Doubtless, those disinherited by the Kanes would have been thrilled at the prospect of sending Aidan to join his ancestors in hell, but he already suffered a far worse torment. A grinding sense of impending doom that grew more painful with each beat of his stallion's hooves on the road to Castle Rathcannon.
Rathcannon. Spoils of war. The reward for the betrayals and traitorous plots that were the only rightful legacy Aidan Kane had inherited from his ancestors.
For five hundred years, the Kanes of Rathcannon had been the slender blade the English held to the throat of western Ireland.
But if those unquiet Celtic spirits wanted vengeance against the Kanes, Aidan was certain they must be pleased. Now he was the one desperate-- to secure the future of the only person he had dared to love.
Aidan leaned close to his stallion's neck, trying to drive back the images in his mind. A rosy-cheeked little girl with silver-gilt curls, a small hand clutching at his, dragging him to see a nest of kittens or a thrush's speckled egg. A fairy-bright child urging her pony to soar over fences, never once imagining that she might crash to the ground.
Cassandra.
Child of all that was bright and beautiful, so brave and strong and lovely that nothing could dull the magic that surrounded her. Nothing except the darkness from her father's past.
Aidan reined in the pain with practiced savagery. No, there had to be some way to shield Cassandra. To keep her safe, as he had from the moment he had brought her to the Irish castle beside the sea.
Aidan leaned into the sea-sweetened air as if it could banish the stench of the city from his skin, brush away the traces of his mistress's hands.
The wild lands had always seemed the gateway to another world, another life. And when he went there he was a different man, a better one, the fragments of decency that still remained in his jaded soul polished bright for just a little while.
But it was a cruel enchantment, for he knew that the man who rode through the stone gates of Rathcannon was an illusion. And that the girl waiting for him in Rathcannon's tower chamber believed with her whole heart that he was real.
Aidan raised eyes gritty from lack of sleep to the magnificent turrets of Rathcannon, which were bathed in the soft light of dawn. The surge of triumph he usually felt at winning his race with the sunrise was dulled by an insidious dread. That dread had crept more and more often into his consciousness for the past year. An unease that told him that this tiny island of beauty in a sea of madness was slipping through his fingers forever.
He reined Hazard to a halt outside Rathcannon's stables and was greeted by a short bowlegged man, Gibbon Cadagon. The aged head groom was already busy with his morning task of brushing out the impossibly long manes of an exquisite pair of perfectly matched ponies Aidan had imported from Spain for Cassandra's eighth birthday. Aidan didn't want to think about how many years ago that had been.
"Welcome home, sir!" Cadagon exclaimed, lifting one hand from Lancelot's glossy gold flank, while Guenevere eyed Aidan's stallion with an expression of ill-disguised feminine admiration. "I know one young lady who will be pure delighted when she opens her eyes this morn! She's been stewing and stewing over whether or not you'd come."
Aidan dismounted, tossing Hazard's reins to one of Cadagon's underlings. "I received the child's royal summons, didn't I?"
Cadagon gave a hearty chuckle. "Miss Cassandra is not a child anymore, as she'll be telling you soon enough in that lofty way of hers! An' she's been worrying herself to a fever over whether or not you'd come. After all, you've been busy of late. We haven't got to see you near as much as we like, if you'll pardon my saying so."
Aidan averted his eyes from the keen gaze of Cadagon. It chafed at him when he heard the edge of defensiveness in his own voice. "I visit when I can."
Color flooded the pixyish Irishman's face. "I know that, sir, but Miss Cassandra, she... well, that daughter of yours grudges every day you're gone like a miser payin' out gold coins. I was tellin' Mrs. Cadagon just last evening that I never saw a girl adore her da more than our Princess does."
Aidan's fists knotted unconsciously, and he wondered when the knowledge that his daughter loved him had become so painful. Perhaps it was when he had realized that time and truth would drive that hero worship from her eyes. Or when he began to picture just how bleak his life would be when she had left him behind.
"Aye, Miss Cassie's got the whole castle in a pelter over your birthday. Why, the little termagant even bullied Coachman Sean into making the trip to Dublin to fetch up the gift she's got planned for you. Not that it was any surprise that she bent poor Sean to her will. She's been ordering the man on mysterious errands for months now, in her efforts to arrange things."
"She sent Sean all the way to Dublin? What the blazes could this be about?"
"I don't have the slightest idea, sir. But it must be something grand. The girl was acting right fairy-kissed, she was, threatening to run off to the city herself if we didn't send the coach. She would've done it, too. You know the Princess when she gets in one of her states. And then what would the lot of us have said to you?"
Aidan knew he should be filled with parental wrath, or at least an appropriate measure of vexation at his daughter's antics. Instead, tenderness squeezed his heart. "The girl is incorrigible. Mrs. Brindle always said she would be."
"Mrs. Brindle! Sometimes I think she's the worst o' all of us! Acting so stern and all prunes and prisms, when she's as soft on the girl as any of us! She's the one who finally surrendered to the girl. The surprise seemed to mean so much to Miss Cass, it did. And well, sir, no one understands how persuasive Cassandra can be better than you do. You've never been able to say no to her yourself."
"I've never been able to say no to one last roll of the dice either, Cadagon, but throwing them has usually gotten me neck-deep in trouble. Give Hazard an extra measure of oats once he's cooled down."
Aidan strode up to the castle, and a footman scrambled to open the heavy door still emblazoned with the crest of the family the Kanes had disinherited generations before. But Aidan barely returned the youth's greeting. He hastened through the corridors of the glistening haven he had built for his daughter, then took the stairs two at a time, unable to quell the strange tightness in his throat as he hurried up to his daughter's room. When he reached the landing, the door was ajar, and he flattened his palm on it and gently pushed it wide.
Sunbeams filtered through the wide windows he'd had carved out of the castle's old defenses, brilliant diamond patterns of stained glass setting the chamber aglow.
If the weavers of legend had set out to fashion a fairy bower, it would have mirrored this suite of rooms at Rathcannon. The walls were warmed with tapestries stitched by the holy sisters in France ages past. Unicorns laid their heads in maidens' laps, knights tested their courage against dragon fire. Trees spilled gold and silver fruit into children's hands while blossoms grew in exquisitely sewn fields.
Even the furniture that filled the chamber had been patterned after the fanciful stories Cassandra Kane adored: Nymphs and wood-sprites danced across the rosewood armoire, dainty fairies with gauzy silver wings adorned the candlesticks. The four posts on her huge tester bed were wound about by garlands of flowers, so delicately wrought it seemed that when one touched them their fingers should come away wet with dew. Curtains--which Cass had insisted were the impossible blue-green of a mermaid's hair--draped the bed, the velvet hangings embroidered with winged horses that seemed so lifelike the mere brush of a hand should make them take flight.
But to Aidan the most miraculous creature in the room had always been the girl who drowsed among coverlets sprinkled with gold-flecked stars.
Cassandra, half angel, half imp--a treasure that fate had foolishly thrust into a rogue's awkward hands. The most intense battle Sir Aidan Kane had ever waged had been his struggle not to destroy her.
With a stealth acquired by years of practice, he slipped across room. His throat tightened as he saw a gilt chair drawn clos
e to the bed. A blanket had been draped across its seat, and a small satin pillow placed atop it, small luxuries he knew Cassandra had set out the night before to make him more comfortable when he took up his customary vigil.
He could remember the first time she had devised the chair, heard her child's plea echo in his memory. She had been seven years old, still reeling from her mother's death in the disaster that had nearly cost Cassandra her own life as well.
She had grasped his hand, tight in her own, and stared up at him with wide blue eyes.
Papa, when it's time for you to visit, I wake up and wake up and think you are here, and run to your room again and again until I'm quite fractious indeed and my feet are very cold. If you slept in the chair, when I woke up I could reach out and touch you and make certain you are real.
Aidan would have walked through fire for his daughter. It had always seemed a small sacrifice to do as she asked. What he hadn't expected was that those night watches would become the most precious moments of his life.
Times when he could watch Cassandra's little face, soft, rosy, content, her lashes feathering across her cheeks. He could know that she was safe, that she was happy, and that, for a brief, precious space in time, nothing could hurt her--not even Aidan himself.
Slowly, he reached out, to draw back one of the bed's embroidered curtains, his gaze taking in the tumble of silver-blond curls tossed across her pillows. For an instant, he pictured her cuddling the doll he'd bought her in London, imagined his daughter's rosy mouth sucking on two fingers, the way she had when she was small.
He had spent countless hours worrying that she would ruin the shape of her mouth, but as he looked down at the girl now, he would have been grateful for such a minor concern. There were far more painful dangers drawing inexorably nearer to Cassandra with every day that slipped past.
She was growing up. Aidan's heart lurched as the morning light revealed the face of a girl on the verge of womanhood. Even in slumber, there was an expectancy in those features that were so familiar and yet suddenly so changed.
Aidan's chest ached at the sudden awkwardness he felt--the knowledge that he no longer belonged here. It was time the chair and blanket were tucked away forever.
It was inevitable, Aidan knew, this letting go of childhood games once cherished. It would not be long before Cassandra abandoned him as well, leaving him behind the way she had the ragged doll she'd finally outgrown.
Aidan closed his eyes, hearing the echoes of her chatter on his last visit.
Was my mother beautiful when you first saw her at General Morton-Syffe's ball?
Aidan had tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. Yes, she was beautiful.
Beautiful and cunning, selfish and greedy for pleasure. A foolish, spoiled, brainless girl who threw herself away upon the rogue most likely to send her family into apoplexies.
Mrs. Brindle says that my mother was the belle of the season, with a dozen beaux fighting over the privilege of bringing her a cup of ratafia. And when she eloped with you, three of her suitors went into such a deep decline they had to be sent to the seashore, and another nearly shot himself in desperation. Do you think that I will have as many beaux when I have my season in London?
It had been difficult enough to speak of Delia March without letting his hatred show and wound the one decent thing that had come out of his union with Cassandra's mother.
But when dreams of London--balls and theaters, waltzing and flirtations--had crept into his daughter's conversations, Aidan had finally understood the depths hell could reach.
My season in London...
How many times had those words seared Aidan the past three years, more painful than the pistol shot a disgruntled duelist had driven through his shoulder?
He had reeled at the realization that Cassandra had spun out fantasies that could never come true, and his own responsibility for her inevitable disillusionment had festered inside him.
Since she was five, he had kept her safe, happy in her castle beside the Irish Sea--a princess dashing about her private kingdom in a gilded pony cart, begging for presents, hurling herself into his arms, laughing. He had marveled at her, a miracle of goodness in a lifetime ill spent.
The only danger he had never reckoned with was the one overtaking them now: his bright-eyed imp changing into a restless spirit, anxious to fly; a young woman with no understanding of the word impossible, and no inkling that a scandal from a decade past still had the power to harm her--that the sins of her father and mother were emblazoned like some hideous brand upon her breast.
Aidan would have given the last drop of blood in his veins to spare her pain, but he'd been too selfish, too arrogant, too unthinking during that brief span of time when he might truly have fixed things for her. And now it was too late. There were some wrongs that couldn't be righted, some wounds that couldn't be healed. No one knew that better than Aidan Kane.
He reached out a fingertip to trace the scar usually hidden by the curls that tumbled across her brow, the faint white arc a poignant reminder of how close he had come to losing her forever.
At his touch, Cassandra's lashes fluttered open, revealing wide blue eyes, so like her mother's. But instead of the vanity, the deceit that had characterized Delia Kane, delight shone unabashedly in his daughter's face. She scrambled out of bed in a flurry of nightgown and flung her arms about Aidan's neck with no thought to her jealously guarded adolescent dignity. "Papa! You've come! If you hadn't, I would've been quite desperate!"
Aidan gave a strained chuckle. He gathered her close, his heart wrenching at the realization that she nearly reached his chin. He buried his face in her curls and breathed in the scent of milk and cinnamon and innocence. "Desperate? That sounds rather alarming, Princess. Is there something amiss?"
"No!" she said rather too hastily. "It's just that... it's been forever since I saw you last!"
"Three months only," Aidan corrected. But when I left, you were still a child....
She drew away, looking up at him with eyes suddenly far younger than her fifteen years. Wistful. Wide. "You used to think that three months was forever too. Remember, Papa?"
But that was before, when I didn't have to face how I've hurt you, simply by being your father.
"Perhaps I stay away to save myself the embarrassment of making a disaster out of your presents, girl. Last time I came, I brought a length of muslin for a gown and, when I saw how tall you'd grown, was forced to face the fact there was scarce enough fabric to fashion a petticoat for you!"
A heartbreaking smile tugged at her lips. "It is my turn to surprise you with a present this time! After all, it's not every day that a gentleman turns... How old is it? Eighty? Eighty-one? A great doddering age."
"Thirty-six, minx," Aidan said, pinching her cheek. "And seeing you is the best present I could receive. Except... perhaps one. Pray, tell me you have not baked me a cake again. The last one nearly poisoned me, if I remember rightly."
"I have a much better gift this year," she said loftily. "I worried over it until my head ached. But it was worth the agonies. It is absolutely perfect."
"You perceive me positively agog with curiosity." Aidan made a great show of searching the room. "You know, it is officially my birthday. When do I receive this paragon present?"
Cassandra swirled about to grab up her dressing gown. "I don't know exactly." There was an over-bright quality to Cassandra's voice that set alarms rattling in Aidan's head. "Sh--I mean, it is arriving by coach."
"Ah hah! You nearly said she! Let me make a guess! When last I was here, I told you that Squire Phipps was going to breed that pointer bitch of his. I'd wager a hundred pounds you've sent for one of the pups from Dublin!"
"Dublin? I don't know what you mean."
"You needn't dissemble, girl. Cadagon already told me how shamelessly you tyrannized over them, sending the coach clear to town to fetch it! You knew that I was in the city. If you'd just have written, I could have scooped her up and--No, you needn't put on
such a sour face. I'll have her trained to my hand before the week is out! Make her the most devoted female ever..."
Cassandra went quite pale. "It's not a dog! It's something ever so much more exciting."
Aidan raised one dark brow. "Why does that particular adjective suddenly make me nervous?"
"Because you are far too stodgy and set in your ways, and you need someone to shake you up royally, sir," Cassandra said, with a most disquieting gleam in her eyes.
"I see. And you are just the imp to reform me, eh?" Aidan laid one finger alongside his beard-stubbled jaw. "Come to think of it, I passed a coach on the road a ways back, but between the darkness and the crazed pace I was setting, I didn't even realize it was my own! Perhaps I should roust out Hazard and go make a search of it." He started toward the door, but Cassandra lunged for him, grabbing his arm.
"No!" She glanced at the window as if expecting the king himself to come racketing up to the door. "You should carry yourself off to make yourself quite handsome."
"I should, eh? Since when did you become so particular about my appearance?" Aidan peered into the gilt-framed mirror on the wall. His mouth tipped up in a rueful grin. Cassandra was right: He was looking even more disreputable than usual. Stubble shadowed his square jaw, his hair wind-tossed and wild about sun-bronzed cheeks. His eyes were reddened from a shortage of sleep and an overabundance of liquor. A spectacular bruise stained his left cheekbone where he'd been struck by a vase his mistress had flung at him when he'd not tarried in her bedchamber. His cravat had been mangled by impatient fingers, while his breeches and boots were dulled by a fine layer of travel dust.
"Your coat is deplorable," Cassandra insisted with a toss of her head. "And your whiskers nearly burned my cheek raw when you kissed me!"
He rubbed at the offending stubble with one long-fingered hand. "I should hope these will be a minor irritation, since I doubt I'll be tempted to kiss my present!"