Keeping
hold of the girl, he hauled her into the corridor, where two alert footmen
stood guard before the door. The menacing gleam of pistols shone at their
waists. "Rose will be spending the rest of the day and all night in her chambers,"
he said. "Lock her in, and God help the man who lets her escape."
One
of the footmen looked as if he were about to argue, but he obviously thought
better of it once he glimpsed the fire in his master's eyes.
"I'll
see to it myself, sir."
He
watched the two lead the crying girl away. His jaw clenched. The rising of the
moon was hours away, but the restless blaze that was in his blood, the hunger
for vengeance, for answers, was already driving him half mad. The knowledge
that Norah had not been honest with him ate like poison inside him.
"Aidan."
He heard Norah say his name, felt her touch him, tentative, so tentative.
"Aidan, what are you going to do?"
He
jerked away from her and stalked to the fireplace, staring into the flames as
if they were the gateway to hell.
"I'm
going to hunt down Gilpatrick. Make him tell me who is behind this
madness."
"You
can't ride into the midst of a band of rebels all alone."
"So
what would you have me do? Make an appointment to meet him at White's? Or wait
until the rebel bastard writes another cryptic message to my wife? Not that
she'd bother to show it to me until it's too late."
Norah
paled. "I didn't find the note until after the ball."
"You
found the first one a helluva lot earlier than that, but you didn't feel
compelled to show it to me!"
"What
was I supposed to do? Pound on your bedchamber door and say
Excuse me, but
did you murder your wife?
You were already furious, intending to pack me
off to Dublin at first light. There seemed no reason—"
"No
reason to mention it to me? Why? Because you were afraid it was true?"
The
expression on her face was answer enough. It hurt Aidan, more than he dared
admit.
"I
did ask you about Delia. When you awoke from your sickness. I asked you and you
told me what had happened. I believed you. Why would I present the note to you,
knowing that it would only cause you pain?"
"Because
if you had, I would have known something was afoot. I would never have
consented to this infernal ball." He swore, slamming his fist into the
mantel.
"I
see," Norah said, so quietly it stunned him. "This is my fault,
then."
"I
didn't say that."
"You
might as well have. Of course, I understand it must be so. That way you don't
have to face the truth."
"And
what truth is that?" he demanded, stung by her words.
"That
you can't protect Cassandra from the world, no matter how much you want to.
That there are things you cannot control. That someday, she's going to be hurt,
just like the rest of us—by cruel words or cruel deeds—and you are going to be
helpless to stop her pain."
"If
I hadn't been chasing over the countryside searching for you, I would have been
here when she needed me."
He
was wounding her. He could feel her pain throbbing in his own chest, reminding
him with excruciating clarity how damn good it had felt not to care. About
Delia. About any woman. Especially this woman, with her soft eyes and her
healing hands.
He
swore. "Go back to your room, Norah. I have more important things to do
than argue with a woman."
He
expected her to run, flee in a bout of tears. God knew, any other woman he'd
ever encountered would have. Instead, she asked in a tight voice, "What
are you going to do?"
"I'm
going to confront the rebel lord of Rathcannon," he said. "To see if
the blackguard has the courage to face a man instead of terrorizing a
child."
"Aidan,
he hates you."
"Then
perhaps the bastard will have the courage to put a pistol ball through my
heart. God knows, he's been hungering to do so for the last twenty years."
With
that, he spun on his heels and stalked from the chamber, racked with his own
hunger—for the coming of the night.
The
circle at the Hill of Night Voices had imprisoned secrets long before the first
bard touched fingers to a harp made of bog oak. Gray stone thrust up from the
clearing in mystic contortions, like arms reaching for some treasure lost in
the heavens—or, Aidan thought grimly, like the forever damned clawing at night
in a wild attempt to escape from hell.
It
was a place of mystic power, rooted deep in the Irish hills. One that had
intrigued countless throngs of the curious, including Aidan himself when he'd
been a boy. He'd not been able to resist the tales of human sacrifice and
strange pagan rituals that had been practiced within the cryptic monument. He'd
followed with interest scholars' efforts to unlock the riddle of the stones.
And he'd understood the fascination of those who hungered to release the dark
magic centered there, seeking the entryway to other worlds they believed
existed beneath the hillocks on which the stones held their vigil.
It
seemed somehow fitting that Donal Gilpatrick should choose the mystic circle as
his meeting place this night. Gilpatrick.
Never
had Aidan been able to hear that name without the stirring of a memory that
still had the power to make his jaw clench in a wash of shame and frustration
decades old. They had been born to hate each other, schooled in it as boys by a
master of such emotions. And they both still bore the scars from that
encounter: Gilpatrick's on his face, Aidan's hidden from any eyes but his own.
Yes,
Gilpatrick was his old adversary, dangerous, and yet one he thought he'd
understood—until now.
Aidan
held his stallion to a walk along the narrow path that carved its way up the
stone-scarred hill, aware of the hot press of eyes boring into his back, the
hair on the back of his neck prickling, as if it could feel the nudge of cold
invisible pistol barrels against his skin.
Gilpatrick
was no fool. The Irish renegade was cunning and careful, or he'd have dangled
from a traitor's gallows years before. Aidan was certain that the tangle of
gorse and blackthorn concealed any number of Gilpatrick's sentries— men bred
from the cradle to hate Aidan like Donal Gilpatrick himself, served up the
thirst to shed Kane blood with his first taste of mother's milk.
It
was madness to range the night, searching for those who would rejoice at his
death. Of that much Aidan was certain. He was courting a rebel pistol ball
through his heart with the same dark fervor he had lavished on Norah at
Caislean Alainn.
But
he couldn't stop himself now, any more than he'd been able to keep himself from
laying Norah down upon his cloak in the moonlight and making love to her until
he was raw inside, and aching and unsure.
For
he was one with the darkness. One with the sin-blackened souls who were the
lords of night. Hadn't he always been? Condemned even before his mother had brought
him into a world that despised him because of the Kane blood that flowed
through his veins?
He
was a villain whom the angels had chosen, in a cruel twist of fate, to entrust
with a child of light. He had tried so damned hard to guard her, protect her,
keep her safe from the evil swirling all around, even the dark places in his
own soul.
Yet
last night, those jeering angels had shown him how futile his quest had been,
how helpless he was to shield her.
Someone
had tried to harm his daughter.
Why?
There could be only one reason. To use Cassandra as a weapon against him—the
only weapon that could give his enemies ultimate power over his soul and
destroy him completely.
No,
a voice inside Aidan whispered, mocking him with a vision of soft brown eyes,
so earnest, so filled with wonder in the shadow of Caislean Alainn. Cassandra
was not the only weapon an enemy could wield against Aidan Kane's heart. Not
anymore.
The
stark vulnerability slayed Aidan. His fingers gripped the reins of his stallion
as if they were the slenderest of threads keeping him from falling through the
entrance to Hades.
Norah.
How had she breached his defenses? She had managed to slip past his guard with
the same subtle warmth as a ray of sunlight through a crack in a thick stone
wall. She had wanned him in places he didn't want warmed, had touched him in
ways his raw and weary heart had never expected. She had made him hunger for
her hands on his body, her mouth under his, so he could catch her breathy
whispers, hold onto the words she had spoken time and time again at his
command:
I
love you.
Love.
From the instant the words had first fallen, so shy, so reluctantly from her
lips, he'd been starving for the sound of them.
Even
when he had stridden into Rathcannon's stable at dusk and found her waiting
outside his stallion's stall, he had wanted to draw her into his arms and kiss
her. Promise her that everything would be all right. He had expected anger,
pleading, raging.
But
she had merely stood there, in the first light of the lantern suspended from an
iron hook in the stable rafter. She had been quiet, so quiet, while Sean O'Day
and Gibbon Cadagon had demanded to be allowed to follow their master into this
den of rebels. Two guns to watch his back, Cadagon had claimed.
Two
men—innocent, good men with families dependent on them—volunteering to take a
bullet for Aidan Kane. The notion had raked mercilessly across his nerves,
unsettling him in ways he couldn't begin to understand.
He'd
been surly as hell with the two, telling them he'd be in more danger that they'd
shoot him by accident than that Gilpatrick's men would manage to gun him down.
But at the hurt in those puckish Irish faces, he had softened, clasping first
Cadagon's hand, then Sean O'Day's. He had gazed into the eyes of these two men
he trusted and told them that he needed to know Cassandra was guarded, safe;
and with the two of them at Rathcannon, Aidan said he doubted the devil himself
could steal Cassandra away.
At
that rough confession, he'd seen the determination melt out of the Irishmen's
eyes and sorrowful acceptance take its place. Cassandra, the treasure that must
be guarded, kept safe at all costs. Cassandra, the child that these two loved
nearly as much as Aidan himself did.
But
it had been Norah who had lanced his soul with her huge, fear-filled eyes, far
more eloquent in their aching silence than the Irishmen's pleas. She had
crossed to him, laying her fingertips against his lips, soft, so soft.
"Revenge can't hold your daughter while she cries, or rejoice when she
laughs. Cassandra needs a father far more than she needs to be avenged."
The words had twisted deeply into his heart and lodged there.
He'd
been furious at the sensation that she was able to reach him, cripple him in a
way no woman had for eight long years. He had wanted to shake her, to kiss her,
to beg her to understand. But he had clenched his jaw and turned away from her.
He hadn't spoken. He couldn't trust himself to.
Instead,
he had stripped down to shirtsleeves, then swung astride his stallion and rode
into the night.
He'd
welcomed the chill night air, biting through the thin fabric, cooling the fires
of confusion and rage inside him. And he had hoped that his unorthodox plan
would serve as some kind of shield against Gilpatrick's hatred, and that
somewhere, in the rebel's heart, there remained a scrap of the oak-tough code
of honor Aidan had once believed to be unbreakable, the one quality in the one
man he had come close to envying.
The
white of Aidan's shirt would stand out starkly against the backdrop of night,
announcing his presence to Gilpatrick's watch. He wanted the bastards to see
him. He wanted them to know he didn't give a damn if the whole county knew he
was coming to confront the bastards who had dared terrorize his daughter.
If
there was anything Gilpatrick could understand, and grudgingly respect, it
would be bold-faced courage, a foe who dared face him down, outnumbered a score
to one. Besides which, Aidan was certain it was the only way he could get close
enough to the rebel to demand the answers he needed.
The
stallion tossed its magnificent head, whickering nervously, and Aidan tightened
his knees around the animal as it sidestepped, dancing away from a clump of
underbrush. Survival instinct raged inside him, demanding he turn toward the
brush, tear back the veil of darkness with his eyes. But he rode on, his
features impassive, his mount under iron control.
His
heart thundered in his chest, as if realizing that each beat could well be its
last.
In
the moonlight, he could see the first glimpse of the Stone of Truth, which
legend said had sent Eremon O'Caighan to hell for his crimes against his
chieftain's wife. Orange-gold tongues of flame from a torch or lantern licked
hellish reflections onto the towering slab.
Every
muscle in Aidan's body was coiled, as if expecting the fiery lash of a whip,
every nerve ending sparked and tingled.