if her protest had robbed him of something sweet.
"I suppose we are not bound—yet," he allowed, his breath warming the curves of Norah's lips, heating places far deeper. "However, a betrothal kiss is something to contemplate."
With that he slipped through the door. Norah pressed a hand to her racing heart, taken aback by the knowledge that there was a part of her that had wanted Sir Aidan to close the space between them, to fit that beguilingly sensual mouth to hers.
Her experience in kissing had been limited at best. There had been the snipe-nosed Mr. Lambeth to whom she had allowed the liberty in a fit of simple curiosity, and there had been the sickening, overly enthusiastic groping of the lustful youth her stepfather had chosen to be her husband.
Never had she suspected that a man like Aidan Kane would kiss her. Never had she imagined tasting the power, the passion that would be in the Irish knight's mouth, in hands so skilled that a dancer hungered for them.
Never had she imagined such an experience, except in her dreams.
She pressed her fingertips to her lips, trembling. No. Aidan Kane was no dream-spun hero, no lover born of mist and magic and fantasies ages old. He had made it glaringly clear that he was no man for a woman to build dream castles about.
He was selfish. Ruthless. Dangerous. He was a man at one with vice and greed and dark pleasures.
When I leave my daughter, I am a wholly different man.
Norah paced toward the tumbled bed Aidan Kane's first wife had slept in and wondered if he had always been a man lost in the darkness, or if Delia Kane had driven him to wander the path he embraced.
She crossed to the dressing table onto which he had slammed the candlestick he'd forgotten in his haste to quit her chamber.
The mahogany surface was still littered with woman's things: a cut-glass scent bottle, a half-open fan depicting the seduction of Venus, a silver jewel case with the initials D.K. etched in elegant letters. And a... note?
The folded square of paper was propped against the looking glass, a gobbet of sealing wax glistening red, as if defending the missive from prying eyes.
Norah stared at it long moments, her gaze taking in the freshly inked inscription:
Lady...
She caught her lips between her teeth, confusion and curiosity warring inside her. The servants had made it clear this chamber had rarely if ever been used since the demise of the first Lady Kane. Was it possible that this note was yet another relic of the dead woman, like the jewel box and the fan? Could this be some impassioned letter from one of Delia Kane's lovers? A missive left behind by the woman who had once possessed the dark-haired man, the fairy child, and this lovely, haunting room?
No. Sir Aidan said Delia Kane had died when Cassandra was five. The ink would be faded, the paper yellowed with age if it had belonged to that time so long ago.
Then who could this missive possibly be intended for? One of the servants? Or... most unlikely of all... could it be for Norah herself?
Norah took it up, a sense of foreboding, a whispering of unease prickling at her nape.
An unease that multiplied tenfold as she broke the wafer of sealing wax and read the verse inscribed on the bit of paper:
Three tragedies has Rathcannon,
cursed from a rebel's grave—
A princess, imprisoned in a tower,
A mistress, murdered by her husband's hand,
A woman, straying near hell's flame.
Flee, before it consumes you.
Norah's heart fluttered, a thick knot of fear lodging in her throat, and she glanced about the room, half expecting to discover some phantom there, ink stains on transparent fingers, a cryptic warning on death-cold lips.
Hatred. Bitterness. Norah had heard those emotions, raw in Sir Aidan Kane's voice. Cassandra's mother was a coldhearted bitch.... Believe anything reprehensible you hear about me.... It's probably true....
But this?
Norah shivered. If she didn't know better, Norah might believe that this note was warning her... of what?
That Aidan Kane had murdered his wife?
CHAPTER 5
Nights at Rathcannon had always been miserable—silent eternities chafing Aidan. During the hours when Cassandra was filling the castle with laughter and temper tantrums, mischief and magic, he was able to forget at least a little, subdue the constant litany of regrets that warred inside his head.
But after his daughter had trailed up to her tower chamber to lose herself in sleep, Aidan had always ranged about the castle with the restless tension of a condemned prisoner listening to the carpenter's hammer strokes on the gallows that would be his destruction. A man tormented with the knowledge that the trapdoor would be sprung beneath him eventually, though unsure exactly when the fates would hurtle him to his doom.
He retaliated against that sense of powerlessness the only way he knew how: by riding the night until he could return to Rathcannon too tired to think, too numb to dream, too exhausted to peer into a future that only looked bleaker and more dismal with each passing year.
But as he plunged his stallion over countless Irish hills this night, he knew that his future had been altered forever.
Altered by a dark-eyed woman with sorrow, softness in her ivory face, and quiet courage drifting in a veil about her, as subtle as the gossamer nightgown that had hidden her most intimate secrets.
Redemption.
She had offered it to Aidan with one slender hand, as certainly as any angel come to give him pardon from heaven. Her name.
Linton.
It was the key that could unlock the most noble doors in London, gain entry there, even for the daughter of an infamous scoundrel like Aidan Kane. It was a passage through darkness into the light.
The salvation of Cassandra's future. Yet this miraculous pardon could only be bought by the ultimate act of selfishness, villainy. The price? What little decency remained in Aidan's own soul. That, and the future of the innocent woman who had strayed too close to the beast's den.
He reined his stallion up the rise to where the ocean crashed against the cliffs. As dastardly as he might have been—dissolute, decadent, jaded—he'd never yet stooped to taking advantage of a woman like Norah, using her for his own purposes.
The prospect of doing so now twisted something deep in his chest, sickened him to the point that he was nearly tempted to thrust her into the coach and drive her away from Rathcannon as quickly as possible—not to save his own neck this time, but, rather, to save hers.
And yet he hadn't sought her out, hadn't intentionally drawn her to him. She had come to Rathcannon wanting a husband. He was merely going to grant her wish. At Rathcannon she would be out of reach of her bastard of a stepfather. She would have a home.
Cassandra would have someone to chatter with about dresses and hair ribbons, someone to go to during dozens of balls and soirees, in search of a pin to catch up a drooping flounce. In search of consolation when the young gentleman who had caught her eye failed to sign her dance card. And Aidan—Aidan would never have to suffer the hell he had been dreading for so many years—seeing his daughter rejected because of his own sins.
He drew rein, barely halting Hazard at the edge of the
cliff, sending a spray of pebbles and turf cascading down into the water. He stared down at the moonlight melting over the waves, heard the violent music of the sea, felt the rush of certainty in his heart.
He would take what Norah Linton had so innocently offered. He would bind her to him forever, not out of love, or even affection, not to build some sort of future. But to use her for this small space in time. For Cassandra.
Self-loathing pulsed through him, mingled with fierce resignation, as he remembered the great dark pools of Norah Linton's eyes, that determined lift of her chin that had been intended to assure him that she had entered into this adventure with only the most practical of intentions. That she had not spun girlish dreams of fairy tales and love about this marriage she had sought.
But it had been a lie, a lie exposed in the lines of the letters she had written him, words that whispered through his memory like the haunting strains of a ballad, revealing secret, tender places inside her soul that a man like him could never touch, never heal.
Beneath Norah Linton's quiet strength and stiff-necked English pride, he recognized the remnants of the emotions he had seen so often of late in his daughter's eyes. A kind of breathless anticipation, a waiting, a hoping that Norah had not yet fully extinguished from her soul.
Hope that could never be realized once she was Aidan's wife. Dreams she could never fulfill in his bed.
Aidan grimaced. Damn, what a heartless bastard he was. For he had promised Norah Linton that he would not demand his conjugal rights only two hours before, but already he could almost feel the satin-ribbon tie of her nightgown between his fingers and imagine what it would be like to slip the bow free, taste the ivory-satin skin along her delicate collarbone, the hollow of her throat—a far different sensual flavor than the wanton fare he had become accustomed to.
Aidan swore, disgusted with himself, berating that part of any man's nature that allowed him to be led about by what was tucked beneath the flap of his breeches.
He had always enjoyed women—all women—buxom and bonnie, temperamental and passionate, exotic beauties and giggling little idiots, the size of their busts far outstripping the size of their intellects. He'd had females clambering after him even before his father took him to lose his virginity—and he'd been offered more than his share of trysts in the ill-spent years since.
But the only temptation he had faced when confronted by a woman of Norah Linton's mold was the devil-inspired craving to drive them to distraction, to break through their proper facades with the hot whispers and teasing suggestions that had sent them fleeing in the opposite direction whenever they laid eyes on him. Surely it should be easy enough to keep himself distant from such a pale, solemn slip of a thing as Norah Linton. Surely he wouldn't be tempted....
A sudden sound, barely audible over the voice of the sea, made Aidan stiffen. He wheeled Hazard about. Aidan's eyes narrowed, searching the tumble of stone and heather, gorse and rowan that spangled the hills around him, searching the faint track of bare turf that couldn't be described by any term so grandiose as "road."
Night sounds. Wind whispered in the leaves, rustling creatures skittered beneath hedges, concealed by the darkness. He had heard those sounds on a hundred different rides. He had felt the prickling at the nape of his neck, the sensation of someone watching him, waiting—for what, he'd never been certain. To watch him plunge down into hell, perhaps, or to send him to the devil with help.
Never had Aidan cherished any delusions about the danger that lurked beyond Rathcannon's boundaries. If hate-filled looks were daggers, the country folk who dwelled among the wild Irish hills would have put him in his grave years before. His death would be a fitting blood price for his family's nefarious deeds throughout the years.
But his demons drove him to dare their wrath, to plunge into their territory, their havens, and challenge them.
It wasn't until tonight, with Cassandra's fears still reverberating through his mind, that he had considered what might happen if he pushed the Irishmen too far. If one night he had not ridden back to Rathcannon's stable, exhausted, exhilarated, but rather been hauled there on a litter, past the ability to hold his daughter or shield her ever again.
His fingers moved to the butt of the pistol he had shoved into his boottop before setting out on his ride. He spurred Hazard toward the road, but the horse reared, nearly unseating him, when a crouched shadow appeared nearly beneath his nose. Eyes flashed in the moonshine, wide and defiant by the silvery light—the face of a zealot beneath a shaggy tangle of hair, something unwieldy cradled in his arms. A boy who looked to be Cassandra's age was crumpled like a child in the larger man's arms, a man whose rugged features seemed strangely familiar to Aidan despite the darkness.
No, it was not the man who was familiar, Aidan assured himself. Rather it was the scent that filled his nostrils, a metallic mixture of blood and gunpowder and desperation that still haunted his senses from a dozen different battlefields.
Yet these two figures had been silent, still as rabbits cornered by the ravaging fangs of a fox.
"What the devil!" Aidan started to dismount.
"Ride out now, murdering English bastard, or die!" the man snarled.
"Your boy there needs help. Let me—"
"He'd rather have his last drop of blood soaked up by Irish soil than have his wounds bound up by a thieving Kane of Rathcannon! Leave, before I have to kill you!"
Aidan was stunned that the man had recognized him in the dark. Yet in a heartbeat Aidan understood the situation as the sound of hoofbeats approached at breakneck pace from down the road. They were being hunted, the man and the wounded boy. For what crime? God only knew. Yet their helplessness chafed at Aidan as the two huddled there, helpless, awaiting certain doom.
He shielded his eyes with one hand, trying to peel back the veil of darkness. He caught a glimpse of scarlet, a flash of gold, heard the unmistakable tones of an English soldier.
"Certain... can't have gotten far, sir." The assurance drifted toward them. "At least... one bullet... hit the boy. Sure of it."
"Perhaps you managed to kill him, Denny. Save the Crown the cost of a new rope to hang him with, though the hangmen'll be fighting over who gets to stretch the neck of the other bastard."
A hanging offense. Whatever these men had done, they were to pay for it with their lives.
Aidan glanced down at the Irishman, just in time to see the man lunging toward Hazard in an effort to grab the horse and make an escape. With the barest shift of his knees, Aidan sent the stallion bolting out of the man's reach, leaving him defenseless.
How many times had Aidan known that sensation of helplessness in the years he'd battled under Wellington's command? How many times had he felt the blind panic, the wild surging of fear through his veins as his enemies charged toward him? How many times had he been certain he was about to die?
Blast it, these men were no one to him. Aidan attempted to rein himself in savagely. For all he knew, they could've been plotting villainy against Rathcannon, destroying his own fields.
But at that instant he heard the wounded lad whimper, felt his desperation like a living thing in his own chest. Damnation, could he really abandon them to the soldiers' vengeance?
Cursing himself as a fool, he spurred Hazard toward the contingent of soldiers bearing down on their prey. If he hadn't consumed so much Madeira hours earlier, he was dead certain he would have pointed the way to the idiots' hiding place, or at least ridden on, not embroiling himself in affairs that were none of his concern. Instead, he felt a wave of pure stupidity unfurling in his gut.
"Halt! Who goes there!" Alarmed commands rang out as Aidan cantered from the shadows, to find the whole bevy of soldiers bristling with pistols and muskets aimed squarely at his heart.
With a reckless laugh, Aidan reined his stallion so that it blocked the narrow breach in the road. He held his hands aloft. "Don't shoot! I surrender! Only tell me my crime! Attempting to steal the moon? Disturbing the peace of the sea gulls? O
r something truly heinous, like trampling the fairy folk dancing in the raths?"
"How would you like your words rammed down your throat at the point of my sword?" one of the soldiers growled.
"It might be a novelty. Last acquaintance I had with a sword, His Majesty was laying it atop my shoulders, knighting me for heroism. I vow it was one of the most chilling confrontations of my life."
"His Majesty—knighting—who the devil..." The portly sergeant sent his mount trotting toward him, and Aidan turned so that his profile was angled into the light.
"Sir Aidan Kane, your obedient servant."
"Sir Aidan!" The man glared owlishly at him, obviously disgruntled. "Please remove yourself from our path! We're on a mission of the highest importance."
"But of course you are!" Aidan said, as if to a petulant child. "How diverting for you. Just what is this mission?"
"Hunting down a pack of Irish rebels who set Magnus MacKeag's barn afire."
"MacKeag?" Of all those who dwelled around Rathcannon, there was no man Aidan loathed more—a pompous, self-righteous fool with a penchant for petty cruelty.
He chuckled. "Doubtless the brigands considered it a mission of mercy to destroy MacKeag's stable. You know— end the horses' misery in one fell swoop instead of leaving them to MacKeag's whiplashes. The Irish always did have the most infernal attachment to the beasts. I wish you happy hunting, gentlemen. What, pray tell, do these brigands look like? Of course, I'll excuse you if you don't know. After all, it's dark."
"There was one of their infernal whelps—they teach them murder and thievery from the cradle, I vow. Can't say I'd recognize him except for the bullet hole in his gut. But I'd know the leader's face if I saw it in hell! Donal Gilpatrick, may he be damned by Lucifer himself."
Aidan averted his eyes for a heartbeat as a blinding flash of images jolted through him: pain, confusion, and two boys who for a moment in time hadn't realized that they were destined to hate each other. The night-shadowed image of the man hiding in the shadows shifted into focus, fueled by Aidan's own relentless memory. A memory already scoring Gilpatrick's face with a twisted scar. It took immense force of will to school Aidan's features into their usual mocking sneer.