"The
cottage? You can't mean you'd take her side!" Betrayal. It filled the
girl's tear-reddened eyes and paled her cheeks.
"Miss
Norah is goin' t' take care o' things, just as your da asked her to. Now don't
get yourself all blathered, sweetheart, just come along, an' 'twill all come
right in the end."
"No!
You can't make me leave him!" A sob broke from Cassandra, and she bolted
over to her father's side, clambering onto the bed as if she were small. She
clutched at Aidan's restless hand. "Papa, wake up! Tell them not to make
me leave you! Papa!"
"Hurts..."
Aidan groaned, groping for something he couldn't see. "Delia... for the
love of God... don't—"
The
child's face was stricken and pale. "Mama? Why is he—he talking to
Mama?"
"Mr.
Cadagon, we have to get her out of here now," Norah insisted. But Aidan's
garbled words had been enough to galvanize Cadagon into action. He grasped
Cassandra by the shoulders, pulling her into his arms despite the girl's
struggles.
"Don't!
Please, you can't do this!"
"Come
along, girl," the old groom crooned, as Cassandra broke into shuddering
sobs.
"When
my papa awakes, you'll be sorry for this," the girl cried, casting Norah a
glare filled with loathing and searing hurt. "He—he'll make you
sorry!"
Fighting
back her own tears, Norah smoothed her hands across Aidan's brow in a desperate
effort to soothe him, to quiet him.
At
the doorway, Cassandra almost broke free. She clung for a heartbeat to the
wooden frame. "The blanket!" she choked out. "It's the one he
always uses in my room, when he comes to sit."
"I'll
lay it over him." Norah took up the blanket, battling to keep her own
voice steady. "I'm certain it will comfort him."
"More
than I could?" the girl demanded, tears brimming over her lashes and running
free.
Norah
was certain she'd never forget the look on Cassandra Kane's face as Cadagon
shut the door, barring the girl from her beloved father.
* * * * *
Darkness
clawed at Aidan as he desperately clung to his horse's mane, plunging deeper
into a nightmarish world of wind and rain and the sinister laughter of death.
Death.
He held his old enemy at bay with a wild resolve as the demons peeled the skin
from his body, a knife's width at a time, flaying away sanity, hope, leaving
him stripped bare of everything save the pulsing need to reach her, to save
her.
Cassandra.
His
child. His baby. She was somewhere in this hell, lost without him.
Aidan
roared out his rage, tearing at the wild trees that seemed alive, in league
with the witch who had stolen
Cassandra
away. With every beat of his horse's hooves, every searing breath Aidan sucked
into the torturous cavities that were his lungs, he felt his strength fading,
felt his life ebbing away.
Let
go!
the
demons whispered in his ears.
You can't go on!
But
Aidan dashed them away, saying her name again and again, in a litany of love
and guilt and madness.
Cassandra...
Oh,
God, why hadn't he seen? Why hadn't he realized what was afoot? She must be
terrified—terrified—unless in her innocence his angel had no idea she was stumbling
closer, ever closer to the abyss.
No,
he would find her, had to find her. And when he did, he'd kill the one who had
tried to hurt her. Crush that lying throat with his bare hands.
Flames
were licking his skin, hellish laughter like shattered crystal ground into his
night-blinded eyes. His hand reached out, brushed the cool silk of Cassandra's
hair, his senses filled with the scent of sweet milk and innocence that was his
daughter.
Papa!
Cassandra's
scream of terror rent his vitals as the demons snatched her away.
Papa, help
me! Frightened! I'm frightened!
An
animal cry tore from Aidan's throat, and he flung himself into the darkness
where he had touched her so briefly, hurtling through emptiness, eternal
emptiness.
Cass!
Sweet God, where are you?
His
cries were lost in that hideous jeering laugh.
Take
me! he
raged
at the demons.
Take me instead of her!
But
the laughter went on and on, crushing his soul, shattering his heart.
I'll
see her dead before I leave her to you,
the voice sneered, gloating over his
anguish.
She's mine... mine... forever!
Aidan
struggled after that voice, his daughter's fading screams, even as he felt the
demons snap white-hot manacles about his wrists and his ankles, chaining him
forever to the gates of hell.
He
battled with the last strength inside him, felt it sucked away and drained. But
as he sobbed out his rage, his terror, his love for the child he had lost, he
suddenly felt coolness touch his torture-seared brow, heard another voice, soft
and gentle, reaching through the madness of his pain.
Don't
be afraid.
Tenderness?
In this prison of eternal pain? No, it must be a dream, the insane delusion of
a man driven into the very depths of hell.
Then
why did he feel the velvety touch on his face, why did the slightest wisp of peace
find its way into his battered soul, as if one of the fairy folk Cassandra so
loved to dream of had suddenly reached out for him with one ethereal hand?
I'll
take care of her,
that
magical voice whispered in the accents of England. English fairies? Aidan
puzzled as the worst of his torment drained away.
She'll
take care of her. Aidan clung to that certainty, surrendering himself to
oblivion.
* * * * *
He
was resting at last. Whether out of sheer exhaustion or because God had granted
him some sliver of peace, Norah could not guess.
She
whispered a prayer of thanks, stroking a cool cloth over features so pale, so
tormented, it didn't seem possible they belonged to the same man who had kissed
her in the ruins of Caislean Alainn. For five days she had kept her vigil by
Sir Aidan's bedside, knowing that the only way she could help his daughter was
to make certain this man would not die—a quest even the doctor had doubted
would be successful.
The
gypsy women had vanished into the Irish mists from whence they'd come, and the
purgatives the doctor had forced down Sir Aidan's throat had done nothing to
assuage the madness that held the knight in its brutal grasp.
In
desperation, the physician had begun administering remedy after remedy, trying
to guess at what the potions might have contained, until Norah began to believe
that if the gypsy possets didn't kill Sir Aidan, the doctor's cures most
definitely would.
In
the end, the medical man had merely shaken his head and said that Sir Aidan's
fate was in God's hands. That he could only hope the Creator would not decide
to take his vengeance now for the Irish knight's myriad sins.
The
words had infuriated Norah, and she'd raged at the doctor, saying that if his
God could be so cruel as to destroy such a wonderful father, to shatter an
innocent girl with guilt over his death, then his God could go straight to
blazes! She'd save Sir Aidan herself.
Channeling
her own fury, her own terror for this man and his child, she had never left Sir
Aidan's bedside. She had slept in the chair beside him, let him crush her
fingers in his desperate grip when the pain came, listened to his wild
ramblings, his tortured cries, until her tears mingled with his own.
She
had been racked with regret but had resolutely tightened the silk cords that bound
his wrists and ankles, tying him to the bed in an effort to keep him from
hurting himself during the worst of his torment. And when he'd finally slipped
into unconsciousness, exhausted from fighting enemies that seemed to cluster
about him like malevolent phantoms, Norah had loosed the bindings, smoothing
healing salves upon the raw marks he'd torn in his own skin, stunning herself
by raising those limp fingers to her lips.
Oh
God, what was making him suffer so horribly? The barely intelligible words torn
from his throat hinted at unspeakable acts and nightmares Norah feared had once
been all too real. Threats of murder, whisperings of poison, and always his
desperate struggle to find the little girl who was now almost a woman.
The
woebegone waif who had sobbed herself sick. The girl who had raged at Norah,
hated her when Norah had given the order that Cassandra be barred from her
father's room unless she had express permission to be there. Mrs. Brindle, her
wise eyes holding the same fright as Norah's own, had seen to it that the order
was obeyed.
Yet
Norah saw the consequences of her actions every time Cassandra was allowed to
come to her father's side. She heard the confusion, the pain in the girl's
voice, as she told her father again and again,
Papa, she won't let me stay.
She makes me leave you, or I would never, never go. Papa, I'm so sorry I ever
brought her here.
As
Norah watched Cassandra, her heart ached for the girl. And as she washed the
sweat of agony from Sir Aidan's muscled body, and stroked his tumbled hair, she
wished she could have found a way to spare both father and daughter their pain.
And to spare herself the pain of knowing that, whatever the outcome of Sir
Aidan's ordeal, she would still have to leave Rathcannon.
It
had been inevitable from the first, and yet, with each passing day, the
knowledge weighed more heavily within her. With each moonlit night, it was more
difficult to deny the truth. That in the hidden depths of her soul, she didn't
want to leave anymore. She wanted to reach into the vulnerable places Sir Aidan
had betrayed during this grueling siege. She wanted to heal those gaping wounds
she'd heard in his half-crazed cries, his broken pleas, his wild, desperate
rages.
She
wanted to discover the truth about what had battered his spirit so deeply, to
solve the enigma of how he could seem to be two men so different from each
other. To find out which was the real Aidan Kane.
Exhausted,
Norah stroked that harsh, pale face, assuring herself that he was resting, for
however brief a time. With gentle fingers, she tugged the sleeves of his
nightshirt down to conceal the bruises on his wrists from the times she'd had
to bind him to keep him from hurting himself as he thrashed in the grip of the
fever.
Then
she dragged herself wearily to her feet, smoothing her rumpled skirts with her
palms. At the doorway, she found Calvy Sipes, the young footman who had risen
to her defense what seemed an eternity before. The loyal youth was stationed
there, always at her disposal.
"You
may tell Miss Cassandra that she can see her father now," Norah said
softly.
"She's
been leading Mrs. Brindle a merry chase today. Looked ready to throttle
her." With that, the footman hurried off. Norah leaned against the wall,
letting the coolness of it seep into the knotted ache that was her back.
It
seemed barely a moment had passed before she heard slippered feet running down
the hall and saw Cassandra, her eyes filled with worry and hurt and anger,
racing toward the room in which her father lay. Norah knew instinctively she
didn't want to waste one precious second.
The
girl who had fought so valiantly to keep Norah at Rathcannon only cast her one
scathing look as she brushed past into the chamber.
"When
my papa wakes up, I'm going to tell him what you've done," Cassandra
vowed.
"I'm
so sorry that you're hurting, Cassandra," Norah said, wishing for the
thousandth time that she could reach out to the girl and hold her while
Cassandra sobbed out her guilt and fear. But she had surrendered that right the
moment she had made the decision to shield her from her father's nightmares.
"I
hate you," Cassandra snapped. "I wish you'd never come to
Rathcannon."
"I
know," Norah said wearily, watching with burning eyes as Cassandra went to
catch up her beloved papa's hand.
Norah
felt old and totally drained as she stood in the doorway. She didn't even
realize the footman had returned until she heard his voice, low, for her ears
alone.
"The
little missy, she doesn't understand," he said with such gentleness and
respect it astonished her. "Sir Aidan will bless you a hundred thousand
times for what you've done. Even if he does so from his grave."
"He's
not going to die," Norah vowed to the servant. "I won't let him
die."
How
many times had she sworn to herself she wouldn't allow Aidan to die and leave
his daughter to suffer? How many times had she sworn she wouldn't let Sir Aidan
Kane destroy himself? But now, as she stared into her reflection in the looking
glass that hung in Rathcannon's hallway, she saw the truth in the bruised hollows
of her eyes.
She
couldn't let him die because somehow, in that bleak chamber, she had lost her
heart to a man who didn't want her. A man who would never let her—let
anyone—see the demons that drove him, the past that haunted him.