Cates, Kimberly (22 page)

"Cass,
there's something you need to know," he said, his stomach knotting
painfully. "Miss Linton is leaving Rathcannon in the morning."

"What?"
Cassandra shrank back, her face even more stricken than Aidan had feared it
would be. "But things have been going so—so wonderfully. She—Miss Linton,
you— you like Rathcannon.... You think it's beautiful. I know that you do! And
me..." Her voice trailed off uncertainly, questions welling up in her
eyes. Aidan could see the uncertainties were breaking Norah's heart.

"I
think you are charming, sweetheart," Norah said. "But..."

"Is
it Papa, then? I know he was reprehensible when you arrived, but he's promised
that he'd court you now. And he must be good at it, because all the housemaids
sigh over how—how handsome he is, and how dashing. I'm not supposed to know
that, but I can hardly help it."

Those
dark eyes flicked to Aidan's, distress and confusion warring in their
depths—that, and just enough accusation to put Aidan's teeth on edge.
"Cassandra, the simple truth is that your father doesn't want a wife. He
loves you very much, and I know how much he wants to make you happy. But you
cannot force people to... to fall in love."

"You
don't have to fall in love right away," Cassandra insisted. "Oh, it
would be lovely if you did, but you don't have to in order to marry. Tell her,
Papa. You and Mama, you didn't love each other."

Aidan
reeled at Cassandra's words, sick with the certainty that she must have some
memory of the vile mockery that had been her parents' marriage. "Cass,
your mother and I... we cared about each other at first. We lost each other as
time passed. The difference is that we had you to bind us together."

"I'm
certain in time you and Miss Linton can have more babies, little brothers and
sisters for me to spoil quite abominably. That would make you happy, Miss
Linton, wouldn't it? In your letters, you said how much you wanted children.
With Papa, I'm certain you'll have the most beautiful little green-eyed
babies."

Scarlet
spilled onto Norah's cheeks, filling Aidan with images that were far too
painfully sharp and clear, images of what it would be like to fill her with his
child.

Christ,
didn't every man picture such a thing? His woman, glowing, blossoming with the
fruit of his passion, a soft, secret bond that could never be broken?

No.
He'd learned the hard way exactly how much sentimental rubbish such dreams
were.

Aidan's
jaw clenched at the memory of Delia's reaction to the joyous announcement that
she was going to bear him a babe: hysterics, fury, loathing, as if he'd planted
a monster inside her instead of a helpless, fragile new life.

"There
will be no babies. There will be no wedding."

"But
you said you were going to court her! I don't understand."

"Cassandra,
it's too late. I... made mistakes."

"Mistakes?
What did you do, Papa? To make her unhappy? Why did you—"

"Cassandra."
Norah's voice was sharp yet strangely bracing. "Listen to me. This is not
your father's fault. It's not anyone's fault."

"Then
why are you running away? Running away like my mother ran away?" The girl
wheeled on her father, tears streaking her cheeks. "Papa, why are you
making her run away?"

Agony
ripped white-hot through Aidan's veins. Oh, God. Had his little girl believed
that all along? Blamed him for Delia's defection and death in some secret part
of her soul?

"Cass,
after what happened with—with your mother and I, surely you must see Miss
Linton deserves far better than marriage to a man who cannot love her."

"You
could
love her if you'd just put forth some effort! I already do! Papa,
she doesn't have anywhere else to go!"

"Damn
it, Cass, she doesn't want to stay here! Ask her, for God's sake!"

Cassandra
cast a desperate glance at Norah. What she saw made her face crumple, a sob
tearing from her throat. "It's not fair! I already lost one mother! How
can you make me lose another one?"

With
that she spun and ran from the room, the sound of her desolate sobs knifing
through Aidan's vitals, leaving in their wake the most savage regret he'd ever
known.

Silence
pulsed in the room for long seconds, Cassandra's desolation seeming to have a
life of its own. Slowly, Aidan turned to where Norah stood white-faced, her own
eyes glistening with tears.

"I'm
so... so sorry," she said, in a quavering voice. "Should I go to
her?"

"Why?
So she can become even more attached to you?" Aidan lashed out in his own
blinding pain. "Just get the devil out of here before you make it any
worse."

The
tears shivered on her lashes, but Aidan was too far gone in his own pain to
care. He turned his back on her as Norah ran from the room.

Norah
rushed about the Blue Room, flinging her belongings into her trunk as if to
hasten her escape from Rathcannon and the hard-eyed man who had kissed her to
madness and the fairy-like girl who had wanted a mother so desperately it broke
Norah's heart.

Leave,
before you make things even worse,
Aidan Kane had ordered her. Had it only
been hours before in the drawing room? Even the harshness of his words had not
concealed the anguish he was suffering, the scathing wound his daughter's words
had raked in his spirit. Norah had known her inevitable departure would be
difficult for Cassandra. And despite the shortness of her acquaintance with Sir
Aidan, she had realized how difficult it would be for him to upset his only
child. A child he adored in a way that wrenched Norah's heart, a child who, she
was certain, could easily break Sir Aidan's own—that vulnerable heart the Irish
knight tried so hard to deny he possessed.

What
had she been thinking of, letting her growing affection for Aidan Kane's
willful, delightful daughter show? She had only wanted to drive away the
nagging uncertainties of her own future for just one night and enjoy the daughter
she would never have. She had wanted to forge a memory to take with her from
the ashes of the dreams she had dared to spin during the days after she had
received the first precious letter from Ireland.

But
she had only tantalized the girl with things that could never be, pointing out
with ruthless clarity empty places, not only in her own life but in Cassandra's
as well.

Norah
placed the last garment into her open trunk, then brushed one hand across the
traveling costume she had put out for the morning journey.

No,
there was no question she needed to leave Rathcannon. The only uncertainty was
where to go when she did so. Was it possible for her to throw herself on
Richard's mercy? Did she dare embroil her stepbrother any further in her
difficulties, knowing the possible consequences should Winston Farnsworth
discover his son was harboring the disobedient stepdaughter who had publicly
shamed him?

Even
if she did go back to London, she could hardly remain dependent on Richard
forever. The idea of living on someone else's charity once again was more
repugnant to her than ever, now that she had escaped that fate even for such a
short time.

The
notion of acquiring a position as governess and devoting herself to other
people's children could hardly be expected to hold any delight when she had
been foolishly spinning out daydreams of holding her own babies in her arms.

Babies
who had acquired unruly dark hair and flashing green eyes in the days she had
stayed at Rathcannon, babies with a softer version of Aidan Kane's bedazzling
smile.

She
closed her eyes against a wrenching sense of loss. No, there would be no
emerald-eyed lover filling her with his seed. No delight in splaying a hard
masculine hand over her belly, to feel the first miraculous flutterings of a
life they had created together.

She
would never lie in a bridal bed, her veins singing with that primitive thrill
she'd tasted in the dizzying moments when Sir Aidan had mated his mouth with
hers.

Not
that she would want to surrender herself to Aidan Kane now, Norah hastened to
assure herself. Or would she?

It
would have been so easy to answer that question two hours ago. Dismiss Sir
Aidan Kane as an arrogant libertine, a cad. But now?

Norah
hesitated an instant, her eyes shifting to the door that joined her bedchamber
to his own, the agitated sounds of movement beyond that carved oak panel
rasping against her nerves.

Yet
instead of the intricate carvings, she saw Sir Aidan as he had been in the ruin
of Caislean Alainn, so certain of his carnal power over her, disdaining love
even as he introduced her to the heady power of passion. She remembered him as
he had appeared in Rathcannon's dining room, his eyes dark and aching, subdued
when she told him she was leaving.

Is
there anything I can do to make you reconsider?

Why
had he suddenly made such a plea, sincerity glimmering beneath that usually
rakish gaze?

He
had looked at her as if she were something precious that was slipping from his
grasp.

And
when she had asked to go in peace, he had enfolded her hand in his warm, strong
one, that touch conveying a far more eloquent apology for his behavior than
words ever could.

She
had watched him undergo a transformation a dozen times. From the debauched
scoundrel to the doting father. From reluctant hero to a man with loneliness
hidden beneath his scoundrel's facade—a loneliness every bit as bleak as
Norah's own.

A
loneliness that had almost given Norah cause to hope... for what? That they
could somehow forge a bond on shared misery? That they could weave their futures
together in the patterns of one of Cassandra Kane's fairy tales and live
happily ever after?

Happy,
when so much pain, so many questions and dark mysteries, still lay between
them?

Norah's
gaze flicked to the silver box in which the cryptic note still rested. She
shivered, Cassandra's distraught face rising in her mind; the girl's cry was
that of a hurting child as she'd accused her father of making her mother run
away.

Sir
Aidan had looked sick, stricken, at his daughter's accusation, guilt tearing
with brutal evidence across his features. Guilt, and a hideous sense of shock,
as if the girl had unconsciously ripped away a meager covering on a festering
wound.

Norah
couldn't help but recall the sinister hints buried in the mysterious note. What
had happened the night Delia Kane had died? Had she been running away, as
Cassandra had claimed? If that was so, she had bolted headlong to her own doom.

It
seemed impossible. And yet, was she being naive—no, positively foolish—in
trying to dismiss such grim charges? Sir Aidan had made no secret that he'd
despised his wife, a woman who, from what Kane had confided, had committed
transgressions that would have driven more than one man of Norah's acquaintance
into a fit of murderous rage. And even Cassandra had obviously known her
parents' desperate unhappiness, despite the fact that Norah sensed Sir Aidan
would have shielded his daughter from any such ugliness, even if it cost him
his last drop of blood.

Norah
nibbled at her lower lip. If Aidan Kane were responsible for his wife's death,
would his face have taken on that gray hue at the girl's accusations? Would his
features have twisted so grimly, like a man in abject agony, battling to get a
handle on his pain?

If
Aidan Kane's soul were blackened by such a heinous sin, why would she have felt
the almost unquenchable need to reach out to him in that moment? To comfort, to
heal wounds she doubted he even knew were hidden inside him?

Blast
the man, he was an enigma. If only he were not as mesmerizing as he was
incomprehensible. If only he hadn't reached out to her so fleetingly with those
aching eyes, that strange vulnerability clinging to lips that would have been
far easier to dismiss had they remained only blatantly sensual, filled with
mockery.

If
she had not been able to picture all too clearly what it would be like to brush
his mouth with hers—not in the courtesan's kiss he had treated her to in the
castle ruins but, rather, a healing kiss, one that would take away his pain.

Norah
felt a lump rise in her throat and burn there, born of her own regret as she
pictured Cassandra Kane, likely sobbing out her misery into her pillow. Aidan
Kane's bond with his daughter was obviously shaken. "Why did it have to
turn out this way?" Norah breathed the words aloud. "It hurts so badly."

A
cry of regret rose in Norah's breast, but before it could find voice, it was
echoed by a sound of such anguish it rocked her to the marrow of her bones.

She
stilled, as that muted sound rippled forth beneath the oaken doorway, the
restless noises that had drawn her attention before more disturbing than ever.

She
took a tentative step toward the tightly closed door, then stopped to listen.
She stiffened as she heard a guttural groan, then the shuffling noises of
someone tossing and turning.