Aidan
looked into those dark eyes, strangely transfixed, and tried to infuse into his
voice a lightness he didn't feel. "That wager has already been lost."
"Or
perhaps the battle is just being joined, the prize to be won your immortal
soul."
Aidan
forced a laugh. "And I suppose, Goodwife, that you have some cure amongst
all this rubbish that will prove my salvation? Some posset—at a very dear
price, of course. No, I must insist on no more graveyard visits, no rowan
branches over my cradle—or, er, bed. Dashed uncomfortable when the things begin
to shed their leaves. I'm afraid the devil and I shall have to wrestle this out
alone. And if it's hell I'm bound for, well, I am certain that the Kanes will have
a torture chamber set aside in Lucifer's palace for their exclusive use."
He
gently but firmly took Norah's arm. "Come along, Cass. We can't tarry here
all day."
"But
Papa, she—she hasn't read my palm yet." There was a note of doubt in the
girl's voice, as if she were no longer certain she wanted those glittering
black eyes to peer into her future.
"We
are leaving, Cassandra.
Now."
Aidan dug into his pocket and removed
a few guineas. "I'm not certain what the going rate is for predicting a
man will go to the devil," he said, dropping the coins into the gypsy's
withered hand, "but I assume you think some payment is due. However, if
you would allow me to give you a bit of advice?"
The
crone nodded.
"I
would suggest that from now on you foretell wealth and happiness, true love and
great honor, no matter what the scribbles on a person's palm say. I am quite
certain your grateful patrons would be much more generous with their pay than
if they walked away feeling a cloud of doom hovering above their heads."
"I
say what I see. The truth. 'Tis no gift to mock, having the sight. You would do
well to heed my warnings."
Aidan
merely laughed, yet whatever luster had been on the day seemed to have
evaporated. Taking Norah's arm, and shooing Cassandra before him, Aidan tried
to tease away the strange shadows that had circled about them beside the table
of the gypsies' mystic wares.
It
was nonsense. Absurd. The gypsy could have plucked any generality out of the
air, given such broad meanings to her predictions that any fool could twist
happenings about until it seemed they had come true.
Then
why was it that each time he looked at Norah Linton's face he heard the
whispered warning? Why did he see the reflection of her betrayer every time he
peered into her eyes?
Aidan
drove like a madman. Norah gripped the brace of the carriage seat as the
tension that had coiled her stomach into knots during the hours since breakfast
tightened even more ruthlessly inside her.
Every
muscle in her body ached with the effort it cost her to keep from bumping that
hard masculine shoulder bare inches from her own, the steely length of thigh
stretched out with suicidal negligence beside her.
The
insane pace Kane set would have been terrifying enough on its own, the spirited
team of grays seeming bent on hurtling the carriage to its destruction. But
more disturbing still was the sight of Sir Aidan Kane's face—his eyes intent on
something she could not see, hazed with secrets she couldn't begin to guess at.
He
had barely spoken after they'd left the gypsy fair, and even Cassandra seemed
strangely preoccupied, restless, a disturbing light in those angel-blue eyes,
as if the gypsy magic still hovered about them in an iridescent haze of gloom.
Even the arrival of Gibbon Cadagon and his mischievous brood of children hadn't
been able to restore the gloss to the day. When Sir Aidan had suggested it was
time to leave, Cassandra's mood had shifted with the swift fury of a summer
storm, the sunshiny girl displaying a formidable stubbornness, the fierce
determination of one unused to having her wishes denied. She had insisted that
if Sir Aidan and Miss Linton were weary, she was not, and there was no reason
her fun should be spoiled when she could remain behind with the Cadagons.
Norah
could think of a dozen reasons why the girl should not be given her way. Not
the least of which was her suspicion that Cassandra was up to something—an
instinct Norah had honed during the years she had helped with the younger
children while attending Miss Valentine's Academy for Young Ladies.
There
had been something in the girl's face that Norah couldn't help but mistrust,
and yet, when bolstered by the pleas of a dozen little Cadagons and the
troll-like groom himself, Aidan had finally given his grudging consent.
It
was none of her concern, of course, how he chose to discipline his daughter.
Yet Norah couldn't help but feel he would come to heartily regret giving in to
Cassandra in this instance.
By
the time she and Sir Aidan had reached the carriage, it seemed he already did
regret his actions. He guided the elegant equipage onto the road with skilled
hands. But it seemed as if he had left the last bright pieces of himself
behind, in Cassandra's care. It was as if he were yet another man, another
enigma, far too complex to be unraveled.
Here,
with the soft, moist breeze tousling his dark hair, his eyes misty, and his
mouth strangely vulnerable, the hardened scoundrel who had come to her
bedchamber the night before seemed to have vanished. The bedeviling tease of
that morning had also melted away, leaving a man who looked daunted, not
dangerous. Lonely, not reckless. Angry, yes, still angry. But mostly at
himself.
Norah
had tried once or twice to comment on something in the ever-changing landscape
but at last had lapsed into silence, sensing that a battle was waging inside
Aidan Kane. She knew that he was not a man to share his pain. No, she thought
with sudden insight. He would not share his pain, only his darkness, his flaws,
his shortcomings.
He
had made certain she'd witnessed every one of these the night before.
She
pressed one hand to her bonnet, as the strings had come loose yet again, and
tried to gauge exactly how far it was to Rathcannon. But none of the landmarks
were familiar. It seemed as if they were going astray somehow, listing to the
west.
"Is
this the way we came?" Norah cried above the wind when she could bear her
confusion no longer.
He
slowed the carriage just a bit, his stormy gaze slashing to meet hers.
"No. This isn't the way we came. I thought I would take you someplace
where we can be alone."
Alone?
Norah felt a shiver of nervousness and glanced up into that implacable face.
"Surely Rathcannon has a dozen rooms—"
"A
dozen rooms stuffed with servants whose wagging tongues cannot be
trusted," Kane cut in. "Every man jack of them doubtless with their
ears pressed to the wall. Nothing quite so entertaining as watching the grand
folks make fools of themselves, you know."
"But
I don't know—I don't understand what this is all about," Norah said
helplessly. But then, did she truly understand anything anymore?
It
seemed that Kane was in no hurry to enlighten her. That sensual mouth merely
hardened, the lines carved at its sides deepening as the carriage crested the
hilltop.
In
that instant, Norah's questions were swept away by a glory beyond imagining as
the sunset's magnificent paintbox spilled into the valley below. Red, orange,
gold, the impossibly vivid hues glittered on hedges and piled stone fences and
dyed the wool of sheep nibbling on green grass. The land tumbled, vale over
stone, a symphony of lushness, of untamable majesty melting down to where the
sea cast foam upon its shore.
These
beauties alone would have elicited a gasp of pleasure from anyone who saw them,
but it was the structure that stood in the valley's heart that made Norah's
fingers loosen their grip on the seat brace, numbed with awe.
Gray
stone battlements soared in stark majesty against the sky. War had shattered
the front of the castle ages before, but time had healed the ugliness of the
wound with the tenderness of a lover, until it seemed as if a fairy's hand had
peeled back the wall to reveal what lay within.
Empty
windows shaped the light into gingerbread patterns. Stone stairs spiraled
through lovely archways, their landings high above the ground seeming like
jumping-off places to the stars. The floor on the upper stories and the walls
that had sectioned the castle into chambers were only ghostly imprints in the
stone, but the fireplaces remained, lovely carvings surrounding them.
Encircling
the base of the entire ruin was a wreath of grass, darker green than any other,
a ring of ancient stones showing beneath, as if the site had been marked
somehow, blessed by the Old Ones from the mists of time.
Norah
had seen so little of Ireland. In Dublin and on the journey west, she had been
so anxious about the meeting with her prospective bridegroom that she'd spent
the whole trip rehearsing what to say to him, trying to imagine his face, his
form.
On
the trip to the fair, she had been unnerved by the sudden change in Aidan,
continually glancing over at him as if he were a wolf that might decide at any
moment to turn about and snap off her head.
But
as she stared at the desecrated loveliness before her, her throat closed, her
eyes stung.
Magic
and mist, soul-deep sorrow and heart-shattering beauty—was it not the lifeblood
of this fey and lovely land? Where the ravaged dreams that clung to the
hillsides in gray stone ruins seemed more searingly beautiful than dreams come
true anywhere else on earth?
Yet
trapped within the beauty were skeins of tragedy, of simmering violence, of
passions dark and bright, just as the same wild traits were caught in the man
beside her.
"What
is this place?" Norah breathed, as Aidan drew the carriage to a halt
beside the vivid cascade of a fuchsia hedge.
"In
Gaelic it's called
Caislean Alainn.
Castle of Beauty."
"It
is
beautiful. It seems almost... enchanted." Norah's cheeks stung
with embarrassment at words that might have come from Kane's starry-eyed
daughter.
But
he was already leaping down from the carriage, and his strong hands were tying
the team to a branch bowing under the fragrant weight of magenta and purple
blossoms. "Enchanted, is it? No wonder Cass was taken with you. From the
moment Cassandra first discovered the castle, she populated it with fairy folk
and dragons. There were times I could almost see the fairies through her
eyes." His fingers were still for a moment as an unaccustomed wistfulness
clung to Kane's careless words.
Norah
looked down at him, attempting to picture this devastatingly handsome rogue
watching his daughter cavort among a myriad of playmates only she could see,
bright-winged, beautiful playmates painted by her imagination.
How
many pretend worlds had Norah created for herself as a child? Safe places,
protected from the bitter winds of reality that buffeted the tender hearted too
harshly.
What
would happen when Sir Aidan's princess stepped beyond the boundaries of her
dream castle and into the real world? It was a world Sir Aidan had already
admitted would be waiting for her, not with the praise and love and
open-hearted kindness she was accustomed to, but rather with cruel talons,
clutching at scandal a decade old, long lists recounting the sins of her father
and mother.
The
knowledge broke Norah's heart all the more, for she understood what it was like
to step from such a haven into a cold realm where no one could help you, not
even the papa you believed was invincible. The empty ache was an aftermath she
remembered all too well.
She
was jarred from these troubling thoughts as Sir Aidan circled the carriage to
help her down. She stood up and started to step down, but he caught her about
the waist, his hands hard and hot pressed against her, his fingers so long they
nearly spanned her waist. For an instant, that hard, sun-bronzed face was so
close to her that she could see the lines carved about his eyes and mouth. A
shiver skated through her at the realization that this Sir Aidan could be far
more dangerous than the angry man who had charged into her bedchamber the night
before.
She
started to protest, but before she could pull away, he lifted her high into the
air, then drifted her to the ground, as if she weighed no more than a flower
blossom plucked from the hedge.
Of
course, it was only gentlemanly that he should aid her. But did she imagine it,
or were those hands clinging a heartbeat longer than necessary? Were those eyes
clouded with an odd uncertainty?
Unable
to bear the weight of those compelling eyes another moment, Norah whisked away
from Sir Aidan's grasp and started toward the castle ruin, searching for
something, anything, to fill the sudden, pulsing silence. "Who did this
place belong to?"
"Cassandra
would tell you it belongs to the Tuatha de Daanan, the fairy folk who made the
circle of stone. The fortress itself was built many centuries later, an Irish
chieftain's gift to his bride in the years before Strongbow and his Normans
came to conquer Ireland."