The
pain, the loss, in surrendering hopes that had once fluttered in her heart
surged again inside her, and she raised her chin a notch, clinging to the
legendary Linton pride. "You want me to marry you to ease your daughter's
way. To shield her from the humiliation a scandal tied to your past might cause
her, do you not?"
"Exactly
so."
"And
yet, if I were mad enough to wed you, wouldn't my fate be exactly that which
you are battling so hard to spare your daughter?"
Dark
brows lowered over a patrician nose. "What do you mean?"
"You
fear that your daughter will become the target for cruel jests and mockery
because of your actions."
His
face whitened, that flash of anguish and self-loathing burning in the fierce
green lights of his eyes. "You need me to say it? Yes. That is exactly
what I fear. Damn it, there is no justice on God's earth if that girl has to
suffer for my sins."
"On
that we both agree. But if I
do
decide to aid you..." Her voice
trembled just a whisper. "If I were to become your bride, what will happen
when Cassandra is safe? What possible use will you have for me?"
"Your
task will be done. I would grant you any wish within my power, to the last drop
of my blood."
"Anything,"
Norah said softly, "except honor."
Aidan
stared at her, his voice low, roughened with earnestness. "If you spare my
daughter pain, you will be honored by me above all other women."
"I
suppose I should be flattered. After all, from our previous conversations, I
gather that the annals of your regard is quite overflowing with those of the
gentler sex."
"What
are you saying?"
"Just
that I saw enough of my stepbrother's friends to know the way of men like you.
They lavish gifts and entertainments on mistresses who are bright and
beautiful, bold and dashing. When they are forced to think of their wives at
all, they make sly mockeries of them, often within the wife's hearing, as
though a wedding ring upon a woman's hand deadens her to all feeling."
Aidan's
features darkened, his mouth tightened. "You think that is how I would
repay you for sparing my daughter pain?"
"You
wouldn't have to make jest of me. Others would be happy to do so for you."
"Norah—"
She
raised one hand in protest. "Can't you imagine what they would say? How
they would speculate about our marriage?"
"Why
the devil should they?" he demanded, stalking away a few paces.
"Because—look
at you," Norah exclaimed helplessly. "At everything you are. Then
look at me."
He
turned, his arms crossed over the hard plane of his chest, the Kane
belligerence she had seen in Cassandra carved much more formidably in her father's
aristocratic features. "I see nothing but a man and a woman who both need
what the other can provide."
"Society
will see a desperate spinster and a man who could not possibly love her.
They'll see you with women battling for your favors, and believe that you are
trying to wash away the sour taste of a night in my bed." Norah's cheeks
flamed, her voice faltered, but she plunged onward with brutal honesty.
"That is, if they believe you ever seek my bed at all."
Green
eyes clashed with hers, and she felt as if the mere weight of his pulsing
intensity were crushing her, making it impossible to breathe. "Do you want
me in your bed?"
Norah
gave a pained laugh. "And if I did? Are you saying you would accommodate
me in exchange for my services to Cassandra?"
"Norah,
I've attempted to be honest with you. As honest as I know how to be. You be
honest with me. If you want me as your lover, I'm certain we could do well
enough."
The
words poured hot acid into the most vulnerable place in Norah's battered heart.
"What? Would we make consummation part of the bride price? Perhaps we
could get it written up in the marriage contract: 'Herewith, Sir Aidan Kane
does solemnly swear to perform his husbandly duty every month on the last
Tuesday—'"
"Blast
it, what do you want me to say?" Aidan roared with a helpless gesture.
"That I'm madly in love with you? We'd both know that was a lie. Truth to
tell, after what happened with Delia, I'm not capable of loving any woman,
ever."
"You
made that quite clear already."
"Do
you want me to promise that I'll never look at another woman?" he
demanded. "Or that I'll duel every ton bastard who dares make mockery of
our marriage? Why should they stand in judgment? When it comes to marriage,
society has always set far more store by practical considerations than anything
so fleeting and ephemeral as love. And as for your fear of being scorned
because of my infidelities, you needn't worry. Taking lovers is as common a
practice among the ton as sipping ratafia at a rout party. You might even find
a man who strikes your fancy one day—and you can be sure I would wish you both
a most pleasurable dalliance."
The
words bit into Norah like a lash, and rippling fire shot through the tattered
remnants of her pride. She groped for something to say—something with which to
wound him, to make him feel the desolation drowning her in crushing waves. But
the slightest movement, the tiniest breath, and she feared she would disgrace
herself by bursting into tears of exhaustion and soul-deep disappointment.
Sunlight
and shadow pooled on that harshly masculine face alive with restlessness and
impatience, his burning gaze clashing with hers. "Blast it, don't look at
me that way—as if I were some blackhearted villain who dragged you here by your
hair! When you left England it was with every intention of—" He cut off
the words, pressing his fingertips against the hollows of his eyes.
"Of
what?" Norah demanded with icy dignity.
"Of
marrying a man blindly." His hand fell away to reveal eyes glittering with
a recklessness already too familiar. The heat of his anger fired hotter still
with a darker intent that stirred raw panic inside her—panic and something
more.
"Perhaps
that is where I have erred in my wooing of you, Miss Linton. Perhaps I should
give you a taste of that which you seem to crave."
Norah
took a step backward and collided with solid stone. "No!" she said,
fighting desperately to hide her alarm. "You're mistaken if you
think—"
"If
I think what?" Aidan purred, flattening his palms on either side of her.
"If I think you came here to taste of a man's passion before it was too
late?"
Norah
swallowed hard, her heart hammering, her pulses racing. "Whatever I came
here seeking, I'm certain I haven't found it."
"You
should fall down on your knees and thank God for that. Love is poison when
compared to simple passion. Love blinds you, seeps into your marrow like the
most insidious venom, weakening you until it strips away everything— your
strength, your honor, your pride."
She
was shaking under the force of those bitter words, words that made her question
his callous dismissal of the woman who had once been his wife. Words that made
her wonder just how deeply Delia Kane had wounded him— this man who despised
himself, everything he was, everything he stood for, except when his life
brushed that of his cherished daughter.
"Let
me show you, Norah," he breathed. "Let me show you how much sweeter
passion tastes than the poisonous bond you think you desire."
Norah
stared into that starkly handsome face, her lips parting to protest. But at
that instant, Aidan Kane lowered his mouth to hers.
His
breath heated her tingling lips for just a whisper, those thickly curled lashes
dipping lazily to half mast, until all she could see was a mesmerizing glimpse
of emerald green. Then that hard, reckless mouth mated its sensual contours to
her own, hot and moist and insistent. Fire sizzled through Norah's veins—wild,
terrifying, as Sir Aidan Kane's mouth seduced hers with a mastery that left her
knees weak and her spirit shaken.
Rocked
to her very core, she grasped for something, anything, to anchor her in the
maelstrom his kiss released in her. Her fingers clutched at his coat, the scent
of him musky and dangerous, touched with the tang of salt waves and
wind-battered moors.
As
if her touch signaled acquiescence, Aidan moaned low in his throat. His tongue,
hot and skilled and sweet, traced the crease between her own lips, starting a
shuddering pleasure blossoming in that secret forbidden place between her
thighs.
A
tiny sound of pleasure and despair rose in Norah's throat, and her lips parted
to allow it to escape. Aidan caught it in his own mouth and answered the
longing plea Norah didn't even understand by entering her mouth with his
tongue.
Once
the lecherous youth her stepfather had bade her marry had attempted such
liberties, and she had been so sickened she had all but retched after breaking
away from him. But the wet, stroking roughness of Sir Aidan's intimate kiss
unleashed in Norah something wild and frightening in its power. He shifted, the
stiffened joints of his elbows softening, buckling, so that the length of his
forearms met the stone, bringing the virile plane of his body tight against
hers. The masculine ridges and hollows imprinted themselves on her until the
folds of her gown and petticoats seemed no more shielding between his flesh and
hers than the last veil of mist, burned away by a too hot sun.
Her
nipples were afire, abraded by the buttons on his coat. Her thighs were melting
where his long, sinewy legs molded against hers, her senses spinning, wheeling
dizzily into madness.
She
whimpered in quiet anguish when Aidan broke the kiss, trailing his questing
mouth down her cheek to the vulnerable curve of her throat. Those straight,
impossibly white teeth nipped at her with an exquisite artistry that made a sob
shudder through her. A sob of need, of despair, born of longings that could
never be fulfilled. Never, by any man. Especially this bitter, anguished,
reckless Irish knight.
"See,
ladylight?" Aidan murmured against her heated flesh. "I can give you
what you crave, though I can't give you love. I
can
give you this."
His hand swept up to capture the fluid weight of her breast, his thumb circling
the pearled bud of her nipple. "And more... there's so much more, Norah. I
can show you. The moment my ring is on your finger."
The
words were icy water, drowning the flames he had ignited inside her with his
consummate skill as a lover, a skill Norah knew with agonizing certainty he had
learned in the beds of countless other women. Women who had offered him only
the lush bounty of their bodies, the sating of mutual desires, not the striking
of some cold bargain that had brought him to their bed.
The
thought tore an anguished denial from her throat, and she flattened her palms
against him, shoving with all her might. "No! I can't—you can't make
me—"
Aidan
staggered back a step, the unfathomable green of his eyes clouded with a
strange light, his mouth reddened from taking hers with such fervor. "I
can't make you what?" he grated, his breath rasping, a raw uncertainty
about his mouth. "Can't make you want me?" he demanded, low. "By
God, Norah, I already have."
The
truth seared Norah's shattered nerves as nothing else could have, and she
choked out, "You think I don't know what you're trying to do? Use me? Bend
me to your will by—by—"
"By
kissing you until your goddamn knees are weak? What? You expect me to regret
that you responded to me? Or would you prefer a
gentleman,
who would
attempt to lure you with soft promises and honorable deference? One who would
beg for your help, and yet never dare to look beneath all your pretty tales of
desiring contentment, a home, to be useful—
useful,
for God's sake? A man
who would never once delve beneath your pretty protestations to what is
revealed in those goddamn eyes of yours? That you, my dear, spinsterish,
honorable Miss Linton, need a man."
Tears
were stinging Norah's eyes, humiliation rushing in to fill the void left by Sir
Aidan's broken kiss. "How dare you?" she quavered.
"You'll
discover there isn't much that I won't dare. I may be everything you've named
me," he bit out roughly. "A villain. A heartless bastard prepared to
use you for my own devices. But I am also a man who knows a woman's body better
than you do, my sweet innocent—places that the merest brush of my fingers, the
softest touch of my lips or tongue, will hold the power to make you lose every
one of your high-brow principles and beg for more."
He
had wounded her so deeply she couldn't breathe, ripped out the desperate
secrets inside her, leaving her naked, vulnerable to his arrogance, his
mockery. She groped for any weapon to drive him away.
"If
that is so, then I cannot fathom why your wife would have sought consolation in
so many other men's beds."
All
color bled from Aidan's face, as if she had suddenly driven a knife in his
chest, and for an instant his eyes were unguarded in all their wild anguish and
self-doubt, all their fierce recriminations and regrets.
She
expected him to rage at her, let fly the fury she must have unleashed with her
calculated blow.