Never
once had he gilded his own wicked nature, his dissolute ways. Never once had he
been anything but honest about his lack of honor, of the noble impulses women
seemed to set such ridiculous store by.
But
it was obvious that Cassandra had had no such scruples when writing to the
woman she'd chosen as his bride. If the Englishwoman's reply was a reflection
of the kind of romantic rot Cassandra had penned in his name, it was no wonder
the idiotic female had shown up on his doorstep all starry-eyed and hopeful.
Lord,
what a shock he must have been to the damnable woman! No fairy-tale prince. No
hero. No knight to kneel before her and offer up his heart.
Aidan
flinched at the sense of feeling exposed, vulnerable in a way that infuriated
him. He thrust the letters in his pocket, unable to read another word. Damn
both of them!
His
mouth compressed in a hard line, but in the end there was only one thing he
could do. With an oath, he stalked to the table and drained his Madeira in one
gulp. Hoping that the liquor would dash away what little common sense still
reigned in his head, Aidan grabbed up a branch of candles and stormed out of
the chamber. He stalked up the castle stairs toward the room where the woman
lay sleeping.
The
fire was dying. The candles left about the chamber had long since flickered
out, but still Norah couldn't bring herself to return to the tumbled coverlets
of the four-poster bed. It seemed as if every time she stirred, she could feel
the ghostly imprint of another woman's body in the feather ticking, imagine
another woman's scent still filtering through the air.
A
woman beautiful enough to have given Cassandra Kane the face of an angel, the
hair of a fairy queen. A woman Norah could only pity because that woman had
been wife to Aidan Kane.
What
had she looked like? Cassandra's mother? How had Delia Kane's life ended? Had
the tragic accident changed her loving husband into this rogue of a man? The
letters Norah had received wreathed the woman's death in mystery. Cassandra
Kane's knowledge of her mother's death was obviously vague, hidden by the mists
of time and the lies adults told children in an attempt to soothe them. Had
Aidan Kane broken his wife's heart?
He
had the face of a man fashioned to lure women to their own destruction,
sweeping them into his sensual spell.
Had
he loved this mysterious woman? Loved her so deeply that her death had left him
shattered? So shattered that his daughter had wanted to ease his pain with some
misguided notion of providing another woman to love him?
Love:
It was a word that seemed foreign when linked to Aidan Kane. It was all too
easy to picture the man, his blood hot with a passion unbridled and dark,
addictive and deadly sweet as opium. Yet to imagine Kane in love—supplicant,
adoring, worshiping a woman with his eyes, with his fingers —was as futile a
fantasy as smoothing a storm-tossed sea with the touch of a hand.
Norah
struggled to imagine those hard, sensual features gentling into adoration,
those hands—long fingered and strong—initiating a lover into rites of pleasure
Norah couldn't even begin to understand, while his mouth seduced a woman to
taste the recklessness in him, the passion. The promise.
Promise...
of what? Norah wondered. Heartbreak? Pain?
Why
should it even matter to her?
She'd
be gone long before she could begin to unravel the enigma that was Aidan Kane.
But even if she did stay in this castle forever, she was not the sort of woman
who could manage to unlock whatever secrets Kane guarded beneath the relentless
green fire in his eyes.
No,
she could only pace the chamber of his first wife in an agony of sleeplessness,
listening to the whisperings of Castle Rathcannon, wondering about the woman
who had occupied this chamber years before and the man who had given her his
child.
She
might even have been tempted to satisfy her curiosity about the first Lady Kane
by asking one of the numerous maids as they fluttered in and out of the chamber
from time to time, except that the servants continued to regard her as if she
were some strange creature brought back from a gypsy fair.
In
any case, even if she'd been rash enough to question someone about Aidan Kane's
first wife, it was too late to do so tonight.
The
chatter of servants had long since died down to silence, and not a sound had
come from the other side of the door she was certain led to Sir Aidan's
bedchamber.
Norah
pressed one hand to the window, wishing with all her heart that she could
surrender forever to her own loneliness and hopelessness—a bleak existence that
had seemed to be her destiny from the day her father died.
Her
ineffectual efforts to change her fate had all been in vain. She had defied her
stepfather, braved the sea to reach a man who didn't want her.
And
so here she stood in the darkness, garbed in a lovely bridal nightgown, the
blush of her skin shining through the fabric, whispering of wedding-night
secrets that she would never come to know.
Her
fingertips toyed with one primrose-hued ribbon, and she flushed with the
knowledge that Richard was the one who'd ordered the gown for her. It touched
her heart that her feckless brother would think to make her a wedding gift of
the kind of gown any bride would dream of—one that would turn a bridegroom's
eyes to hot pools of need, make his hands tremble as he reached out to trace
the delicate latticework of blossoms that trailed across her breasts.
She
would have given anything to be able to put on one of her old worn
nightgowns—prim and plain as she was—a gown that didn't seem to have impossible
fantasies woven into every thread.
But
those garments were heaven only knew where, disposed of by Richard. Richard who
had sent her off from England with such high hopes, such fierce determination
that she should be happy.
Happy.
Poor
Richard would be appalled if he knew what had befallen her.
Tears
stung her eyelids as she pictured her stepbrother's face when he'd brought her
the letter that had sent her on this crazed journey. He'd been ecstatic. Eager.
So certain it was the right thing to do. And she had dared to believe it too,
because she'd had nothing else left to believe in.
She
dashed away the moisture on her lashes, then stiffened as she heard the sound
of footsteps in the corridor— resolute masculine steps that reminded her of a
soldier marching off to war.
A
servant? No. She was certain it must be Kane himself. She could feel his
presence even through walls of stone and the door's heavy-carved panel. She
could feel the restless energy in him, like a pulse in the castle's floor.
Her
heart hammered against her ribs, and she held her breath, waiting for him to
pass—impatient, no doubt, to put an end to this hideous day.
Nothing
prepared her for the crash of a fist on the oak door to her own chamber. She
started to call out, to protest, but the panel was already being wrenched open,
and light poured into the bedchamber from the branch of candles clutched in one
of Sir Aidan Kane's hands.
Norah's
first instinct was to dash for the coverlets, to find something—anything—with
which to cover her, but her legs wouldn't obey her commands. Her mind was too
overwhelmed by the image of the man framed in the doorway.
He
was every woman's nightmare—or secret dark dream.
Broad
shoulders strained against a white shirt, which was open at the throat to
reveal a vee of sun-bronzed chest. Breeches of midnight blue clung like a
second skin to powerful legs and lean hips. Ebony waves of hair, tousled as if
by the fingers of a lover, tumbled above eyes fired with such savage
resolution, Norah had to grasp the back of a gilt chair to keep her knees from
buckling.
His
mouth was set in the grim, determined line of a man who had decided what he
wanted and would not be denied.
The
Blue Room was my former wife's chamber,
Kane had taunted her.
The perfect
place for you in case I am tempted to sample...
Norah's
throat went dry and she groped for something she might defend herself with, but
he was already striding into the room, shoving the door closed behind him. Her
fingers curled about the base of a silver unicorn. "Wh— what are you doing
here? I told you I'd blacken your other eye if you dared—"
"Dared
what? Ravish you?" Kane raked his fingers distractedly through his dark
hair. "If it was only that goddamned simple. But no, I can't charge in
here on a mission of pleasure. I have to make an absolute ass of myself, laying
out ridiculous maxims, to untangle this impossible mess."
Norah
stiffened her spine. "On the contrary, you're not required to come
charging in here at all. As you can see, I'm hardly prepared to entertain
visitors. You have no right—"
He
slammed the candlestick down on a table, then turned to glare at her. "A
man driven to the brink of insanity isn't particularly concerned with the
rights of the woman who is responsible, Miss... whatever the devil your name
is."
"Linton."
"Yes,
that's it, God curse it. Well, you can leave off your maidenly protests, Miss
Linton. I might have been tempted to plunder a lady's charms before, but I have
no desire to do so to yours. Now, or ever. No offense, you understand. It's
just that my taste in women runs to something a trifle more... ah..." His
emerald gaze skated from the loose cascade of her dusky curls past the delicate
embroidery upon her breasts to where her bare feet peeked out beneath the
garment's hem. "... more ripe and rosy," he finished.
She
should have been grateful for his dismissal, comforted that he posed no threat.
Instead, Norah's skin burned beneath the thin shielding of fabric, Kane's words
sizzling in a painful path to the very core of her. Her chin held high, she left
the meager protection of the gilt chair and crossed with arctic dignity to
where she had laid her silver satin wrapper upon the foot of the bed. With her
back to Kane, she drew the garment on.
"Since
you've no desire to plunder my charms, Sir Aidan, you can leave this chamber
before you ruin my name."
"No,
damn it to hell, I can't. There's no help for it. Might as well settle this
now, get it over with as expediently as possible."
She
turned to face him, outrage and hurt laced with confusion. "Get
what
over
with?"
"Deciding
what to do about this mess Cassandra has trussed us both up in."
"There
is nothing to decide. I'm leaving tomorrow."
"That's
how I saw it too, until my daughter came downstairs, to beg me..." Aidan
scowled. Shoving his thumbs into the waistband of his breeches, he began
ranging about the chamber like some wild, captive beast. "Miss Linton,
there is no easy way to say this, so I'm going to just fling the dice onto the
table and see what the devil you say about the roll. In case you failed to
notice, my daughter is a damnably stubborn, willful, determined little female.
She is also the only family I have. For some strange reason, she's got it into
her head that she needs a mother."
Norah
closed her eyes for a moment, remembering her own painful longings at
Cassandra's age, the need to be so grown up, yet still be able to bury her face
in a loving mama's skirts and sob out her heartaches, her fears, her confusion.
True, Norah's own mother had only been separated from her by the length of a
corridor, but the distance hadn't mattered. Corabeth Linton Farnsworth had
still been as unattainable as if she'd been a sky's breadth away in heaven.
"Cassandra's
longing is not so strange. She must miss her mother very much. Were she and
your wife close?"
"Close?"
Kane blasted away Norah's own poignant musings with a bitter snort.
"Cassandra's mother was a cold-hearted bitch who did her best to forget
she'd ever borne a child."
Norah
gasped, stunned by his loathing-filled words. "You sound as if you hated
her. Surely you must have—have cared for your wife!"
"Cared
about Delia? Oh, I was quite besotted over her in the beginning—the way her
breasts filled out the bodice of her gown, her lips all tempting red, and, of
course, the fact that half the men in London would have joyfully slit my throat
to get her in their bed. Then there was also the entertainment factor: Her
dragon of a mama regarded me as if I were the blackest-hearted serpent ever to
be spawned of Eden, an Irish demon trying to seduce her precious daughter into
sin. The woman hadn't a clue that Delia was one of those women destined to
incite men to madness, a woman with insatiable appetites for
amours."
He
had painted an all too vivid image—the devastatingly handsome rogue, the
exquisite beauty and the carnal magic that blazed between them. Norah
remembered a time when she had dreamed of being transported by the same fierce
passion. She'd almost believed it would be worth the anguish that came after if
she could just taste of that intoxicating wonder.
But
men—especially men like Aidan Kane—couldn't be moved to madness by someone
whose only claim to beauty was her generous fall of curls and eyes that looked
far too large and dark and haunted in her pale face.