Cardiff Siblings 01 - Seven Minutes in Devon (25 page)

How could he not have known? And yet,
it had simply happened, his hands knowing how to create what his
head had not yet fully embraced.

What in God’s name did it mean? Why
would he, whether he knew what he was doing or not, create a
sculpture of the woman he’d hated for so long. Marble wasn’t a
medium he could toss into the hearth and watch it burn. It was more
permanent.

It was absolutely,
undeniably
her
.

He couldn’t speak. With all the
blasted emotion roiling through his veins, he couldn’t possibly
trust his voice not to crack and betray him. So he stood there,
watching and waiting as his sister experienced his artwork for the
first time in years—the possibility of which he’d long ago
denounced in his own mind, in order to bury the deep seated ache in
his gut over her loss of sight.

I’m a blithering
idiot
. There was no other explanation for
how he could have himself been so blind as to think Morgan couldn’t
experience his sculpting. For so long, he’d been utilizing a
different medium—one which she had no possibility of sharing in
with him—and trying to convince himself he couldn’t sculpt any
more.

He’d deprived her of the one part of
his artwork she could have shared with him, all along.

And why?

To spite Miss Hathaway? She knew
nothing of this part of him, so why should it matter to her if he’d
been sculpting or working with pastels, or doing nothing at
all?

If he had thought, for even
a moment, that his art could help Morgan, he would have started
sculpting again in the span of half a second. But now, as her hands
slid rapidly over the many contours as though she were trying to
memorize every bit of it and store it in her memory forever, he
could see how it might have helped her. How it
was
helping her even now. Her eyes
sparkled with such joy, he felt like the greatest cad ever to walk
the earth.

So he waited, allowing his sister to
examine it as long as she wished without interruption. Alas, that
mangy dog let out a yap after a few moments. He’d never know how
long she might have gone on were she not distracted. Morgan dropped
down beside the dog to scratch his ears with such earnestness it
was as though spoiling the beast was the only thing she was meant
to do in this life.

Then Miss Hathaway cleared her
throat.

His head shot up almost, and he locked
his gaze with Miss Hathaway’s. The sun had started its descent, and
streaks of pink and orange came into the hermitage around the two
ladies, making it difficult to see them other than their
silhouettes. After a moment, her eyes became clear in the dark
shadows of her form. They were huge and almost black, forced wider
than was their wont. Bewildered and dealing with his own shame, and
indeed anger with himself, he knew his expression must be wild and
terrifying.

She flinched and took a half step
back, which only confirmed his suspicions. “Morgan,” she ventured a
moment later, her tone betraying none of the fear in her eyes,
“shouldn’t we return to the main house? They’ll send a search party
after us if we aren’t back soon.”

“
Why did you bring my
sister here?” Aidan demanded. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from
becoming far more aggressive with the chit than was called for.
There was simply something about her that brought out the very
worst in him, and he had not come close to discerning a way of
stopping that change within himself. “Did they know this was your
destination?”

Miss Weston smiled, her auburn hair
shimmering like flame in the setting sun. “Kingley was ready to
lead Morgan, and so we all went for a walk with him. We didn’t
truthfully know where we had gotten to.”

Kingley was
ready
. Of course he was. Their absurd
behavior could only be related to something equally as absurd. “How
could you know the dog was ready? And why did Sir Henry allow you
to go without his assistance?” When he saw Henry Irvine next, he’d
demand an answer as to why the deuced baronet would let the three
of them go off on their own, but that would be between Aidan and
Irvine.

Miss Hathaway pursed her lips tightly
together and crossed both arms over her chest. “Berating us after
the fact will hardly change anything, Mr. Cardiff. If you’ll excuse
us.” She took the dog’s lead and pressed it into Morgan’s hand,
then started to guide the lot of them out of the
hermitage.

But the sun was already setting, and
it could be quite dark by the time they returned to the main house.
That wouldn’t do. Niall would never let Aidan hear the end of it.
Not if Aidan allowed them to return alone, and if Niall ever got
wind of the situation.

Especially not after what had
happened, with Miss Hathaway stalking off alone through the woods
the last time they’d been out at the hermitage.

“
Wait a few moments for me
to clean up my work, and I’ll come with you.”

His directive seemed to do the trick
with Morgan and Miss Weston. The two of them—the reasonable ones of
the bunch—stopped and waited. Miss Hathaway continued stalking off,
tromping down the almost nonexistent path and stumbling
occasionally. Blast, but she was going to hurt herself. Not only
that, but she didn’t even have the damned dog with her this
time.

There was no time to sort out his
mess. Aidan marched out the door and chased after her. When he
reached her side, he took her by the elbow and forced her to stop.
“I said to wait.”

“
I realize that,” she bit
off. Her glare was fit to level a man at fifty paces. “I chose to
ignore you. Kindly release me.”

Never in his life would he understand
his reactions to this woman. One moment, he was in awe of his
sister and her appreciation for his artwork, and the next he felt
ready to spit fire. And all because Miss Hathaway didn’t just annoy
him, but she consumed him. His every thought was of her. Her image
was in his mind even when she wasn’t present. For God’s sake, he’d
even turned his sculpture into her likeness. It was more than he
should have to bear.

Before he allowed himself the time to
think, Aidan picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder,
ignoring her gasp of outrage, then turned to the other ladies.
“Miss Weston, would you be so kind as to fetch the lantern by the
hearth and then close the door to the hermitage?” Without waiting
for her response, he whistled for the dog and started off back
toward the manor house.

This was not how he’d envisioned the
completion of his day.

After Miss Hathaway had voiced her
displeasure with him the entire way back to the manor house, right
up until the moment he’d set her upon her feet just before they
broke through the line of trees into the clearing, he finished
making certain the three ladies arrived safely and more or less
intact. Aidan then went in for supper and attempted to go about the
rest of the evening as usual.

Such a thing was easier said than
done, however. Particularly when he could not remove the image of
his sister exploring his sculpture from his mind—the sense of
wonder in her eyes, the pure joy alighting her features.

For that matter, he couldn’t remove
thoughts of Miss Hathaway either. She’d squirmed and struggled
against him the entire way back from the hermitage, despite the
teasing censure she received from Morgan and Miss Weston, and he’d
been forced to hold her legs more tightly against him in order to
avoid dropping her. Those legs were long and lean, as was the rest
of her. But they weren’t bony and hard—there was a softness to
them, one which sent his thoughts traveling to an entirely
inappropriate place. No matter how hard he’d tried, he couldn’t
remove the memory of how well she’d fit against him, how her very
shapely, very long legs were nearly begging to be wrapped around
his waist.

He had no business thinking of taking
her to his bed. There was no situation in which it would ever be
befitting for him to think of delving between her
thighs.

And yet, that was essentially all he
could think of throughout their entire jaunt.

His thoughts ought to be focused
instead upon the fact that Morgan was by his side but her hand was
not upon his person as they walked through the woods. He ought to
be marveling that, however unlikely he’d thought such a prospect,
the dog truly was guiding her as Miss Hathaway and Sir Henry had
intended.

How could he think of such things,
though, with Miss Hathaway’s entirely too enticing derriere
situated over his shoulder, in perfect view? Well, in perfect view
should he turn his head to the side. (An act which he discovered,
much to his dismay, he was completing rather more frequently than
was necessary.)

He couldn’t possibly think of those
things of which he ought to be thinking. He was a man. He thought
like a man. As such, his thoughts invariably turned to those of
bedding shapely females and the delightful sounds those very
females would make in the process.

Even now, sitting across the drawing
room from those same three ladies as the houseguests conversed all
around him, he couldn’t force himself to think in such a clear
manner. The path of his thoughts inevitably turned to the slight
downturn of Miss Hathaway’s eyes when she smiled, as she was doing
just now for Sir Henry. It ought to make her look sad,
despondent…but instead it simply made her appear
intriguing.

And that made Aidan want to look at
her more than before.

He watched her, noting how she crossed
her ankles just so, when Niall came and took the seat across from
him, blocking the lady from his view.

Aidan bit back an oath.

“
How did Morgan fare with
Kingley?” Niall asked. “Was she able to handle him? I know Miss
Hathaway and Miss Weston say they had no problems at all,
but…”

“
But you want to hear it
from me,” Aidan finished for him. But damn, if he hadn’t really
paid much attention. Still, they had made it all the way from the
hermitage back to the main house, without anything involving either
Morgan or the dog catching Aidan’s notice. That had to mean she’d
managed quite nicely, didn’t it? He ought to have paid Morgan more
attention, and paid less to Miss Hathaway’s derrière. “They did
just fine together.”

Speaking his approval aloud ought to
have grated upon Aidan’s last nerve. It all came back to Miss
Hathaway, after all. But instead of annoyance, a flicker of pride
started to work its way through his body, warming his
veins.

“
Miss Hathaway’s idea might
not prove to be as disastrous as you first thought,
then?”

“
I think perhaps she is not
as careless as I’d initially thought her to be,” he
said.

“
Indeed?” Niall smugly
lifted a single brow. “So your opinion of her is beginning to
change? Perhaps you could behave in a civil manner toward her after
all.”

Aidan coughed on a sip of brandy.
“Don’t let’s take this too far, now.”

“
But you could, at least,
stop depicting her death in your artwork.”

After what he’d witnessed earlier,
when Morgan had come so alive while exploring his marble, Aidan
couldn’t imagine ever creating those fiery pastels again. Not with
the same rage fueling it, at the very least. The realization almost
hurt.

“
I could,” he finally
conceded for his brother’s benefit, not that Niall seemed to be
paying attention any longer.

Aidan turned his head to see what had
caught Niall’s attention. He was staring in the direction where
Morgan and Miss Hathaway were seated with Miss Weston. The
auburn-haired lady was tittering with laughter, her lips pressed
together in a mischievous manner—and she had Niall’s full
focus.

Interesting. In the last many years,
neither Aidan nor Niall had spent much time thinking about women
for their own personal pursuits. All of their time and energy had
been taken up with worrying about Morgan and how to convince her to
live.

Sure, Niall had said he was ready to
move on since Morgan had obviously done so. But Aidan hadn’t
thought about it being the truth—hadn’t thought about the fact that
Niall must find a bride and procure heirs for the earldom. Aidan
had thought only of himself and Morgan. Never of his
brother.