Norah
raised one hand to her face, wondering why the fates had brought her to
Rathcannon.
It
seemed as if they'd lured her here to break her heart.
How
long she had stood there, she didn't know. But her body stiffened as she heard
the first signs of restlessness emanating from the bed.
Her
stomach churned with the knowledge that Sir Aidan was falling into the demon
claws again, and that Cassandra would have to leave him.
Still,
she turned to confront the girl who was even now trying desperately to calm Sir
Aidan, to hide the plucking of his fingers at the coverlets, the jerky
movements of his long legs beneath the bedclothes.
"You
have to leave," Norah said, her gaze taking in the telltale signs that
another nightmare was coming: the crinkling at the corners of his eyes, the
twisting of that mouth carved with such carnal beauty.
"No!
It's too soon!" Cassandra cried. "Let me stay with him! He needs
me!"
Norah's
eyes stung with tears as the footman gently led his mistress away.
Steeling
herself, Norah walked back into Sir Aidan's chamber, and she wondered if the
only thing she would carry away from Rathcannon would be her own nightmares.
Nightmares filled with Sir Aidan's secret agony, Cassandra's anguished cries,
and her desperate need to reach them both.
* * * * *
Warmth.
Light. They tantalized Aidan with silken fingers, whispered to him from
tranquil glades in his own imagination. He drank them into his starved spirit,
reached for them with what little strength remained inside him. Soft, silken
strands wove a gossamer snare about his fingers. Something warm and moist
stirred against his arm. Something that made him feel safe for the first time
in an eternity.
He
marveled at it, like a man who had been adrift in raging seas but had finally
reached a sheltered cove.
Not
reached it, Aidan realized with a sudden insight, been drawn there. Inexorably
drawn there by something... someone.
With
grinding effort, he dragged his eyelids open, his bleary gaze fixing on pale
brown hair tangled over a face gray with exhaustion, dark lashes only accenting
the circles worry had painted on the fragile skin beneath a woman's eyes.
A
woman, her head pillowed on his bed, her breath feathering against him with the
shallow, measured rhythm of sleep.
Heaven
knew, he'd wakened more than once to the discomfort of finding himself in bed
with a woman whose name he wasn't certain of, whose face he doubted he'd
recognize if he were ever to run across it in a crowd. But this was not his bed
in the chamber above the Ball and Claw. His fingers stole out to touch the
carvings that some Jacobean craftsman had created for one of Aidan's Kane
ancestors.
This
was Rathcannon, Aidan thought numbly. But how could it be?
He
tried to shake free of the thick layer of silt that seemed to shroud his brain.
He never brought his women here. From the day he had brought Cassandra to the
castle, he'd spent his nights alone in this solitary bed.
Yet
this was definitely a woman here beside him. And there was something oddly
familiar about her, something about the vulnerable curve of her cheek, dappled
by the watery morning sun that streamed through the window. He struggled to get
a better look at her face.
Who
the devil was she? A shiver of unease rippled through him, shaking that
astonishing sense of peace. More disturbing still, what was she doing here?
Aidan bloody well would have asked her, if he could just summon the strength.
But
his throat felt like a white-hot poker had been rammed through it a hundred
times. His arms and legs throbbed as if he'd run to Dublin and back.
With
eyes still rimmed with the sandy grit of fever, he tried to focus on the figure
resting on his bed.
One
hand stole out with the greatest of care to brush back the web of brown locks
that veiled that feminine face as delicately as the fine-woven lace of the
mantillas he'd seen so often on the Peninsula. As the tumbled curls fell away,
Aidan stilled.
Norah.
Why
was the mere echo of her name an empty, aching place inside him?
She
was supposed to be gone. He'd arranged for the coach to take her to Dublin.
He'd placed three hundred pounds in an envelope and instructed the coachman to
slip it into her trunk without her knowledge, to make certain she had enough to
get by on until she could get settled somewhere.
Norah
was going to leave. Wasn't that why he had... what? Drunk far more brandy than
he should have to drown out the memory of Cassandra running from the room,
hurling accusations? Hadn't he used the fiery liquor to obliterate the memory
of Norah, her face so fragile, her eyes so soft and wounded, it had been all
Aidan could do not to go to her and take her in his arms, to kiss her until she
could never go away?
No.
He'd wanted the brandy—craved the oblivion it promised—but he'd never taken
more than a sip. He had felt so damned strange. Sick, weak down deep in his
very bones. And he'd feared... what? That the brandy would loosen what hold he
still had on himself, that under its influence he would open the door that
joined his bedchamber to Norah's, that he would take her into his bed, force
her to see that she could find the passion she was searching for there? That he
could make her feel... beautiful?
Raw,
shuddering terror of his own vulnerability doused what little remnants of peace
still lingered in his soul, flooding him instead with an uncertainty that made
his palms damp, his jaw tighten.
Oh
God, Norah...
Had
he breathed her name aloud? She stirred, as if accustomed to hearing the
slightest sound, being aware of the most subtle movement. As if she were
attuned to every pulsebeat of his heart.
"Hush,
it's all right. You're safe. Safe." The words echoed from her lips as if
she said them a hundred times. Her fingertips, cool and soothing, groped for
his hand.
She
raised her head, blinking her eyes as if to clear them. Never had Aidan seen a
woman in such a state of disrepair. Her hair was a tangled mess, robbed of all
luster, the color gone from cheeks always far too pale. The bodice of her gown
was limp and crumpled, lines from his rumpled bedsheets pressed into her
breasts. But in the instant those great, dark-ringed eyes met his, Aidan
doubted he had ever seen anything more beautiful.
"Aidan?"
she choked out his name, disbelief snagging on a broken sob. "Aidan... oh,
thank God! I can't believe you—you are..."
"What
I am is... insane. You look like... the devil," he managed to croak out.
Her
hand fluttered to her hair. Tears trickled down her cheeks. But she was
laughing. Laughing. "I must look a sight."
"You
do. Why the blazes is it... I want to... kiss you?"
A
raw laugh tore from her throat, and she placed her lips on his brow, cool
satin, seeping in to calm the troubled waters of his mind.
"What
the hell... has been... going on here?"
Her
gaze dipped down to a fold of coverlet. "You were ill," she allowed,
catching her lip with her teeth. "Poisoned."
"Poisoned?"
A cold blade slipped into Aidan's vitals, and he struggled to lever himself
upright. "What the—"
"No!
Don't strain yourself!" Norah cried in alarm, forcing him back onto the
mound of pillows. "It was an accident. She slipped the potions into
your—"
"The
brandy! Sweet Jesus, but she's dead!"
"No!
Cassandra is fine! Just worried to distraction about you. I'll send for her at
once." With that the woman bounded to her feet and exchanged a few words
with someone just outside his door. Aidan heard a whoop of triumph, then the
sound of someone running down the corridor, bellowing in a way that made his
head feel as if it were about to blast apart.
When
Norah returned there were pink stains on her cheeks, and she caught at her
lower lip with her teeth like a nervous child.
"I
think you should know that—that Cassandra is none too pleased with me at the
moment. In fact, I doubt you'll have any trouble now convincing her to give up
her notion of having me for a mother." She smiled, but the corner of her
mouth trembled. "In fact, she's informed me on multiple occasions she
quite dislikes me now."
"Dislikes
you?"
"Yes.
You see, I—I wouldn't let her in, when—"
She
never got the chance to finish the sentence. Cassandra barreled in, a whirlwind
of rose-pink gown and fluttering hair ribbons, her blue eyes seething with
anger, puffy from crying. The sight of her wrenched at a place where Aidan's
heart was still raw.
"Papa!
Papa, I can't believe you're well!" The girl landed on him with such wild
joy she drove the breath from Aidan's lungs. "I'm so sorry, Papa! I didn't
mean to!"
Aidan
still felt damned weak, but he held his daughter with all his strength,
stroking her golden curls, burying his face against the sweetness of her hair.
"Of course I'm well. You must know nothing could ever make me leave
you."
"Me
either. You, I mean." The girl's voice crackled with unshed tears.
"Except that
she
made me leave." Cassandra cast Norah a
vitriolic glare. "She wouldn't let me stay with you."
Aidan
raised his gaze to Norah's, the woman's face suddenly very still, very pale,
stoic.
"Papa,
I tried to send her away, just like you wanted. I hate her!"
"Hate?"
Aidan echoed, stunned.
"I
hate her," Cassandra sobbed. "I thought I killed you, and she would
barely ever let me come into your room!"
"Cass,
hush." He clasped the girl close, his brow lowering as he peered over at
Norah Linton. The woman's face seemed cast in the most fragile crystal, as if
the slightest jarring would shatter her. Without a word, she slipped from his
bedchamber into her own.
"Norah?"
he called out, wanting to stop her, but she only shut the door, gently but
firmly, behind her.
Aidan
grasped his daughter's chin, raising it until he could look into her
tear-reddened face. "Cassandra, what the blazes is this all about?"
Words
tumbled out, anguished confessions of gypsy potions and desperate attempts to
gain entry into his room, horrible tales that let Aidan know exactly how close
he had come to letting go of life forever. While the villainess who reigned
over all was the tyrannical Norah Linton, who allowed no one else to tend him
in his illness, the dictatorial woman who had taken perverse delight in having
Cassandra hauled bodily from the room on the merest whim.
Cassandra's
revelations confused and unnerved him. Why would the Englishwoman stay with him
when he had a whole castle full of retainers at Rathcannon? Servants who were
in Kane employ? And why the devil wouldn't she let Cassandra sit with him, if
it could have given the girl some comfort? Worst of all, why had she looked so
damned fragile as she had slipped away?
He
raked the whole maddening incident over and over in his mind, while he held the
crying Cassandra, soothing her, until at last she drifted off to sleep.
After
summoning the footman to carry her back to her own room and put her in Mrs.
Brindle's capable hands, Aidan ordered the youth to bid Norah to return to the
chamber.
She
entered the room a quarter of an hour later, her face scrubbed, her hair caught
up in a prim knot atop her head. The rumpled gown had been exchanged for one of
India muslin, printed with sprays of violets, a purple sash beneath her
breasts, long sleeves skimming down to overlap pale kid gloves.
Only
her eyes were the same. Tired. Resigned. Filled with quiet yearning. For what?
The question nagged at Aidan.
She
was fingering the brim of a particularly fetching bonnet, of white straw with
cream lace and a cluster of silk violets. "I hope you don't object, but I
asked Sean to ready the coach to take me to Dublin. You had given the orders
before you were ill, so I was relatively certain you'd have no
objections."
Aidan
was surprised to feel her words thud in his chest, and he hated himself for
feeling so off balance, so strange. Damn the woman anyway. "Of one thing I
can be certain," he said levelly. "Cassandra won't be enacting any
Cheltenham tragedies over your departure now. I was anticipating —or should I
say, dreading—quite a performance before."
"No.
I'm certain her ladyship won't even bestir herself to say goodbye."
Her
ladyship. It could have been mockery, it could have been scornful; instead, the
all-too-fitting sobriquet sounded tender, more than a little sad.
"Norah,
what the devil happened between you two?" Aidan demanded, his tone more
gruff than he'd intended. "Hellfire and damnation, the night of
Cassandra's Curse, the two of you were bosom friends. Now I think the girl
could serve you up a helping of her poisonous raspberry syrup with a smile. She
claims to hate you."