She
was jarred from the thought by Cassandra clasping her hands together in girlish
delight. "Oh, but Tristan and Isolde shared the most wonderfully romantic
doom, Miss Linton!" the girl enthused, proving Norah's theory about the
effect of such tales on the feminine sex by heaving a dazzled sigh. "They
both fought so desperately not to love each other, struggled not to betray
Isolde's husband, but the potion was so strong they could not fight it."
The girl's face shifted to an odd expression, bemused, a little eager, as she
echoed, "They could not fight it."
Norah
turned away.
The
ancient story of impossible love had haunted her from the first time she'd
heard it. Honorable Tristan, escorting his liege lord's intended bride to
Cornwall. Isolde, the Irish princess whose mother had so wished for her
daughter's happiness in marriage that she had secretly sent a love potion along
with Isolde's maid. The servant had been instructed to slip the potion—a potion
destined to meld the lovers' spirits in a fiery passion unbreakable even by
death —into the bride and bridegroom's cup when the party reached Cornwall.
But
tragic Isolde had not shared that cup with the husband her family had chosen
for her. Instead, she and Tristan had unknowingly partaken of its sweet poison,
condemning them forever to a love so fierce, so tragically beautiful, that the
tender-hearted still wept over it though thousands of years had passed.
Norah
looked away, a quiet sorrow closing about her heart at the memory of herself as
a child, dreaming of such soul-deep love. But she'd learned since that such
love was for other girls, not for her.
"Cass,
if I intend to woo the lady, I suppose I would have been wiser to choose a
different tale," Sir Aidan said, his voice tinged with soft amusement and
some other more subtle emotion she couldn't name. "One with a happy
ending. After what happened to those two poor unfortunates, the mere suggestion
of love is enough to send one fleeing into the night. Is it not, Norah?"
Norah.
Her
name. Just her name. She had heard it spoken a thousand times, a plain name and
simple. But it slipped from Aidan Kane's tongue like silvery moonlight,
lilting, liquid.
Norah's
fingers clenched as she drew back from that secret, beckoning warmth. She
didn't understand him. Didn't know what he was attempting to do. When she had
arrived at Rathcannon, he made no secret of the fact that he would have happily
tossed her atop a donkey cart bound for Dublin if he could have gotten rid of
her.
Last
night he had come to her, belligerent, angry, trapped by his daughter's
pleading. He'd all but dared her to be fool enough to wed him.
Now
here he was, spinning out love stories and teasing her in a way designed to
make feminine hearts melt.
If
I intend to woo the lady...
The
mere thought of Sir Aidan Kane turning that soul-searing charm upon her was the
most terrifying prospect Norah had ever faced. Terrifying because she wasn't
certain any woman who breathed possessed defenses against such a dangerous
weapon. A weapon in a game Aidan Kane had obviously played many times before. A
game in which Norah could only lose, come away bested by him, embarrassed past
bearing—or, worse still, with an aching heart.
Norah's
chin tipped upward. "I do not require wooing, if you remember, Sir Aidan.
Even if we do enter into an agreement, it will be a practical one. A business
proposition."
Cassandra's
brow wrinkled in confusion. "A business proposition?" Heat flooded
Norah's face, but Sir Aidan remained almost beatific.
"Cass,
run and get the basket that Cook prepared and meet us by the carriage."
Kane gestured toward the door.
The
girl started to protest, but he only said, "If we don't get there early,
all the prettiest things will be gone."
Cassandra
turned in a flutter of hair ribbons and excitement and hurried from the room.
"I'm
sorry," Norah stammered. "I didn't mean to say that in front of
Cassandra. There's no need for her to know that this is a purely practical
arrangement. I mean that we agree that—"
"That
was before," he cut in softly.
Norah
blinked. "Before what?" Before he'd been dazzled by her beauty?
Before he'd seen past her pale face and into her soul? No, more likely he'd
taken an unexpected blow to the head that had left his brain addled.
She
watched one bronzed hand slip into his coat pocket, a smile melting onto his
face, slow and sweet as fire-warmed honey. "Before I read these."
Norah
stared in horror as he withdrew a packet of letters bound up in ribbon. Letters
written in her own careful script, penned to a dream-love who didn't even
exist.
From
the moment Norah first entered her stepfather's house, she had learned to hide
her feelings. Winston Farnsworth had no patience for a child's tears, shed over
the father she had lost. Farnsworth said that any such display was one of
weakness, and Norah knew instinctively that showing weakness to this great,
scowling man who so disliked her would be a mistake. And now, to allow Sir
Aidan Kane to see the tender places tucked beneath her defenses would be the
worst mistake she could ever make.
Instinctively,
she lunged at him in an attempt to snatch the letters from his hand, feeling as
if he held the tenderest secrets of her heart in that careless clasp. Kane
whisked them out of her reach.
"Give
them back," Norah demanded between clenched teeth. "They're
mine."
"I'm
afraid I have to disagree," he said, reaching beneath the flap of his blue
coat to tuck the letters into the pocket of his gold-and-sapphire-striped
waistcoat. "They are clearly marked with my name: Sir Aidan Kane, Castle
Rathcannon."
"You
know
they were not meant for you! I mean, you weren't the person who
wrote... I was penning a reply to someone who—"
"Regardless
of how they came to my hand, I've found the contents most...
illuminating."
Norah
was appalled to find her eyes stinging, her throat tight. But this man had
already seen her too many times, vulnerable, lost. She forced her chin to bump
up a notch, fighting back with the only weapon she could find at hand. "As
I recall, my letters are not half so
illuminating
as the ones written in
your name."
Kane
winced as if she had slammed a hammer down on a particularly sensitive tooth.
His silky-dark brows collided, a good measure of his charm vanishing. He shrugged,
and Norah sensed he was attempting to adopt that aura of devilish arrogance he
wore so often. But the stain of red along aristocratic cheekbones betrayed him.
"It's
obvious I didn't write the letters. You should thrust the damned things in the
fire. Now, the carriage is being brought 'round, so if you're hungry, scoop up
a scone or currant bun, something to munch on our way. What is it to be, my
love? A nibble of one of Mrs. Cadagon's sugar buns?"
"I
am
not
your love, we are
not
betrothed, and I am not about to
subject myself to an afternoon trapped with you anywhere! Especially when
you're acting like a candidate for Bedlam!"
"Bedlam?
Blast it, I haven't come down to breakfast attired in nothing but my nightshirt
and riding breeches again, have I?" He made a great show of examining his
attire, from the polished leather of his Hessian boots to the impeccable sleeve
of his coat. "No," he observed, "all seems to be in order. And
it was no mean feat, I might add, since I barely slept all night."
Norah
glared at him. "If lack of sleep always has such an improving effect on
your disposition, I suggest you give up slumber altogether."
"But
you are not impressed by the change."
"Sir
Aidan, at the moment I would not trust you if you said the sky was blue."
"Very
astute. A desirable quality in a woman, though there are men who want their
wives mutton-headed and docile."
"And
ripe
and rosy," Norah snapped, then flushed, furious that she had allowed him
to hear how much his careless comment the night before had stung her. It wasn't
as if she'd wanted him to find her attractive, was it? A man like him? A rogue?
A scoundrel?
She
silently damned him to a torturous death as he reached up and caught her chin
in his fingertips. Jerking away, she intended to storm down the corridor, but
in a heartbeat Kane had trapped her in the sinewy prison of his arms, his palms
flattened on the wall, his thumbs entangled in the wild curls of her hair.
"Norah,
have you ever strolled in a garden?"
"You
are mad! What could that possibly have to do with—with anything?"
"Humor
me for but a moment. When you first stroll through the gate, what do you
see?"
"Weeds
that the gardener hasn't bothered to pull."
His
lips quirked in that disarming way, and he chuckled just a little. "Why
doesn't that surprise me? But flowers, Norah. Which ones do you notice
first?"
"This
is insane. I don't—" The futility of arguing with a madman bore down on
her, and she snapped out, "I suppose, the roses."
"Yes.
And why is that?"
"They
have the brightest colors. They're the most beautiful."
"Not
necessarily. I suppose that on first glance one would say that was so, but if
you wander about, with a watchful eye, there will be other blossoms even more
lovely, tucked away beneath the rose's shadow."
Wonderful,
Norah thought with a grimace. She now had a murdering parental rakehell
horticulturist holding her prisoner in his dead wife's bedchamber. "I'm
sure I haven't the slightest idea what this has to do with anything."
"Have
you ever seen heartsease growing in a crack between stones? There is nothing
more delicate, more fragile; and yet I think they are far stronger, even braver
than the rose that grows in the walls of your garden. A man could crush one
beneath his heel and not even know it. He could pass it by without seeing the
way sunlight turns golden on the petals."
What
was he trying to say? she wondered a little desperately. Norah swallowed hard,
excruciatingly aware of the hard plane of that masculine chest brushing the
tips of her breasts.
But
it was his eyes that suddenly held her, impossibly green, starred with thick,
dark lashes. Eyes in which she had seen so many conflicting emotions since her
arrival at this castle by the Irish shore, so many warring revelations about a
man whose soul seemed as tangled as any enigma woven of a sorcerer's spell.
"I—I
don't understand what this has to do with—"
"With
you? With
us?"
The timbre of his voice roughened just enough to
make a shiver of heat wash through her. "I just think that there might be
a chance I have... heedlessly passed over something beautiful."
She
didn't know why his words hurt so badly. "I wish you wouldn't."
"Wouldn't
what?"
"Say
things that are ridiculous."
"You
mean it isn't possible that I have nearly cast aside a treasure? You forget, I
lost the first five years of my daughter's life because of that same blindness.
Anything is possible, Norah. Just ask Cassandra."
Cassandra,
beloved, indulged in every whim. Cassandra, who had not yet found herself
pitted against the real world, its harshness, its ugliness, its cruelty.
Anything
is possible....
Kane's
words echoed through Norah, vibrating in the fragile threads of her own
storm-battered dreams. She closed her eyes, remembering the cryptic message
tucked in the silver box in the bedroom of a woman who might have been
murdered. She shuddered at the memory of Kane ripping back the darkest part of
his soul, ruthlessly exposing the throbbing anger he dulled with gambling and
women.
But
even as she tried to cling to those memories, another image shuddered to life
in her mind: the fleeting flash of anguish, the self-loathing, the helplessness
that had shone so briefly in Aidan Kane's eyes when he spoke of his daughter's
uncertain future.
What
was illusion?
What
was real?
Norah
shivered as the questions tugged at her with chill fingers, teasing her with an
even more daunting enigma.
What
fate might befall any woman who tried to find out the answer for herself?
* * * * *
Sunlight
glinted off new tinware, turning pots and pans, spoons and ladles, into
shimmering ornaments of silver. A crowd of Irish crofters already thronged the
rows of booths, bickering over prices, laughing over gossip, chattering about
the latest news. Bright shawls and kerchiefs were splashes of brilliance, as
voices cried out their wares, trying to conjure up the coins from the pockets
of passersby.
It
was a perfect day for a fair, as Cassandra had pointed out at least a dozen
times. And, greedy little baggage that she was, the girl had spent hours
dashing about gorging herself on the sights and sounds, the wonderful smells
and the bright trinkets that had delighted her since childhood.