Cardiff Siblings 01 - Seven Minutes in Devon (7 page)

There could be no doubt—he hated this.
He hated every blessed moment of this interaction. She felt it
pouring out of his skin and working its way through the thick air
toward her, like a serpent slithering toward its prey.

Why was he so angry at her? Never in
her life would she understand what she could have possibly done to
engender such distaste.

Yet, despite her disquiet from being
near him, she couldn’t help but admire his tenacity in protecting
his sister. True, he was taking things too far in his desire to see
her safe. Emma couldn’t imagine what he thought keeping Emma and
Morgan separated would accomplish. Not only that, but he tried to
do every little thing for Morgan when she could seemingly do a
great deal on her own.

For a moment, she wondered
what it would be like to have someone so fully engrossed in
protecting
her
.
But only for a moment, because then Mr. Cardiff nearly snarled
toward her.

She couldn’t be free of his presence
soon enough. “I would like that very much, Morgan.”

Morgan stretched her scars into a
smile. Mr. Cardiff’s jaw worked, and his eyes narrowed to steely
slits. He nodded to Emma, tugged on his sister’s arm, and then they
were gone.

The act of hating Miss Hathaway,
regardless of the sheer, perverse pleasure it gave him, was
irrational. Aidan knew this all too well.

Blaming her for Morgan’s attempts to
take her own life was not only unreasonable but delved into the
realm of the ridiculous.

Morgan’s despair had begun well before
she’d ever met Miss Hathaway. It had started when Stoneham—a man
with whom Aidan had long been friends, and whom he had suggested
court his sister—left her heartbroken by returning from the wars
with a bride on his arm. Despite Stoneham’s promises. Despite
Morgan’s loyalty and steadfast patience. Despite any attachment
which the man had sworn to feel for Aidan’s sister.

Indeed, it would make more sense to
lay blame upon Stoneham. Some part of Aidan continued to hate his
friend, even though he had answered for his treachery in a duel.
Yet, since the viscount had had the decency to answer for himself
in such a way, how could Aidan continue to blame him? Despise him,
certainly. But blame?

Likewise, it would seem exceedingly
more rational for Aidan to cast some, if not all, of the blame upon
himself. He’d encouraged the attachment, after all. If he hadn’t
done so, would Stoneham have ever paid Morgan any notice? Would she
have so readily set her cap for him? Would she have fallen so
easily and so thoroughly into the darkest recesses of her
mind?

But hating himself was not an option,
lest he potentially cast himself along the same perilous path his
sister had taken. Morgan had always been so steadfast, so
levelheaded. Until Stoneham. So if she could fall victim to such
desperate thought, wouldn’t it also seem reasonable that he would?
He’d always been prone to acting rashly and then rehashing his
choices interminably in his mind.

And, while she was the one who had
attempted to take her own life, Aidan could not bear to place any
of the blame upon Morgan’s shoulders. They were too frail. Too
weighted down already. He would never do anything to add to her
burden.

How could he, when he’d sworn back
when they were children that he would never give up on her again?
He would never forget that day, how when she was all of ten years
old, Morgan had chased after them when Aidan, Niall, and David had
once again left her behind while they went off to explore the
grounds at Tavistock Manor.

She’d raced along behind them, her
skirts tangling in her legs, heedless to any danger she might place
herself in.

“
Go back to your
governess,” Aidan had called, rushing ahead with his brother and
friend, a snicker in his tone. “You can’t possibly keep up with us.
You’re a girl.”

Then they’d kept going on their way,
assuming she would do as she was told. They climbed trees and
walked along the cliffs, doing those dangerous things that boys
were wont to do. And they never looked back.

But Morgan hadn’t returned home. She’d
kept following them, until her half-boot slipped out from under her
as she tried to leap across a ridge, and she’d fallen down onto a
ledge below. There she’d remained until they made their return
journey to the manor. She tried desperately to climb up the rocky
wall, but she’d broken her leg in the fall and couldn’t manage
it.

In the end, Aidan had lowered himself
down to lift her out, and Niall and David pulled them both up. As
he carried his sister home, he’d promised her he would never doubt
her again. Despite her smaller size and the limitations of her
skirts, she had kept pace with them far beyond what any of them had
ever imagined she could do. She’d proved them wrong.

She’d proved
him
wrong. That was the
most important part. And so Aidan could never again believe less
than the best of her. That was what he’d told her—what he’d
promised her. What he intended to do. What he
wanted
to do. It was easy to have
good intentions. He was discovering, more so now than ever before,
that it was far more difficult to follow through with those good
intentions.

Still, he couldn’t possibly
blame
her
for the
situation she’d found herself in after Stoneham’s
betrayal.

Stoneham, Morgan,
himself…Aidan couldn’t blame any of them. That left only Miss
Hathaway, since she was the only one involved, in whatever small
way. He’d trusted her. He’d placed his already fragile sister in
Miss Hathaway’s care and trusted that she could perform the simple
task of keeping Morgan from hurting herself again, and
she
had
failed.

These last three years he’d spent
countless hours at his easel, trying to ease the rage he felt
billowing up from his gut. Even if he couldn’t take the time and
effort to sculpt his marble as his heart yearned to do, he’d made
the attempt to return to his art in some manner. Yet, instead of
creating portraits or landscapes with his pastels, he often found
himself creating depictions of his rage. Against Miss Hathaway,
more often than not.

These were not pieces of art he could
ever share. Not with anyone. Certainly not that first one—the one
with the brown-haired, brown-eyed woman. It had been all long limbs
and sleek curves, with her hand reaching out past her buttery
yellow dress as though to rescue—

No. Not rescue. She wasn’t going to
rescue anyone. She couldn’t save anyone, not even herself. She just
lured him into thinking she was something other than what she was.
Aidan had tossed that first piece into the hearth at the dower
house, watching until the last licks of the flames ate the canvas
away. Yet he couldn’t burn the image from his mind, no matter how
hard he tried to do so.

Most of his artwork since then
depicted women, dead beneath the glassy surface of water, burning
trapped in buildings…all sorts of awful things that he could never
actually do in life. Despite the direction his thoughts had begun
to travel, he was not a monster. He would never be a
monster.

He was just a man who wanted to
protect his sister from all the atrocities in the world.

And none of them eradicated that first
one from his mind.

But in art, he could do anything. In
art, he could take all the abominable ideas that kept assaulting
his mind and act them out, to see if they actually helped. If only
Morgan had had something like that—a way to exorcise the demons
that had haunted her and led her to hurting herself. What might
have changed then?

He’d never shown even a single piece
he’d created in these past several years to Niall or Mother. They’d
think him mad beyond repair or redemption, deranged even. Surely
they’d send him off to Bedlam without batting an eye, though they
had never allowed Morgan to suffer such a fate.

She was innocent, after all. He wasn’t
always certain about his own innocence. Some nights, he awoke in a
sweat, thinking he had actually committed the revenge he so often
depicted upon canvas.

He’d crafted so many of them that they
filled nearly the entirety of the dower house at Tavistock Manor,
where he’d been living since returning to the family estate. With
these dark works interspersed so completely through his living
quarters, he couldn’t possibly be free of the thoughts which led to
their origin.

Even now, as he tried to force a smile
for Morgan’s benefit and greet David’s guests as they arrived, the
images burned in the back of his mind. They seared him with their
intensity, leaving his mind scarred and with open, seething
wounds.

Today, his animosity only grew when he
saw Miss Hathaway standing off in a corner of the great hall. She
wore a lemon-yellow gown far more fashionable than anything he’d
seen her in before and had her hair done in a style that could
almost be considered pretty. Yet still, her nose remained buried in
the crevice of a book.

She hadn’t changed, so why should his
hatred of her have diminished, even somewhat?

Yet with her sitting there, looking so
fashionable and pretty, and wearing yellow again for Christ’s sake,
he couldn’t hate her. He couldn’t see her as anything other than
the girl he’d tossed into the flames and watched until the last
ember had died. The piece of art he couldn’t bear to look at…but
why?

He swallowed hard, trying to force the
images away. But even after he turned away from her, he could see
her reaching out her hand to him from the flames. That hand had
been the last bit of her to burn.

Morgan cleared her throat gently at
his side, and he refocused on the present. He was here for her. So
she could meet the other houseguests. He could do this.

Aidan stood fully across the room from
Miss Hathaway, near the hearth with Morgan by his side. His
sister’s delicate hand, covered by a kidskin glove in order to hide
as many scars as possible despite the warmth inside the grand
house, rested just over the back of his hand. She wasn’t holding
onto him for dear life, as she’d so often done in the first months
after her blinding. Yet he knew she preferred to have some contact,
however slight, so she could sense when she might need to
move.

In truth, he preferred it too. He
worried less when he could see her.

A veritable parade of ladies and
gentlemen had been brought over and introduced to them over the
last hour—some familiar, others not—and still more continued to
arrive. As Lady Burington crossed over to them once more with a
gentleman at her side, Aidan leaned down to Morgan’s ear. “Our
hostess is bringing another gentleman our way. Do you wish to meet
him, or have you tired?”

Part of him hoped she would have grown
so tired by now that she’d beg off. Niall had stood with her to
begin the day, but now he was off mixing with the other guests,
making himself amenable to the lord of the manor.

Aidan would prefer to leave entirely,
to escape out of doors, but he wouldn’t leave Morgan if she desired
to stay. His needs no longer mattered. That was what he’d told
himself all along. He was determined to hold true to
that.

“
I’m perfectly all right,
Aidan,” she said softly, a twinkle lighting her eyes in a way he’d
so rarely seen these many years. She wouldn’t be ready to move on
until the very last guest had come to her, that much was clear, and
he couldn’t bear to take that from her. Morgan had been hidden away
at Tavistock Manor for so long now he could practically sense her
excitement radiating from her skin.

He patted over the back of her hand.
“Of course you are.” He hoped his tone did not betray his lack of
confidence in that statement. Not that he didn’t want to believe
her. He did wish to, more than he could possibly ever explain. Yet
she had been in such a dark place for so long, it was difficult to
ever truly believe she’d come back to the light.

“
Lady Morgan,” Lady
Burington said, her smile melting through to her tone. “May I
introduce Lord Muldaire? Lord Muldaire, this is Lady Morgan Cardiff
and her brother, Mr. Cardiff.”

Muldaire
. Something niggled at the
back of Aidan’s mind with the name, but he brushed it aside as
Morgan brightened considerably, her shy smile and blinking eyes
making it next to impossible for Aidan to see her flaws.