"The
fete at the standing stones was a private party. Some of Gilpatrick's men took
exception to my arriving without an invitation," he said, attempting to
jest. "I just need to wash the cut, and then bind a tight cloth about my
ribs."
"Aidan,
they hurt you. I thought you said Gilpatrick had tried to help."
"His
men didn't have their leader's philanthropic impulses. And as for the fight
with Gilpatrick, I goaded him into it. I wanted so damn bad to gain control of
something again, anything. To fight some foe besides this—this phantom that
melted out of the night to try to steal Cassandra and then disappeared
again."
He
crossed to the washbowl and lifted the pitcher to pour water into the bowl. A
spike of pain jolted from his collarbone through his ribs, and he winced. Norah
snatched the china pitcher away and filled the bowl herself. Then she took him
by the arm and settled him in a chair.
Aidan
sank down into the cushions, exhaustion seeping through his body, pulling him
down into emotions he couldn't conquer, couldn't hide. And as Norah's hands
began gently swabbing his wound, Aidan let his head sag onto the chair back,
his eyelids slipping closed.
God,
it was so beautiful, feeling her fingertips glide across the wounded places on
his body, tending him with such infinite tenderness. Love...
Belief
in him, when he didn't deserve it. Love, when he had none to give her in
return. Magic, where there had only been darkness and dread and self-loathing.
She
was a treasure that should be cherished, framed in a backdrop of love worthy of
her devotion. She should be forever safe, in the care of a far better man than
he.
Aidan's
heart tore with the pulsing terror that he would somehow fail her. His jaw
knotted, his fingers clenching on the arms of the chair. He welcomed the pain
of his hands throbbing, wishing it could drive away the deeper pain in his
heart.
"Aidan,
what—what are you thinking? Feeling?" Her breath wisped over him as she
bandaged his wound. "Damn it, Norah."
"You
say I don't know you. I want to. Need to. Tell me."
Aidan
wanted to shake her, rage at her, tell her that the truth would destroy her.
She should pull away from him, not try to peel back the layers of his soul,
because what she'd find there... oh, God, what she'd find there...
And
yet there was a pull in those remarkable dark eyes of hers he couldn't deny, a
kind of dignity, courage, love that reached inside him, cupping about his pain,
drawing it to the surface, until for the first time in his life Aidan felt
words spilling free, memories rising inside him, things he'd never talked about
coming out in the rasping voice of a man imprisoned for an eternity, speaking
for the very first time.
"I
feel like the first time I stepped onto a battlefield, being swept under by
bloody currents, flailing in the darkness, my lungs screaming for air. My hands
grappling for purchase on something, anything to drag myself out of the gore,
to stop from hearing the shrieks of men dying. Knowing I was helpless to save
them. Sweet Christ, what if I can't save you or Cassandra? What if—"
"You
were knighted for bravery. You did save as many men as you could. Cassandra
wrote—"
"Cassandra
wrote a damned fairy story, rigged out in laurels I never earned. Yes, I saved
my men. But I saved the accursed major as well—a pompous ass, hungry for his
own glory, greedy for promotions. I was knighted for saving that bastard. I
should have let him die. Hell, I should have put a bullet in him myself."
"I
don't understand."
"While
I was being knighted for bravery," Aidan all but spat, "the
sonofabitch was sending my men in to be slaughtered as cannon fodder so that he
could climb over their bloody backs and rise among the officers' ranks."
He'd
fought so damned hard to dismiss his past, layer it in devil-may-care scorn.
But he could hear the pain in his own voice, see its reflection in Norah's
meltingly dark eyes.
"I'm
sorry. So sorry. But Aidan, you couldn't have known."
"They
labeled me a hero. Hero. For saving that bastard's life. But I wasn't any
goddamn hero. I was a reckless fool who had plunged in without knowing or
thinking. Just as I did in every other facet of my life."
A
bitter smile twisted his lips. "War was a nightmare, but I thought I could
escape it, cleanse myself of what I'd seen, done, as I had washed away the
blood on my hands. When I got back to England, hell, my marriage made war seem
like a cursed musicale by comparison. When Delia discovered she was pregnant...
God, the joy I felt. For just a moment, I believed the fates had given me the
chance to start over, to make things right with this new life we'd
created."
"It
was a new chance, Aidan. One you've taken advantage of. You have made something
beautiful in Cassandra."
Her
praise was an acid-soaked whiplash against the raw places in his soul.
"You see Cass as she is now," he insisted. "Here. Safe. You
wouldn't be handing me any hero crowns if you had known me during those first
years of her life, Norah. You'd be as sickened, as disgusted as I am with
myself, every time I remember."
Those
soft lips firmed, her chin tipping up with a stubbornness that wrenched his
heart. "I don't believe you were ever a bad father. Ever."
"I
wasn't a father at all, damn it. I didn't even exist in Cass's world. Delia
hated me for burdening her with a child, made me feel as if I'd raped her,
forced my baby inside her. I all but begged her to let us make a new beginning,
but it was too late. She said that after what I'd done to her, I owed it to her
to leave her in peace. I could only destroy the baby, the way I'd destroyed
Delia's life, the way I'd destroyed the troop of soldiers, the way I'd
destroyed everything I ever touched."
Tears
welled in Norah's eyes, and Aidan saw them fall free. She knelt down at his
feet, so he had to look into that lovely angel's face. "You didn't destroy
Cassandra, Aidan. You made her... magnificent."
"I
didn't make Cassandra anything. She survived because of her own strength, her
own courage, her own blasted stubborn will. I only saw her once in the first
five years of her life. I'd stayed away, like Delia demanded. I didn't even
know when she had the baby. God knows, no one at the March household thought it
important to notify me that I was a father. I was cheating at a game of hazard
when one of the Marches' acquaintances congratulated me on the birth of my
daughter. Cass was three weeks old."
"It
must have hurt so badly," Norah said, her hand stroking his. "To find
out about your child that way."
Aidan
bit back that remembered pain, too raw to be examined, and went on. "I
rode all night to reach Delia's parents' estate. My wife had already gone off
to Bath to take the waters, and, I don't doubt, to renew her acquaintance with
her former admirers."
"She'd
left the baby?" Disbelief echoed in the soft query.
"She
cast Cassandra aside the instant she was up from childbed, with no more thought
than if my baby had been a wilted posy from some forgotten beau." Aidan
sucked in a steadying breath, his lungs burning at the memory.
"I
went upstairs to the nursery and saw Cass cuddled in this elegant cradle that
had been in the March family for a hundred years. She had this little lace
bonnet on, and her knees tucked under her, her little rump in the air. She
was... so damned beautiful, lost in rose-satin coverlets, so innocent, so
helpless. I was afraid... afraid she'd break if I touched her. I was afraid I
would hurt her."
"You
loved her even then," Norah said gently. "How could you leave
her?"
His
voice roughened on the pain of the man he had been, so young himself, without
the hard core of cynicism to protect him. "I left to save her from
myself."
"Aidan..."
"Since
the night I first waltzed with Delia, her mother had hated me, seen me as her
daughter's despoiler. God, how could I blame her? Yet that day, when she came
to me, the proud Lady March stooped to plead with me. She begged me to leave
Cassandra in her care."
"But
Cassandra was
your
daughter. You loved her and wanted her."
Aidan
raised an unsteady hand to his eyes, rubbing away the burning sensation that
had little to do with exhaustion. "Lady March promised me that if I gave
my daughter into her care, Cassandra would have everything she ever wanted or
needed. That she'd have love, security, a home. The kind of stable life I could
never give her."
His
lips twisted in mockery. "Hell, I could hardly have dragged a baby with me
to my apartments over a tavern or gaming hell, could I? The blasted old dragon
was right about that. With the kind of life Delia and I led..." He
stopped, swallowed hard. "I thought about changing—casting aside my life,
making a place for Cassandra and me. But even if I had, what did I have to give
her? Nothing but a crumbling castle in Ireland. I remember standing there over
Cassandra's cradle, staring down at her, memorizing... memorizing the way her
lashes curled on those plump little cheeks, the way she crinkled up her nose. I
stored up images of the little shuddering sigh of contentment she gave when she
got her tiny fingers in her mouth and sucked on them."
Something
hot and wet splashed his bruised hand. Norah's tears. Would God Aidan could
shed some himself, for the confused, hurting youth he had been, standing over
his daughter's cradle.
"I
couldn't even touch Cassandra because I knew that if I did, I would never be
able to leave her. And I had to. For her sake, I had to let her go. I'd been
through a war, the destruction of my marriage, but I never understood the
depths pain could reach until I rode away from my daughter."
Norah's
hand slipped up to curl her fingers around his, the way this woman had somehow
managed to curl herself deep in the battered reaches of his heart.
"Don't
cry for me, angel. I don't deserve it," he said roughly. "I'm not
proud of the life I lived after I left Cassandra in that cradle. I drowned
myself in brandy, gambled like a lunatic. And there were women—I don't even
know how many, Norah, can't even remember their faces. I was so damned broken
inside, trying to prove to myself that I could make some woman... any woman...
want me when my wife did not. I didn't care if I lived or died. Hell, I wanted
to die. I believed Cass would be better off if I did.
"Five
years I stayed away. Delia was playing harlot to half the men in London. I'd
quit playing the jealous fool after I almost killed a raw lad in a duel over
Delia. I suppose I'd finally realized she wasn't worth another death on my
conscience. I turned everything into a game then, a game of wagers—bed sport,
gambling, drink. The amazing thing was that suddenly I couldn't lose at the
gaming tables. I knew that Rathcannon was Cassandra's legacy. I poured every
shilling of my ill-gotten gains fashioning it into something she could be proud
of. I even created the perfect room for her. It was the only way I could think
of to let her know that I loved her, wanted her, that every day she was in my
mind... in my heart. One day I was racing my curricle near the March estate
when a wheel shattered."
He
paused, blessing that broken wheel and the brainless wager that had ended in
his getting his daughter back.
"I
knew I should just go on to an inn, hire out another carriage, see to the
fixing of my own. But instead, I went to Lord March's door. Suffice it to say
they were not thrilled to see me. I demanded to see Cassandra... to just see
her. I didn't want to upset her life, intrude. I just—just wanted to look at her
and to make certain that she was all right."
Aidan
smiled, an aching, brittle smile. "Mrs. Brindle was there. She had loathed
me, like the rest of the Marches, for defiling Delia—but she led me into the
garden, let me wander through it, searching....
"They
say children are innocent. But they can also be incredibly cruel. I found
Cassandra on a stone bench, crying her eyes out because the cousins she'd been
playing with had taunted her about her mama and papa and the fact that we
didn't want her. She didn't even know who I was, Norah, when I tried to comfort
her."
His
jaw set, hard. "I decided then and there that my child's life was going to
change. I hauled Delia away from her lovers, cast my gaming aside, took every
shilling I'd won, and went to Rathcannon with a bewildered little girl in tow.
You know the rest. Delia's hatred, the poison, her death. I know you can't
choose your parents, but whatever angel delivered Cassandra into the hands of
Delia and me had made a terrible mistake. I'm still sick when I think of the
years I lost.... The time she first walked, smiled, her first skinned knee. I
wonder what scars those years left inside her, in places I will never
see."
"You've
done wonders with her, Aidan."
"Have
I? Or have I just made things worse? Left her unprepared for the future? I've
given her eight years of fairy tales when she has to face a reality that's
harsh and ugly. She's so brave, so damned innocent, so open. But someday she's
going to stumble into the truth—about Delia, about me. And when she
does..."