Cates, Kimberly (28 page)

He
was making a scathing mockery of the fact his wife had attempted to kill him, Norah
thought, her heart breaking. That sensual mouth was curled in self-derision, as
if his life meant nothing, except where it touched his daughter.

"What...
happened?"

"When
we'd first arrived at Rathcannon, Cadagon gave me a wolfhound pup with a taste
for spirits. As Delia slipped from the room, Finn came bounding in and knocked
the glass out of my hand. It was the damnedest habit—the dog could lick up the
spilled wine without ever so much as nicking his tongue on the glass
shards." Aidan leaned an arm against the window and rested his head on his
clenched fist. Regret. There was far more regret in the man's voice over his
dog than himself.

"Did
the dog..."

"About
forty-five minutes later he went into convulsions. He died just as the poison
took hold of me."

"Oh
my God."

"The
instant I knew what was happening, I stumbled up to Cass's room."

"You
couldn't have thought that Delia would murder her own child."

"Delia
had always known that if she wanted to hurt me, the child was the place to
strike. She used to say all kinds of wild things—that Cassandra wasn't my
daughter, that she was the bastard of one of a dozen lovers. As if I would've
given a damn. She was my child, Norah, in my heart. That was all that mattered.
Delia had once threatened to tell Cass she was a bastard, an unwanted child
that she had tried to get a witch woman to rip from her womb. Half of
Rathcannon heard me vow that if she ever breathed a word to the girl, I would
kill her."

Norah's
gaze skated over Aidan's features, pale and yet so dazzlingly handsome, his
eyes dark and intense. And she was certain he would have done anything to
protect his daughter from this woman who had threatened to hurt her.

"I
told her to leave, to get the hell out, but she said she'd never leave Cass.
The girl was hers.
Hers.
Property. As if Cass were a goddamn dog Delia
could drag around on a string. Delia didn't want Cassandra, didn't love her.
She only wanted to make my life hell. In the end, she made the one threat that
I couldn't fight. She vowed that if I banished her from Rathcannon, she'd find
Cass when she was grown up and tell her I was the one who had so cruelly
separated them."

"Cassandra
adores you." Norah jumped to his defense, aching for him. "She would
never have believed such a lie."

"I
believed Delia, didn't I? All those years ago when I went to the altar like a
blasted beast to the slaughter. The woman was a consummate actress. One who
took the hearts of half the men in London and twisted them to her will. Made
them believe she was an angel, all the while she laughingly led them to hell.
Tell me, Norah: What chance would an innocent like Cassandra have against that
kind of evil?"

Norah
shivered; the scene Aidan had painted in her imagination was all too vivid, the
consequences of such a revelation to the proud sheltered girl in the tower room
all too easy to imagine.

"When
I reached Cass's room, her bed was empty. Mrs. Brindle had been Delia's nurse
when she was small. I thought—thought she might have been in league with Delia,
but the old woman was as shocked and scared as I was. That was when I knew that
Delia had taken Cass and run. Cass was so damned brave, but the one thing that
frightened her was storms. And she was lost in one far more dangerous than
anything she could imagine. To make matters worse, I didn't know how much time
I had before the poison... finished me. I didn't know which way they'd gone. I
dragged myself up on a horse and rode. Thank God I passed a man who had seen a
coach, hellbent for leather, heading toward the coast. The coast, and, I was
certain, a ship that would take Cassandra away from me forever, hide her where
I could never find her."

Norah
closed her eyes against the image: Aidan, lashed by the storm, death snapping
at his vitals, his daughter just beyond his grasp. If there was indeed a devil,
he could not have fashioned a more hideous hell for this man.

"The
whole sky was shattered with lightning, and torrents of rain were lashing down.
It was the worst storm I'd ever seen, like something alive, malevolent. Delia
must have seen me, or her lover did. All I know is that they veered up onto the
road that snaked along the edge of the cliff. Sweet Jesus, I couldn't believe
it. They were insane. On a clear day, a lone rider traveling at that speed
would have been in peril. They were in a coach, and that night I doubt the
angels themselves could have traversed that road without plunging to the rocks
below."

His
gait still unsteady, he made his way to the hearth and stared into the writhing
flames, his face shadowed with that decade-old horror. "I could hear
Cassandra screaming for me. Screaming." Norah saw his throat constrict in
a paroxysm of remembered anguish. "If I had had Delia in my grasp at that
moment, I could have killed her. Of that I'm certain. I was only a horse's length
from the back of the coach when one of its wheels disintegrated in front of my
eyes. The coach rolled, teetering on the brink of that cliff."

"Cassandra...
she was—"

"Cass
was inside the coach, the whole thing threatening to fall. I reached in to grab
her. I remember... remember Delia clawing at my arms, trying to shove Cass
aside so she could escape. I remember Cass screaming and screaming, her face...
her face covered with blood. I don't know how I got the two of us onto my
horse. Whatever poison Delia had used was working its way through me with a
vengeance. The last thing I remember was riding like a madman, Cass in my arms,
trying to get her to the doctor's house. They say I collapsed outside the man's
door."

"How
in God's name did you survive?"

"Cassandra
kept calling for me. I had to hold her hand."

A
simple admission of fact. Norah wondered if she fell in love with Aidan Kane in
that instant.

"Thank
God you're both safe. I can't believe you escaped unscathed."

"Not
completely. Cass has a scar still on her forehead, and I'm terrified there are
others as well, buried where I can never see them. And as for me..." He
grimaced. "Delia's legacy will haunt me forever. The moment I regained
consciousness, I sent a search party out to find her and the bastard who was
driving the coach, but by the time they reached the accident site Delia was
dead. The only thing they found of her lover was a gold-handled walking stick,
with a head in the shape of a hawk."

"Had
he run away?"

"After
an accident like that? It would've taken a miracle. No. The cliffs claimed him,
and the sea pulled him under before the search party could find the body."

"But
if that's so, then why would anyone think that you murdered Delia? Everyone
involved must have known the truth. The staff at Rathcannon, the people who
searched. And the doctor whose aid you sought must have known as well. You must
have been half dead when you arrived at his house."

"When
they found Delia, her throat was crushed. They believed she had been
strangled."

"She
could have been injured any one of a hundred ways when the carriage
overturned," Norah said firmly. "Or it could have been the man
who—"

"There
were plenty who claimed her 'lover' was a figment of my imagination. Someone
I'd invented to cover up my heinous deed."

"You
didn't kill her."

Those
incredible green eyes widened in astonishment and bemusement. "Are you so
certain, Norah?" he queried softly. "Sometimes I still wonder if I
did it, maddened by the poison and my own rage. God knows, there were a dozen
times when I thought if she made one more threat against Cassandra, if
she..." His voice snagged. "Isn't it possible I crushed her throat in
my hands and I just don't remember?"

Norah
crossed to him, and her fingertips cupped his beard-stubbled cheeks, forcing
him to face her, her eyes capturing his troubled gaze. "If Cassandra was
in danger, you would never have wasted precious time attacking Delia. Never. No
matter how much you hated her. No matter how much agony you were in. Aidan, I
know you. Nothing would matter to you except getting help for your
daughter."

Was
it possible for those eyes that had been filled with such mockery, such
self-loathing, to suddenly seem defenseless, stripped of everything save a
dawning wonder? It was an astonished wonder that made Norah think she would
sell her soul to have seen that green gaze in the years before Delia Kane had
poisoned not only Aidan Kane's body but his soul.

He
smiled, just a little, and Norah's heart wrenched for him. "I had never
thought of it that way before. Christ, Norah, I... maybe I didn't." He
raked one trembling hand through his dark hair, then gave a brittle laugh.
"Not that it would matter a damn to most people whether I'd been pardoned
by a band of holy angels. In the end, what I did or didn't do mattered a
helluva lot less to the folks hereabouts than who I was. A Kane of Rathcannon.
Most of them relished the idea that I'd murdered my own wife. One more
diabolical legacy to add to the castle's illustrious history. Wife murder is a
creative mode of villainy which none of my ancestors had thought to indulge in
before."

Norah
shivered, unsettled by the notion of so many people clinging delightedly to
such tales of supposed wickedness, embroidering them with lies as great ladies
would embellish their fancy work. Saints only knew how twisted the stories had
become. And, Norah thought with chilling clarity, what would happen if such
stories ever reached the wrong ears?

"Has
Cassandra ever heard these lies?"

"God,
no. I have enemies aplenty, but they know that if they dared breathe a word to
my daughter, I
would
commit murder." There was an underlying
savagery in his tones that made Norah almost believe him. "The one mercy
about the whole affair is that Cassandra doesn't remember much about that
night, or about her mother. I thank God for that much.

"So
there you have it, Norah Linton. The hideous truth. Not a pretty tale." He
hesitated a heartbeat, and Norah felt as if she might drown in that stormy
green gaze. "Your eyes," he breathed on a husky whisper. "They're...
oh, God, Norah. Tears?"

She
couldn't stop them, didn't try. He reached up to cup one hand on the soft curve
of her cheek, his thumb sweeping along the ridge of her cheekbone, gathering up
the droplets.

"Are
these for my little girl?" he asked softly.

"No.
They're for you."

His
breath caught in his throat and his gaze was unguarded for just an instant. She
wondered if anyone had ever cried for Aidan Kane. For the hidden pain in him,
for the scars left by the most brutal of betrayals. For the courage he had
somehow found inside himself to build a new life for his daughter.

No
wonder he had walled his daughter up in a fairy-tale castle, protected from the
rest of the world. And yet, wasn't it a futile quest? For someday Cassandra
would have to walk through the castle gates.

What
must it be like for this man to see that future ahead, knowing the tales his
daughter might hear, the heartache that would almost certainly await her? Tales
that could poison Cassandra's vibrant spirit with more virulence than Delia had
infected into Aidan's own?

Of
their own volition, Norah's fingers came up, cupping over Aidan's long strong
ones. She turned her face until her lips touched that callused palm in a kiss
that was burning with tenderness, trembling with a soul-deep need to heal
wounds she could taste upon his skin.

She
raised her tear-streaked face to Aidan Kane's, her voice clear and certain. If
only her heart could be.

"Yes,"
she said, peering straight into his eyes. "I will marry you."

His
eyes hypnotized her, mesmerized her—like those of a broken knight, led astray
by an evil enchantress. A knight trying to find his way back to the path of
some abandoned quest.

The
bright Irish green shimmered, filled with gratitude, soul-deep gratitude, and a
wondrous burgeoning of hope. Norah ached with the beauty of it and tried to
ruthlessly cling to reality: The reason he rejoiced was because of his
daughter—only his daughter. Not because he wanted Norah Linton as his wife.

She
swallowed hard, wondering what it would be like to see those eyes glow with the
love a man had for a woman.

"You
could do far better than a man like me, Norah," he said, his tones
roughened with emotion. "I wish to God that I could promise you... give
you more. Give you what you dreamt of the day you sailed for Ireland."

Regret.
Tenderness. Both were in the beguiling lines of his face.

"If
I were a noble man, an honorable one, I would send you back to England and give
you a chance to find a man who warrants what you have to offer. But I... I'm
not." He cleared his throat. "I'd like the marriage to take place as
expediently as possible. As soon as things can be arranged. I already have a
special license. I purchased it before you were awake, the morning of the gypsy
fair." He had the grace to blush. "If I had managed to coerce you
into saying yes, I wasn't about to give you time to change your mind."